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Global Bible Exhibition and Workshop, Münster.

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Workshop

The Global Bible exhibition was launched following an international workshop at the University of Münster on 10 October 2025.

Left to right: Michael Wandusim, Felicity Jensz, Ben Weber, Christian Herrmann, Hilary Carey, Holger Strutwolf, Martha Frederiks, Floris Solleveld, Kennedy Kwame Owiredu, Friedrich Tometten.

The workshop included three panels, beinning with a series of presentations by representatives from international Bible societies active in the three case study regions of the Global Bible project. Dr Kennedy Kwame Owiredu of the Ghana Bible Society discussed the current work of the society in multiple media and the many languages of Ghana. These include recent work to make video recordngs of Bible translation in Ghanaian sign language. This is particularly important becuase of the low literacy rates among deaf Ghanaians. This was followed by an account by Friedrich Tometten, Bible consultant for the Indonesian Bible Society, of his fieldwork translating into Yali (Yaly, Jalè, Jaly) a Papuan language of Indonesian New Guinea. Tometten argued that language was a powerful instrument for identity in the face of intense colonial pressure, in this case Indonesian. He illustrated the complex layers of meaning possible in Yali and the unique world view it was able to represent.  This session was followed by a presentation by Leeza Awajobi including a video of her poetic response to missionary Christianity and the loss of her mother tongue. After lunch, there were three presentations, by Floris Solleveld on Bible societies and comparative linguistics, by Hilary Carey on the Bible in the Arctic, and Marha Fredericks on translating the Bible on the Gold Coast and the politics of using ajami (Arabic) script to print Christian scripture. In the final session, Dr Christian Hermann provided an overview of the recent exhibition at the State Library of Württemberg (Württembergische Landesbibliothek or WLB), which currently has one of the world’s largest Bible collections and has recently held an exhibition on the colonial impact and reception of the Bible. The lead researcher for the exhibition, Michael Wandusim, provided an overview of the methodology and rationale behind the choice of exhibits for inclusion in the exhbition, noting that the intention was to illuminate the lengthy process involved in a Bible translation as well as the particular role of mother tongue and Indigenous co-translators in the process.

Exhibition

The workshop was followed by a reception and talk to launch the exhibition and the newly published catalogue, displayed in the image below. The launch was well attended by people of all ages who relished the opportunity to examine exhibits from across the world, and close to home, in the highly curated and professional context provided by the Bible museum.

Prof. Hilary Carey (Bristol), Prof. Holger Strutwolf (Director of the Bible Museum), Dr. Felicity Jensz (GloBil), Dr. Jan Graefe (Curator of the Bible Museum) and Dr. Michael Wandusim (GloBil), from left to right

The Global Bible exhibition runs until 1 March 2026, with a public guided tour taking place every Sunday at 3 p.m. The exhibition is the culmination of three years of research and collaboration with researchers, Bible societies, artists and museum professionals looking at the colonial and post-colonial legacies of Bible translation.

In his presentation to the opening session,  Prof. Holger Strutwolf (Direktor Bibelmuseum) described the origins of Bible translation and the complex histories of landmark works, such as Erasmus’s Greek New Testament (1516), generally referred to as the first published edition in the original Greek language.

Felicity Jensz introduced the first of the three case study regions of the Global Bible project, namely that for the Arctic. In this section, ethnographic artefacts sourced from the Moravian archives have been placed together with the first translations into Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) which were originally completed under royal patronage in the 18th century.

Michael Wandusim then discussed the exhibits relating to Ghana in West Africa, noting that Bibles were only the last stage of a complex translation process, that also involved the creation of word lists, orthography, grammars, and translations of short sentences, passages and scripture books, before culiminating – if ever – in a complete translation of all books of the Bible.

The third case study region is that of Oceania and Australia, vast regions in which there were multiple incursions by different imperial and Christian missionary agencies. This is reflected in the complex transmission history of Bibles in this region. One telling example, is the Tahitian Bible of Pomare II (1774-1821), completed after his strategic alliance with the London Missionary Society. Pomare leading not just to translation of the Bible, but also a new lawcode.

Leeza Awojobi
Poet and storyteller, Leeza Awojobi.

Reflections on the colonial reception of Bible translations was led by spoken word artist, Leeza Awojobi, whose poem was one of two commissioned art works produced as part of the project. Three drawings by New Guinea artist Alfred Manfred Wkeng Aseng narrated the missionary journey of his brother, who donated land to the Anglican mission to come to the village and set up a church and school. Floris Solleveld explained the process which led Aseng to contribute to the project and the need for Indigenous perspectives on the colonial process.

Finally, there was a presentation of works which have been used to develop the digital map of Bible translations, including the Book of a Thousand Tongues, originally published by the American  Bible Society in 1939, and re-issued with a marked turn to empower mother tongue translators under the editorship of Eugene Nida for the United Bible Society in 1972. This has formed by the basis for the Global Bible Project (GloBil) dataset, an accessible dataset available in multiple formats with a range of queries now available through FactGrid. 

Catalogue

The Global Bible exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue of over 100 exhibits and thematic essays. This is published by LIT Verlag and edited by Holger Strutwolf, Jan Graefe, Felicity Jensz and Michael Wandusim: Global Bible – Legacies of (post)colonial Bible translations in the Arctic, Oceania, and West Africa. Catalogue for the exhibition at the Bibelmuseum Münster from 10 October 2025 to 1 March 2026. Copies may be obtained from the publisher.

Global Bible exhibition opens 10 October 2025

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We are excited to be at the final stages of the Global Bible exhibition, the third and final milestone for the Global Bible project.

The exibition, with the subtitle ‘Legacies of (post)colonial Bible translations in the Arctic, Oceania, and West Africa’, will be held at the Bible Museum of the University of Münster from 10 October 2025 to 1 March 2026.

It will feature over 100 exhibits which will illustrate the impact of  Bible translation in the colonial and post colonial worlds, with an accompanying catalogue. The exhibition has been led by Michael Wandusim with support from the Bible Museum team and chief investigator Felicity Jensz. There will be a workshop bringing together international scholars who will explore the findings of the project across the fields of history, linguistics, theology, biblical criticism, and colonial and post-colonial studies.

 

Speakers include a number who contributed to the project conference, ‘Translating Colonialism‘, held in Cambridge in November 2025. Participants will have another opportunity to hear the work of spoken word artist, Leeza Awojobi on her ‘lost’ mother tongue of Kpwe (Mokpwe).

For more information, visit the Bible Museum website.

Visiting the National Art Library

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This week I paid my first visit to the National Art Library, which is housed in the Victoria Albert Museum in London. The splendid library is open three days a week, and I wanted to look for recent research on bible mania in the nineteenth century, and evidence of the response to the output of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a treasure house of art and technology and represents many of the Victorian values also reflected in the overseas missionary movement and its associated Bible societies. It is the confidence and assumption of superiority that seems so anachronistic today, and the assumption of right to power and civilization. With friends, I wandered through the new galleries to Asian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese art, then made my way through the ‘cast galleries’ of what were believed to be the great western works from Christian Europe. The National Art Library is on the second floor, and they are exceptionally welcoming to visitors. After signing up online and providing an address, visitors were welcome to use the library.

It was a pleasure to access printed collections of valuable and large-format volumes, all placed in accessible galleries. Every desk enjoys the luxury of a book stand for managing the large volumes which line the shelves.

Although I have read it online many times, I was able to re-visit the article on Bible Societies in the 11th edition of the Encylopedia Britannica (EB), the version published by Cambridge University Press in 29 volumes from 1910 to 1911. Although Edward VII (r. 1901 – 1910) scarcely lived to enjoy it, this edition exudes the values and confidence of the Edwardian age, the maximalist point of the expansion of the British Empire. The entry on the Bible (vol. 3, pp. 849-894), left no doubt as to the stature of this work in the views of the EB editors; it was followed by another leisurely account of the English Bible (pp. 894-905), which points out that the controversy and labour involved in what remains the only authorised revision of the King James version. The revision to the New Testament (published in 1881) was completed in 407 meetings over more than ten years; that of the Old testament (published in 1885) took 792 days, with the Aprocrypha finally published in 1894. This casts a valuable light on the challenge of translating the Bible into other global languages, and an appreciation of the intellectual, linguistic, social and political negotiations that drove their production.

The article on ‘Bible Societies’ was written by the Rev. Thomas Herbert Darlow, the co-editor with  H. F. Moule of the monumental account of the Bibles held by the BFBS, the Historical catalogue of the printed editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (1903 -11). This mighty catalogue deserves an entry of its own, but it is testament to Moule and Darlow’s scholarship and rigour that it remains in use, while regularly updated, to this day. In his EB entry, Darlow gives considerable prominence to the BFBS, but does not entirely neglect predecessors, including the Canstein Society, the SPCK, the The Protestant Bible Society of Paris (Société Biblique Protestante de Paris) and even the Roman Catholic Propaganda.

One purpose of my visit was to advance work for my presentation later in the month on ‘The Future of Research in Bible Society Collections‘. This is organised by Joshua Fitzgerald, Eyal Poleg, Lucy Sixsmith and Harry Spillane at the University of Cambridge. I will be presenting on our efforts to identify mother tongue translators in the archive. This is always a challenge given the Bible Society’s firm policy of publishing ‘without note or comment’, but there are vestiges of the work of native speakers in the correspondence and letter books of the Society. Let us see how many we can uncover.

Imperial Bible Translation – New article by Felicity Jensz

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Felicity Jensz has published an open-access article in the Journal of Commonwealth and Imperial History on bible translation in late-nineteenth century German East Africa. The archival work of this paper was undertaken in the Unitätsarchiv in Herrnhut, Germany, as well as the Archives of the British & Foreign Bible Society at Cambridge University Library, a GloBil project partner.

This article examines the context and process of bible translations from German East Africa at the tail end of German colonial rule in the early twentieth century. It is informed by an attention to global and transnational entanglements that are evident within the process of bible translations and publications. Translation is always a process of negotiation and compromise, and through examining the processes behind the translation and publication of the Bible into Kinyiha and Kinyamwezi a number of imperial as well as religious tensions become evident. The publication of the Kinyamwezi translation was undertaken quickly in order fend off Catholic and Islam threats to the Protestant efforts of conversion. As with the Kinyamwezi translation, the Kinyiha translation contributed to the field of colonial linguists, which itself underscored broader German colonial governments imperial agendas.

Map of German East Africa
Map of the Moravian missions in German East Africa around 1900. Mbozi is indicated by a red ‘H’ in the top left-hand corner on the map, on the River Nkana. Source: Periodical accounts relating to the foreign missions of the Church of the United Brethren, 1900, vol. 04, no. 41, Map.

The named translator of the Nyiha New Testament (as it was called), was a Moravian missionary by the name of Traugott Bachmann. The article demonstrates that through focusing on the historical setting of, and contributors to, colonial bible translations new insights into the political, cultural, religious, and economic tensions across imperial borders are gained. Although seldom mentioned in official reports, indigenous translators, women and even children, were of immense importance to the ‘reduction’ and ‘conquering’ of ‘unmastered languages’ beyond the work of colonial and missionary linguists, and thereby also contributed to the imperial reach of European empires. In this article through extensive archival research a number of indigenous translators were able to be identified and named. This article contributes to the broader aims of the GloBil project to decolonise the archives of missionary and bible societies and to highlight the contributes of local people to the broader colonial project of bible translations.

 

Link to open access journal: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2025.2508271#abstract

Global Bible goes to Brazil

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It was the privilege of members of the Global Bible project team to travel to São Paulo for the Yale-Edinburgh conference on the theme for 2025, ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism.’ Approximately 100 delegates from all over the world met to discuss this challenging topic over three days, from 28 – 30 May 2025.

We thank our hosts at the Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, and the conference team of Pedro Feitoza, Sérgio Santos, Ronaldo Cavalcante, Suzana Coutinho, Adriano Godoy, Erika Helgen, and Helen Teixeira, for their hospitality and excellent organisation.

conference photo of delegates
Photo of delegates from the final session

The journey from Bristol and Muenster to São Paulo was a big undertaking, but we were committed to participating in the first meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh conference in the global south. WIth its remarkable traffic, diverse population of Afro-Brazilian, Japanese and Portuguese heritage, this was the right place to be discussing the impact of colonalism on the Bible translation movement.

Hilary Carey, Ben Weber and Felicity Jensz
Hilary Carey, Ben Weber and Felicity Jensz

For our session, Hilary Carey discussed the progress of the project, and in particular the argument of Adrian Hastings that the creation of a national literature, especially a Bible in the mother tongue of a particular people, was a critical step in the creation of a national consciousness. She discussed this in relation to the case studies from Greenland, Ghana and Australia. While each translation project was a unique intellectual achievement, there was a wide variety of outcomes for the elevation of these Bibles to national significance.

Felicity Jensz’s paper, entitled ‘German Colonialism, the Global Bible and National Identity in the Age of Empire’, focused on micro studies from the German colonial world including the translations in Ewe in Togo, and work on the Duke of York Bible translations. She demonstrated that through a triangulation of sources we have been able to uncover the names and contributions of various local translators in the project of creating a global bible, thus contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge.

Benjamin Weber spoke on the Digital Humanities aspect of our project.  He described the process of compiling a project data base from multiple sources to enable a large-view analysis of the spread of the bible translations over the nineteenth century and presented this digital tool.

Having completed our own contribution in the first session, this left us free to enjoy other contributions throughout the conference. Sessions were in both Portuguese and English, with Portugues sessions skillfully translated for the less linguistically adept. In this way we learnt about Christian nationalism in Lain America, and the unique identities created by religious minorities in regions as diverse as Hungary, Malta, and Ghana. Eric Miller introduced me to Milton Nascimento, the wildly popular singer songwriter and voice of Brazil. For the final session, Emma Wild-Wood had the unenviable task of summing up the main themes, and bidding us gather and return for the next Yale-Edinburgh meeting.

In between sessions, we continued to discuss the future of our own project, possible grant developments that can build on what we have done so far, and – with Ben Weber’s help – thinking about developing the Global Bible missionary map using AI to allow plain language queries of our data. We also visited the extraordinary Afro-Brazilian Museum which helped us gained further insight into this exciting city and its colonial heritage.