Translating Colonialism? Global Networks of Bible Translation and their Cultural and Linguistic Impact
Westminster College, Cambridge, 7-8 Nov 2024
At the beginnings of the 19th century, Christianity was not a majority religion except in Europe and its settler colonies. By century’s end, it had become a world religion, with Biblical texts translated into over 500 languages by 1914. Missionary translation networks, accordingly, were a significant factor in cultural and linguistic change on a global scale – transformations that were often accompanied by colonial violence, cultural destruction, and language death. While the ‘Global Bible’ aspired to universality, the ways in which it was made, used, read, and received or rejected were culturally and loc ally specific. It was both an instrument of colonial power and a mass-marketed product of missionary linguistics and ethnology; for the converts, it was also a source of cultural and religious self-understanding.
This conference uses the ‘Global Bible’ as a lens for the study of global transformations, missionary networks, colonial knowledge, the clash of cosmologies, and Indigenous self-understanding. Its aim is to cover perspectives from a broad range of disciplines – history, linguistics, missiology, religious studies, anthropology – and regions, with special attention to the role of global majority actors and perspectives as well as to the contribution of Bible societies. The main period we will be considering is the long 19th century, but earlier and later translations and networks will be relevant for understanding these global developments.
Programme
Thursday 7 November
9:00–9:30 am Registration and reception
9:30 –10:00 am Welcome and opening remarks
10:00 – 11:00 am Panel 1
| Daniel Jeyaraj (Liverpool) |
Danish Colonialism in India (1620 – 1845) and Bible Translations |
| Hepzibah Israel (Edinburgh) |
Translation and Materiality in the Global Circulation of the Bible |
11:30 – 1:00 pm Panel 2
| Onesimus Ngundu (Cambridge) |
The BFBS Archives as a Library, a Legacy and a Living Testimony |
| Benjamin Weber (Münster) | Presentation on the Bible Translation Map |
| Artist presentations |
1:00 – 2:00 pm Lunch
2:00 – 3:30 pm Panel 3
| Martha Frederiks (Utrecht) |
The missionary strategy of using of ajami (vernacular in Arabic script) and Arabic Bible translations (or passages) as a tool to evangelize Muslims in West Africa |
| Tyler Horton (Cambridge) | Wind or Spirit? Decolonizing Bible Translation with the Septuagint |
| Uchenna Oyali (Abuja) |
From “Sacred Prohibitions” to “Holiness”: The Semantic Extension of Nsọ in Igbo Bible Translation |
3:30 – 4:00 pm Afternoon break
4:00 – 5:30 pm Panel 4
| Brian Stanley (Edinburgh) | The “Heathen” in the Bible and Colonial Vocabulary |
| Laura Rademaker (Canberra) |
Missionary translation in Australia beyond 1914 |
| Mia Jacobs (Bristol) | Blood as a Liminal Space between the Holy and the Worldly: A narrative exploration of the womb and flesh in Christian theology |
5:30 – 6:00 pm Advisory Board Meeting
7:00 – 9:00 pm Conference dinner
Friday 8 November
9:00 – 10:30 am Panel 5
| De Valera Botchway (Cape Coast) |
“Nyamesom pa”: A (mis)translated concept in the Twi (Akan) Bible? |
| John D.K. Ekem (Accra) | Shapers of theology via bible translation/interpretation: insights from some 18th century models on the gold coast (Ghana) |
| Toon van Hal (Leuven) | Between linguistics and missiology: 19th-century Lord’s Prayer collections |
10:30 to 11:00 am Morning break [Book launch TBC]
11:00-12:30 pm Panel 6
| Holger Strutwolf (Münster) |
Lost in Translation? How the New Testament was translated in antiquity. |
| Anastasiia Akulich (Leeds) |
From Russia to China and Back: The Shifting Geographies of Russian Orthodox Translations into Chinese and the Changing Role of Indigenous Translators |
| Lisa Kerl (Münster) |
The Confusion of Tongues: Struggles in Translating the Bible into Chinese |
12:30 to 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30-3:00 pm Panel 7
| Floris Solleveld & Hilary Carey (Bristol) | Translation and the Missionary World Map: Maps and Histories of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-1904 |
| Michael Wandusim & Felicity Jensz (Münster) | German and British Bible Societies in Colonial West Africa: A study of entangled network of institutions and resources in translating the Bible into West African mother tongues |
| Judith Becker (Berlin) | Closing observations and discussion |
3:00 to 3:30 am Afternoon break Walk to Cambridge University Library
3:30 to 4:30 Tour/ Display BFBS Archives