One
Small Step To Better Bible Understanding
When English cleric
William Bedell went to Ireland in 1627, he found a very puzzling situation.
Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country, was ruled by Protestant Britain.
Protestant Reformers had already translated the Holy Bible into local languages
all over Europe. Yet no one seemed interested in translating it into Irish.
Bedell felt strongly
that the Irish people “ought not to be neglected till they can learn English.”
He set out to produce a Bible in the Irish language. But he met with bitter opposition, particularly from
Protestant sources.
OPPOSITION TO THE USE
OF IRISH
Bedell made it his
business to learn Irish himself. He encouraged students to use Irish when he
became provost, or head, of Trinity College in Dublin and when he later became
the bishop of kilomore. As a matter of fact, when Queen Elizabeth 1 of England
founded Trinity College, she did so to produce ministers who could teach her
subjects the Bible’s message in their mother tongue. Bedell try to make that
happen. In the kilomore dioces, by far the majority of people spoke Irish. So
Bedell insisted on having ministers who could speak Irish.
But influential
authority figures made every effort to stop him. According to historians, some
asserted that the use of Irish was “dangerous to the state” and others
suggested that is was “against the interest of
the Government.” Some felt that
is was in the interest of England to keep the Irish in ignorance. In fact, laws
were enacted that require the Irish to abandon their own language and customs
and to learn English and follow English ways and manners.
BEDELL’S BIBLE PROJECT
Bedell was not deterred
by such dictatorial views. Early in the 1930’s, he started translating the
recently published English-Language Bible (the king James Vesrion of 1611) into
Irish. He wanted to produce a Bible that was understandable to as many people
as possible. He felt strongly that the poor people could not search the
Scriptures to find the way to evalasting life as long as the Bible remained a
sealed book to them.
Bedell was not the
first to see this. Some 30 years ealier, another bishop, William Daniel, had
seen how it was for anyone to learn what the Bible taught when it came, as he
put it, “in the cloud of an unknown tongue.” Daniel had translated the
Christian Greek Scriptures into Irish. Bedell now took on the task of
translating the Hebrew Scriptures. What
is known as Bedell’s Bible includes both his work and William Daniel’s ealier
work. As things turned out, Bedell’s Bible – the first complete Bible in Irish
– was the only translation of the Bible into Irish for the next 300 years.
Bedell, a qualified
Hebrew scholar, enlisted two native speakers of Irish to help with the
translation from English into Irish. As they progressed with their work,
Bedell, along with one or two trusted helpers, painstakingly checked and
revised each verse. For reference, they consulted an Italian translation made
by Swiss theologian Giovanni Diodati, as well as the Greek Septuagint and a
precious old Hebrew manuscript.
The team followed the
lead of the translators of the King James Version (many of whom Bedell would
have known personally) and included God’s personal name in a number of places
in their Bible. For example, at Exodus 6:3, they rendered God’s name “Lehovah.”
Bedell’s original manuscript is preserved in Marsh’s Library, Dublin, Ireland.
FINALY PUBLISHED.
Bedell completed his
project about 1640. But he could not immediately publish it. For one thing, he
still faced unrelenting opposition. Detractors vilified Bedell’s chief
translator, hoping thus to discredit his work. They even maliciously had him
arrested and imprisoned. As if that were not enough, Bedell found himself in
the middle of a bloody and bitter anti-English rebellion, which broke out in
1641. Local Irish people protected Bedell for a time despite his English
origins because they recognize his genuine concern for them. Eventually however
, rebel soldiers imprisoned him in a very poor condition. No doubt this
hastened his death in 1642. He never saw his work published.
Bedell work almost
perished completely when his home was ransacked and destroyed. Thankfully a
close friend managed to rescue all his translated documents. In time, Narcissus
Marsh, who later became the archbishop of Armagh and the primate of the Church
of Ireland, got hold of them. He received financial support from scientist
Robert Boyle and courageously published Bedell’s Bible in 1685.
Bedell’s Bible did not
receive worldwide acclaim. Still, it was one small yet significant step toward
better Bible Understanding, especially for people who spoke Irish- not only in
Ireland but also in Scotland and many other places. They could now satisfy
their spiritual need as theyt read God’s Word in their mother tongue.
Bedell’s Bible has
continued to help lovers of truth to do that right up to modern times. One
speaker of Irish, who in relatively recent times learned what the Bible really
teaches, says “when we read Bedell’s Bible, we heard the words of the Bible in
our mother tongue. This was crucial key that opened the way for me and my
family to learn the wonderful truths found in the Scriptures.
For nearly 300 years
after the publication of Bedell’s Bible in 1685, no other complete Bible in
Irish was published. Then, in 1981, Catholic scholars produced the Maymooth
Bible, a translation in modern Irish, in its foreword, the Maymooth Bible
recognizes that “great achievement on the part of the Church of Ireland when
they published their version of the Bible in the 17th century.”
That, offcourse, was Bedell’s translation, although, in fact, until very
recently the catholic prohibited catholics from reading the Bedell Bible.
The scholars who
produced the Maymooth Bible published some of their preparatory work in 1971.
One part of this was the Pentatuc (Pentateuch), the first five books of the
Bible. In recognition of the pioneering wirk that Bedell had done, those
Catholic scholars include the note “in memory of William Bendell” Inside its
cover page.
The translators of the
Pentatuc used the Irish term “lave” for God’s name in many of the places where
it appears in the Tetragrammation or YHWH. Examples can be found at “Exodus 6:
2-13”. Sadly, when the complete Maymooth Bible was eventually published, the
editors- unlike Bedell – decided to remove the divine name completely from
their translation and substitute “an Tiarna” (the lord) in its place.
Source: www.jw.org
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