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The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom established in Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. According to a legend reported by Josephus, King Ptolemy II (reign 285-247 BC) asked 72 Jewish scholars to translate the Torah into Greek for inclusion in the famous Library of Alexandria. The king enclosed the 72 scholars in 72 rooms and they produced identical translations of the Torah in 260 BC. The translation was called Septuagint (LXX). The Old Testament was completed in 132 BC. In the modern era, the Bible was retranslated into Greek many times. The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece approved the popular “Today’s Greek Version” as official version in 1997.

Syriac was the Aramaic dialect spoken in Edessa, modern-day Şanlıurfa in Turkey. The Old Testament was probably translated before the New Testament, either by Christians (110?) or by Jews (300?). The New Testament is mentioned for the first time in 160. The Peshitta translation became the standard version of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the 5th century. It was used as the basis for the Armenian, Georgian, Arabic and Persian versions, and also for Scriptures in Chinese which were lost but mentioned on the Stele of Xī'ān in 781. The Peshitta was printed in 1657 in the London Polyglot Bible of Brian Walton.

Hieronymus translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. Pope Damasus I originally mandated Hieronymus in 382 to revise the Vetus Latina collection of Biblical texts. Hieronymus moved to Bethlehem where he accessed the original Hebrew text. He was the only person involved in the translation. Augustine initially opposed the translation for its move away from the Septuagint to the Hebrew text. The Vulgata, the People's Version, was the authoritative Bible in Europe for more than 1,000 years. At the Council of Trent in 1546, in reaction to the challenges of the Reformation, the Vulgata was declared the Official Catholic Bible.

The Christian tradition traces the beginning of the Armenian Church to the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Gregory the Illuminator converted the Armenians to Christianity in 301 and was the first head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Mesrob Mashtots, an Armenian linguist, created the Armenian script in the early 5th century and translated the Classical Armenian Bible together with Catholicos Sahak in 411. The translation was mainly based on the Peshitta. After accessing the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament, they revised the whole Bible in 434. In modern times, the Bible was retranslated into Western Armenian (1853) and Eastern Armenian (1883).

According to the Islamic scholar Al-Bukhari (810-870), the practice of oral translations of Bible portions into Arabic existed before the rise of Islam. John II, the Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Antioch, translated the Gospels into Arabic in 631. The first New Testament was published by Giovanni Raimundi in 1616. The first Bible was edited by Sergius Risius, Maronite Archbishop of Damascus, in 1671. The Bible was retranslated by Cornelius van Dyke in Beirut in 1882. The popular New Arabic Version of the Bible was completed in 1988 under the auspices of Living Bible International, which later merged with the International Bible Society.

The Gospel of Matthew was translated into Old High German by monks at the Mondsee Monastery in Austria in 810. Scribes in Augsburg translated the New Testament in 1350, while the whole Bible in Middle High German was completed by Johannes Mentelin in 1466. Martin Luther translated the New Testament into Early Modern High German in 1522 and the whole Bible in 1534. Revisions of the Luther Bible are published today by the German Bible Society. The Elberfeld Bible was a project of von Poseck and the British dispensationalist John Darby and was published by Brockhaus in 1855. The popular Schlachter Bible of 1905 was completed by the revivalist preacher Schlachter.

The Vespasian Psalter was translated into Old English by unknown monks in 850. John Wycliffe and others translated the New Testament (1380) and the Bible (1384) into Middle English. The King James Version in Early Modern English was completed in 1611 by a committee appointed by King James I. The American Standard Version of 1901 and the New Revised Standard Version of 1989 are revisions of the King James Bible by two interdenominational committees. The New International Version (NIV) was translated by an international group of theologians and published by the International Bible Society in 1978.

Old Church Slavonic is the language in which the two brothers Cyril and Methodius from Thessaloniki translated the Bible. The language is close to Bulgarian and Macedonian. Cyril was professor of Theology and Philosophy in Constantinople. In 863, he and his brother Methodius settled in Moravia (Czech Republic), created the Cyrillic alphabet and translated the Psalms into Slavonic. Methodius continued the project after Cyril’s death and completed the whole Bible in 884. Church Slavonic is still used as the liturgical language in many Orthodox churches today. By order of Empress Elisabeth of Russia, the Slavonic Bible was revised in 1751 and is online today in various formats.

Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile (1221-1284), commissioned the School of Toledo with the first translation of the Bible into Old Spanish. The Biblia Alfonsina was completed in 1280. Casiodoro de Reina (1520-1594) was a Protestant theologian who translated the Bible into Early Modern Spanish in 1569. De Reina, who was exiled in Frankfurt, relied on the Ferrara Bible of 1547, a translation of the Old Testament into the Ladino vernacular by Sephardi Jews. Cipriano de Valera revised de Reina’s translation in 1602. Revisions of the Reina-Valera Bible are now published under the auspices of the United Bible Societies.

In 1297, Guyart des Moulins translated the Bible into Old French, called La Bible Historiale. Jean de Rély translated the Bible into Middle French in 1487. Isaac Lemaître de Sacy completed the Bible, La Bible de Port-Royal, into Early Modern French in 1696. The Swiss theologian Louis Segond translated the Bible into Modern French in 1880. The Bible of Jerusalem is a Catholic Bible completed under the auspices of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem in 1956. The Ecumenical Translation of the Bible was jointly translated by Catholic and Protestant scholars, and published by the United Bible Societies in 1975.

John EliotThe Wampanoag language was an Algonquian language spoken in the coastal regions of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, USA. John Eliot, an English puritan missionary learnt Wampanoag, wrote a dictionary and a grammar, created a Romanized alphabet and translated the whole Bible into Wampanoag by 1663. 1,000 copies were printed, the first Bible printed on the soil of the USA. Eliot instituted a kind of theocracy among hundreds of converted Indians modeled on Moses’ government of the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 18).

Hans EgedeThe Danish Lutheran missionary Hans Egede went to Greenland in 1721, founded the capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk, and learnt the Inuit language. A smallpox outbreak complicated missionary efforts. Hans Egede and his son Paul completed the Gospels in1744 and the New Testament in 1766. The Moravian missionary Johan Kleinschmidt retranslated the New Testament in 1822. His son Samuel Kleinschmidt translated most of the Old Testament by 1886. Yet, it was only in 1900 that the Danish missionaries Jörgenson and Rasmussen completed and published the first Inuit Bible. The Danish Bible Society published a new edition of the Bible in 1999.

Henry Colebrooke, who was an expert of Sanskrit, translated the Gospels into Hindi and printed them in Calcutta in 1806. Shortly afterwards, the three British missionaries, William Carey, John Chamberlain and John Thompson, settled in Serampore and completed the Hindi New Testament in 1811. During his lifetime, William Carey further coordinated the translation of Scriptures in more than thirty Indian languages. The Hindi Old Testament, however, was completed by another missionary, William Bowley, who transliterated the Urdu Bible into Hindi in 1835. Much later in 2006, the World Bible Translation Center India published a Bible in Simple Hindi.

Portions of the Scriptures were translated into Middle Chinese during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) by Nestorian missionaries but no manuscript was preserved. The first Bible in Classical Chinese was translated in 1822 by Joshua Marshman of the Serampore Mission. Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society completed another translation of the Bible in Classical Chinese in 1823. The Chinese Union Version in Mandarin Chinese was translated by an inter-denominational committee in 1919 and revised by the Hong Kong Bible Society in 2010. Another important translation is the Chinese New Version which was completed by an overseas committee and published in 1992 by the “Worldwide Bible Society” （环球圣经公会）.

Before the 19th century, Christians in Russia used the Slavonic Bible that was published under the Empress Elisabeth in 1751. The Epistle to the Romans (1815) and the New Testament (1821) were translated into Modern Russian by a committee selected by the Holy Synod at the request of Tsar Alexander I. The translation of the Old Testament was completed by the abbot Makarios in 1867. The first publication of the whole Bible in 1877 included the Holy Synod NT and the OT by Chwolson-Levinsohn. In 2000, the International Bible Society completed an easy-to-read version of the Bible, called the New Russian Translation.

Amharic is related to the ancient Ge'ez language in which the whole Bible was translated in 480. Ge'ez is still used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, while Amharic serves as the modern lingua franca. The Ethiopian Orthodox monk Abu Rumi translated the Bible from Arabic into Amharic. Pell Platt of the Church Missionary Society published this Bible incrementally, the Gospels in 1824, the New Testament in 1829, and then the whole Bible in 1840. Later in 1961, under the auspices of the emperor Haile Selassie, a revised version of the Abu Rumi text was published. In 1987, the Bible Society of Ethiopia completed a new Bible translated from Hebrew and Greek.

Protestant missionaries have evangelized the Thai people since the 19th century, especially in Northern Thailand. The Gospel of Luke was translated by Karl Gützlaff (Netherlands Mission Society) and published in Singapore in 1834. Taylor Jones (American Baptist Missionary Union) and others completed the first New Testament in 1843. MacFarland and colleagues of the American Presbyterian Mission translated the Old Testament in 1883. It was later in 1894 that the Thai Bible was published as a single volume. In 1971 and 2011, this Bible was revised by the Thai Bible Society under the name of Thai Standard Version. In 2000, the International Bible Society completed another version, the Thai New Contemporary Version.

The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier brought Christianity to Japan in 1549. Jesuit missionaries printed the New Testament in Kyoto in 1613, but no copy has been preserved. In the 1830s, the independent missionary Karl Gützlaff translated the Gospel and Epistles of John into Japanese. They were published in Singapore in 1837. The first New Testament was translated by Jonathan Goble and Nathan Brown (American Baptist Missionary Union) in 1879. A committee of the Scottish Bible Society, which included the Japanese scholars Matsuyama and Okuno, completed the Motoyaku Version of the Bible in 1887. Later in 1970, the Japanese Bible Society released another version, the authoritative New Japanese Bible.

Bishop CrowtherIn 1821, Ajayi, a young Yoruba, was carried away from Nigeria during a slave raid. Released in Freetown (Sierra Leone), he was adopted by missionaries and baptized as Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-1891). He later returned to Nigeria as an Anglican Bishop to supervise the translation of the Bible into Yoruba. The Epistle to the Romans (1850) and the New Testament (1862) were translated by Samuel Crowther and Thomas King. In 1884, the whole Bible was completed by Samuel Crowther and Adolphus Mann. The Bible has given rise to a standardized form of Yoruba and was revised twice in 1930 and 1959. 

Mayan languages form a small family of thirty languages spoken in Mesoamerica. The achievements of the Mayan civilization (peak 200-900 AD) were a calendar and a logographic writing. The Maya were converted by the Spanish to Christianity after the 16th century. Protestant missionaries from the US reached the Maya in the late 19th century. In 1865, the Gospel of Luke was translated into Yucatec Maya by Joaquin Ruz and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The New Testament was translated by David Legters (Wycliffe Bible Translators) and others in 1961. The whole Bible was completed by a committee of the Bible Society of Mexico in 1992.

Swahili is the lingua franca in Southeast Africa. In the 9th century, Islam was established as the dominant religion of that area. Protestant missionaries arrived in Southeast Africa in the 19th century. Sheikh Abdel Aziz, Edward Steers, Richard Fennel and Francis Hodgson (all Universities’ Mission to Central Africa) translated the Bible into the Zanzibar dialect of Swahili, first the Books of Ruth and Jonah (1868), then the New Testament (1879), and finally the whole Bible (1891). In 1928, the Zanzibar speech was selected as the standard dialect of Swahili. In 1952, the Bible was adapted from two independent dialect versions and called Swahili Union Bible. A revision of this Bible was published in 2006.

Southern Quechua was the language spoken in the Inca Empire (13th-16th century) in Peru. The Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro dissolved the empire by killing the last Inka emperor Atahualpa in 1533 and by forcing the Inca to convert to Christianity. Catholic missionaries have evangelized the Quechua since the 17th century without translating the Bible though. Protestant missionaries from Scotland and the US were assigned to Peru in the 19th century. The Gospel of John was translated by Gybbon-Spilsbury (South American Missionary Society) in 1880. The New Testament (1947) and the whole Bible (1988) were translated by committees of the United Bible Societies.

Spanish Period (1521-1898) | American Period (1898-1946).
Tagalog or Filipino is the National Language of the Philippines understood by 96% of the multi-ethnic population. The Filipino writer Pascual Poblete (1857-1921) translated foreign literature into Tagalog, mainly secular works but also parts of the Bible. The Protestant missionaries Calderón and Miller adapted and expanded Poblete’s translation of the Bible: three Gospels in 1898, the New Testament in 1902 and the Old Testament in 1905. The Filipino priest Jose Abriol completed the translation of a Catholic Bible in 1953. The Philippine Bible Society published the popular Good News Bible in 1973, which is a translation of the Scriptures in Simple Tagalog.

Indonesia was a Dutch colony during 1602-1945. In 1928, Indonesian, which is largely identical with Malay, was declared the national language of the developing state. Indonesian was more suitable for unifying the country than Javanese, the most populous language. Since the 1950s, six versions of the Bible were translated. Frequent revisions are necessary as Indonesian is on a path of rapid language change. Two committees of the Indonesian Bible Society led by Swellengrebel and Abineno completed the Book of Genesis in 1955, the New Testament in 1968 and the whole Bible in 1974. Another important translation is the Everyday Indonesian completed by the International Bible Society in 1985.