Thursday 19 January 2012

"Book of Books" Exhibit, National Library, Cape Town

A photo of one of the pages from an old Bible on display at the "Book of Books" exhibit at the National Library, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (1611-2011).

Some trivia: the first English translation of the Bible was done in most part by John Wycliffe in 1383. It was a handwritten translation. In 1525 William Tyndale completed and printed a Bible for the "common man", which was smuggled into England from Germany. Tyndale was eventually arrested and burnt at the stake in 1536. King Henry VII ordered that the English Bible be used in all the churches in England sometime after 1539, so that ever Bible did become accessible by the "common man". King James I resolved that a proper translation was needed, and a panel of translators was organized in 1603. The King James Become was published in 1611.

Bible were published in South Africa from the early 1800s, with translations into many of the indigenous languages.

The Society of True Afrikaners was founded in 1875 with the purpose of translating the Bible into Afrikaans. The first complete Afrikaans Bible was only published in 1933 with a revision in 1953, known as the Afrikaans Old Translation ("ou vertaling") and considered one of the best translations of the Bible into any language. A new direct translation is currently in the works.
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