Bibles and resources

Peter Brassington

Do you know where to find Bibles in all the languages spoken by people attending your church (live or online), and the people living in your community?

As we started 2021 YouVersion’s Bible app (also available at Bible.com) provided 2,212 versions in 1,512 languages. By Dec 31, 2021 this had risen to over 2,646 versions in 1,794 languages .

Many versions can be downloaded for offline use and easily switched between using the compare function. The interface is also available in over 60 languages.

The site and app includes reading plans, tools for creating verse images, or sharing notes and variety of other resources. There is also a Bible app for kids in over 60 languages

faithcomesbyhearing.com now has Audio Scripture recordings available in over 1560 languages. Increasingly these are also being made available as videos of at least one of the gospels, and they also have many additional versions in text only.  The Bible.is website and app includes these plus the Jesus Film Lumo gospel videos.

Another site worth a mention is stepbible.org which at the start of 2021 had scripture in 300+ languages, and an interface in almost 60. It has lots of nifty tools for in depth bible study whether you are prepping a sermon, wanting to check up on what someone else said the Bible says, or perhaps just wanting to explore for yourself what something said in the original Greek or Hebrew, and whether that helps you in knowing and following God better.

An older favourite, biblegateway.com, has about 200 versions of the Bible in over 70 languages (including about 70 English Versions)

Should you be looking for a Bible in another language not already on one of the sites above, scriptureearth.org provides (or links to) Bibles, New Testaments, Portions and other materials from over 2800 languages and dialects in a wide variety of formats for downloading or using online.

Find.Bible provides a similar service and had a major update in 2021.

New-neighbour-bible.org is another site with a growing list of links and resources for European churches reaching out to newcomers in their communities.

With so many versions in so many languages, it often come as a surprise that the complete Bible is available in ‘only’ 722 of the of the world’s 7,000 or so languages. 
Fortunately initial or continuing translation work is know to be in progress in over 2800 languages (an easily misunderstood statistic as over 2000 of those with work in progress languages have something published). But translation is only part of the story. (See Wycliffe UK , Wycliffe Canada , Wycliffe USA and other Wycliffe sites for the big picture).

Other key partners in Bible Translation include United Bible Societies , SIL International, Deaf Bible Society, and many others within the Forum of Bible Agencies, as well as individual churches and language communities.

Some of these sites also have pages on how to find Bibles.
wycliffe.org.uk/stories/where-can-i-find-a-bible-in-my-language 
wycliffe.net/resources/how-to-find-bibles-and-scripture-resources

And yet with all of these possibilities there are people who still don’t know where to find Bibles, especially in ‘non-majority’ languages. Wouldn’t it be great if every church linked to online Bibles in all the languages spoken by the people living in their communities? Perhaps you can suggest it to your church along with some other thoughts on how to be a more multilingual church or discuss how and why people read the Bible.