The Global Bible and National Identity in the Age of Empires

Carey, Hilary M.; Jensz, Felicity; Wandusim, Michael F.

Abstract

This essay considers how Bible societies in German and English-speaking lands came together in the attempt to translate the Bible into all the languages of the world – a global Bible. It focuses on case studies from Greenland and eastern Australia/Oceania as well as West Africa, examining the extent to which colonial translations enhanced, impeded or complicated the emergence of Indigenous and national identities. In Greenland, a national Bible emerged as a crowning achievement for a new national language. In Australia, the Bible translation movement was accompanied by harrowing cultural destruction, including the loss of almost all Indigenous languages in areas of intense settler colonisation and population replacement. In German-controlled New Guinea and West Africa, the translation of the Bible by German missionaries underscored the legitimation of German imperialism. Within the linguistically diverse area of New Guinea, the colonial period saw no project for a single Bible translation to encourage a national identity. In West Africa, the translation of the Bible into Ewe contributed to the creation of a new form of Ewe identity. Using the extensive archives of Bible societies in both the UK and Germany, notably the British and Foreign Bible Society in Cambridge, the paper explores the varying ways in which the creation of a written language and a national Bible impacted on colonised and missionised peoples in the age of empires.

Projects the publication originates from