Why some people don't read the Bible
Because they don't have the Bible in their own language.
According to Wycliffe Bible Translators New Zealand ...
There are 6912 languages in the world, of which
- 2529 have no Bible translation begun
- 1640 have translation in progress
- 862 have at least one book
- 1115 have only the New Testament
- 426 have the entire Bible
(source: Wycliffe Bible Translators New Zealand http://www.wycliffe.org.nz/)
Seem a little imbalanced? Although these statistics are shocking, we can praise God for the work of translation that is taking place. Check out Wycliffe's Vision 2025! This is one (very important) aspect of what God is doing through his people to reach all nations with the gospel of Jesus.
According to Wycliffe Bible Translators New Zealand ...
There are 6912 languages in the world, of which
- 2529 have no Bible translation begun
- 1640 have translation in progress
- 862 have at least one book
- 1115 have only the New Testament
- 426 have the entire Bible
(source: Wycliffe Bible Translators New Zealand http://www.wycliffe.org.nz/)
Seem a little imbalanced? Although these statistics are shocking, we can praise God for the work of translation that is taking place. Check out Wycliffe's Vision 2025! This is one (very important) aspect of what God is doing through his people to reach all nations with the gospel of Jesus.
4 Comments:
In my opinion those statistics are misleading.
Two reasons:
1) The 426 languages having the entire bible are likely to have more people speaking them than
2) People often speak more than one language. Chances are, a high percentage of the world will be fluent in the 426 languages with the entire bible.
More relevant would be the numbers of people without bibles in a language they understand
Not trying to knock the work of Wycliffe, but I don't have a high view of misleading stats.
oops - the first reason again:
1) The 426 languages having the entire bible are likely to have the most people speaking them as their primary language.
well, God was the one who changed all our languages around
and even those who have access to the Bible misuse it, especially Christians (aka Pharisees)
pastors say it's inherent in every human being to feel a Creator, therefore there must be One, but it's also inherent in every human being to feel that Creation is unfair, therefore it must be
One one hand I agree with you, Nathan, that you can't judge a situation purely by statistics.
However, the fact that the majority of the world's population speaks a small number of the world's languages is irrelevant, in my opinion.
Even if the millions without Bibles were relatively proficient in one of the languages that do have Bibles, that is not to say that they would not need the Bible in their own language.
I studied French for about 10 years and have been studying Chinese for almost 5, but there's no way I would understand the Bible completely (if at all) in either of those languages if we had no English Bible. To understand the Bible in a second language would require amazing profiency, if not fluency. I wouldn't put up with only partial understanding .... would you?
Perhaps the statistics don't tell us everything we need to know about the linguistic situation in the world and the availability of Bibles, but they do give us an indication that there is still much work to be done in the area of translation.
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