BIBLA-HONI. MAnn. Pterocarpus marsupium. - BIBLE, from the Greek Biblos and Latin Biblum, a book. Christians divide their sacred book into two portions, the Old and New Testaments. The former contains the writings of Moses and other prophets, and is the canonical book of the Semitic religion of the Jews or Hebrews; the latter contains the doctrines of Jesus Christ, but both books are canonical in the religion of Christians. The two books of the Old and New Testament are reverenced but not read by the Mahomedans of the S. and . S.E. of Asia ; and the possessors of the Taurait, Anjil, Zabur, and the Koran, viz, the books of Moses, the Evangels, the Psalms, and the Koran, are all styled A hl-i-Kitab, or People of the Book, i.e. people possessing a revealed religion. The Old Testament is supposed to have been mostly written in Hebrew, from which it was translated into Greek. The New Testament of the Bible was written, it is supposed, originally in Greek, but the book has now been translated into all the European, and most of the Semitic, Aryan, Mongol, and Polynesian tongues, and largely dis tributed. The Old Testament, too, has been, in parts, turned into the vernacular tongues of the East Indies, and the whole of the two books have appeared in Arabic. It is related that Philadelphus sent Aristmus, a man whose wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard, both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts, to Eleazer the high priest of Jerusalem, and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a Greek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer named seventy elders to undertake the task, and they held their first sitting at the king's dinner-table ; and Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, who had been sent to Philadelphus a ambassador from Eubma, was also present. The, translators then divided the work among themsaves ; and when each had finished his task, it was laid before a meeting of the seventy, and then by authority. Thus was said to have been made the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which, from the number of the translators, is' called the Septuagint ; but a doubt is thrown upon the whole story by the fables which have been mingled with it to give authority to the translation. During 1870 to 1881 a committee in England revised the New Testament. In the 2d century there is said to have been an Indian translation of the New Testament St. Chrysostom (Evang. Joan. Homil. I. cap. i.) says the Syrians too, and Egyptians, and Indians, and Persians, and Ethiopians, and innumerable other nations, translating into their own tongues the doctrines derived from this man, barbarians though they were, learned to philosophize.
Nadir Shah, in 1740, ordered Mirza. Mehdi to translate the four Gospels, but it was done in a very faulty manner. A Georgian translation was printed at Moscow in 1743. The Armenians have
it in their tongue ; the Nestorians and Jacobite Christians use the Syriac Bible, and it is in the vernacular of all the nations of Europe.
The first versions printed in India of any of the Christian Gospels • in the Persian and Hindustani languages, were in 1805 at the College of Fort William. The Persian was superintended by Lieut.-Colonel Colebrooke, and that in Hindustani by William Hunter. Thomas Jarrett translated the Gospels into Western Malay ; Pfirfish Ram, into the Uriya ; Vydya Nath, into Mahratti, under the superintendence of Dr. William Carey. The Old and New Testaments, in whole or in part, have now been translated into 72 of the languages of the East Indies.
Assamese. Gondi. Lepeba. Pushtu.
Batta. Gujerati. Macassar. Pwo.
Badaga. „ Mer- Malay. Sgau.
Baluchi. eantile. „ Low. Siamese.
Bengali. Harouti. Malagasy. Sindi.
Bhatti. Hindi. Malealam. Singhalese.
Bhugeli. Hindustani. Magadhi. Sonthal.
Bikaniri. „ Portu-'Mandailang. Sundanese.
Bruj. guese. Mahratti. Tamil.
Bghai. Javanese. Marwari. „ Kodun.
Balinese. Jypuri. Mon or Peg- „ Shen.
Bugi. Kach'hi. uan. Telugu.
Burmese. Kanoji. Multani. Tibetan.
Canarese. Karen. Mundari. Toba Batta.
Dyak. Kashmiri. Munipuri. Tulu.
Dakhani. Khasi. Nepali. Udaipuri.
Dogri. Konkani. Nias. Ujaini.
Formosan. Kosali. Palpa. Uria.
Garhwali. Kumaoni. Panjabi.
In Malay it was published in the Arabic character, in 5 vols. 8vo, in 1758, under the direc tion of Jacob Mossel, Governor-General of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies.
The immense numbers of Malayan Bibles and other religious books that have been circulated throughout the Moluccas, have produced a uniform ity of idiom which greatly facilitates communi cation not only between Europeans and natives, but between the natives of the different islands them selves. Indeed, the Malayan language here assumes a degree of importance which is unknown to the other European establishments in the Archipelago. It becomes in a great degree the language of general society, as Dutch is rarely spoken except by born in Europe, who are few in number. A constant correspondence is also kept up in Malayan between the Government and Orang Kaya of the interior. Under these favourable circumstances, the Malayan dialect of the Moluccas affords a facility in expressing 'ideas which is unknown to the westward, where the language is only spoken generally by uneducated people, a circumstance which may eventually lead to the Amboyna dialect becoming the general medium of communication throughout the Archipelago. A similar result followed on the translation of the Koran. it gave the purest Arabic a hold.
Since 1811, Bible societies for the distribution of this sacred book have been formed in most of the Protestant countries of Europe.—Indian Artily. 1873; Cust, Modern Languages, p. 196; Sharpe's History of Rept, i. pp. 308, 309.