Global Bible: Legacies of (Post-)Colonial Bible Translations in the Arctic, Australia/Oceania and West Africa

In the past two years, the Glob­al Bible Project research team has ded­i­cat­ed itself inten­sive­ly to a crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of British and Ger­man con­tri­bu­tions to the cre­ation of a glob­al Bible, i.e. the attempt to trans­late the Bible into all lan­guages of the world in the nine­teenth to ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies. The research team has focused on three case study regions where Ger­man and British colo­nial­ism once pre­vailed: the Arc­tic, Australia/Oceania and West Africa. Apart from pub­li­ca­tions in rep­utable jour­nals, a sig­nif­i­cant event of the project in the last two years was the Glo­Bil Con­fer­ence at West­min­ster Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge which brought togeth­er schol­ars from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pli­nary back­grounds and from dif­fer­ent parts of the world (Africa, Aus­tralia, Europe).

The exhi­bi­tion will there­fore com­prise, for instance, ancient man­u­scripts, trans­lat­ed Bibles and Bible por­tions in Euro­pean, Arc­tic, Ocean­ic, and West African lan­guages. Vis­i­tors will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to view phys­i­cal copies of the ear­li­est trans­lat­ed Bible por­tions in some of the indige­nous lan­guages of these regions. Apart from Bibles, the exhi­bi­tion will also com­prise lin­guis­tic mate­ri­als such as gram­mars, dic­tio­nar­ies, text­books, and oth­er items that con­tributed to the trans­la­tion of the Bible. This will demon­strate to vis­i­tors the mul­ti-step process behind mis­sion­ary Bible trans­la­tions in the nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies. It is impor­tant to men­tion that, in most cas­es, the lan­guages into which mis­sion­ar­ies and their local col­lab­o­ra­tors sought to trans­late the Chris­t­ian scrip­tures exist­ed ini­tial­ly in oral forms. Con­se­quent­ly, mis­sion­ary lin­guis­tic endeav­ors, encom­pass­ing col­lec­tion of words, cre­ation of gram­mars, primers, dic­tio­nar­ies, etc., were essen­tial prepara­to­ry work pri­or to the trans­la­tion of Bible.  In addi­tion to tex­tu­al mate­r­i­al, the exhi­bi­tion will show­case ethno­graph­ic arte­facts relat­ed to the three regions which will illu­mi­nate the socio-cul­tur­al milieu with­in which mis­sion­ar­ies and their local coun­ter­parts lived and trans­lat­ed the Bible. It is also impor­tant to indi­cate that a vis­it to the exhi­bi­tion will be reward­ed with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see art­works that were specif­i­cal­ly com­mis­sioned for the project and exe­cut­ed by Glob­al Major­i­ty artists from West Africa and Ocea­nia. The artists, Leeza Awo­jo­bi (Bris­tol-based Cameroon­ian poet) and Man­fred Wkeng Aseng (New Guinean artist), engage  artis­ti­cal­ly with the post-colo­nial lega­cies of mis­sion­ary Bible trans­la­tions in their respec­tive regions of inter­est. Last­ly, but cer­tain­ly not the least inter­est­ing, the exhi­bi­tion will dis­play results from the Dig­i­tal Human­i­ties part of the project led by the Ser­vice Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Human­i­ties of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mün­ster. These will include a dig­i­tized map of the glob­al Bible move­ment and open access data­base.

Ulti­mate­ly, the exhi­bi­tion seeks to pro­vide a forum for a post­colo­nial reflec­tion on the lega­cies of mis­sion-trans­lat­ed Bibles dur­ing the era  of Euro­pean colo­nial­ism in the Arc­tic, Australia/Oceania, and West Africa, fore­ground­ing the essen­tial yet often over­looked con­tri­bu­tions of indige­nous Bible trans­la­tors will equal­ly be fore­ground­ed. An exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue is being pre­pared with con­tri­bu­tions from select­ed Bible soci­eties of the Unit­ed Bible Soci­eties (UBS) and project team mem­bers to secure the results of the exhi­bi­tion. It will be pub­lished by the Bible Muse­um.

Date and Time

The exhi­bi­tion will com­mence with an offi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on 10 Octo­ber 2025 at 18:00 CET in the Bible Muse­um. After­wards, it will run until 1 March 2026, dur­ing which peri­od vis­i­tors will be able to view the exhi­bi­tion dur­ing the Bible Museum’s usu­al open­ing hours.

by Michael Wan­dusim (Mün­ster)