THE BIBLE

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14766, 4 October 1921, Page 6

THE BIBLE

IN MANY LANGUAGES. (From Our Correspondent) • ' LONDON, August. 12. The early publication, by the British and Foreign Bible Society, of "The Gospel of Many Tongues" is announced. Students should look out for it. The number of specimens of the tongues in which the Bible or some pari of it is published by the Society will, in the new work, be brought up to 543, as contrasted with 432 in the edition of 1912. Taken from St. John's Gispcl, the well-known passage "God so loved the world," etc., has been selected for illustration of the variety of human speech that missionary effort has to overtake. The superintendent of the translating and publishing, department, Rev. Dr. Kilgour, tells an interviewer that there is a complete Bible in 135 of tbfse tongues, that 126 have a complete new Testament, and that in the rest there is one complete 800k —usually a Gospel. We are told, 100, that the new edition will contain specimens nl' inure than GO forms of characters—idiograms 'if China, ancient, alphabets or Syria and India. Gothic and Slavonic letters, and occasionally special scripts which have been invented for the use of the people served. It is easy llien f.o agree with Dr. Kilgour that, the book will be highly interesting and useful to linguists and philologists, apart from ttic inherent interest of Bible-lovers. While ample efforts arc being made to bring the knowledge of the Bible to the savage of his native land, how today one is inclined to ask, docs the Book stand in the luiowledg-e of civilised men —-practically brought up upon it. These are days in which the inspiration of the Bible is often sharply challenged or flatly denied, but that is not the real point. Regarded as the Word of God or as a collection of allegories, the Bible, which as an inspired work or a mere literary production, is the greatest and most wonderful Book in the world. To millions it is a daily source of strength and consolation; but there is an increasing number of people on this side of the world whose childhood tuition in Biblical knowledge is never refreshed by present-day reading ajid study. Such people do not know what they miss.