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PREFACE
Fon four generations the British and Foreign Bible
Society has been publishing and circulating the W ord
of God throughout the world.
\Vhen it was founded,
·in
1804,
sorne portión of Scripture had been printed
in over 60 languages ;
118
years later, the number of
tongues in which the Societ-y has proníoted the trans–
lation, printing: or distribution of God's Book has
grown to
553.
Specimens of every one of these
forms of speech are given in the following pages.
Each separate language
~nd
dialect is numbered. At
the right-hand upper corner is usually given a very
general geographical note to enable readers to locate
the language. Then follows the text itself-as a rule
the well-kno,vn ·words of St.
J
ohn
3.
16.
Where
these words are quoted, no na1ne of the Gospel is
added.
But 'vhere that text was not available, the
latter clause of St. Matthew
4.
1
O, or St. Mark
3.
35,
or St. Luke
15.
10 (represented by the contractions
Mt., Mk., Lk.,
respectively) appears instead.
In a few
instances, a text from son1e other part of Scripture had
to be chosen, in which case the full reference is given.
The figure at the end of each entry gives the date of
the particular edition · in the Bible House Library
from which the quotation is made.
In certain languages versions are no longer in
circulation. The· names of such languages are marked
in the first Index with an asterisk.
Men write in many alphabets. Moreover the Society
has sometin1es to print the same version in llore
than one script to suit different readers.
These aré
represented in the following specimens '\-Vhere they
occur; andan Index recording over
60
forms of charac–
ters -
ideograms of China, ancient alphabets of Syria
and India, Gothic and Slavonic letters of mid-Europe,