My molasses-paced photo-digitizing project really should be completed by now; I am digitizing our old family photos so as not to be burdened with boxes of prints. I think I started nearly two years ago, but alas it’s still not done. I have hit pause on this project more times than I can count.
I am not the only person with unfinished projects.
Gaby, a native Wolof speaker in Senegal, let us know that he has only the New Testament in his language.
What?!?
There are 10 million Wolof speakers, how could they not have a complete Bible in their language?
Sad Fact: This project was started 146 years ago. (In 1873)
I can’t imagine waiting that long to have God’s Word in my hands. In 1988, the Wolof were presented with the New Testament, which was probably a glorious day…but it took 115 years to get it. And let’s not forget, they don’t have any of the Old Testament.
As an elder in his church, Gaby lamented over the fact that many young people in his church don’t actually read their Bible.
How could that be? Gaby explained…
“The Bible we have is too ‘pure’ for us to understand.” Language changes. As time passes, the language you started with doesn’t match the language being used by the speaker. Think Shakespeare, a great literary work but not easily read by most people. I guess that’s a danger of taking 115 years to complete a project. Isn’t that agonizing? All that arduous work invested by translators, but because of how long it took, not even the portions completed speak to the heart of the reader any longer.
Happily dancing on the table.
Huh? (Is that confusing?)
That is a sentence fragment, it leaves you wondering ‘who is dancing on the table?’ or ‘what does that have to do with anything?’ All you know is that someone, somewhere is dancing on the table, but you have no idea why.
Having the New Testament without the foundation of the Old Testament leaves you with a book of answers to questions never asked. The Wolof must have so many un-questioned answers…if only there was the Old Testament.
So English speakers, you have over 500 versions of the Bible available to you. Beyond being thankful, let it serve as a reminder to pray for those who don’t have one word of it available to them*, or versions that are incomplete at best. Surely there must be something we can do about this.
*2,251 people groups… or 193,000,000 people.
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