Dansk / Danish Bible History (2)

**List: Danish Ministry Bible ( Bibelen ) Danish... "THE SCANDINAVIAN VERSIONS    The difficulty of classifying Scandinavian editions of the Scriptures according to the present boundaries of the three countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, is well illustrated by the fact that Christiern Pedersen, who has been called "the father of Danish literature," was Canon of Lund, a city in what is now Sweden.   Similarly Hans Mikkelsen, secretary to King Christian II, who at his sovereign’s command translated the New Testament for the first time into Danish (1524), had been mayor of Malmö, also a Swedish city at the present time. Pedersen was probably the man whose draft of the entire Bible was revised by a group of professors of the University of Copen- hagen, at command of King Christian III, thus producing the first Danish Bible, issued in that city in 1550.   Two facts about this Bible give it special interest to English readers.   One of those professors was the Scot, John Macalpine, a brother-in-law of Miles Coverdale, editor of the first printed English Bible. And in the second-English Bible, that known as Matthew’s Bible of 1537, the same woodcuts which frame several of the title-pages and the same engraving of Adam and Eve which serves as a frontispiece, appear again thirteen years later in this earliest Danish Bible.    When at the close of the Napoleonic era Norway was set up as an independent state, the already existing dialectal differences between Denmark and Norway received recognition through new revisions and editions made in and intended for Norwegian territory.   This drawing apart has continued since.   In addition, there have been several issues in Norway of translations into the Folkemaal or colloquial Norwegian.    The first Swedish Bible also owes its origin to royal decree and high ecclesiastical patronage.   It antedates the Danish Bible by nine years, although the earliest Danish New Testament ap- peared two years before the first Swedish.   Luther’s German Bible furnished the basis for these issues, though Erasmus’ Greek and Latin texts were used for comparison.   Revisions and edi- tions of the Swedish Scriptures have generally been by official command."--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only]

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