Dutch: Creole Bible History (3)

**List: Dutch: Creole Ministry the Bible ( die [Bible] ) Dutch: Creole... CREOLESE. "CREOLESE, a kind of broken Dutch, with a rather Danish orthography, is the language of the black population in the Danish West Indies.   The possessions of the Danes in the West Indies consist of three islands, namely, St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John, all of which form part of the Virgin group.   Of these islands, St. Croix, or, as it is frequently called, Santa Cruz, is the most important: it contains an area of about 110 square miles, and a population of 32,000, chiefly negroes. St. Thomas comprises an area of 37 square miles, and its population is estimated at 7000, of whom about 500 are whites.   In St. John there are 150 whites and 250 negroes: the population to whom this language is (or rather was) vernacular, is, therefore, upwards of 39,000.    The Creolese idiom is very peculiar, possessing no distinction of gender or of number (so far at least as terminations are concerned), no declension of nouns, and no simple conjugation of verbs.   The New Testament was translated into this language, and an edition printed at Copenhagen, by order of the Danish government, in 1781.   A school-book, containing the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, in Creolese, was published about the same period, by order of the same authority.   Another edition of the New Testament, consisting of 1500 copies, was printed at Copenhagen, in 1818, by the Danish Bible Society.   It is said, however, that Creolese has long been gradually falling into disuse, and that it has now ceased to be spoken.   The slaves, or, as the Danes wish to have them called, "the unfreed," were in 1848 nominally emancipated in the Danish islands; and on this occasion a copy of the New Testament and Psalms in the English language, furnished by the British and Foreign Bible Society, was presented to each negro who could read, and who was not in possession of the Scriptures."--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)   Samuel Bagster   [Info only] CREOLESE.--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: n.d. John 1:1-14 unknown (@ 1:14 eenig gebooren Soon = "only begotten" Son).]

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