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**List: Turkish Ministry Holy Bible ( Kitabı Mukaddes )
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Türkçe / Turkish Bible History (2)
**List: Turkish Ministry
Holy Bible ( Kitabı Mukaddes )
Turkish...
"THE TURKISH VERSIONS The word "Turkish" as applied to language covers a large
number of dialects of Turkish or Turkoman tribes extending from
Central Asia to the Mediterranean, of which the best known in
the western world are the Osmanli Turks, citizens of the present
republic of Turkey. The language of the latter became in the
long past also the language of large groups of Greek and Armenian
inhabitants of Asia Minor who were more familiar, however, with
Greek and Armenian characters than with the Arabic script in
which Osmanli Turkish was written. Thus there are of Osmanli
Turkish not only that in Arabic characters, called sometimes
Arabo-Turkish, but also Turkish in Armenian characters (Ar-
meno-Turkish) and Turkish in Greek characters (Greco-Turkish).
To these now a fourth has been added as will appear.
There is a whole world of my. faith, courage, and
persistence lying behind the veil of the heterogeneous data
beneath each of those fourteen other Turkish dialects. The
Central Asian plateau and the endless steppes of European and
Asiatic Russia where they are spoken have been barely accessible
to evangelical forces in the past, and are still less so today.
There will be space here to write only of the Osmanli Turkish,
which, as the official language of the Ottoman Empire, became
the most widespread and the most literary of them all.
The story of Ali Bey, the first translator of the Bible into Turk-
ish, has often been told but is, even so, less known than it deserves
to be. Who would seem less likely to fill this role than a Polish
child, stolen from his home and sold as a slave to the Turks? Yet,
such was the origin of the man, a contemporary of Cromwell,
who as a Mosl_m was known as Ali Bey, but whose real name was
Albert Bobowsky. It was the thorough education this slave boy
received in the Sultan’s palace school, and the experience he
gained as chief dragoman or translator for Sultan Muh_mm_d IV,
that prepared him to render the Bible out of French into Turkish.
The Dutch ambassador to the Sublime Porte was perhaps the
one who led Ali Bey to undertake this work. At any rate, as soon
as finished in 1666, it was immediately sent by the ambassador to
Leyden, where the manuscript is still kept in the library of Ley-
den University. Unlike most versions, on which the humblest of
men and women have toiled, this version seemed destined to be a
joint task of men high in the affairs of state. After lying for a
century and a half in Holland, the first portion of the manuscript
was edited in Berlin by a Baron Diez, sometime Russian ambassa-
dor at Constantinople, well versed in Turkish as well as a scholar
in the other languages, Arabic and Hebrew, Latin and German,
of which he made use for comparison with Ali Bey’s rendering.
At least half of the Old Testament was completed and the first
four books had been through the press, when the learned editor
died. Still another person, of another nation, was thus destined
to have a share in this production. This was a M. Kieffer, who
had been interpreter and secretary of the French Legation at Con-
stantinople, then seven years a prisoner of the Sultan, then a
Professor of Turkish and Interpreter to Louis XVIII at Paris. At
last the manuscript was to be published, but it was only the New
Testament that actually saw the light in this first (1819) edition
of Ali Bey. Eight years later M. Kieffer completed his long task
by the issue of the whole Bible, with a revision of the New Testa-
ment printed separately. At least seven nationalities had by this
time had a share in the famous book."--1000 Tongues, 1939 [Info only:
Ali Bey 1666/1819 appears to have used Dynamic Equivalency. See E. Henderson.]"Contemporary with the first appearance of the Ali Bey New
Testament in Arabo-Turkish was the first issue of the Testament
in Armeno-Turkish. This was one of the praiseworthy efforts of
the short-lived Russian Bible Society to meet the needs of various
Christian races living within the Russian Empire. For manyTurkish-speaking Armenians dwelt in the Russian Caucasus as
--1000 Tongues, 1939 [Info only]
well as in Turkey. A later and better text issued in Turkey in
1831 superseded that first attempt: this text of William Goodell
is still preferred by some readers today, to the later Bibles,
which were conformed to the Arabo-Turkish and Greco-Turkish
texts.
Meanwhile the Greeks using Turkish received their Bible, part
by part. The Psalter in Greek dress was in fact the very earliest
part of the Turkish Bible to be published, as early as 1782. After
Kieffer’s Ali Bey Bible appeared, it was worked over into Greek
type and issued at Athens, but paid for by subscription of the
Turkish-speaking Greeks of Anatolia, who were most anxious to
possess it as their Armenian brethren had their Armeno-Turk-
ish Bible.""In spite of differences in the way Christians and Mosl_ms spoke
Turkish, the existence of divergences between the various Turkish
texts did more harm than good. They gave offence to some who
compared them and declared the Word of God in Turkish was
contradictory. After isolated attempts to harmonize, a large and
representative committee was appointed in 1874 under the lead
of the Bible Societies, with the commission to produce a single
text that would be satisfactory to all readers, when issued in all
the three scripts. This was done, so far as it was possible to reach
a compromise, and this is the text still being issued for the Turk-
ish-speaking Armenians and Greeks."--1000 Tongues, 1939 [Info only:
Bible Societies’ 1874 compromise.]"For the Turks themselves a new Bible became absolutely im-
perative after the establishment of the new Republic. For among
the sweeping reforms, introduced in rapid succession, was a thor-
ough-going reform of the Turkish language. It was not enough
to abandon the Arabo-Persian script in which Turks had dressed
their language ever since it had been committed to writing, and
to adopt the roman script, which much better fitted the Turkish
sounds. Large areas of the vocabulary, the very stuff of Turkish
as it had been spoken--still more notably, as it had been written
for centuries--were by strict order banished from newspaper,
from book, and from official documents. So rapid was this change
put through that, it is said, it became necessary for a while to
accompany government instructions issued by officials in Angora
to inferiors in various parts of Turkey and abroad with the same
message expressed in the now forbidden language of yesterday;
otherwise they would not be clearly understood.
The committee that undertook the production of a Turkish
Bible for this new nation was faced with a difficult problem: how
much of this excessive zeal for change would last? How thorough
should be the rejection of the foreign words and phrases (chiefly
Arabic and Persian) now banned in favor of "genuine" Turkish?
Clearly, some happy mean must be found; and as the work pro-
ceeded, lasting eight years, it became increasingly obvious that
from the first the common-sense decisions daily made by the
committee were being justified by the event. By the time the
whole was finished, the worst of the upheaval was past: what was
to go had gone, and what was to stay had come back even if
banned at first. A Turkish Bible lay ready for the new Turkish
nation, intelligible to the unlearned, yet acceptable to the learned
who were willing to adapt their tongue to the speech of a new day.
The reception accorded the New Testament, already published,
augurs well for the success of the entire Bible when issued. To
the thousands of emigrants from the old Ottoman Empire, whose
mother-tongue is the Turkish of yesterday, this new version will
be unacceptable, sometimes even shocking. But to the Turk of
the Turkey which has passed through all the reforms of 1923 to
1938, it will speak in the new sort of Turkish that he uses and likes."--1000 Tongues, 1939 [Info only]
[Chr. Helps Ministry (USA)] [Chr. Home Bible Course]