Making Bibles more available

Happy New Year! …and no, the balloons aren’t wrong. I’m celebrating the fact that at the start of the year there were online Bibles, New Testaments, or portions of scripture available via Bible apps in at least 2,322 languages. (more have already been added or reported)

• YouVersion provides 2,867 versions in 1,913 languages, many with audio and video as well as text.
• Faith Comes by Hearing provided audio scriptures in 1,740 languages by the end of Dec. (figures released early 2023. They also provide text and video for many of these and for a few they have text but no audio yet)
• SIL’s Scripture App Builder isn’t a single app but rather a tool for creating scripture apps and so far they have been created in at least 1536 ISO recognised languages, plus a few additional dialects.

I wrote a little more on this on my own blog, including encouragement to churches and individuals to celebrate the progress so far, support translation, help make existing translations known, and read the Bible themselves.  

Here on MAP I'd like to make a plea for making more scripture available, both digitally and in print.

It is great that there is scripture available digitally in 2,322 languages but the latest figures from progress.bible show that there are whole lot more that exist and could be made available: Bibles in 732 languages, New Testaments in 1,622, Selections in 1,030. There are also an additional 226 languages in which there are stories which includes languages in which there is a Jesus film but no printed scripture.

Sadly, translation doesn't guarantee availability. Some are not only not online, they are also out of print (or in print but speakers don't know where to find them). Some of these are languages in which the existing scripture is currently being digitised from older print copies, others exist in Paratext and just await permissions and processing. Is it possible that we could see scripture available online in 2,500 languages by the end of 2023? 

There are another 1,000 languages in which work is in progress but nothing yet published, so available scripture in 3,000 or even 4,000 might not be too far behind.

Digital distribution isn't the only solution but it helps, especially if accompanied by promotion and good plans for local use. Availability alone doesn't guarantee that scriptures will be found and used, but lack of availability is one barrier that can be overcome.