Bob at Boar’s Head Tavern did a little ranting of his own (Thanks for the link love)

The sad story of downloadable Portuguese Bibles

Bibles available in major European languages for use with the Crosswire SWORD program:

Spanish: 5
German: 10
French: 4
Italian: 2
Portuguese: 0

While every other major world language has multiple versions of the Bible represented online, Portuguese has not one. To paraphrase Emerson, make the Bible illegal and we all become criminals*. I’ve mentioned this problem before here and here (in Portuguese). At Faith Comes By Hearing, you can download an audio Bible in Pokoot and Polish but not Portuguese.

To read a long thread about Portuguese translations at the Crosswire Sword project see here: Bibles in Portuguese.

The spirits of John Wycliff and Brother Andrew hover over this shameful situation compelling us to act. If the enemy forces were a state religion like the Church of England or an oppressive government like China or Iran we would think nothing of risking our lives to bring the Bible to those who can’t access it otherwise. But in this case because the bad guys have the words “Bible Society” in their name we’re supposed to sit on our thumbs.

Here’s the Bible Society of Brazil’s mission statement: (translation mine)

A SBB tem a missão de:

“Difundir a Bíblia e a sua mensagem a todas as pessoas e a todos os grupos sociais como instrumento de transformação espiritual, de fortalecimento de valores éticos e morais e de incentivo ao desenvolvimento cultural e social.”

The Bible Society of Brazil has as its mission:

“To distribute the Bible and its message to everyone and every social group as an instrument of spiritual transformation, for the strengthening of ethical and moral values, and as an incentive to cultural and social development.”

One way of fulfilling that mission is by making proper electronic versions of the Almeida and O Livro freely available.

I’d like to give you the Portuguese Bible Society’s mission but their site is completely absorbed by a store without any sign of a mission other than to sell Bibles.

The result of the lusophone stranglehold on Bibles through copyright restrictions has resulted in a chaotic and error-riddled corpus of Portuguese electronic Bibles on the Internet. Even http://biblegateway.com has to share a “public domain” translation of the Almeida that is misidentified as Actualizada (It’s closest to the Corrigida). Here is a sample of the Portuguese translation of Acts 1:1-2 identified as Almeida:

1993 Brasil	“Actualizada”	1995 Brasil
1 Escrevi o primeiro livro, ó Teófilo,a relatando todas as coisas que Jesus começou a fazer e a ensinar 2 até ao dia em que, depois de haver dado mandamentos por intermédio do Espírito Santo aos apóstolos que escolhera, foi elevado às alturas.	1 Fiz o primeiro tratado, ó Teófilo, acerca de tudo quanto Jesus começou a fazer e ensinar, 2 até o dia em que foi levado para cima, depois de haver dado mandamento, pelo Espírito Santo, aos apóstolos que escolhera;	1 F iz o primeiro tratado, ó Teófiloa, acerca de tudo que Jesus começou, não só a fazer, mas a ensinar, 2 até ao dia em que foi recebido em cima, depois de ter dado mandamentos, pelo Espírito Santo, aos apóstolos que escolhera;
Paratext, Genebra	Unbound, Bible Gateway, e-Sword	Paratext, Fiel

Excuse me for getting bent out of shape about this but I’m working in the trenches where print Bibles are scarce and audio and digital Bibles could be a huge blessing to my college students and my pastor friends, and could be shared in Internet cafes and via radio and Saber mp3 players but we can’t do it because if we do we’re breaking the law.

If the lusophone Bible Societies are going to hold the Bible hostage maybe somebody needs to plan a rescue mission. Doesn’t the United Bible Society have enough influence to get these societies to cooperate like the other 143 Bible Societies. What gives?

Illegal sources of the Portuguese Bible in digital format

Here are sources of the Portuguese Bible in digital format that the lusophone Bible Societies don’t want you to know about. My listing them does not necessarily indicate on my part an agreement with the principles of those who are illegally sharing the Bible, (although you can probably guess my point of view by now). Also, please note that the inclusion of this information does not constitute an endorsement by my sending or field organizations.

Audio Bibles

• CadêCristo: The entire Bible in mp3 by chapter.
• Palavra Da Verdade: The entire Bible in mp3 in 11 zip files of between 60 and 97 Mb

Digital Versions

• siriarah: Bíblia Linguagem de Hoje para eReader e eSword
• e-sword brasil: NVI, BLH, RA59

How I’m using these versions

The Palavra de Verdade recordings have been a big blessing in my New Testament course where we’ve been listening to the letters of John.

My fourth-year New Testament students have no access to electronic Bibles and the school library will be inaccessible once they’ve graduated and moved to another part of the country. I’m making available the illegal Portuguese versions together with the KJV tied to Strong’s and a Greek Majority text through the e-Sword system. And a more lightweight option that fits on a USB drive is the The Unbound Bible Tools 0.07 programmed by Russian pastor Vladimir Rybant and loaded with the World English Bible, the Greek Byzantine/Majority 2000 and an error-riddled version of the Almeida. While none of these electronic versions are ideal they are better than nothing. In time, I expect better versions will come available for the Unbound Bible.

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If you want to hear me rant about the Logos “luxury Bible” giveaway: Logos.com hawks luxury Bibles while the world starves for God’s Word

More posts about the Portuguese problem: In which I say some nice things about the Brazilian Bible Society (and scratch my head about the Portuguese Bible Society), The mysterious Portuguese Bible at biblegateway.com, Ezekiel and the Submarine.

More posts in the series Hummingbird tongues

Logos.com hawks luxury Bibles while the world starves for God’s Word»