Do You Appreciate God-Given Gifts? - Making the Bible Available in African Languages

 

By the year 1800, printed copies of the Bible in whole or in part were available in some 70 languages, but very few of those languages were spoken in Africa. At the time, the African Bantu languages did not have a written form. Things changed when individuals, such as William Boyce from England, went to Africa and lived with people who spoke unwritten languages. Boyce helped to develop a written form of Xhosa, and he, along with others, translated the Gospel of Luke into that language. Published in 1833, this Gospel contained God's name in all the same places that it ow appears in the New World Translations. Boyce also discovered the key to the complex grammatical rules that govern not only the Xhosa languages but also the complete Bantu-language family.  This opened the way for translators to produce the Bible in many African languages. Today, the Bible or portions of it are available in over 1,000 African languages. Clearly, Jehovah wants people from every nation to have this gift! - ACTS 10:35.

We can prove  that we appreciate the Bible by reading it each day, meditating on what it teaches, and doing our best to apply what we learned. In addition, we show our gratitude to God by doing all we can to share its message with as many people as  possible. - PSALM 1:1-3; MATTHEW 24:14; Read MATTHEW 28:19, 20. 

So far we have considered such God-given gifts as our home, the earth, our amazingly designed brain; and God's inspired Word, the Bible. But there are other gifts that Jehovah has given us that are invisible to our eyes. These unseen treasures will be discussed in the next article. 

Next time: Show Your Appreciation for Unseen Treasures

From the j.w.org publications