Item Info

Media Type: Books
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

*******
This item appeared in the exhibition "Sacred Stories: The World's Religious Traditions" in the Rare Book Department, August 2015-January 2016.

This is the label from that exhibition:

The first Bible printed in the western hemisphere is this translation of the New Testament into the Algonquian language Massachusett. It is the first translation of a bible for missionary purposes.

Notes:

This is the first copy of the  New Testament, translated by John Eliot into the Natick dialect in order to proselytize Algonquin American natives then living in Massuchessetts and in parts of the East Coast of New England.  Eliot was an English Puritan clergyman and pastor from Roxbury, Massachusetts.  Samuel Green and Mamaduke Johnson printed the New Testament in 1661 and  the entire bible only two years later,  which is most commonly known today as the Eliot Indian Bible. The Eliot Bible is the first  complete Bible to be printed in the Western Hemisphere and the first Bible to have been translated into any new language for use by missionaries. 

Bibliography:

De Hamel, Christopher. 2001. The book: a history of the Bible. London: Phaidon. PP. 270-274.

Call Number: Elkins 142