New Persian Bible Translation
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‘The translation has made the old clothes new… all the verses have become so beautiful.’
Iranian Christian man
‘This new translation is very clear and easy to understand’.
New Iranian Christian
‘The translation is very sweet. It uses today’s Persian, but also keeps the meaning. Your work has wiped my eyes so I can see better.’
Iranian Christian lady |
For the Church in Iran to be properly equipped to grow in strength and depth, there is an urgent need for a modern standard version of the Bible in Persian that will speak to people’s hearts and that they can understand and study and respond to. The present standard Bible is over 100 years old and is very difficult for modern Iranians to understand. With 60% of Iran’s 70 million population under the age of 21, the need for a modern translation becomes even more evident.
Furthermore, there is a need to have Scriptures in the regional languages of Iran so that people can read or hear the Word of God in their mother tongue – the language of their heart. The best way to produce these Scriptures is to have a new Persian translation that can be adapted into the regional languages of Iran.
To meet the need for a new standard Persian Bible, Elam Ministries, in partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators, began the ‘Michaelian Project’ at the end of 1995. The project was named after Tateos Michaelian, a prominent Iranian Church leader who was martyred in 1994. Michaelian had been Iran’s foremost Christian translator, translating 60 Christian books into Persian. He had agreed to play a leading role in the translation project before he was tragically killed. Three key objectives have been set for the translation; Accuracy, Clarity and Elegance.
A key milestone was reached in July 2003 when the New Testament was published and launched at an historical dedication service for the Iranian church.
The next step for this project is to finish the Old Testament so that the whole Bible will be available in a modern standard translation. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2008.
Old Standard Version
As an interim measure until the whole Bible is completed, Elam Ministries re-typeset and printed the whole of the old standard Persian Bible which was translated in the 1800’s. Punctuation marks, section headings, a glossary for difficult words, and cross references were put in for the first time.