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Mari New Testament

A New Testament has just been published in the Meadow Mari language which is spoken to the East of Moscow in Russia and Kazakhstan. Christopher Culver writes:

Unfortunately, I doubt this Bible is going to see much use in Mari El. Not that it isn’t economical. As it sells for only 50 rubles (approximately 1.50€), probably significantly subsided, any family could afford it. Rather, the target audience for this are already completely bilingual and have already grown accustomed to the use of Russian in religious life. When the liturgy is in Russian and most parish priests speak only Russian, it’s hard to imagine Mari speakers replacing their Russian-language Bibles with this new translation. Only permitting all expression of Orthodox Christian life in Mari would make a Mari Bible essential, but the Russian Orthodox Church has departed a long way from the efforts of St Stephan of Perm and St Herman of Alaska who initiated the translation of liturgical texts into indigenous languages, and seems nowadays to be on the side of Russia’s forces for ethnic unification. (read more)

This is an illustration of one of the difficulties that Bible translators face: even a good translation may not be accepted by a people group if they have become used to using another language for their church life.

3 replies on “Mari New Testament”

I hope Culver’s assessment is too negative. When I was working on translation into another language of the former Soviet Union, one of the translators who had completed her higher education in Russian and was certainly completely bilingual nevertheless told me how wonderfully and in new ways the Bible was speaking to her now it was in her own mother tongue. I expect at least some of the Mari people to have similar reactions to their new NT.

Thanks for the link, but be aware that Meadow Mari is not spoken in Kazakhstan. It is spoken in some villages in the Russian state Tatarstan, though. Maybe that’s what you or your source had in mind?

I got the information from the Ethnologue, which is the resource I tend to use for this. This isn’t a part of the world I know at all, so I can’t verify the information. I’m sure the editors would welcome your comments though.

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