Bible translations in Norway

Translations have appeared in several of the official languages that Norway has had throughout its history, including editions in Old Norse, Danish, and both current standard forms Nynorsk and Bokmål.

This rendering of the text became known as "Stjórn", meaning "Government," because it was most likely done at the court of King Haakon V. It serves as more of a paraphrase of the Bible than as a strict translation.

[1] In 1524, the exiled King Christian II of Denmark-Norway ordered the publication of the first Danish-language translation of the New Testament.

The inspiration to publish this translation came from the king's visit to Wittenberg, Germany, a focal point of the Protestant Reformation.

The translation work was done by Christiern Winter, Hans Mikkelsen, and Henrik Smith, while Melchior Lotter financed the printing.

A commission of theologians compiled this first 1550 edition, largely based on Luther's complete German-language translation of the Bible published five years earlier in 1545.

A combined emphasis on fluency of the language employed and a translation close to the original texts yielded a result which is considered very good.

The language used in this translation exhibited German influence, but because this book significantly improved access to the Biblical literature for everyday Danes and Norwegians, editions based on this became the dominant Bibles in Denmark and Norway for much of the Reformation era, earning the edition the common name, "The Reformation Bible."

This was largely a reprinting of the 1550 edition, but also included Martin Luther's preface to the different texts and expanded the notes.

This edition showed less German language influence than its predecessor, and contained many corrections of translation and typography.

A new family of translations, which came to assume a very important position in the Danish-Norwegian biblical tradition, is named after professor of theology Hans Poulsen Resen.

This version is known for a strongly Norwegianized language, taking it in a more idiomatic direction and focusing on the importance of the meaning of the original rather than the words themselves.

The Picture-Bible of the Norwegian People, Containing the Canonical Books of the Holy Scripture was published privately in Christiania in 1840.

In 1891 a translation was published of the Old Testament with the Apocrypha, the first official Norwegian-language version of these books from the Bible Society.

The first Norwegian biblical text in Nynorsk was Ivar Aasen's translation of the story of the prodigal son, in 1859.

Pioneers in this work were minister and professor Elias Blix, text scientist John Belsheim and school man Matias Skard.

The language of the translation was characterized by the Danish syntax, with Norwegianization increasingly applied to words rather than sentence structure.

Hognestad translated also Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in its entirety to the Norwegian, in addition to many smaller pieces of text.

(Rough translation)[5] As Seippel's work progressed, the biblical books were published in booklet form, first by the Samlaget, then from 1915 onward by Bible Society.

This included translation of the Apocrypha, which once published with the Old Testament formed the Bible Society's first official version of these texts.

These two translators initially estimated that the work would take five years; the project ended up lasting for around fifty.

When Bugge became Bishop of Oslo in 1893, his translation work was handed over to Sigurd Odland, who, like Dietrichson, remained closer to the Textus Receptus The last ten years of work was carried out by an audit committee consisting of the theological professors Anton Christian Bang, Sigurd Odland, and Elias Blix, as well as linguist Johan Storm.

The audit process was led by Bang and Odland, with help from Alexander Seippel, who had worked hard to translate the Bible into Norwegian.

Despite this opinion by 1939 Eivind Berggrav, bishop of the Diocese of Oslo, felt that the language was not good enough and that it should work with a new translation.

The motivation for, and the results of, these versions have varied; several important ones include: The "GTMMM", or S. Michl, Sigmund Mowinckel and N. Messel scholarly edition of the Old Testament in five volumes came out from 1929 to 1963.

The movement in support of this translation included people with links to Linde publishing and to Gideon's efforts to distribute Bibles in hotels.

Jacob Jervell published a translation of the four Gospels in the series World Scriptures in 2002, on behalf of The Norwegian book clubs.

In 2003, Bearing Precious Seed of Milford, Ohio published a Norwegian Bible translated by Morten Gjemlestad directly from the English text of the Authorized (King James) Version.

[8][9] The Youth translation of the New Testament was founded by Eivind Berggrav, who was the bishop of Oslo in 1937, which at the time made him also the chairman of the Bible Society.

Also, it uses more common terms, such as Mary was called a "virgin" in the 1978 version, but in the newest translation she is referred to instead as a "young" woman.