Bible translations into Dutch
After the early Medieval Christianisation of the language area of Old Dutch (Old Low Franconian), the entire populace was nominally Catholic, but very few were literate, let alone in Latin.
[1] Another contender is the Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible, a series of fragments of biblical histories translations into an apparent mix of Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Dutch from the early 12th century.
However, due to the paucity of evidence, it's difficult to date, linguistically classify and geographically pinpoint the origins of these writings; although a number of scholars associate it with the German Rhineland, possibly the Werden Abbey, this remains undetermined.
Later scholars developed more nuanced positions; this gospel translation might just have been a tool for Latin-knowing clerics to explain to their congregations the texts' meaning in the vernacular.
[5][6] A later example is the Rijmbijbel of Jacob van Maerlant (1271), a poetic edition of the Petrus Comestor's Historia scholastica (c. 1173).
[8] Several Middle Dutch translations of the Apocalypse of John, the Psalms, the Epistles and the Gospels appeared in Flanders and Brabant at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century.
[8] Later, the entourage of Brabantian mystic John of Ruusbroec (1293–1381) produced a full translation of all non-historical books of the New Testament.
[8] Evidence suggests that such late Medieval Dutch translations were in widespread use in the Low Countries and the German Rhineland amongst monks, nuns and wealthy burghers.
[8] The first nearly complete Middle Dutch translation from the Latin Vulgate was the Hernse Bijbel [nl] or Zuid-Nederlandse Historiebijbel ("Southern Netherlands History Bible").
Scholars find it highly probable that it was written by the Windesheim monk Johan Scutken (died 1423).
Because the latter two satisfied the needs of most vernacular readers – primarily nuns in convents – no full Dutch Bible translation was ever printed before the Reformation.
An authorised Catholic translation based on the Latin Vulgate to counter the Textus Receptus favoured by Protestants was also produced, the Leuvense Bijbel (1548, Louvain).
The Vorstermanbijbel (Antwerp, 1528 several later editions) was a semi-authorised version with a mix of Latin Vulgate and Textus Receptus translations that is difficult to classify as either 'Catholic' or 'Protestant'; later editions generally removed Reformationist passages and followed the Vulgate ever more closely, aligning it more with Catholicism.
The first authorised Bible translation into Dutch directly from Greek (using the Textus Receptus) and Hebrew sources was the Statenvertaling.
It soon became the generally accepted translation for the Calvinist Reformed Churches in the Northern Netherlands and remained so well into the 20th century.
[12] In order to replace the outdated Statenvertaling with a more accurate, modern, critical edition that was acceptable to all Protestant churches in the Netherlands, the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap (NBG, "Dutch Bible Society") set up two commissions with experts and representatives from most denominations to produce the NBG 1951, which would grow to become the new Protestant standard for the second half of the 20th century.
Some other examples of modern Dutch language translations are Groot Nieuws Bijbel (GNB, 1996), and the International Bible Society's Het Boek (1987).
[21] Calvinist translation during the Protestant Reformation, based on the 1526 (Lutheran) Liesveltbijbel and 1534 Luther Bible, which derived from the Textus Receptus.
Lutheran translation derived from the Luther Bible, which used the Textus Receptus (a Byzantine text-type) for the New Testament.
