[1] The first attempt to translate the Bible into Malayalam was made by Pulikkottil Joseph Ittoop and Kayamkulam Philipose Ramban, with the support of the Rev.
He visited South India in the early 19th century and persuaded church leaders to translate biblical manuscripts into Malayalam, with support from local scholars.
The Malankara Church authorities in Travancore gave Buchannan, during his visit, a copy of the Bible in Syriac, known in local parlance as Suriyani.
He actively supported Buchanan, attending meetings with senior church leaders as well as facilitating several audiences with the Maharajah of Travancore to secure his approval as well.
By 1807, Ittoop and Ramban—both Malankara Syrian Christian monks—had translated the four gospels from Syriac into Malayalam, assisted by Timapah Pillay.
Timapah completed translation of the New Testament in 1813, but this edition was found to include vocabulary known only to the Syriac Christian community and not to the general Malayalee population.
In 1817, the Church Missionary Society of India (CMS) provided Benjamin Bailey to translate the Bible into Malayalam.
[11] As per Bible Society of India (Kerala Auxiliary), there are 2 versions of Sathayavedhapusthakam popularly used today.
There was a need to bring out a Bible in the contemporary Malayalam language, thus the CL version which was published in 2013.
Based on the public domain version of the Malayalam Bible 1910 edition, digitized, revised and published by volunteers of The Free Bible Foundation in the contemporary orthography and released the source file for free use.
Currently the Binoy Chacko audio bible app both in Android and Apple versions are available for NT and Psalms.
The translator assumes that Tetragrammaton originally appeared in New Testament but was later replaced by Christian copyists with Lord (Kyrios in Greek) following the Jewish tradition evident in later copies of Septuagint.
Saint Thomas Christians, Anglican, Evangelical and Pentecostal Churches use the Bible Society of India version.
Saint Thomas Christians may have used the Peshitta Bible at church services until the sixteenth century conflict and church divisions;[citation needed] Saint Thomas Christian denominations now use various translations depending on their affiliation.