The Book of Common Order was translated into Scottish Gaelic by Séon Carsuel (John Carswell), Bishop of the Isles, and printed in 1567.
[2] James Kirkwood (1650-1709) promoted Gaelic education and attempted to provide a version of William Bedell's Bible translations into Irish, edited by his friend Robert Kirk (1644–1692), Episcopal minister of Balquhidder and later of Aberfoyle, author of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, which failed, though he did succeed in publishing a Psalter in Gaelic (1684).
[3][4] It was not until after the final defeat of the Jacobite warriors at Culloden in 1746, that the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge began serious work on a published Bible in Scottish Gaelic and initiated a translation project in 1755.
In 1826 a revision of the Bible was made by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and was printed with the Metrical Psalms Sailm Dhaibhidh by SSPCK and BFBS.
Clerk, T. McLauchlan, and N. Dewar, Andrew D. Mackenzie, Robert Blair, John Maclean, Alexander Nicolson, and Donald Mackinnon.
By the time the New Testament was completed the affairs of the SSPCK came under the investigation of a Royal Commission, and the work of revision was suspended, to be resumed some 13 years later in 1896.
In 1980 the Bible Society produced An Deagh Sgeul aig Marcus which was the Gospel of Mark in Today's Gaelic Version (TGV).
In 1986 the Bible Society produced Facal as a' Phriosan which was a translation of Paul's Letters from Prison to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon.
The translation aims to combine faithfulness to the Koine Greek original with vocabulary in normal use, and clarity with dignity.