Eliot Indian Bible

America's first printing press Printed sources have been produced in Spanish America since the sixteenth century. Stephen Daye of England contracted Jose Glover, a wealthy minister who disagreed with the religious teachings of the Church of England, to transport a printing press to America in 1638. Glover died at sea while traveling to America. Act of Parliament In 1649 Parliament enacted An Act for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England, which set up a Corporation in England consisting of a President, a Treasurer, and fourteen people to help them. The name of the corporation was "The President and Society for the propagation of the Gospel in New England," To accommodate the transcription of the phonemes in the Massachusett language, extra "Os" and "Ks" had to be ordered for the printing press. Johnson had a three-year contract to print the entire Protestant Bible, containing both the Old Testament and New Testament. In 1661, with the assistance of the English printer Johnson and a Nipmuc person named James Printer, Green printed 1,500 copies of the New Testament. In 1663 they printed 1,000 copies of the Bible in a 1,180 page volume. The costs for this production was paid by the Corporation authorized by the Parliament of England by donations collected in England and Wales. John Ratcliff did the binding for the 1663 edition. == Description ==

Eliot was determined to give the Christian Bible to the Massachusett Indian Nation in their own language. He learned the Natick dialect of the Massachusett language and its grammar. Eliot worked on the Indian Bible for fifteen years before its publication. England contributed about £16,000 for its production by 1660. The money came from private donations in England and Wales; the New England colonies did not provide any funding for the book. While working as a missionary, Eliot encouraged Massachusett converts to pray and read the Bible as methods of strengthening faith in Christ. Eliot's translation made reading the Bible possible for non-English speaking Massachusett people. Some ecclesiastical questions given to Eliot by the Natick Indians that were to be answered by the new Algonquian Bible and Indian religious learning were: • If but one parent believe, what state are our children in? • How doth much sinne make grace abound? • If an old man as I repent, may I be saved? • What meaneth that, Let the trees of the Wood rejoice? • What meaneth that, We cannot serve two masters? • Can they in Heaven see us here on Earth? • Do they see and know each other? Shall I know you in heaven? • Do they know each other in Hell? • What meaneth God, when he says, Ye shall be my Jewels? • If God made hell in one of the six dayes, why did God make Hell before Adam had sinned? • Doe not Englishmen their souls, to say a thing cost them more then it did? and is it not all one as to steale? == Legacy ==

In 1664 an especially prepared display copy was presented to King Charles II by Robert Boyle, the Governor of the New England Company. Many copies of the first edition (1663) of Eliot’s Indian Bible were destroyed by the British in 1675–76 by a war against Metacomet (war chief of the Wampanoag Indians). The first English edition of the entire Bible was not published in the colonies until 1752, by Samuel Kneeland. Eliot's translation of the complete Christian Bible into Massachusett was supposedly written with one pen. This project was the largest printing project done in 17th-century Colonial America. The Natick dialect of Massachusett, in Eliot's Bible was written, is no longer spoken in the United States. Eliot's Bible is notable for being the earliest known example of both translating and printing a complete Bible in a previously unwritten language. In 1709, excerpts from Eliot's Bible were used by Experience Mayhew to prepare a bilingual edition of Psalms and the Gospel of John, with the Massachusett words in one column and the English words in the opposite column. It was used for training the local Massachusett Indians to read the scriptures. The 1709 Algonquian Bible text book is also referred to as The Massachuset psalter. == See also ==