De Bibl auf Bairisch — The Bavarian Bible (Sturmibibl)

Overview

De Bibl auf Bairisch (also known as the Sturmibibl, after Saint Sturmi, first abbot of Fulda) is the first and only complete Bible translation into the Bavarian dialect. It was translated by Josef Hell ("Hell Sepp"), a retired Evangelical pastor from Troosburg, Bavaria, who spent roughly 25 years working directly from the original Hebrew and Greek texts rather than from any German intermediate translation. The complete Bible (Old and New Testaments, 1,485 pages) was finished at Pentecost 1998 and self-published through the Sturmibund, Salzburg.

Hell devised a written standard for the translation called Bairische Buechsprach ("Bavarian Book Language") — a constructed literary orthography designed to represent all regional Bavarian dialects in a unified form. No commercial publisher would take on the project for such a regional language; the Sturmibund published it independently. The full text is now freely readable on multiple third-party Bible platforms.

Language and People

Bavarian (ISO 639-3: bar) is a Bavarian-Alemannic dialect group spoken by several million people in Bavaria, Austria, and South Tyrol (Italy). It is recognized as a distinct language at the ISO level despite mutual intelligibility with Standard German.

Publishing and Organizations

Translated by Josef Hell; published by Sturmibund, Salzburg (sturmibund.org). No ISBN was assigned. The text is widely redistributed online without restriction, though no formal open license has been documented.

References