Bongili New Testament — Mina ma Nzambe (1947)

Overview

Mina ma Nzambe ("Words of God") is the complete New Testament in Bongili, published in 1947 by the British and Foreign Bible Society — the culmination of nearly two decades of translation work in the Congo Basin rainforest. The translation was carried out by Elsa Karolina Karlsson (née Lundberg, 1889–1978), a Swedish missionary with the Örebromissionen (Örebro Baptist Mission), and her native co-translator Daniel Bokanga, a Bongili speaker and son of a local chief — what Karlsson herself described as "the classic Bible-translation combination comprising one missionary and one native Christian, whose mother tongue was the language of translation."

Karlsson, born in Stora Tuna, Dalarna (Sweden), was the first missionary sent by the Örebromissionen when she departed for Central Africa in 1915. She and her husband Henning Karlsson completed five field periods spanning 25 years, during which she learned three African languages: Baluba, Bongili, and Gbaya. She also served on the review committee for the Gbaya New Testament (completed 1949) and published two essays on the challenges of translation: "Människan och språket" (1932) and "Språkforskning och bibelöversättning" (1946). When biblical concepts had no direct Bongili equivalent, she and Bokanga sometimes coined new words or incorporated French loanwords with explanatory footnotes.

The translation chronology spans the interwar years: the Gospel of Matthew appeared in 1930, Luke in 1931, and the complete New Testament in 1947 — with some Old Testament portions translated alongside. No complete Bible in Bongili has been published. The 1947 NT remained physically archived at Cambridge University Library (British and Foreign Bible Society Archives) until it was digitized in 2024 by MissionAssist and released on YouVersion/Bible.com (ID 3816).

Language and People

Bongili (ISO 639-3: bui; also called Bungili, Bungiri, Bokiba) is a Narrow Bantu language (Guthrie zone C, group C.15 Ngondi) spoken by approximately 12,000–14,000 people in the Sangha department of the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), concentrated along the Sangha River southeast of Ouesso and in the Liouesso district. Ethnologue classifies the language as endangered. The language uses a Latin-script orthography developed by missionaries; SIL International has produced a modern Bongili dictionary (available as an Android app).

The Bongili are a Bantu farming and fishing people of the deep northern Congo rainforest, in a region of extraordinary ecological richness now partly within the buffer zone of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park — one of Africa's most important lowland rainforest reserves. They share this forest territory with the Mbendjele Bayaka (BaYaka), a Pygmy hunter-gatherer people with whom the Bongili maintain longstanding symbiotic exchange relationships: forest products and labour in exchange for agricultural foods, iron tools, and goods — a pattern characteristic of the entire Congo Basin zone where Bantu farmers and Pygmy forest peoples have coexisted for millennia.

By the time the NT was completed in 1947, the Bongili had had nearly two decades of exposure to literacy and Christian community since Matthew appeared in 1930. Today approximately 78% of the Bongili identify as Christian (Joshua Project), a high proportion reflecting the depth of those mission roots.

Historical and Colonial Context

The Bongili homeland lay within Middle Congo (Moyen-Congo), one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa (AEF), a federation administered from Brazzaville from 1910 until independence in 1960. The Sangha and Likouala regions of northern Middle Congo were among the most remote parts of this already-remote federation — accessible mainly by river, with minimal colonial infrastructure. The Örebromissionen worked in a corridor of this territory that extended into what is now the Central African Republic borderlands. The BFBS, as was standard practice across Africa in the colonial period, funded and published translations carried out by field missionaries of partner mission societies, taking no direct role in the translation process itself.

In the broader Congolese Protestant context, 1947 was a significant year: the Église Évangélique du Congo (EEC) was taking shape during this period and beginning to indigenize its leadership and practice, representing a wider charismatic and spiritual-gifts movement among Congolese Christians.

Publishing and Organizations

The NT was translated by missionaries of the Swedish Örebromissionen (Örebro Baptist Mission, founded 1892 by John Ongman, now part of the Evangelical Free Church of Sweden) and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. It was digitized in 2024 by MissionAssist from archival copies held at Cambridge University Library (BFBS Archives), enabling its release on YouVersion/Bible.com. SIL International has subsequently conducted linguistic documentation of Bongili (dictionary, orthography).

References