Old Persion Version Bible (PESOPV)

Overview

The Old Persian Version (POV) is a landmark Bible translation in the Persian language, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1895. The translation has its roots in the pioneering work of Henry Martyn (1781-1812), the Anglican missionary who completed a Persian New Testament translation from Greek at Shiraz with the assistance of Mirza Sayyed Ali Khan in 1812. [1] After Martyn's early death, the Scottish missionary William Glen (1779-1849) produced the first complete Persian Old Testament translation from Hebrew between 1830 and 1846, working with assistants including Haji Mirza Taleb and Mirza Mohammad Jafar. [2] The BFBS combined Glen's Old Testament with Martyn's New Testament in 1846, creating the first complete Persian Bible. [2] Robert Bruce, a missionary and BFBS representative in Iran, then spent twenty years revising both testaments, producing the 1895 edition in which the Old Testament represented largely new translation work and the New Testament was a fresh revision. [1][2] According to the bibliographers Darlow and Moule, the Bruce translation became the standard Bible in Persian, the version by which all later renditions are judged. [2] The 1895 edition was reprinted in 1901, 1904, and 1925. [2]

Language and People

Iranian Persian (ISO 639-3: pes) is spoken by approximately 52,800,000 people. [Glottolog: west2369]

Publishing and Organizations

Published by British and Foreign Bible Society.

References