Bibel für Schwoba — The Swabian Bible

Overview

Bibel für Schwoba is a complete translation of the Bible (Old and New Testaments) into Swabian (Schwäbisch), the Alemannic German dialect of Baden-Württemberg. The translation was undertaken by retired Evangelical pastor Rudolf Paul (1933–2021) over roughly 25 years, working directly from the Hebrew and Greek source texts rather than from the Luther Bible. Individual books were published from 1988 onward; the first complete one-volume edition was publicly presented on May 25, 2008 at the Tübingen Stiftskirche.

Because no commercial publisher would take on a translation for such a small dialect region, the Schwäbischer Albverein e.V. (a regional folk-culture society) published the complete Bible for their 120th anniversary. A revised second edition (ISBN 978-3-920801-59-9, 1,459 pages) was published in 2014 and remains in print. After Rudolf Paul's death in 2021, copyright passed to his estate.

The only freely accessible online reading is a daily verse service at bible2.net/swg, which uses passages from the Bibel für Schwoba with permission.

Language and People

Swabian (ISO 639-3: swg) is an Alemannic German dialect spoken by several million people in the region historically known as Swabia, centered on Stuttgart and Tübingen. It is considered a distinct language at the ISO level despite mutual intelligibility with Standard German.

Publishing and Organizations

Translated by Rudolf Paul; published by Schwäbischer Albverein e.V. / Haus der Volkskunst (Balingen). Earlier NT volumes (1988–1998) were published by Silberburg Verlag, Tübingen. The complete Bible in PDF form (€17) is available at the Schwaben Kultur online shop.

References