IBT’s Evenki Bible translation project continues with the release of the Gospel Parables edition. I's the seventh IBT Scripture publication in the Evenki language. Previously published works include: excerpts from the Gospel of Luke (1995); Jesus - Friend of Children with a parallel Russian translation (1999); the Gospel of Luke (2002); the Children’s Bible (2011); the Gospel of Luke with a parallel Russian translation (2013), and the book of Jonah with a parallel Russian translation (2018).
The Evenkis are spread out over a huge part of the Siberian taiga. According to the 2010 census of Russia, the total number of ethnic Evenkis is about 38,000, but it’s very hard, if not impossible, to estimate the exact number of actual speakers of the Evenki language. Some people name Evenki as their mother tongue just because they feel a connection to it, not because they actually speak it.
IBT’s list of Scripture texts published in the Evenki language of Siberia has a new addition – the book of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet who tried to run away from God and spent three days and nights in the belly of a giant fish. This book was prepared as a diglot edition, with the Scripture text given in both Evenki and Russian (Synodal version). The publication also includes 13 illustrations that were originally drawn for the Chukchi edition of Jonah, which came out earlier this year.
At the end of 2013, IBT published a new edition of Luke's Gospel in the Evenki language of Siberia. Since this language is highly endangered and most Evenkis do not have much experience reading in their mother tongue, this edition was printed together with the Russian Gospel of Luke in a parallel column as an aid to comprehension. An audio recording of the Evenki text, read by the translator, Nadezhda Bulatova, was released on CD together with the book.