The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles in the Lak Language
March 19, 2019

 The Laks (with a population of 178,630 in Russia) are an ethnic group native to the central part of Dagestan. Most adhere to Islam.

The Lak language belongs to the Northeast Caucasian, or Nakh-Dagestanian, language family and is spoken by 145,895 people, according to the 2010 census. From the 15th century until 1928 the Lak orthography was based on the Arabic script. Then it was converted to the Latin script, and finally replaced by the Cyrillic script in 1938.The language is widely used in newspapers, prose and poetry, and translations of classical literature.

IBT’s new Lak edition appears under the title Injil, the Arabic equivalent of the Greek term εὐαγγέλιον, which means "gospel, good news." It includes a revision of the Gospel of Luke and the first-ever publication of the Acts of the Apostles. The first Lak translation of Luke was published by IBT in 2003, and then reprinted in 2012. The translation is accompanied by footnotes with relevant cultural and historical information, as well as a glossary of key biblical terms and difficult Lak words, maps of the ancient Mediterranean world, and other supplemental materials.

This edition and the Gospel of Matthew (2016) can be found online in the e-book section of the IBT website. The Lak translation team plans to complete work on the book of Revelation this year and publish it in a single edition together with the Four Gospels and Acts in 2020.