Chukchi is an endangered language spoken by about 5,000 people on the eastern fringe of the Russian Federation. 2018 is a special year for the Chukchi Bible translation project because it has seen not one, but two Scripture portions within months of each other. The first was the revised translation of Luke’s Gospel, published as a diglot with Russian earlier this year. Now IBT has printed an edition of the book of the prophet Jonah, the first Old Testament book translated into Chukchi.

For many centuries, the Chukchi people have led a lifestyle that is inextricably tied to the sea, since their homeland is on the northeastern Pacific coast of Russia.  They are consummate sailors, fishermen, and whalers. This is why we hope that the book of Jonah, which involves a sea voyage and an encounter with a very large sea creature, will be of special interest to Chukchi readers.

IBT has recently published a revised edition of the Gospel of Luke in the endangered Chukchi language, spoken by about 5,000 people on Russian’s northern Pacific rim. The Chukchi text is accompanied by the Russian Synodal translation of Luke in a parallel column. This is IBT’s fifth diglot edition of Luke among the indigenous peoples of Russia’s Far North and Far East, following similar publications in Nanai and Koryak (2012), Itelmen (2013), and Evenki (2014).  The first edition of Luke in Chukchi was published in 2004 and released with a recording on audiocassettes.

IBT has published the illustrated edition of Gospel Parables in the Bezhta language of the North Caucasus area of Russia.  Bezhta is spoken by about 6,000 speakers, most of whom live in the villages of Bezhta and Tlyadal in Dagestan and in the Kvareli region of Georgia. It is an endangered language without an official writing system. In 1999, IBT published the first book ever in Bezhta (the Gospel of Luke), using an adapted form of the writing system used in the related Avar language. This was followed in 2005 by the Proverbs of Solomon. The translator of all three of IBT’s Scripture portions books in Bezhta is a professional linguist who is the world’s leading expert on his mother tongue...

IBT has published an illustrated book of stories from the Holy Scriptures in the Lamunkhin dialect of the Even language. The Lamunkhin dialect is spoken by 800 people (out of a total of about 5,600 Even speakers), making it the largest of the dialects of Even. It is also the dialect that has maintained the greatest number of vocabulary items having to do with the traditional Even culture.

The book contains 25 stories that cover key Scriptural passages, from the creation of the world to the second coming of Christ as described in Revelation. The 41 color pictures were produced by an Even artist and take an overtly “domesticating” approach to illustrating the text, i.e. they show the world of the Bible as it might be seen through the eyes of an average Even...