IBT has published a translation of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts in the Abaza language. According to the 2020 census, there are 43,793 Abazas in Russia. The Abaza language belongs to  the Abkhaz-Adyghe family of North Caucasian languages. The original homeland of the Abazas is Abkhazia, from where they migrated to the northern slopes of the Caucasus range in the XIII-XIV centuries A.D.  Most Abazas now live in the Abaza district of the Karachai-Cherkess Republic of the Russian Federation and in its capital city, Cherkessk.

IBT’s previous publications in Abaza include the book of Jonah (bilingual edition with Russian parallel text, 2019); Ruth/Esther (2020); Gospel Parables with illustrations (2020), and the Gospel of Matthew (2021). The new publication contains a new translation of the Gospel of Luke and the first-ever translation of Acts of the Apostles.

Luke and Acts were written in literary Koiné Greek in the late 1st century A.D. The Abaza translation was checked against the Greek source text and went through a multi-stage procedure of editing and testing so as to be both accurate and natural-sounding in the modern literary Abaza language.

Since not all books of the Bible have yet been translated into Abaza, the present edition includes a table giving the Abaza names of all Bible books together with their Russian names so that readers could more easily identify the references. The publication also includes maps of biblical places and the Apostle Paul’s journeys, as well as a brief glossary of biblical terms and other words which may be unfamiliar or difficult to understand.

A PDF version of this edition is available on the IBT website. Very soon these translations will be added to the Abaza Bible app via Google Play and App Store.