The Spanish Bible comes to Mexico

On this day in 1876 (the 28th of April), a Mexican man named Mariano Galván Rivera passed away in Mexico City.  Every heard of him?

Galván was a printer and editor in the newly independant Mexico.  He published a newspaper called The Mexican Republic Observer (El Observador de la República de México), and he worked with priest and reformer José María Luis Mora.

Mora believed that study of the Bible should be a part of the new Mexico.  It was Galván that accepted the challenge to translate the Scriptures, something that had never been dared before because of the Inquisition.

There had been Spanish translations before.  In fact, it was just about the same time when Scottish missionary James Thomson was bringing some of the first Spanish Bibles many would ever see into Mexico (and he caused quite the hubub, but that’s another story!).  But this translation from Galván was to be a Mexican translation for the new world.

One language had been blessed with several translations very early on – French.  This was partly due to the work done in Geneva under John Calvin and other who followed him.  Missionaries went out from Geneva, spreading the French Bible and translations from the French.  In fact, it could be that the very earliest translations in Castilian/Spanish in Spain came from missionaries (from the Waldensian tradition) who translated the Bible from French.

So Galván based his version on the French.  In the end, when it was published in 1831, it was 25 volumes in Spanish and Latin, including discourses from an Abbott named Luis de Vence.  Today, we know this Bible as La Biblia Mexicana de Vence, the Mexican Bible of Vence.

The Word of God in Spanish – let’s not take it for granted!  It took a long time to get here…

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