The First Bible in Portuguese​—A Story of Perseverance

“HE WHO perseveres will succeed.” This motto appears on the title page of a 17th-century religious pamphlet written by João Ferreira de Almeida. It is hard to imagine a more fitting description of a man who dedicated his life to the translation and publication of the Bible into Portuguese.

Almeida was born in 1628 in Torre de Tavares, a village in northern Portugal. Orphaned as a child, he was raised in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, by an uncle who was a member of a religious order. Tradition has it that in preparation for the priesthood, Almeida received an excellent education, which helped him at an early age to develop his exceptional ability for languages.

It is unlikely, however, that Almeida would have used his talents in the service of Bible translation had he remained in Portugal. While the Reformation flooded northern and central Europe with vernacular Bibles, Portugal remained firmly under the influence of the Catholic Inquisition. The mere possession of a Bible in the common tongue could result in a person’s being haled before an Inquisitional court. a

Possibly motivated by the desire to escape this repressive atmosphere, Almeida moved to the Netherlands while in his early teens. Shortly thereafter, when just 14 years of age, he embarked on a journey to Asia, via Batavia (now Jakarta), Indonesia, at that time the administrative center of the Dutch East India Company in Southeast Asia.

 A Teenage Translator

On the final leg of his journey to Asia, Almeida reached a turning point in his life. Sailing between Batavia and Malacca (now Melaka), in western Malaysia, he chanced upon a Protestant pamphlet in Spanish entitled Diferencias de la Cristiandad (The Differences in Christendom). In addition to attacks on false religious doctrines, the pamphlet contained a statement that particularly impressed young Almeida: “The use of an unknown language in church, even for the glory of God, is of no benefit to the uncomprehending listener.”​—1 Corinthians 14:9.

The conclusion was obvious to Almeida: The key to unmasking religious error was to make the Bible understandable to all. On arrival in Malacca, he converted to the Dutch Reformed religion and immediately began to translate portions of the Gospels from Spanish into Portuguese, distributing them among “those who showed a sincere desire to know the truth.” b

Two years later, Almeida was ready for a more ambitious undertaking​—the translation of the complete Christian Greek Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate. This he completed in less than a year, a remarkable achievement for a 16-year-old! Courageously, he sent a copy of his translation to the Dutch governor-general in Batavia to have it published. Apparently, the Reformed Church in Batavia forwarded his manuscript to Amsterdam, but the elderly minister to whom it was entrusted died, and Almeida’s work disappeared.

When asked to make a copy of his translation for the Reformed congregation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1651, Almeida discovered that the original had vanished from the church archives. Undeterred, he somehow located a copy​—perhaps an early draft—​and the following year completed a revised version of the Gospels and the book of Acts. The consistory c in Batavia rewarded him with 30 guilders. It was “a paltry sum for the huge task he had performed,” wrote one of Almeida’s colleagues.

Despite this lack of recognition, Almeida pressed on, submitting a revision of his complete New Testament in 1654. Once again, the possibility of publication was raised, but nothing concrete was done beyond the preparation of a few handwritten copies for use in some churches.

Condemned by the Inquisition

For the next decade, Almeida was busy in pastoral and missionary work for the Reformed Church. He was ordained in 1656 and served first in Ceylon, where he narrowly escaped being trampled on by an elephant, and later in India, as one of the first Protestant missionaries to visit that country.

Almeida was a Protestant convert in the service of a foreign power. Therefore, many in the Portuguese-speaking communities he visited viewed him as an apostate and a traitor. His forthright condemnation of moral  corruption among the clergy and his exposure of church doctrine also resulted in frequent clashes with Catholic missionaries. These conflicts reached a climax in 1661 when an Inquisitional court at Goa, India, sentenced Almeida to death for heresy. In his absence, an effigy was burned. Perhaps alarmed at Almeida’s combative style, the Dutch governor-general recalled him to Batavia soon afterward.

Almeida was a zealous missionary, but he never lost sight of the need for a Portuguese Bible. Rather, the results of Bible illiteracy​—all too evident among both clergy and laity—​only served to strengthen his resolve. In the foreword to a religious tract dated 1668, Almeida announced to his readers: “I hope . . . soon to honor you with the complete Bible in your own tongue, the greatest gift and most precious treasure that anyone has yet to give you.”

Almeida Versus the Revision Committee

In 1676, Almeida presented a final draft of his New Testament to the church consistory in Batavia for revision. From the outset, relations between translator and revisers were strained. Biographer J. L. Swellengrebel explains that Almeida’s Dutch-speaking colleagues may have had difficulty understanding some nuances of meaning and style. There was also controversy about the choice of language. Should the Bible use the Portuguese spoken locally or a more refined Portuguese that many would find hard to understand? Finally, Almeida’s zeal to see the work completed was a constant source of friction.

The work progressed very slowly, possibly because of squabbling or the lack of interest on the part of the revisers. Four years later, the revisers were still wrestling with the opening chapters of Luke. Frustrated with this delay, Almeida sent a copy of his manuscript to the Netherlands to be published without the revisers’ knowledge.

Despite the consistory’s attempts to prevent publication, his New Testament went to press in Amsterdam in 1681, and the first copies reached Batavia the following year. Imagine how disappointed Almeida must have been to find that his translation had suffered alterations at the hands of revisers in the Netherlands! Because the revisers were unfamiliar with Portuguese, Almeida observed that they had introduced “clumsy and contradictory translations that obscured the meaning of the Holy Spirit.”

The Dutch government was also dissatisfied, and they ordered the whole edition to be destroyed. Even so, Almeida convinced the authorities to spare a few copies on the condition that the most serious errors be corrected by hand. These copies would be used until a revision could be prepared.

The revisers in Batavia reconvened to continue their work on the Christian Greek Scriptures and began to prepare the books of the Hebrew Scriptures as Almeida completed them. Fearing that the translator’s impatience would get the better of him, the consistory decided to keep the signed pages of final copy in the church safe. Needless to say, Almeida contested their decision.

By this time, decades of hard work and the rigors of life in a tropical climate had taken their toll. In 1689, in view of his deteriorating health, Almeida retired from church activities to dedicate himself to the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Sadly, he died in 1691 while working on the final chapter of Ezekiel.

The second edition of the New Testament, concluded shortly before his death, went to press in 1693. Yet again, it seems that his work suffered at the hands of incompetent revisers. In his book A Biblia em Portugal (The Bible in Portugal), G. L. Santos Ferreira states: “The revisers . . . made significant  changes to Almeida’s excellent work, disfiguring and corrupting what beauty of the original had escaped the revisers of the first edition.”

The Portuguese Bible Concluded

With the death of Almeida, the driving force behind the revision and publication of the Portuguese Bible in Batavia disappeared. It was the London-based Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge that financed a third edition of Almeida’s New Testament in 1711 at the request of Danish missionaries working in Tranquebar, southern India.

That society decided to set up a printing operation in Tranquebar. However, en route to India, the ship transporting the printing materials and a consignment of Portuguese Bibles was captured by French pirates and eventually abandoned in the port of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Santos Ferreira writes: “For some inexplicable reason and in circumstances which many viewed as miraculous, the boxes containing the printing materials were found intact in the bottom of the hold and continued their journey in the same vessel to Tranquebar.” The Danish missionaries carefully revised and published Almeida’s version of the remaining books of the Bible. The final volume of the Bible in Portuguese came out in 1751, almost 110 years after Almeida embarked on his career as a Bible translator.

An Enduring Legacy

From an early age, Almeida understood the need for a Bible in Portuguese so that the common people could discern the truth in their own language. He doggedly pursued that goal throughout his life, despite Catholic Church opposition, the indifference of his peers, seemingly endless revision problems, and his own worsening health. His perseverance was rewarded.

Many of the Portuguese-speaking communities where Almeida preached have dwindled and disappeared, yet his Bible has survived. During the 19th century, the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society distributed thousands of copies of the Almeida version in Portugal and in the coastal cities of Brazil. As a result, Bibles derived from his original text are to this day among the most popular and widely distributed in the Portuguese-speaking world.

Without a doubt, many owe a debt of gratitude to early Bible translators like Almeida. But we should be even more thankful to Jehovah, the communicative God, whose “will is that all sorts of men should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3, 4) Ultimately, he is the One who has preserved his Word and made it available for our benefit. May we always cherish and diligently study this “most precious treasure” from our heavenly Father.

[Footnotes]

[Box/​Picture on page 21]

THE DIVINE NAME

A noteworthy example of Almeida’s integrity as a translator is his use of the divine name to render the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.

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Cortesia da Biblioteca da Igreja de Santa Catarina (Igreja dos Paulistas)

[Map on page 18]

(For fully formatted text, see publication)

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PORTUGAL

Lisbon

Torre de Tavares

[Picture on page 18]

Batavia during the 17th century

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From Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, Franciscus Valentijn, 1724

[Picture on page 18, 19]

Title page of the first Portuguese New Testament, published in 1681

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Courtesy Biblioteca Nacional, Portugal