Scotland has understandably been in the news quite a bit lately. Bible Gateway, alas, has no online Bible in the Scottish Gaelic or Scots languages. But all of the recent discussion of Scottish history and identity prompted me to read up on the history of the Bible in Scotland.

The University of Glasgow has an excellent virtual exhibition showcasing the Bible in Scottish history. Here, it explains the relative dearth of native-language Bible translations in Scotland, and notes that while English-language Scriptures dominated, localized Bible translation projects actually helped to preserve those local languages:

Despite calls within sixteenth-century Scotland for translations of Scripture in the languages of its people, no progress was made. In Gaelic-speaking Scotland, no Scottish Gaelic Bible translations existed before the eighteenth century. The gap was filled by the Irish Gaelic Scriptures, translated from the Greek and Hebrew by Irish Protestant bishops. The Irish Bible, being written in ‘classical common Gaelic’ was comprehensible and usable in Scotland, if not ideal. Classical common Gaelic was a literary language shared by Scottish and Irish Gaels but with which the average Gaelic speaker would have had very limited familiarity.

Between 1766 and 1801 a Bible in specifically Scottish Gaelic was undertaken and published by the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. In part the Society may have seen this project as a means of using Gaelic as a bridge to teach English. Nevertheless, the translation arguably slowed the language’s decline. It helped to stabilise Gaelic orthography and to establish a formal written register which would serve as a model for Gaelic writers for decades to come. Interestingly, later revisions of the Scottish Gaelic Bible owed much in tone to the King James Bible, imitating its English phrasing and pointing.

The language or idiom that fared least well among Bibles in Scotland was Scots, the natural tongue of the vast majority of the non-Gaelic speaking population up to the eighteenth century.

Read more here. Despite the dominance of English-language Bibles, several Scots Bible translation efforts have produced fruit in the last 200 years. It’s a wonderful language to read, even if you can’t speak a word of it. Here’s a gallery (from the University of Glasgow) of Bibles in various Scottish languages and dialects:

When it comes to more modern Bibles, the Scottish Bible Society has undertaken a Gaelic Translation Project, dedicated to producing a new Bible translation in Scottish Gaelic.