Spanish ‘queen’ of Bible translations reigns

Perhaps springing from its first author’s royal surname, the Reina-Valera Spanish Bible occupies uniquely revered “queenly” status within Spanish-speaking Christendom — annually extending its 400-year marathon of wide acceptance and popularity.

The Reina-Valera translation shows few signs of ending its run — even among many of Guatemala’s indigenous Mayans who speak Spanish as a second language.

Inside the few Mayan churches I have visited here in Guatemala, the pastors may teach, preach and give announcements in their Mayan tongue, but when they read the sermon text, many reach for the Reina-Valera Bible — even if the Bible is available in their own language.

Once known as the “Bear Bible,” the Reina-Valera enjoys special reverence despite decades of work translating the Scriptures into the Mayan tongues.

I don’t claim to know the reason why, but it’s a subject of interest and concern for us here at Viña Studios. We believe people everywhere would benefit most by having and putting into practice an accurate Bible translation in the language of their heart. It’s part of the reason why I’m looking into this subject for a video we would like to produce.

Some Mayan pastors preach in two languages, beginning in Spanish and then pausing to interpret into Mayan what they just said in Spanish or read from the Reina-Valera Bible.

“I think (pastors) feel like they have better control if they do an off-the-cuff translation,” says David Ekstrom, a linguist who has translated the Old Testament into three Mayan languages. But Ekstrom cautioned that such informal translations from the Spanish text to Mayan can quickly introduce errors. While working on the Jacalteco Old Testament a man joined them who had worked 21 years with a Catholic priest.

“After he worked with us a few years he said, ‘I had no idea what kind of heresies I was promoting with my off-the-cuff translations,’ ” Ekstrom said.

A Mayan co-worker at Viña Studios, who was once asked to read the Scriptures in his church, chose to read from his Mayan translation. After reading that day, several church members approached him and thanked him, saying how clear and understandable it was. Since then, however, he said there has been little encouragement to use the Mayan translation.

In some cases Mayans don’t have the Bible in their mother tongue, but in many cases today they do — at least the New Testament. Here in Sololá, the Western Cakchiquel New Testament was printed 1996 and recorded on audio by Viña not long after.

Many regard the Spanish Reina-Valera version as “the” inspired Word of God. Some Mayan pastors refer to their mother-tongue translations as “commentaries,” reaching for the Mayan translation only if they don’t understand the Spanish.

To understand why the Reina-Valera enjoys such special status in Latins’ hearts, it may be helpful to consider its lengthy history.

Nine years before England’s King James I saw the results of the Authorized Version he had commissioned, the Reina-Valera Bible was published. It was 1602.

In those days, the Catholic Church of Rome enjoyed broad political power and transmitted the Word of God to its adherents only in the antiquated Latin language, which uneducated, common people could not understand. Fearing a loss of its power, the church engaged in bloody persecution against any who dared to put the Scriptures in common tongues. Bible translators were viewed as innovators, prosecuted and executed by church and state authorities in England, Spain and elsewhere.

Within this dangerous environment, Casiodoro de Reina (1520-1594) and a team of co-workers produced a complete Spanish Bible translation. In Spanish, Reina’s surname means “queen,” a harbinger of how his translation would reign in the centuries to come.

Raised Catholic, Reina entered the San Isidoro Monastery del Campo in southern Spain, near Seville, where he sat under Dr. Blanco Garcia Arias. Arias had heard and converted to the Reformed doctrine of “justification by faith” under the influence of the Waldenses, later reading the Reformers’ writings to his followers. But when Reina attempted to put the Scriptures in the language of the common people, he drew the ire of the Inquisition. In 1557, Reina fled Spain for his life. Monks who remained behind faced Inquisition trials, which branded some “heretics,” burning them alive.

Reaching Germany, Reina — along with 10 friends, including fellow monk, Cipriano de Valera — joined French-Calvinist Huguenot believers. Five years later, Spanish Inquisitors burned Reina in effigy and placed his writings on a list of prohibited books. Subsequent Spanish threats forced Reina to flee Germany for Holland, then to flee Holland for Germany, where he remained until his death in 1594, pastoring and translating.

For his translation, Reina spurned the Church’s Latin translation and relied on original Hebrew and Greek sources. The original biblical authors wrote the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. Reina referred to the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which dates from the seventh to tenth centuries A.D., and to Dutchman Desiderius Erasmus’ 1516 compilation of several New Testament Greek texts known as the Textus Receptus, which gets its name from the Latin phrase, textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum: “So you hold the text, now received by all.” Reina also referred back to several prior Spanish translation efforts. At the time, these were the best available source materials, correcting many errors which had crept into the Latin Scriptures used by the Catholic church. Highlighting the source of his translation, Reina wrote on the cover of his Bible in Hebrew text (with a Spanish translation below), “The Word of our God endures forever.”

In 1569, Reina published 2,600 copies of his translation in Basel, Switzerland, directly challenging a decree issued 18 years earlier by the Spanish Inquisition, which had prohibited the Bible in any “vulgar tongue.” Dubbed the “Bear Bible,” its cover artwork shows a bear retrieving honey from a tree. (Psalm 119:103, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”)

The second half of the Spanish Bible translation gets its name from Cipriano de Valera. After fleeing the monastery with Reina in 1557, Valera later traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied under the influential French Protestant Reformer, John Calvin. Valera’s first major translation project involved putting Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” into Spanish.

Mayans might be interested to know Valera held a dim view of the Spanish conquistadors: He wrote that the European conquerors sought to enrich themselves, robbing and killing natives, “people for whom Jesus died.”

Valera’s interest in personal evangelism and gaining a better understanding of the Gospel led him to England where he studied at Cambridge, later teaching at Oxford. While in England he married an Englishwoman named Ana, with whom he had three children, and he began an outreach, teaching the Gospel to seamen and prisoners. In 1582, some 12 years before Reina died, Valera began to revise his old friend’s “Bear Bible.”

In 1602, then 70 years old, Valera finished his 20-year project and died. His revision became known as the Reina-Valera Version. He announced his goals for revising Reina’s work in this way: It was “the same that motivated Casidoro de Reina, who had been motivated by that hallowed Person, the Lord Himself. He desired to proclaim the glory of God and to make a clear service to his nation.”

***

Since the first Reina-Valera Bible was published, it has undergone several revisions (most recently in 1960 and 1995) to update ever-changing language issues, employing some new translation theories and to correct some translation errors, using more accurate original source materials. Yet, despite these recent revisions, the Reina-Valera still uses verb forms unfamiliar in Latin America.

Several factors may explain why this Bible would be more commonly accepted and used by many Mayans. Spanish is Guatemala’s national language, and as such it enjoys privileged status in government, education and business. Few Mayans (perhaps just 5 percent) are literate in their own language, being taught Spanish in school. Perhaps most significantly, in a multilingual milieu, the Reina-Valera may represent a beloved stranger, whose flowery language sounds beautiful and enchanting, enabling its adherents to overlook any mystifying aspects to its message.

Still, I wonder if Osidoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera would smile to see Mayan preachers using their Spanish translation instead of reading from Mayan translations prepared for Mayan mother-tongue speakers.

*******************

For a detailed description of the various Bible translations in Spanish, see this entry on Wikipedia’s website.