Special Maple Leaf Hours

Baker University Archives: Friday 8-4:30

Quayle Bible Collection: 10am-4pm Saturday and 1pm-4pm Sunday

Quayle exhibit

One Word, a Thousand Meanings: The Bible in Translation

 As soon as the Bible was canonized, it was translated into various languages. While there are thousands of translations today, many of these works faced the politics of translating a holy text: can it be translated; does it lose meaning; by whose authority? This is best  captured in the Italian proverb traduttore traditore: the translator is a traitor. Translating is not an easy task with words having so many meanings. The 2022-2023 Quayle Bible Collection exhibit will focus on these issues, highlighting the history of the Bible in its  original languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic as well as several of the earliest translations. The exhibit also shows the various politics of translating, especially during the Protestant Reformation, and when the Bible was used as a tool for colonization.