Back to home

Wednesday October 24, 2007

Bear shares its honey with Cubans

Bear shares its honey with Cubans

José Aurelio Paz, HAVANA, Cuba, October 2, 2006

An event organized by the Biblical Committee of the Cuban Council of Churches (CIC) rendered Taxi Heathrow Airport a tribute to this translation of the Bible into Spanish, a work carried out by Casiodoro de Reina centuries ago.
 
Present at the ceremony:Pastor Rhode Conzález Zorrilla, president of that ecumenical body, Reverend José López, secretary of the Biblical Committee, and Antonio Mendoza, program consultant from the Regional Center of United Bible Societies (SBU).
 
In the course of the celebration, López exhibited a fac-simile of the original Bible translated by Casiodoro de  la Reina in 1569. The copy was a donation from Reverend José Luis Andavert from the Bible Society in Spain. He also handed out the so-called Young Bible 2000 RVR053J, which was recently received as a donation from the Bible Society of Korea.
 
Reverend José López circulated a note among those present commenting on the remarkable achievement on the part of the translator, keeping in mind that "many were the hardships faced by this distinguished man who, in the midst of difficulties, working without today's technology and doing everything by hand, was able to translate the Bible to Spanish straight from the original languages: Hebrew and Greek.

Another aspect highlighted was that Biblical work  in Cuba started receiving more emphasis in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, even though the priests who followed in the wake of colonization had brought the Bible with them and used it in church, schools and universities they founded.

"But it was with the arrival of American Bible peddlers and preachers known as colporters in the 1880s that a permanent work of spreading the Bible got started in our country..." and Bible Societies and Agencies have left a significant imprint in this field ever since.
 
CIC's Bible Society started out in 1978 and was officially organized in 1983, made up of representatives from member-churches and other individuals who meet regularly to discuss topics related to the Scriptures and to decide on strategies of distribution.
 
Millions of Bibles and of other materials related to the Bible have been imported into Cuba ever since, thanks to the work coordinated by the Regional Center of United Bible Societies (SBU) and other international organisations such as biblical ministries and Christian books from many different origins. But even this is slowly changing, a printing house has started operating at the Presbyterian United Reformed Church in Matanzas, with machines donated by SBU.
 
It is said that the main historical figures in the fight for Cuban independence from Spain, such as José Martí and José de la Luz y Caballero, were avid readers of the Bible.