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Izere Audio Bibles
Recently came across an article which informs us that the Audio Bible ministry recently released Audio Bibles in five more languages to add to their already large worldwide portfolio. One of the languages benefiting from this new release is Izere, a Nigerian indigenous language.
The article goes on to state that, "Some of the people groups represented by these Audio Bibles have significantly low literacy rates. In Nigeria, among Izere speakers, a mere 1% can read."
I must admit, although being Nigerian, I wasn't familiar with that particular language and had to look it up to find out which tribe it belongs to. My findings were that Izere is a language spoken in Plateau State.
"Faith Comes By Hearing's mission is to record the New Testament in 2,000 languages and to start 1.8 million Bible listening groups by 2016 to reach the 50% of the world who cannot read and live in deep poverty."
While this is a laudable cause, I do wonder how many Izere speaking people are taking advantage of this Audio bible. My point being, if it is available for download, then these same people who have the low literacy rates won't just trot off to the nearest internet café to download the Audio Bible onto their iPods (or whatever), I do hope that there is another way of getting this across to them.
So I decided to check out their website http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com
and do a search for ‘Nigeria' and was impressed and happy to find that all the major language groups - Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa (and then some...) were already covered, i.e., have a free download option for the Audio Bible.
I do also quite like the idea of having an Audio Bible in my native Igbo language, but I digress.... Anyway, now satisfied that this is a great concept I would just like to spread the word and let's see how we can get these audio bibles to their ‘end-users' for FREE!
The emphasis on the word free is that having attended many a church service in Nigerian churches, I did note that audio recordings of the weekly sermon are usually for sale.
For your info, the link to the article is: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/religion/article_870.shtml
Posted by: Igbo Chick on 13 August 2009
Comments
Re: Izere Audio Bibles
There's much in the Bible that is beautiful and spiritual but also a lot that is open to interpretation. Some people see it as metaphorical - others view the scriptures as literal truths.
But it's great that the people in the Plateau State can observe the Bible through verbal communication.
Furthermore they should also be encouraged to ask questions about some of the things they don't understand. There are parts of the Bible (take Proverbs for example) which offer sound advice for how we live today. I only know that because I was given a modern English version which brought the words alive. If I still had to fight my way through 'thee' and 'thou' then verily I would have lost interest.
The word 'Bible' sounds a lot like 'Babel' - the latter being a tower which, as the story goes, was built in the Old Testament as a way of reaching Heaven. God however was displeased and scattered the people throughout the earth and that, apparently, is how we all speak with different tongues.
Yet as we've seen, the Bible is being translated into dialects unheard of and in this way it's creating a common bond, thereby almost contradicting the Babel story and because no-one owns the copyright (!) it's free for all.
It's a good thing because there are some cracking stories in the Bible. I'm still waiting for Spielberg to tackle some of the big ones like Samson & Delilah or Moses. One person who absolutely should NOT go near the Bible is Mel Gibson. His horrorifying take of the cruxifixion was bloody and disturbing.
But anyway, that's a different topic, all power to the Izere Bible.