1 March is St David’s Day, the national day of Wales. Ever since the time of St David, the Welsh have engaged with the Bible, and this continues into the digital age. This is the story …
Background
At the time of Dewi Sant (St David), in the sixth century, the Bible was only available in western Europe in Latin. Copies were kept in beautiful, hand-illustrated manuscripts in monasteries. Unless you were a monk or a priest, the vast majority of people had to engage with Scripture through sermons, plays, wall paintings, and communal ritual. Wales became very Christian and sent out missionaries across the Celtic world. What is amazing is that they did all this without the Bible in their own language.
The First Welsh Bible
In 1563, there was an Act of Parliament, under Queen Elizabeth I, which required the bishops of Welsh-speaking dioceses to ensure that the Bible was translated into the “British or Welsh tongue”, with a copy to be placed in every parish church. The New Testament was first published in the Welsh language in 1567, and the whole Bible in 1588. These first Bibles were literally chained in parish churches.
Modern Translation
In 1988, four hundred years after the first full Welsh Bible, a modern version of the Bible was produced, called Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd (the New Welsh Bible). This became the most widely used Welsh-language Bible. In 2004, this Bible was revised as Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd Diwygiedig (the Revised New Welsh Bible), which is the edition used today.
beibl.net
In Welsh, there is a substantial difference between the literary language and the spoken, colloquial language. There is in English too, but it is greater in Welsh. As a result, a charity called Gobaith i Gymru (Hope for Wales) began to translate the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into everyday spoken Welsh. It was intended for young people, for those not used to literary forms, for people not brought up in church culture, and for new learners. The translation process used the latest Bible software and was put online on a website called https://beibl.net/. Having it online enabled the text to be dynamically updated after reviewing feedback.
In 2002, Y Testament Newydd (the New Testament) was completed, and in 2013 Y Hen Destament (the Old Testament) was added to complete the Bible. The new translation came to be known by the name of the website, “beibl.net”. It was one of the first Bible translations in the world to be published online before it was published on paper, which did not happen until it was printed by the Bible Society in 2015.
ap Beibl
In 2015, the Bible Society decided to launch a mobile phone app for the Welsh Bible, based on technology developed by the American Bible Society. Working with Gobaith i Gymru, an app called ap Beibl was launched at the Eisteddfod in August 2015. The name was a bit of a pun because, in Welsh, “ap” is the spelling of “app”, but it also means “son of”.
These days there are thousands of Bible apps, but in 2015 there were not many, and Welsh was one of the first languages to have its own Bible app. You can download the Welsh Bible app for free from any app store by searching for “ap Beibl” or “Welsh Bible”.
Digitisation Project
In 2017, for the 450th anniversary of the 1567 Welsh New Testament, it was decided to digitise the original and put it online. This was the start of a digitisation project to make historic translations of the Bible available.
One concern in Wales was that many Welsh-speaking Bible students and pastors felt they needed to refer to English Bibles, because there was a greater range of versions, study notes, and resources available in English than in Welsh. However, many translations and study notes in Welsh had been produced in the past. The problem was that these resources were sitting in archives, libraries, and collections. It was not that these materials did not exist; the issue was that they were not easily accessible in the way their English equivalents were.
To address this problem, Gobaith i Gymru and the Bible Society created a project to catalogue, locate, and digitise Welsh translations, and to add them to ap Beibl and its parallel website, https://cymraeg.global.bible/. The digitisation was carried out by volunteers, including many from MissionAssist. From the three original items on the app in 2015, there are now about forty items. These cover the whole Bible, editions of the New Testament, Gospels, portions, selections, and many psalters.
YouVersion
In July 2008, a new pioneering app called YouVersion was launched, which is now the world’s most downloaded Bible app. Not long after its launch, William Morgan’s Welsh Bible was added in 2011. Beibl Cymraeg Newydd Diwygiedig was added in 2012, and beibl.net in 2015.
Soon, the interface language was translated into Welsh, so users did not need to access YouVersion via English to read Welsh. More items in Welsh are added online as they are digitised. There are now so many Welsh items on YouVersion that it is the language with the second-highest number of items; only English has more. This reflects the deep Christian heritage of Wales, where many people have translated parts of the Bible, as well as a concerted effort to catalogue and digitise them.
You can access the Welsh Bible on YouVersion by changing the language to “Cymraeg” or “Welsh” in the language list.
Audio
Listening to podcasts and audiobooks is becoming increasingly popular. In 2010, the New Testament of Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd Diwygiedig was recorded for the Bible Society by Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH). This was put online with the text in 2017. William Morgan’s Bible was recorded by Cymdeithas Darllen Pethau Da and added in 2019.
In the same year, Undeb yr Annibynwyr Cymraeg (Union of Welsh Independents) started a project to record beibl.net read by people with different Welsh-speaking accents. There are now eleven New Testament books available in audio online.
Whether you are using YouVersion or ap Beibl, the text and audio are synchronised when you play the audio, and the app highlights the text being read.
Digital Lectionary
In 1567, when the New Testament was published in Welsh, the Prayer Book and the Psalter were also published. Ever since, the Church in Wales, part of the Anglican Communion, has had a tradition of reading the Bible in Welsh using the lectionary. Using the lectionary, readings are assigned to each day according to the Church calendar. These form the basis of Sunday readings and sermons, so that over time the full range of the Bible is engaged with.
The Church in Wales has an active bilingual policy, allowing people to access services in English, Welsh, or both. It began a project to make the lectionary available online via a website. The site is calendar-driven and shows the relevant verses, which pop up when you click on a reference and can be pasted into a service sheet.
In November 2024, the Church in Wales launched its Llithiadur Digidol (Digital Lectionary) to bring the lectionary into the digital age. You can access it at https://lectionary.churchinwales.org.uk/ and select English or Cymraeg. It can also be turned into a Progressive Web App on a smartphone.
Accessing the Welsh Bible
The story of the Welsh Bible in the digital age is the story of a language and a people seeking to keep both their language and their Bible relevant. Embracing the digital age has been particularly important for younger readers, many of whom prefer to encounter the Bible in audio form or on a screen rather than in a leather-bound volume.
The result is that the Welsh Bible is being actively used in forms that reflect the digital habits of a new generation of Welsh speakers, wherever they may be - in Wales, London, or Patagonia.
