Printing and the Bible in many languages

Ages 9 to 12 Read alone or together · about 35 minutes

Read together

Before printing, books were copied by hand, slowly. In China, people printed with carved wooden blocks. The oldest dated printed book is the Diamond Sutra, from 868. In Korea, metal movable type was used in the 1300s.

In Mainz, Germany, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a system of movable metal type for the Latin alphabet. The Gutenberg Bible, printed around 1455, is the first major book printed this way in Europe. Printing made books cheaper, and ideas spread faster.

Printing helped people read the Bible in their own languages. Luther's German New Testament appeared in 1522. A Spanish Bible by Casiodoro de Reina came out in 1569, and the Reina-Valera Bible followed. In the Philippines, a Tagalog Bible was published in 1905. Today at least part of the Bible exists in thousands of languages.

Do it

1. Make a block print: carve a simple shape into a potato or a foam sheet, press it into ink or paint, and print it on paper. Print it five times.
2. Put the dates in order on a timeline: 868, 1300s, 1450, 1522, 1569, 1905.
3. Find out how many languages your own Bible or a Bible app is available in, and which are used in your family.
4. Talk about why reading in your own language matters.

Talk about it

• How did printing change who could read?
• Why do people translate the Bible?

For the grown-up

Gutenberg's invention, building on earlier Chinese and Korean printing, changed the world. The Reformation spread partly through printing. This site's Spanish pages quote the Reina-Valera 1909 and Filipino pages quote Ang Dating Biblia 1905, public-domain translations that grew out of this history. A knife is needed for the block carving, so keep an adult close.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1983)
• British Library, information on the Diamond Sutra of 868, the earliest dated printed book
• United Bible Societies, Global Scripture Access report on the number of languages with Scripture
• Bruce M. Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Baker Academic, 2001)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.