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August 13, 2002
The Kalmyk New Testament is completed!
August 7, 2002 was the day when the first copies of the Kalmyk New Testament were delivered from the printer to the IBT Moscow office.
This is the first time the 200,000 Kalmyks
receive the New Testament in modern Kalmyk, and printed with
Cyrillic text. The earlier edition of the New Testament was
from the mid-1800's, written in a vertical script, which is no
longer used.
"We look forward to receiving the New Testament
in the Kalmyk language", say a growing number of Christian
Kalmyks. "Most Kalmyks know Russian, but when God's Word is
spoken in one's own language it makes the message so much more
meaningful." "The Bible is the Book of Life and can help us
live right", says one Kalmyk person, formerly a well-known
Communist.
The Kalmyk Minister of Culture has offered
assistance with the preparations for the official presentation of
the Kalmyk New Testament this fall.
Kalmykia is one of the republics within the
Russian Federation, located right in the middle of the prairie
between the lower part of the Volga River and the Caucasus
Mountains. The capital city is Elista. The Kalmyks,
being the Westernmost of the Mongolian people, are the only ones who
became rooted in Europe, having arrived from Asia in the
1600's. They are the only Buddhist people group in
Europe.
1943 marked the deportation of all Kalmyks to
Siberia, ending the existence of the Kalmyk Republic. The
Kalmyks were accused of collaboration with the Germans, and were not
allowed to return to their land until 1957.
The Kalmyk New Testament is the fourth in the
series of 15 New Testaments that the Institute for Bible Translation
plans to print by 2005. All 15 languages are spoken in the
former Soviet Union. Those already completed, since 2000, are
the New Testaments in Kurmanji-Kurdish, Tatar and Tuvin. IBT
partners with the Russian Academy of Science, the Bible Societies,
and SIL. Bible translation is in progress in about 80
different languages of the CIS.
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