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Leaf From A 1663 Eliot Indian Bible: Jeremiah Xl, Xlii-Xliii

Rare Books

This is the first Bible printed in what is now the United States and is in a Native American language. John Eliot, a Cambridge scholar, Christian missionary, translator and linguist, learned the Wôpanâak dialect of the tribes of colonial New England with the assistance of several native speakers. His New Testament translation was printed in 1661. Two years later, he completed the Old Testament in Wôpanâak. His translations documented a language that didn’t exist in written form before his translation.

Title supplied by cataloger.