The Welsh language has had the entire Bible since 1588. This is the story …
The Welsh language
The Welsh language is the unique language of Britain. It was the local language of the province of Britannia in the course of the Roman occupation, and consequently it absorbed some Latin. When the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain, they brought the English language. English and Welsh usually are not mutually comprehensible. In English, the word for foreign became the fashionable word ‘Welsh’ since the local British language was foreign to them.
The Welsh language itself is assessed linguistically as a Celtic language. The old British language (which linguists call Brythonic) was the forerunner of the three modern forms called Welsh (spoken in Wales), Cornish (the unique language of Cornwall) and Breton (spoken in Brittany, now a part of France). These three languages have a certain degree of mutual understandability, although they appear quite different because they’ve developed different writing and spelling systems (which linguists call orthographies). Until Tudor times, Welsh was also still called British or the British language, however it known as ‘cymraeg’ in Welsh.
Until the Reformation, like the remainder of western Europe, Christians in Wales used the Bible in Latin. It is remarkable to notice the expansion of Christianity in Europe despite not having the Bible in their very own languages. St David and other missionary monks evangelised other Celtic lands using the British language and the Bible in Latin. There were just a few verses translated into Welsh here and there, however the Welsh Bible itself was a product of the Reformation.
The Tudors
The Welsh background to the Reformation goes back to 1485, when the throne of England was taken by Henry Tudor, son of Edmund Tudor, who was descended from the Tudors of Anglesey, and his royal descent got here through his English mother Elizabeth Beaufort. During the reign of King Henry VII many Welsh people got here to the royal court in London. The heraldic coat of arms of England in the course of the Tudor period included a Welsh dragon, which was only modified to the Scottish unicorn in the course of the reign of King James I/VI.
Church of England
Henry VII’s son Henry VIII created the Church of England in 1534. He also united England and Wales administratively into one kingdom by the Act of Union in 1536. This meant that the Church of England also covered Wales. In 1539, the Great Bible in English was placed into every parish church in the dominion. This was popular across England but resented in parishes in Wales which spoke Welsh and a few parishes in Cornwall which spoke Cornish. In places which didn’t speak English they preferred Latin, which they were used to, even in the event that they didn’t fully understand it.
Queen Elizabeth I
After Anne Boleyn’s execution in 1536, Henry VIII’s daughter Princess Elizabeth was largely brought up by Blanche Parry, who was a native Welsh speaker. Parry got here from the world west of the River Wye in Herefordshire, which was then a Welsh-speaking area. She remained Elizabeth’s companion throughout her life, and it’s recorded that once they had private conversations at court, they used Welsh. Her story is told in ‘Mistress Blanche: Queen Elizabeth I’s Confidante’ by Ruth Richardson. It just isn’t known how fluent Elizabeth’s Welsh was, but actually Elizabeth was a noted linguist and spoke Welsh to a certain level. In 1558 her older half-sister Queen Mary I died, and Elizabeth became Queen. Queen Mary I had reverted the Church of England to the Roman Catholic fold, and Elizabeth could have left it that way, but she selected to revive the Church of England to the Protestant faith.
Queen Elizabeth had a private Christian faith. She was blissful to retain among the old Catholic traditions and forms of worship, and tolerated moderate Catholics as long as it didn’t threaten the state and amount to treason. Elizabeth was very conscious and pleased with her Tudor Welsh roots, although her mother Anne Boleyn was English.
Commissioning the Welsh Bible
The settlement of the Church of England effectively built the principle of female authority into the Anglican DNA, because Henry VIII’s daughters and all subsequent ruling queens were capable of grow to be Supreme Governor, and hold authority over the bishops. Queen Elizabeth’s authority was very real, and he or she used it to appoint bishops, and to sanction them to revise the Great Bible in English. This revision was published because the Bishops’ Bible in 1568.
Queen Elizabeth was also determined that the Bible must be in Welsh. There were many aspects to this, but a mixture of her Protestant faith and her knowledge of Welsh were key. In the fifth yr of her reign in 1563, there was an Act of Parliament to require the bishops of Wales and Hereford to be sure that the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer were translated into the “British or Welsh tongue” and placed in every parish church in those areas.
Psalter 1567
William Salesbury translated the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh from English. He also translated the Psalter from Hebrew, which was the primary complete book of the Bible to be translated into Welsh. The Book of Common Prayer including the Psalter were published on 6 May 1567.
New Testament 1567
The New Testament was translated from Greek by three men. Richard Davies, Bishop of St David’s, translated St Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, and the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistle from St James, and the 2 epistles from Peter. The bishop’s cantor Thomas Huet translated the book of Revelation. However, many of the work was done by William Salesbury. This was published as ‘Y Testament Newydd’ on 7 October 1567. These translations helped to strengthen the loyalty of Queen Elizabeth’s Welsh subjects to the Tudor dynasty.
Full Welsh Bible 1588
Later Salesbury’s New Testament and the Psalms were revised, and the remainder of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha were translated and published together as the primary full Welsh Bible in 1588. This was the authorised version for Wales. The work was largely the work of William Morgan, and it was often known as ‘Y Beibl Cyssegr-Lan’ but is often often known as the ‘Beibl William Morgan’ (the William Morgan Bible). An original copy kept at Westminster Abbey was recently shown at an exhibition at St David’s Cathedral in Wales in from June to July 2025.
The version of this Bible which is used today is the revised edition from 1620. This was accomplished after Morgan’s death by Bishop Richard Parry and Dr John Davies, who improved the language and updated the spellings.
Significance
Welsh was in regards to the twentieth language on the planet to get a full Bible, after ancient translations like Greek, Coptic, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Slavonic; mediaeval translations like Czech and English; and Reformation translations like German and French. Unlike Welsh, most of those were major languages with hundreds of thousands of speakers.
The Welsh Bible helped to preserve the Welsh language and keep the Bible within the core of the culture, which laid the bottom for Wales to grow to be a land of Revivals. The Welsh Revival of 1904 has had a large impact on world Christianity.
New Welsh Bible 1988
The William Morgan Bible was the usual Welsh Bible until ‘Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd’ (which translates into English because the New Welsh Bible) was published by the Bible Society in 1988. This was translated from Hebrew and Greek to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the unique 1588 Bible. This was revised in 2004 as ‘Beibl Cymraeg Newydd Diwygiedig’ (Revised New Welsh Bible) which is the edition utilized in most Welsh-speaking churches today. This is now the authorised version for the Church in Wales.
Beibl.net 2013
Many Welsh speaking Christians now prefer to make use of a more moderen translation called ‘beibl.net’. It was translated from Hebrew and Greek into normal on a regular basis colloquial Welsh. It was first published online on the web site https://beibl.net/ (hence its name) and was accomplished in 2013 and published by the Bible Society in 2015.
Online
Over the years many other people have translated parts of the Bible equivalent to the Psalms and the Gospels and the New Testament, but none of those have gained the recognition of those three versions. Today the Welsh Bible continues to be loved and utilized by Welsh speakers and has been kept up up to now with technology. All these Welsh versions are on YouVersion and a well-liked Welsh Bible app called ‘ap Beibl’ which may be downloaded at no cost onto mobile phones.
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