IBT has published the illustrated edition of Gospel Parables in the Bezhta language of the North Caucasus area of Russia.  Bezhta is spoken by about 6,000 speakers, most of whom live in the villages of Bezhta and Tlyadal in Dagestan and in the Kvareli region of Georgia. It is an endangered language without an official writing system. In 1999, IBT published the first book ever in Bezhta (the Gospel of Luke), using an adapted form of the writing system used in the related Avar language. This was followed in 2005 by the Proverbs of Solomon. The translator of all three of IBT’s Scripture portions books in Bezhta is a professional linguist who is the world’s leading expert on his mother tongue...

IBT has published an illustrated book of stories from the Holy Scriptures in the Lamunkhin dialect of the Even language. The Lamunkhin dialect is spoken by 800 people (out of a total of about 5,600 Even speakers), making it the largest of the dialects of Even. It is also the dialect that has maintained the greatest number of vocabulary items having to do with the traditional Even culture.

The book contains 25 stories that cover key Scriptural passages, from the creation of the world to the second coming of Christ as described in Revelation. The 41 color pictures were produced by an Even artist and take an overtly “domesticating” approach to illustrating the text, i.e. they show the world of the Bible as it might be seen through the eyes of an average Even...

IBT has published the translation of the Old Testament book of Job in Kumyk, a Turkic language spoken by more than 400,000 people, primarily in the Dagestan region of southern Russia. 

The book of Job has a special place both in the Bible and among the masterpieces of world literature, offering deep theological reflection on why suffering afflicts even good people in this life. It is one of the most difficult books of the Bible to translate due to numerous difficulties having to do with rare words and ambiguous expressions in the Hebrew original. This is the first time that IBT has published the book of Job by itself in any of our projects.  The Hebrew poetic form of the central portion of the book was rendered as poetry in Kumyk, and footnotes deal with translation issues that were difficult to get across in the text...

IBT has published another translation of Scripture portions in the Avar language, spoken as a mother tongue by over 700,000 people primarily in Dagestan. The new publication contains the books of Ruth, Esther and Jonah from the Old Testament. The Avar New Testament was published in 2008, and previously published OT portions include the book of Proverbs (2005, 2007) and Genesis (2011).

The present translation was prepared by a new translation team consisting  of an independent translator (working directly from the Hebrew original), a philological editor, a field tester, and a translation consultant. Further work is in progress on the historical books of the OT.