A special service to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Bible in Tshivenda will take place at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thohoyandou on July 17.

The event will start at 10:00

According to a statment by the Bible Society of South Africa, the service will be a joyous occasion with music, Bible readings and a sermon, that will be delivered by Bishop SWS Sihlango of the Lutheran Church. All Tshivenda speakers from the different churches in the area are invited to celebrate and give thanks for the Bible in their own language.

The very first complete Bible in Tshivenda was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1936. This publication was the result of the translation work of the renowned linguist, Dr PE Schwellnuss, of the Berlin Mission Society. Schwellnuss was assisted by a number of mother-tongue speakers, among others, Mr Isaak Mulaudzi and Mr Fineas Mutsila. It took about 18 years to complete this translation of the Bible.

The press statement adds that the first Bible publication in Tshivenda, The four Gospels and Acts, was published in 1920 and a New Testament followed in 1923.

Today, the Tshivenda speakers in South Africa and Zimbabwe have the priviledge of using two Bible translations in their language. The Bible Society of South Africa published the Gospel of Mark in a new translation in 1976 and the New Testament and Psalms in this translation was made available in 1989. The translators, Messrs AR Mbuwa, FC Raulinga and Prof Koos van Rooy, assisted by a review committee, completed this translation. The full Bible in the new translation was launched in 1998.

The Bible Society of South Africa distributes on average between 15 000 and 20 000 complete Tshivenda Bibles every year. Last year, 17 473 Tshivenda Bibles were made available in South Africa. The importance of the Bible in one´s mother tongue became clear in the words of an elderly evangelist when he received his very own copy of the Tshivenda Bible in 1936. "Now my soul need no longer eat the hard food of a strange language. Now that I can read the Bible in my mother tongue, it tastes to me like mukonde."