e-Scripture

Harnessing technology to deliver the Word.

Acts 2:17 (NIV) says, “Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” I’m not sure which category I fit into as it seems like it was years ago that we started to consider Internet distribution of Scripture. However, at that time, technology and qualified personnel were elusive components of accomplishing any real development.

It was at the 2000 Computer Technical Conference of SIL (Wycliffe’s main field partner agency) in Waxhaw, N.C., when I first asked anyone interested in getting Scripture on the Internet to see me after the meeting. About 20 people showed up. One of those was John Hirst of Book of Hope (now called OneHope). He had just been asked to be the technical adviser to International Forum of Bible Agencies (IFOBA) and he wanted our help in putting Scriptures that SIL personnel had helped to translate on the IFOBA site he was building.

In 2001, our goal was to put 20 New Testaments on the IFOBA site, called Bible Repository, to reach diaspora language groups. John was working with Todd Tillinghast of Virtual Storehouse to convert text to the OSIS mark-up language. That was the beginning of a journey that challenged us and caused our faith to grow.

There were ups and downs, but working with Loren Hawthorne and Phil Leckrone of SIL’s Americas Area, we were able to post 10 New Testaments. People could then see the Scriptures in their own languages on the computer. Then came a period of working with Bible Gateway and we were able to get 10 more New Testaments posted, but Gateway had difficulty handling the fonts and text conversion.

With the help of SIL’s Dallas IT, we moved our efforts to Crosswire Bible Society’s Swordweb format. We set up a test site, and then things began to come together. Presently, there are 128 New Testaments on that site. While working on this process, the Lord has opened doors for Scripture distribution via cellphones. Olive Tree software [http://www.olivetree.com/] has joined our efforts and is providing help with using their technology. Go Bible software from Crosswire [http://www.crosswire.org] is another process that we are working with.

One of Loren’s dreams was to have the audio come together with the text. We are working with Faith Comes by Hearing to provide their recordings for the Scriptures on the Internet.

My dream was not given exclusively to me. The Lord laid many of the same desires on the hearts of our colleagues and partners. Development continues and so does our partnering.

SIL’s Americas Area has established an Internet site in partnership with Wycliffe Canada, scriptureearth.org. The Bible Translation Association of Papua New Guinea, in collaboration with SIL PNG, has just launched a site, pngscriptures.org; e-alkitab.org is working with the Australian Society for Indigenous Languages (AuSIL); and Kalaam.org is an independent site for Eurasia. I have also heard of several sites in Africa.

The dream continues. What we hope for is regional sites that will allow users to read and search online, to download the Scriptures in whole or in part, to make CDs of the downloaded Scriptures, to view the JESUS film for that portion of Scripture and also make the Scriptures available for download to the cellphone. God is good!

Bob Critchfield is SIL’s Director of Non-Roman Script Initiative department [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/}, as well as SIL Rights Manager and Project Manager for Smart Phones and Scripture to the Internet.