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from a BFBS edition (Howsam 1991: 95). More speculatively, we might also
ask how Protestant ideas of magical circulation create an environment in
which the idea of transnational circulation itself can start to make sense.
Yet, what of the reception of these circulating texts? What did readers in
various parts of the world make of Protestant Bibles? To address this issue,
we turn to themes of translation.

Translation

The idea that “the Bible” existed in the early Protestant mission empire
is something of a misnomer. Biblical translation was time consuming.
Getting agreement on how to translate key terms such as baptism, spirit,
and resurrection was arduous. Most mission societies worked through the
Bible Society, which generally demanded that all Protestant missions in one
language area collaborate on the translation. Diversity of denominational
opinion further delayed the process. In some cases, it took half a century
before both testaments were translated and published as one volume.
“The Bible” could hence exist as a handful of separate booklets that were
indistinguishable from other pamphlets (Hofmeyr 2004: 77–9).
Complicating this picture was the way in which the Bible (or parts of
it) was changed as it entered new spiritual traditions. In the case of Africa,
with some 1,000 languages and as many ethnic groups, the Bible came to
be reinterpreted in diverse ways. This “reformation” was possible since
Christianity in Africa was spread by Africans. Missionaries were few and
far between and were generally culturally remote from the people they
proselytized. The work of brokering the gospel fell to the African foot
soldiers of Christianity, the catechists, evangelists, and Bible women who
knew how best to present new ideas to their audiences.
African Christianity produced distinctive theologies. These included
an African Christology (Christ as intermediary rather than son of God), a
stress on healing, and an emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In other
cases, African Christians “re-biblicized” the Bible, playing up Old Testament
themes of prophecy and polygamy that the missionaries sought to downplay
(Hastings 1994).
Orality and literacy provided another site for both re- and (in some
instances) de-biblicization. Christian sacred texts pivot on a metaphorical
conjunction of the oral and the written. God’s oral voice is mediated in print
(or manuscript): “The ritual of reading recapitulates the primal experience
of speaking and hearing the word of God” (Stock 1990: 149). These themes
assumed an added edge when introduced into sub-Saharan societies that were
oral or paraliterate. Here ideas of divine orality and literacy were fused in
novel ways. In some cases, literacy was believed to come directly from God