All Scripture to be signed

A mammoth project to translate the Bible into British Sign Language (BSL) is underway. So far, the team at the BSL Bible Translation Project has translated ten chapters of Mark’s Gospel, while another team has started work on parts of Genesis.

More than 400 sign languages are in use around the world, but just one has a full Bible in its own language: the Bible in American Sign Language was completed in 2020 by Wycliffe Bible Translators – after 39 years in the making.

In the UK, Christian volunteers are translating from the original Greek and Hebrew texts into a BSL video version. Gill Behenna is a trustee of the project, who works with the deaf community in Bristol. She told the BBC that the project uses signs that are already widely understood, rather than creating new ones.