History of the Maltese Bible

Abstract

The Maltese translation of the Bible is the product of literary and religious factors and, to a certain extent, private enterprise. For many long centuries, i.e. until the dosing years of the eighteenth century, the Maltese language was never used for literary purposes, the languages of education being Latin and Italian. The earlier Maltese writers found an enormous difficulty to reduce to some sort of Latin script a Semitic language which had many sounds that were absent in Romance languages. Moreover up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the education of the population was very poor. In the year 1836 there were only three Government Elementary schools: one in Valletta, the capital, another in Senglea and the third, very poorly attended, in Gozo, the sister Island, in all of which the instruction was of a meagre and wretched character. As there were very few who could write and read Maltese, the need of a Maltese translation of the Bible was not yet felt.