Eliot's 'Indian' Bible, 1685

Geoffrey Day (CoRo, 1989-2007; Fellows' Librarian, 2005-14) described the Eliot's Indian Bible as "probably the most remarkable of all the Treasures that have been in his care during his time" as Fellows' Librarian. Geoffrey Day wrote a valedictory article for The Trusty Servant about the Bible. You can see and read the article below in the photo gallery.

The description is set out below in an article penned by Andrea Thomas for 50 Treasures from Winchester College.

Even the most talented linguist would be unable to read this remarkable book: it was published in the seventeenth century in a language that has since become extinct. However, it is a translation of the Bible with titles and chapter headings in English, so the contents are readily apparent. It was the product of the missionary vocation of a Puritan colonist in New England, John Eliot (1604-1690), traditionally known as 'the Apostle to the Indians'.

Like many Puritans, Eliot was convinced that the way to create a godly society was to make the Word of God accessible to all people, and from the 1640s he focused his proselytising zeal on the local Algonquian Indians. He gathered his converts into settled, segregated 'praying towns', where he encouraged them to adopt the Puritan faith and culture.

With the help of English-speaking natives, he studied their unwritten language and devised a way to present it phonetically in writing. Eliot produced some twenty religious books in the Natick dialect of the Algonquian language, the most significant of which was the Indian Bible. This was published in 1663 and gave no credit to his Indian colleagues: Job Nesutan, Cochenoe, John Sassamon and James Printer.

It was the first Bible published in North America and was printed by the fledgling press at Harvard. The Winchester College volume is a copy of the second edition of 1685, which was commissioned after many of the earlier Bibles were destroyed in Metacomet's War of 1675-76. The printing of both editions was paid for by the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, and our volume includes a dedication to the Company's Governor, the great scientist Robert Boyle. The final pages contain a set of metrical Psalms and Eliot's 'Rules for Christian Living', also in phonetic Algonquian.

The Indian Bible' is an extraordinary book. Not only does it provide a valuable insight into the world of colonial New England, but in recent years its text has also been used as a prime resource in attempts to recover and revive the lost language of the Algonquians.