Home to the fastest growing church in the world, with up to estimated With 1 million Christians, Iran has many underground brotherhoods that previously worshiped in the Farsi language. But according to a 1991 study investigation Among new mothers in Iran, only 46 percent reported Farsi as their native language.
Gilaki, Mazandarani minorities and other citizens can now read the New Testament in their own language, thanks to the release of 12 new Bible translations. Far from being a Persian monolith, Iran has 62 distinct languages, according to translation agency Korpu, nine of which have more than a million speakers.
And God’s concern for Iran goes beyond their individual souls.
“Translating the Bible is God’s way of not only saving people,” said Yashgin, an exegete-in-training from Korpu, “but of returning glory to humiliated minority peoples.”
Now living in Turkey and a Christian since 2007, Yashgin requested anonymity to protect his believing family in Shiraz, 525 miles south of Tehran. A member of Iran’s Qashqai Turkish minority, she fled the country after two brief prison detentions for her belief, before joining Korpu in 2017.
Seven years later, she contributed to the birth of the first Qashqai New Testament.
Yashgin said she was made fun of as a child because of her accent and Turkish name. (Minority Rights Group (MRG) States that Iran represses its minority languages, requiring Farsi alone in education and civil affairs.) But through studying the Bible, she learned that God called Israel a minority people (Deut. 7:7), and the translation, she says, proves the truth of what John 3:16.
God loves the world, not just the majority.
“No one cares about us more than our mother,” Yashgin said. “God showed us that he cares too, by speaking his language.”
Figures relating to language and ethnicity are disputed in Iran, whose 88 million people reside in a territory roughly the size of Alaska. A little more than half talk a variant of Persian, with Azeris and Kurds as the largest ethnic minority groups.
Local Armenian and Assyrian Christians have long had their own scriptures. The first Kurdish Bible was published in 1872, and an Azerbaijani Bible was published in 1891. While the first reference to a Persian translation dates back to the fourth century with the Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, manuscript evidence from the fifth century was found in a Nestorian monastery in Tajikistan Chinese.
The missionary Henry Martyn led the first modern version, completed in 1846.
But even though the missionaries were exceptional in their geographic reach, said Lazarus Yeghnazar, founder of Transform Iran, they established Farsi-speaking congregations even in regional capitals. His church planting organization has congregations in more than 50 Iranian cities, he said, and seeks to end this ethnic neglect.
Working with unfoldingWord’s Open Bible Stories, Transform Iran used regional accents to orally translate key biblical episodes into 22 minority languages, set to a backdrop of local folk instruments. Few minority Iranians can read their native language, he said, many of whom, experts fear, are at risk of disappearing.
“When they hear their music, it touches their soul,” said Yeghnazar, an ethnic Armenian. “If Jesus delays his return, they will say: Christians have preserved our culture. »
An ethnic Azeri agrees – while recognizing the political implications.
Feridoon Mokhof, director of Korpu, said Iran wrongly sees the spirit of nationalism behind the ethnic desire to use one’s native language. The logic is this: a language implies a people, a people implies a nation, a nation implies a land and a land implies separatism. MRG states that language activists in Iran have been imprisoned or exiled.
When Korpu translators are arrested, Mokhof said, it is often because they are considered a threat to national security. By adding Arabic as an official religious language after its 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic largely continued previous government policies aimed at suppressing ethnic identities. But they have also disrupted previously cordial and historic relations.
The Bible speaks of the 127 satraps of the Persian king Xerxes, whose central authority was in Susa, where the Lak people live today. And King Cyrus ruled biblical Elam, where the Lur people reside. These two languages now have a New Testament, possession of which, Mokhof said, is a fundamental human right.
“The Lur do not need their own country, but their language and culture must be preserved within their own community,” he said. “The Bible is the only literature capable of preserving it. »
Mokhof became a Christian in 1974 while a university student and began his linguistic career in 1990, translating the Bible into his native South Azeri. Five years later, the Azerbaijan Bible Society was founded in Baku, across Iran’s northwest border, to work on translation from North Azeri, while it founded Korpu, which means “bridge” in Azeri.
His goal has always been for the Bible to connect people.
In 1998, Mokhof began translating the New Testament into Gilaki, followed by Mazandarani and Luri a few years later. But much of this work was put on hold until the South Azeri Scriptures were completed in 2014. Subsequently, Korpu began work in Talysh, Tati, Ahwazi Arabic and others, with the 12 New Testaments completed , dedicated during a presentation in London last weekend.
Six more translations are expected to be released in June.
Working with United Bible Societies (UBS), Seed Company, Operation Mobilization, and the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Korpu employs 73 people, including 58 translators, two-thirds of whom work from Iran. Mokhof also serves as deputy superintendent of the Hamgaam Council of the United Iranian Churches, which oversees 850 house churches in Iran. Many are located in minority areas.
When security permits, translators check their work with friends and relatives in Iran. This can open up opportunities for evangelism, and Yashgin said a friend of his believed after hearing the gospel in Qashqai, after rejecting it years earlier in Farsi.
“When you talk about Christianity in Iran, their first thought is that it’s a Western religion,” she said. “Hearing the Bible in one’s native language proves that this is a false idea.”
But until now, Mokhof said house churches – which largely match the ethnic makeup of the nation – have relied on Farsi scriptures. After the Islamic Revolution, Christianity first exploded in Tehran, the cosmopolitan and culturally open capital, dominated by Farsis. It then took about 10 to 15 years for satellite television to extend its revival to the ethnic peripheries.
Before persecution divided believers into smaller family units for security reasons, Yashgin’s congregation was originally mixed Farsi-Qashqai. Although her believing grandmother understood the national language, she translated the Bible orally to help it resonate better. But as people from across Iran have fled to Turkey, the Church is once again a multi-ethnic congregation, with Farsi at the center.
As is the case for Iranians scattered everywhere.
“We do not use labels, which contributes to our national unity,” said Nahid Sepehri, executive director of the Iranian Bible Society in Diaspora (IBSD), referring to the Iranian Church in London and churches bearing similar names elsewhere. “But if other ethnic groups also want to worship in their own language, why not?
She hasn’t heard of any ethnically unique diaspora congregations, but IBSD will partner with Korpu to provide these translations to anyone who needs them. They currently distribute 300,000 copies of the Scriptures per year, in cooperation with national Bible societies aware of the Iranian diaspora. Elsewhere, they ship literature to less developed countries, or transport it by hand to less favorable regimes.
IBSD was founded in 2015, following a UBS-sponsored project to translate today’s Persian version into contemporary Farsi. Completed in 2007, a revised edition was finalized last year. And with the completion of 12 new ethnic New Testaments, Korpu will discern the local desire for the entire Bible. Under the current resource commitment, Qashqai speakers and others will benefit from God’s full guidance within three years.
If freedom came to Iran, what language would they choose for the Church? Yashgin said that while both models are good, monocultural service produces more intimacy while mixed groups promote broader camaraderie. She hopes Iran will allow local languages to be taught, but she recognizes the need for a unifying identity.
“The translation responds to Colossians 3:11: ‘Here there is neither Gentile nor Jew…but Christ is all and is in all,’” Yashgin said. “But I’m also Iranian, and the only difference is my language.”
