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Bible translations into Tibetan

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ4903226 ↗
Source-derived summary

The first portion of the Bible, the Gospel of John, in a Tibetic language was translated by Moravian Church missionaries William Heyde, Edward Pagel, and Heinrich August Jäschke, and later Dr. August Francke. It was printed in 1862 at Kyelang capital of Lahul in Kashmir. The whole New Testament was printed in 1885 in Ladakh. Another version was translated in 1903. So as not to have the problem of various dialectal differences it was translated into classical Tibetan, but this was not understood by most people. Yoseb Gergen (a.k.a. Sonam Gergen), a Tibetan Christian translated the entire Bible, complete in 1935. This version was translated into a dialect of Tibetan Gergen had accidentally stumbled across, and which was understandable by all Tibetans. It was finally published in 1948.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bible translations into Tibetan” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bible, translations and Tibetan, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1862, 1885, 1903, 1935—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Bible, translations and Tibetan is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

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Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4903226. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1885, 1903 and 1935.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bible translations into Tibetan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.