Brother Herculan Alves has published six volumes of The Bible in Portugal, presented today in Guveia, where he points to references to “worship and culture” in Livro dos Livros.

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  Photo Kartódromo CHURCH / PR

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  Photo Kartódromo Church / PR

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  Photo Kartódromo CHURCH / PR

Fatima, July 1, 2021 (Ecclesia) – Biblical scholar Brother Herculan Alves has published six volumes of The Bible in Portugal and analyzes its 6,000-page impact on worship and culture based on a translation by João Ferreira de Almeida.

“That was the starting point,” the Capuchin monk said in an interview with ECCLESIA, referring to João Ferreira de Almeida’s Portuguese translation of the Bible, whose first edition was thrown into the sea because it was “full of errors. “.

“The first translation of the New Testament was corrected by the Dutch in Amsterdam and was full of errors. João Ferreira de Almeida was furious about this work, in which the Dutch misrepresented his translation, and he himself said that he did not want this publication. The Dutch threw him into the sea to make him disappear, ”says the monk Herculano Alves.

A Bible scholar recalls that the Protestant Calvinist translator had 50 copies left, which he corrected by hand, of which “only one is known.”

“I found it at the National Library during my Ph.D. research. This only copy that exists is very well preserved, ”he said.

The 17th century Portuguese translation by João Ferreira de Almeida is a milestone in the work published by the monk Herculan Alves on “23 centuries of Bible translations” and on the Bible in Portuguese cult and culture because it is “from afar”. away ”is the most edited work in Portuguese.

“The catalog of João Ferreira de Almeida has between 150 and 200 million copies published worldwide,” says the monk Erculan Alves, recalling that this translation was not made with the Portuguese from Portugal in mind, but “the Portuguese from Portugal”. East, from the shores of Africa and Asia, who spoke Portuguese, especially in trade. “

The Bible in Portugal will be presented today in Gouvely in the context of preparatory activities for the International Congress “The Bible in Western Culture”.

Brother Herculano Alves recalls that the investigation, which resulted in the publication of six volumes, began in 2000 with the aim of pointing out the “biblical roots of culture”.

“This collection, to put the Bible into culture, the Bible in libraries has always been on my horizon. Who knows if someone, seeing the Bible in Portugal in the library, will awaken curiosity to flip through the book and see that the Bible has always been at the origin of Portuguese and European culture, ”he said.

In the course of translations into Portuguese, Father António Pereira de Figueiredo’s “first Catholic Bible” during the Pombalino Enlightenment is analyzed on more than 250 pages in volume V, being the first “legally translated” into Portuguese. “

Brother Herculan Alves believes that the 20th century is the “century of the Bible and biblical culture” in the Catholic Church, starting with the “kick of the biblical crisis” of Pope Pius XII, when he published the encyclical letter “Divino afflante spiritu” and the publication of the constitution of the Second Vatican Council Dei Verbum.

The Bible in Portugal will be unveiled this Thursday in Gouweira following the conferences of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of the Pontifical Council for Culture on the theme “The Bible is a code for understanding Western culture” and D. Manuel Clemente. , Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, on the theme “Portugal, the biblical country.”

PR