Which Bible did early Americans read? Which translations were available, what did they look like, and how were they used? These questions point to deeper insights about religious and cultural life in British North America.
Bible translations used in the New World were rooted in the Reformation project of making scripture more accessible to a broader audience. Protestant colonists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought Bibles with them across the Atlantic and emphasized reading as central to the faith because it supported worship, moral instruction, and education. Historians often assume that the 1611 King James Bible (KJV) quickly became standard in the colonies, following brief competition from the Geneva Bible (1560) among Puritans in early New England.
While the KJV was widely used, English colonists like Cotton Mather (1663-1728) also produced commentaries that critiqued and proposed refinements to the authorized translation. German-speaking colonists, meanwhile, brought with them other influential translations, including the Luther Bible (1522, 1534), the widely distributed Halle/Canstein Bible (1710-), and regional translations in Dutch and Swiss German. Unlike their English counterparts, they also undertook new translation efforts in America, unconstrained by the British monopoly on English Bible printing. Together, these varied traditions reveal a richer and more diverse biblical landscape in early America.
Printed in New England in 1661 and 1663, the Eliot Indian Bible (known also as the Algonquian Bible) stands as a landmark achievement in colonial religious history. It was the first complete Bible printed in any language in the Western Hemisphere and represented a monumental translational achievement. To carry out this work, English Puritan minister and missionary John Eliot (1604–1690) translated the Geneva Bible into Massachusett, part of the Algonquian language family. This undertaking required him to learn the language, devise a written system and orthography to represent it, and collaborate closely with Indigenous speakers. In contrast to the English-language Bibles used in early America, which were imported from England, the Eliot Bible was locally produced and reflected a unique intersection of missionary ambition and linguistic innovation.1
Bible translation efforts in early America were not limited to linguistic diversity. They also reflected theological and intellectual diversity, as seen in Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana: The Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testament Illustrated, the first full-length Bible commentary written—but never printed—in English in colonial America. Mather worked on the project from 1693 until his death in 1728, producing six folio volumes and more than 4,500 pages of densely handwritten text. His ambitious goal—always in service to the Reformed Protestant tradition—was to synthesize what he understood as the most relevant biblical and scientific scholarship from across the Atlantic world (and beyond) for both scholarly and lay audiences. In doing so, he often proposed translational improvements to the KJV and offered practical insights for believers, an emphasis he shared with German Pietists in Europe and Pennsylvania. Mather’s work is significant because it bridged seventeenth-century Puritanism and the American evangelicalism that would flourish in the eighteenth century.2
The German-language Sauer Bible (1743) further illustrates how colonial Bible translation reflected both linguistic diversity and the theological priorities of transatlantic religious communities. It was, in fact, the first Bible printed in any European language in British North America. Born in Ladenburg, Germany, Christopher Sauer (1695–1758) emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1724 and began printing German-language materials at his Germantown shop using the Fraktur typeface. Seeking to make the Bible more accessible to German-speaking colonists and support Pietistism, Sauer collaborated with the Ephrata Cloister to produce and print a Bible that corrected perceived flaws in Martin Luther’s translation, drawing specifically on the 34th edition of the Halle Bible.
The Sauer Bible also exemplifies how transatlantic religious networks shaped colonial biblical interpretation. In addition to the Halle Bible, Sauer and other German Protestants in Pennsylvania—including the Ephrata community and the Schwarzenau Brethren—were influenced by radical Pietist translations from Europe. These unauthorized German-language Bibles reflected diverse interpretive approaches, from mystical readings to theological commentary and even engagements with Enlightenment science and philosophy, all of which shaped how colonists engaged with scripture.
Unlike the locally printed Sauer Bible, not all influential Bible translations in early America originated within the colonies. Vernacular translations arriving from Europe offered alternative theological frameworks that shaped colonial religious life. One striking example is the Marburg Bible (1712), published by Heinrich Horch, a radical German Pietist and mystic linked to the Philadelphian movement. Horch retranslated the authorized Luther Bible to highlight its mystical dimensions. His edition circulated among key religious figures in Pennsylvania, including Sauer, Conrad Beissel (founder of the Ephrata Cloister), and Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf of the Moravian Church. Alongside textual revisions, Horch added theological summaries and explanatory notes to guide interpretation. These features reflected Pietist efforts to challenge confessional readings and offer alternatives to Luther’s translation. By promoting a mystical, devotional approach, Horch and his readers fostered a more personal mode of engagement with scripture that gained traction during the Great Awakening.
Another influential European Bible translation that circulated in colonial Pennsylvania—though never printed there—was the Berleburg Bible (1726—1742), published by radical German Pietists in Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, a haven for radical Pietists. This ambitious eight-volume project, led by Johann Friedrich Haug (1680-1753), drew on sources including the Luther, Marburg, and Froschauer Bibles (1531), as well as ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin manuscripts. Its extensive commentary aimed to illuminate the traditional fourfold sense of scripture: literal, moral, typological, and mystical. Though intended for everyday readers, the commentary was deeply informed by ancient, medieval, and early modern scholarship, making it valuable even to learned theologians. The Berleburg Bible remained popular among German Pietist Brethren and Mennonite communities in the colonies, extending the influence of radical Pietist interpretation and contributing to early America’s religious diversity.3
Bible translations and commentaries are rich but often overlooked historical sources. Language barriers, especially the use of German, and assumptions that these works were derivative or relevant only to elite theologians have long limited their study. Yet figures like John Eliot and his Indigenous collaborators, Cotton Mather, Christopher Sauer, Heinrich Horch, and the scholars behind the Berleburg Bible show that translation was a diverse, transatlantic intellectual enterprise. These Bibles reflect the pluralism of colonial Protestantism, blending devotional, philological, philosophical, and scientific thought, often aimed at everyday readers. These works offer valuable insights into the intellectual and cultural life of early America and the broader Atlantic world, insights scholars are only beginning to uncover.
Benjamin M. Pietrenka is Assistant Professor of History at Baylor University. He is a historian of early America and the early modern Atlantic world whose research explores the entangled cultural histories of religion, gender, race, and empire. His primary focus is the cross-cultural dynamics of early American religion, particularly how transatlantic encounters reshaped local beliefs and practices
Read Pietrenka’s article “From Text to Ritual: Radical Pietist Approaches to Scriptural Translation and Protestant Diversity in Early America“ in EAS’s Summer 2025 issue.
- See Linford Fisher, “America’s First Bible: Native Uses, Abuses, and Reuses of the Indian Bible of 1663,” in The Bible in American Life, edited by Philip Goff, Arthur Farnsley, and Peter Thuesen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 35-47. ↩︎
- For rich discussions of Mather’s Biblia, see the introductions to volumes 1 and 10 in Cotton Mather, Biblia Americana: America’s First Bible Commentary. A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, eds. Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann et al., 10 vols. (Tübingen/Grand Rapids, MI: Mohr Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2010–); and the interpretive essays in Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, eds., Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana, America’s First Bible Commentary : Essays in Reappraisal (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011). ↩︎
- Kenneth Strand, “Some Significant Americana: The Saur German Bible,” Andrews University Studies 32, no. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 1994): 57–106, 59. See also, Jan Stievermann and Benjamin Pietrenka, “The Pluralization of Scripture in Early American Protestantism: Competing Bible Translations and the Debate over Universal Salvation, ca. 1700-1780,” Religion and American Culture 33, no. 1 (2023): 35-74. ↩︎