The Halam people of India have received Scripture in their language for the first time following the completion of a translated Gospel of John, which also serves as the tribe’s first-ever written material.
The distribution of 5,000 copies, published by the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS), is a major milestone for the 108,000 speakers, who had never had written material of any kind in Halam, which remains a developing language.
The Gospel was translated from the Authorised (King James) Version and written in a standardised form of the language, encompassing the three main tribal varieties with assistance from a linguistic specialist. Due to the lack of other material, it is being used as a key literary resource as well as a spiritual text.
