Ireland was comparatively slow in producing a vernacular translation of the Holy Bible – more than half a dozen European languages had such translations before the close of the 15th century (more than a century earlier than Ireland). There were various reasons (political and religious) for Irish tardiness – linked especially to the failure of the Reformed (or Protestant) religion to make much progress in Ireland. The translation of the New Testament was completed in 1602 by William Daniel, Protestant archbishop of Tuam, and that of the Old Testament some three and a half decades later by William Bedell, bishop of Kilmore (although not published until 1685).

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The story of the labours of Daniel and Bedell, often in difficult circumstances, make for an interesting, and often moving, story. Various efforts were made subsequently to revise and update those 17th-century versions of the Bible, and in the 19th and 20th centuries a number of authors issued partial new editions. Then a scholarly commission, established in Maynooth in 1945, undertook a new edition of the entire work. After some initial delay, the first segment of the work, St Luke’s Gospel, appeared in print in 1964. Thereafter, in a little over a decade and a half, the great work was completed under the direction of the indefatigable Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, culminating in the splendid volume published in 1981.

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Dr Nollaig Ó Muraíle, MRIA, from Knock, Co. Mayo; a graduate of Maynooth University, taught Irish in Queen’s University, Belfast (1993-2004), and in Galway University (2004-14). Now Adjunct Professor of Modern Irish in Maynooth University. His numerous publications include The Great Book of Irish Genealogies by Dubhaltach Mac Fhir Bhisigh, I-V (2003-4); Irish Leaders and Learning through the Ages: Paul Walsh, Essays (2003); Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Éirinn: From Ráth Maoláin to Rome (2007); Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, His Associates and St Anthony’s College, Louvain (2008); and Annals of Cluain Mhic Nóis (to AD 1408) (2022). Currently preparing a new edition – in modernised Irish spelling – of Archbishop Daniel’s New Testament and Bishop Bedell’s Old Testament, together with the Apocrypha (hitherto largely unpublished).