The 1960s Bible: investigating discourse on a Swedish translation of the New Testament

In this paper, I investigate discourse on a Swedish translation of the New Testament during the period 1961–1972. Applying a Translation history perspective, I argue that the discourse on the translation, which situated the Bible firmly in the public space of the time, can be investigated in order to question the narrative of the Swedish 1960s as a radical, secular decade. During the period, the translation was debated by a number of institutional actors following the original initiative by a member of the Riksdag in 1961. The matter was investigated by two different governmental committees between 1963 and 1972, and in 1972, the Social Democratic minister Alva Myrdal appointed a committee for carrying out the translation. I show how the state patronage of the translation, envisaged by the Government and assumed by a number of the institutional actors discussing the translation, demonstrates a strong continuity with earlier official Swedish bibles. At the same time, the continuous state patronage depended on a reconceptualization of the object of translation, i.e. the Bible, which was no longer apprehended as an exclusively ecclesiastical scripture, but rather as a cultural and more loosely religious artifact.A secular Bible: Bibel 2000 at the intersection between religion and politics in postwar Swede