Author’s Note: Before delving into this historical analysis, it is necessary to state clearly that while this essay examines the intersection of scripture, caste, and social hierarchy, this is not an endorsement of those systems. Slavery and casteism have unfortunately been integral companions to the Bible’s journey through history, often used to justify silence or exclusion. This piece is intended as an exercise in historical “navel-gazing”—an introspective, non-judgmental examination of the Nasrani community’s evolution. We look back not to condemn the silence of the past, but to understand the sociological facts that shaped it.
The Bible is often imagined as a static, singular book that descended from heaven, identical in every hand that holds it. History, however, reveals it to be a fluid library—a collection of texts whose boundaries (canons) have expanded and contracted like the borders of empires. The story of the Bible is not merely a story of divine inspiration; it is a human history of schisms, colonial power dynamics, and the fierce protection of identity. This is nowhere more evident than in the contrasting timelines of the Western Protestant tradition and the ancient, bifurcated saga of the St. Thomas Christians (Nasranis) of India.
Part I: The Global Timeline — From Full Library to the “Sixty-Six”
To understand the unique position of the Nasranis, we must first establish the global baseline. For the first 1,500 years of Christian history, the “Bible” was a much larger book than the one found in a modern hotel drawer.
The Early Church and the Septuagint The earliest Christians did not read Hebrew; they read Greek. Their Old Testament was the Septuagint, a translation made in Egypt (c. 250 BC) that included books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, and Maccabees. When the Council of Rome (382 AD) and the Council of Carthage (397 AD) officially set the Christian canon, they ratified 73 books. This version, translated into Latin by St. Jerome as the Vulgate, became the undisputed Bible of the West for a millennium.
The Protestant Shift The timeline fractured in the 16th century. Martin Luther, aiming to reform the Church, argued that doctrine should be based only on books found in the original Hebrew canon. He did not remove the extra books entirely but segregated them into a section between the Old and New Testaments called the “Apocrypha.” For three centuries, Protestant Bibles (including the King James Version of 1611) still contained 80 books.
The final contraction occurred in 1826. The British and Foreign Bible Society, driven by Puritan sentiments and rising printing costs, decided to stop printing the Apocrypha altogether. From that moment on, the standard Protestant Bible contained 66 books. This created a permanent divergence: the Protestant world moved forward with a “slimmed down” Bible, while the Catholic and Orthodox worlds retained the ancient, larger canons.
Part II: The Nasrani Saga — The Sword, the Scroll, and the Schism
While Europe debated Greek and Latin texts, the St. Thomas Christians (Nasranis) of Kerala were living in a different biblical timeline entirely—one anchored in Aramaic (Syriac), the language of Jesus himself.
1. The Era of the Peshitta: The “Hidden” Bible
For nearly 18 centuries, the Nasranis did not have a vernacular Bible. Their scriptures were the Syriac Peshitta (Simple Version).
The Peshitta was not a book for household reading; it was a liturgical object. It sat on the Thronos (altar), wrapped in silk, kissed by priests, and chanted in a language the common people considered sacred but largely did not understand. In this era, the Bible was an auditory experience, mediated entirely through the clergy. The Nasranis, functioning as a high-caste community akin to Brahmins, saw no need to translate this sacred text for the masses. To translate it into the common tongue was seen as profaning it.
2. The Colonial Disruption and the Split (1653)
The arrival of the Portuguese marked the first violation of this Syriac heritage. At the Synod of Diamper (1599), the Portuguese Jesuits burned Syriac texts they deemed “heretical” and forced the Nasranis to alter their Peshitta to match the Latin Vulgate. This imposition led to the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653, splitting the community into two factions with distinct biblical destinies:
- The Puthenkoottukar (New Party): Those who resisted Rome and eventually aligned with the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (today’s Orthodox/Jacobites).
- The Pazhayakoottukar (Old Party): Those who remained in communion with Rome (today’s Syro-Malabar Church).
3. The Puthenkoottukar Timeline: The Protestant Compromise
The disruption of the Nasrani biblical timeline accelerated with the British. Colonel John Munro and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) sought to “reform” the ancient church by giving them the Bible in Malayalam.
Enter Rev. Benjamin Bailey, a British Anglican missionary. In 1841, he published the first complete Malayalam Bible. This created a theological paradox for the Orthodox faction. While they were anti-colonial in their church hierarchy, the Puthenkoottukar adopted the Benjamin Bailey Bible for study. Lacking the resources to print their own, they awkwardly used this Protestant version at home—a version that excluded the very books (Maccabees, Tobit) they read in their church liturgy.
By 1910, the Bailey translation was refined by the German linguist Hermann Gundert to create the Sathyavedapusthakam (The True Veda Book). This became the “Authorized Version” of Kerala Protestants and, by necessity, the Orthodox. For decades, an Orthodox family would read a 66-book canon at the dinner table but hear a 73+ book canon in Syriac at church.
4. The Pazhayakoottukar Timeline: The Era of Prohibition and Delay
The timeline for the Pazhayakoottukar (Syro-Malabar Catholics) was radically different. While their Orthodox neighbors were reading the Bailey Bible, the Catholics were forbidden to touch it. To the Catholic hierarchy, the Bailey Bible was a “Protestant book”—heretical, missing seven books, and translated by enemies of the Pope.
For nearly a century (1841–1930s), the Pazhayakoottukar had no authorized Malayalam Bible. Their faith was sustained by the Qurbana, oral tradition, and Catechism.
- The Manjummal Version (c. 1905): The first crack in this prohibition came from the Carmelite monks of the Manjummal Monastery. Fr. Louis Vypissery translated the New Testament, but significantly, he did not use the original Greek or the Syriac. He translated from the Latin Vulgate. This was a defensive measure—a “Catholic” version created solely to stop the faithful from reading the Protestant Bailey version. It was stiff, Latinized, and not widely read.
- The Mani Nidhiry Attempt (1930s): There was a brief, ambitious attempt by Fr. Mani Nidhiry to restore the Syro-Malabar identity by translating the Bible directly from the Syriac Peshitta. However, due to internal church politics and the dominance of the Latin hierarchy, this project stalled after the Gospels and Acts.
- The POC Breakthrough (1981): The Pazhayakoottukar did not get a fully authorized, complete common Bible until 1981. Following the reforms of Vatican II, the Pastoral Orientation Centre (POC) released a translation based on the original Hebrew and Greek. This ended the 140-year drought, giving Kerala Catholics a Bible that finally included the Deuterocanon.
5. The Orthodox Resolution: Vishudha Grandham (1994)
It was not until 1994 that the Orthodox faction finally closed their own gap. V. Rev. Curien Kaniyamparambil, a scholar of the Jacobite Church, translated the Syriac Peshitta directly into Malayalam.
The Vishudha Grandham was the first vernacular Bible that actually matched the Puthenkoottukar theology. It included the Apocrypha, used distinct Syriac terminology (e.g., Sleeba for Cross), and restored the text to the version used by their ancestors before the British arrived.
Part III: Why the Delay? A Sociological Autopsy
Why did the Nasranis, a community claiming apostolic origin from 52 AD, wait until the late 20th century (1981 for Catholics, 1994 for Orthodox) to produce authentic vernacular Bibles? The reasons lie in the rigid sociology of Kerala.
1. The Caste Barrier and the Lack of Evangelism The primary driver of Bible translation in history is evangelism. Protestants translated the Bible into Hindi and Tamil quickly because they wanted to convert the masses. The Nasranis, however, did not want to convert anyone. Over centuries, the St. Thomas Christians had evolved into a closed, high-caste community. They sat near Brahmins and Nairs; they were “Mapillas” (Sons). To evangelize the Avarnas (lower castes) would have meant integrating “polluting” castes into their distinct ethnic community, which would have lowered their social standing in the Hindu kingdoms. Because they had no desire to share their faith with the non-Syrian masses, they had no practical need for a Malayalam Bible.
2. The Magisterium and the “Mystery” Both factions held a “High Church” view of scripture. They believed that the Bible belonged to the Church, not the individual.
- Fear of Misinterpretation: The hierarchy feared that if common laypeople read the Bible without guidance, they would develop heretical ideas—a fear realized when the Mar Thoma Church split from the Orthodox faction in the 19th century after absorbing Anglican Sola Scriptura ideas.
- Preservation of Mystery: Syriac acted as a veil. Much like Latin in the West or Sanskrit in Hinduism, the liturgical language preserved the “mystery” of the Qurbana. Making the text plain in Malayalam risked making the sacred mundane.
Part IV: The Gideon Contrast
This insular history stands in stark contrast to the Gideons International. The Gideons represent the ultimate evolution of the Protestant timeline: the Bible as a mass-produced, individual utility.
The Gideon Version The Gideons distribute a Bible strictly adhering to the 66-book Protestant canon. It contains no footnotes, no commentary, and no Apocrypha. Their theology is simple: “The seed is the Word of God” (Luke 8:11). They believe the text itself has the power to save, independent of a priest or church.
Why Gideons Don’t Reach Catholics and Orthodox You will never find a Gideon Bible in the pew of a Syro-Malabar or Jacobite church.
- The Canon Issue: To a Catholic or Orthodox believer, the Gideon Bible is a “mutilated” book. It is missing 7 books (Wisdom, Maccabees, etc.) that support key doctrines like Purgatory and prayers for the dead.
- The Authority Issue: The Gideons operate on Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone). The ancient churches operate on Scripture plus Tradition plus Magisterium. The Gideons’ refusal to include the Deuterocanon or church-approved footnotes makes their Bibles unacceptable for Catholic/Orthodox use.
- The Approach: The Gideons scatter the Word like seeds on a highway—hotels, hospitals, schools. The Nasranis traditionally kept the Word like a jewel in a vault—guarded by priests, wrapped in silk, and revealed only in the sanctuary.
Conclusion
The timeline of the Bible is not a single straight line; it is a forking path. For the West, it moved from the Latin monopoly to the Protestant printing press, shrinking the canon to 66 books to prioritize accessibility.
For the Nasranis of Kerala, the journey was inverse. The Puthenkoottukar (Orthodox) endured a century of theological schizophrenia, using a Protestant Bible that contradicted their liturgy until the Vishudha Grandham of 1994. The Pazhayakoottukar (Catholics) endured a century of silence, forbidden from the vernacular until the post-Vatican II era birthed the POC Bible in 1981.
The delay of the Nasrani vernacular was not a failure of scholarship, but a calculated preservation of caste and ecclesial identity. While the Gideons sought to put a Bible in every hand to save souls, the Nasranis sought to keep the Bible in the hands of the priests to save their community’s unique social standing. It is only today that the children of St. Thomas can finally read the faith of their fathers in the tongue of their mothers.
The Gideon Malayalam Bible is essentially the Sathyavedapusthakam wrapped in a Gideons cover. It represents the “accessible, mass-produced” timeline of the Bible in Kerala, standing in direct contrast to the “guarded, liturgical” history of the Vishudha Grandham or the Peshitta.
Reference Note
To further illuminate the divergent paths of these traditions, a detailed chronological reference is appended to this essay. This timeline contrasts the rapid publication milestones of the Protestant pioneers, Benjamin Bailey and Hermann Gundert, against the centuries-long delay experienced by the Pazhayakoottukar and Puthenkoottukar factions. It serves as a visual testament to the historical lag between the printed word of the missionary and the reclaimed vernacular of the Nasrani.
Chathoth family, Vallamkulam, Kerala, India 