First Bible published in North America
Who
Eliot Bible
What
first
Where
United States ()
When
1663
The first bible published in North America was the so-called “Eliot Bible” which was printed in 1663 at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But it was not a version of the King’s Speech…or King’s English--the King James Bible. Rather, it was written in the Algonquin Indian language. Harvard’s charter had called for educating Indians, and the Puritan founders of the school hoped that a bible translated into the indigenous language would serve to convert the native peoples to Christianity. An English-language bible was not printed in the present-day United States until 1782 when Robert Aitken issued one. There was no English bible printed in America before that as it was simply cheaper and more expedient to import bibles from the Mother Country, England.