The exhibition La Biblia del Oso (The Bear Bible) opens today, until 16 December, at the Centro Sefarad-Israel. It consists of a total of eleven explanatory panels that offer all the details of the first complete translation of the Bible into Spanish, made more than 450 years ago.
The Bear Bible was presented without mentioning the translator or the place of printing because the translation was published underground. The Catholic Church strongly opposed attempts to translate the Bible into common languages, arguing that the only suitable languages were Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The exhibition traces the history of this first translation into Spanish, which had a great influence on the society of its time. It is not in vain that, although the first 36 books of the Bible were written by Israelites, by the third century BC many Jews no longer understood the Hebrew language.
