Casiodoro de Reina’s Fight for a Spanish Bible

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY Spain was a dangerous place to read the Bible. The Catholic Church had instructed the Inquisition to snuff out the slightest flicker of unorthodoxy. But there was a young man in southern Spain who not only read the Scriptures but also vowed to translate them into the vernacular so that every Spaniard could read them. His name was Casiodoro de Reina.

Reina’s interest in the Bible was aroused during the years he spent in the monastery of San Isidro del Campo, on the outskirts of Seville, Spain. During the 1550’s, the majority of the monks at this extraordinary monastery spent more hours reading the Scriptures than attending to their canonical duties. And the Bible’s message changed their thinking. They rejected Catholic doctrine regarding the use of images and belief in purgatory. Inevitably, their views became known in the area, and fearing arrest by the Spanish Inquisition, they decided to flee abroad. Reina was one of the 12 who succeeded in escaping to Geneva, Switzerland.

After that narrow escape, he journeyed from one European city to another, somehow managing to keep one step ahead of his persecutors. In 1562 the frustrated inquisitors burned his effigy in Seville, but even that brutal threat did not make Reina flinch from his task of translating the Scriptures. Despite having a price on his head and living in constant fear of arrest, he worked incessantly on his Spanish translation. “Except for the time that I was sick or traveling, . . . the pen never left my hand,” he explained.

Within ten years Reina completed the job. In 1569 his translation of the entire Bible was published in Basel, Switzerland. This outstanding work was the first complete Spanish translation made from the original languages. For centuries Latin Bibles had been available, but Latin was the language of the elite. Reina believed that the Bible should be understood by everyone, and he risked his life in the furtherance of that goal.

In the introduction to his translation, he explained his reasons. “To prohibit the Holy Scriptures in the common language inevitably does singular insult to God and harm to the welfare of men. This is the plain work of Satan and those whom he controls. . . . Seeing that God gave his Word to men, desiring that it be understood and be put into practice by all, he who would prohibit it in any language whatsoever cannot have a good motive.”

This statement was a bold one, coming as it did just 18 years after the Index of the Spanish Inquisition had specifically outlawed the Bible “in Castilian romance [Spanish] or in any other vulgar tongue.” Clearly, Reina did not allow fear of man to bridle his love for the truth.

Apart from having a keen desire to make the Bible accessible to all Spanish-speaking people, Reina also wanted to produce the most accurate translation possible. In his introduction, he expounded the advantages of translating directly from the original languages. Some errors had crept into the Latin text of the Vulgate, Reina explained. One of the most glaring of these was the elimination of the divine name.

The Divine Name in Spanish Translations

Reina realized that God’s name, Jehovah, should appear in any conscientious translation of the Bible, as it does in the original text. He refused to follow the custom of replacing the divine name with such titles as “God” or “Lord.” In the preface to his translation, he explained his reasons with typical directness.

“We have preserved the name (Iehoua), not without the most weighty reasons. First, because wherever it may be found in our version, it is likewise found in the Hebrew text, and it seemed to us that we could not omit it or change it without committing unfaithfulness and sacrilege toward God’s law, which commands that nothing be removed or added. . . . The custom [of omitting the name], perpetrated by the Devil, arose from a superstition of modern rabbis who, although claiming to revere it, in fact buried His holy name, making God’s people forget that by which he wished to be distinguished from all other . . . gods.”

Reina’s laudable desire to magnify God’s name had far-reaching consequences. Down to our day, the vast majority of Spanish translations—both Catholic and Protestant—have followed this precedent, using the divine name throughout. Largely thanks to Reina, readers of almost any Spanish translation of the Bible can readily discern that God has a personal name that distinguishes him from all other gods.

Noteworthy is the fact that Jehovah’s name in Hebrew is clearly visible on the title page of Reina’s Bible. Reina devoted his life to the noble cause of preserving God’s Word, making it available in a language that millions could read.