Translation, power and domination : the postcolonial explorations of the Bible in the Kurdish context

The chapter offers analysis of the nineteenth-century translations of the Bible into the Kurdish language, undertaken by missionaries from various organisations including the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Basel Mission and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. By adopting the postcolonial approach, the chapter proves the need for a new reading of the missionary narratives and archives to identify and describe the nets of dependencies which the Bible as a printed text created in the mostly oral societies of Kurdistan (Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian). It reveals the "hybrid" nature of the ‘Kurdish Bible’ as a powerful and hegemonic instrument in the hand of a missionary and, on the other hand, as an emancipating text as it was used by the Kurdish-speaking communities