Bíblia Livre (Almeida 1819)

The Bíblia Livre, published in 2018, is a modern public-domain update of the classic translation by João Ferreira de Almeida, based on the 1819 edition that uses the Textus Receptus as the basis of the New Testament. The project was led by Diego Santos, Mario Sérgio Rocha Filho, and Marco Teles, with the goal of offering Portuguese-speaking readers an updated Bible faithful to the Almeida tradition and entirely free of copyright restrictions.

The methodology consisted of revising the 1819 edition into the orthography and norm of contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, modernizing archaic vocabulary, adjusting punctuation, and clarifying obsolete syntactic constructions, without altering the original textual base. The Old Testament remains anchored in the Masoretic text, and the New Testament preserves the Textus Receptus, the textual alignment characteristic of the historic Protestant tradition that Almeida represents, in distinction from modern translations based on the critical text.

João Ferreira de Almeida (1628-1691), a Portuguese Protestant missionary in the service of the Dutch East India Company, was a pioneer in translating the Scriptures into Portuguese, having completed the New Testament in 1681. The 1819 edition, a landmark of the classical Almeida, served as the basis for numerous later revisions. The Bíblia Livre revives this tradition in an accessible and legally unencumbered format, meeting the growing Brazilian movement for open and free Christian resources.

The text is entirely in the public domain and may be freely reproduced, modified, distributed, and used in any commercial or ministerial project. This open character makes it especially valued by developers of Bible apps, independent publishers, and Brazilian ministries.