Sagradas Escrituras 1569 (Biblia del Oso)

Casiodoro de Reina was a monk at the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo in Seville when Reformation ideas reached him. Around 1557 he fled the Inquisition, which later condemned him and burned him in effigy. He spent more than a decade in exile, in Geneva, London and Frankfurt, translating the whole Bible into Spanish. On September 28, 1569 the work came off the presses in Basel with a printer's mark on the title page: a bear reaching for a honeycomb. Hence its nickname, the Biblia del Oso, the Bear Bible.

It was the first complete Spanish Bible made from the Hebrew and Greek. Reina worked from the originals and consulted the best help available: Santes Pagnino's Latin version, the Ferrara Bible (a Jewish translation of the Old Testament) and Francisco de Enzinas' New Testament. The result is Golden Age Castilian, direct and resonant, which shaped Spanish religious language for centuries.

This is the root of the Reina-Valera family. In 1602 Cipriano de Valera revised the text, and from that revision come the RVR1909 and RVR1960 that millions read today. Reading the 1569 is hearing the original voice behind them. The honest limit: the text here is Russell Martin Stendal's 1996 edition, which updated spelling and grammar to modern Spanish without changing the meaning. It is not a facsimile. And since this site serves the Protestant canon, the deuterocanonical books Reina included are left out.

Reina's translation is in the public domain. Stendal's update may be used freely provided its content is not altered, and that is how it appears here.