Bible translations into Portuguese

Although the biblical themes have been an essential formative substance of the Portuguese culture, composition in that language of a complete translation of the Bible is quite late when compared with other European languages. The beginnings of the written transmission of the sacred text in Portuguese, parallel to its traditional liturgical use in Latin, are related to the progressive social acceptance of the vernacular as a language of culture in the low-medieval period. And even though the official language of the Portuguese monarchy dates back to the end of the thirteenth century, during the reign of D. Dinis, the writer Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (1851–1925), for example, was able to state categorically that, in the medieval period, "Portuguese literature, in matters of biblical translations, is a poverty Desperate" – a judgment that remains valid, experts say.

The first complete translation of the Bible into Portuguese was composed from the mid-seventeenth century, in specific regions of Southeast Asia under the domination of the Dutch East India Company. The man responsible for its elaboration process was João Ferreira Annes d'Almeida (c. 1628–1691), native of the Kingdom of Portugal, but resident among the Dutch since his youth. A first edition of his New Testament translation was printed in Amsterdam in the year 1681, in the passage that the books of the Old Testament were published from the eighteenth century onwards in Tranquebar and Batavia.