Although vernacular Bible translation is associated most commonly with Martin Luther, there were other versions that pre-dated Luther during the Middle Ages (including these Spanish and Czech versions). In English, the Bible first appeared in the late 14th century, thanks to a reformer named John Wycliffe. His resounding success led the Catholic Church to censor him, his translation, and any future ones. 

Wycliffe was quite an enemy. According to Christianity Today, he managed to earn himself the title of “master of errors,” have five separate papal statements against him, and be burned as a heretic after he was already dead. He also believed, like Luther, that ordinary people should study the scriptures in their own languages, and produced a partial English translation of the Bible. This was yet another high crime.

According to “History of the Christian Church,” Wycliffe’s crime earned him several new titles. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, declared him a “pestilent wretch of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of anti-christ who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother-tongue.” According to History Today, Wycliffe went further and denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, but was never formally tried for heresy. He died of a stroke in 1384. 

After Wycliffe’s death, the English church cracked down on Wycliffe’s would-be imitators. The Synod of Oxford in 1407 threatened translators with excommunication. A 1414 law threatened seizure of property for reading English scriptures. Thus did the English church seek to censor and destroy any attempt to disseminate the Bible in vernacular languages.

One way to censor a text is to simply destroy it. If it doesn’t exist, no one can read it. According to the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, when the (Protestant) Bible Society distributed Bibles to Champlain, New York’s Catholic population in 1842-43, one Catholic priest ensured that his flock would not read them. Today such actions would likely not catch much attention. Christians all agree that the Bible is scripture and should be treated as such regardless of the version, right? Not quite, since Protestant and Catholic Bibles are distinguishable from the number of books (66 vs. 73).

Fr. Telman (also spelled Telmont), a French priest visiting Champlain, was not pleased. It seems that the Protestant Bibles were not worthy of respect in Telman’s opinion because according to 19th century pastor John Dowling’s “The History of Romanism,” he burned a number of them publicly. Telman’s actions caused some outrage among the townspeople, but overall, the Times-Picayune noted that their reaction was measured. Instead of turning against the Catholic community, whom the town called “neighbors and friends,” local authorities investigated the incident and concluded that Telman had acted alone. The Bishop of Montreal, Telman’s superior, also expressed regret and the incident passed.

Unlike its Soviet archenemy, which tried to crush Christianity by force, Nazi Germany tried to eliminate Christianity by co-opting it. A 1933 New York Times article claimed that German chancellor Adolf Hitler planned to create a state church whose Bible would be harmonized with Nazi ideology. Germanic legends and sagas would replace the Jewish Old Testament. Although this vision never came to full fruition, the Nazis vigorously redacted the Bible to mold Christianity to their liking.

According to the Daily Mail, a redacted German Bible illustrates Nazi attempts to rewrite and de-judaize the book. The Ten Commandments were replaced with maxims emphasizing among other things, racial purity, duty to Germany and the Nazi Party, and loyalty to Hitler. Borrowed Hebrew words such as “hallelujah” and “hosanna” were banned too. Thus, the Old Testament was not completely removed, although that had been the plan. According to Time, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the architect of Nazi racial policies, even proposed replacing biblical figures with pagan gods and offered Germany’s 2,000,000 dead from World War I as replacements for the Catholic community of saints.

Despite the attempt to nazify Christianity, it was ultimately a con. Hitler’s goal, as Time attests, was the replacement of Christianity with a hybrid nationalist-pagan cult of the state. Hitler and other Nazi ideologues exhorted Germans to reject Judeo-Christian doctrines, those teachings of “alien priests” that they deemed a threat to Germany’s future existence and brought the state into conflict with Catholicism and Protestantism alike.

Despite the Bagram incident, biblical censorship is relatively rare in the U.S. But elsewhere, censorship of the Bible is alive and well, especially in countries where Christians face restrictions or persecution. One of the more interesting cases took place in Malaysia, where Christians, despite having the right to worship, have encountered government censorship of their Bible translations. In 2014, the BBC reported that the Malaysian government confiscated 300 Bibles from the country’s Christian minority. The crime? The Bible Society had translated the word “God” as “Allah.” Malaysia’s court of appeals ruled that “Allah” was an exclusively Muslim term and its use by Christians would cause civil unrest. This was the second incident of its sort after a Catholic newspaper was charged for a similar offence. 

The Malaysian Bible Society accused the government of overstepping its authority and violating the religious freedom provisions of the constitution, including revoking publishing credentials for anyone using “Allah” in non-Muslim contexts. Malaysia’s Christians appealed the ruling. According to the BBC, Malaysia’s High Court ruled in their favor in 2021 and buried the issue. Why all the fuss? As usual, it was probably politics to deflect from the Malaysian government’s poor performance. Virtually everywhere else in the Muslim world, this is a non-issue. According to the Christian Research Institute, Arab Christians call God “Allah,” since the word literally means “God.” Thus, it seems strange that Malaysia would have issues with use of the word unless there were a political backdrop to the issue.

Most of the above incidents are serious cases of Bible censorship that have been aimed at preventing people from reading the Bible independently, for whatever reason. But there is always a more amusing episode of censorship. In 2017, Pride Magazine reported that gay comedian Elijah Daniel decided he was going to publish his own “hella gay,” translation of the Bible to troll his detractors and “the straights.”

Daniel’s version made changes to particular parts of the Bible to make them “gayer.” He replaced God with Rihanna. Satan became Donald Trump. Adam and Eve became Adam and Steve. In the Bible, Jesus turned water to wine. In Daniel’s version, he turned water into mimosas. Daniel’s stunt was his latest after becoming the mayor of Hell, Michigan, and banning all heterosexuals from the town. But his Bible stunt would not be taken nearly as kindly.

Daniel’s version became the bestselling Bible on Amazon, and as one can imagine, Christians were not happy. Amazon responded by banning the book. The company never released a statement explaining its reasoning, but according to Patheos, it reinstated the book shortly after. Does this count as biblical censorship? If it does, it sure is a case stranger than fiction.