Supporting Faith and Community – Distribution of Bibles

Iraq’s Christian communities continue to face immense challenges, including persecution, displacement, and cultural erosion—threats that endanger both their faith and their linguistic heritage. Aramaic, the historical language of Christianity and the spoken language of Jesus Christ, has fragmented over centuries into multiple dialects. For generations, many Christians could only dream of owning a Bible in their own native Aramaic language.

As part of our commitment to preserving faith and language, Syriac Cross, in collaboration with our local member organization Bahro Studios, has expanded efforts to make the Bible more accessible to Christian communities across Iraq.

Since 2019, we have printed and distributed several tens of thousands of Bibles. We printed and distributed 10,000 Bibles in Eastern Aramaic for the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church. Building on this success, we extended the initiative this year by printing and distributing 2,500 Bibles in Western Aramaic throughout Iraq.

In addition, through the development of a corrected digital version of the New Testament in Western Aramaic, the Syriac Orthodox Church refined grammatical structures and simplified the complex Old Aramaic text traditionally used in liturgy. This effort has made Scripture more accessible beyond church services, enabling wider engagement with the Word of God in daily life.

This initiative is part of a broader strategy to preserve Christianity in its historic heartland and sustain the living use of the Aramaic language amid ongoing persecution and displacement. By safeguarding both faith and language, we are empowering communities to maintain their spiritual and cultural identity—ensuring that their heritage endures for future generations.