The first Scottish Gaelic New Testament.

It was not until after the final defeat of the Jacobite warriors at Culloden in 1746, that the Scottish branch of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge began serious work on a published Bible in Scottish Gaelic and initiated a translation project in 1755. The result of this was the New Testament of James Stuart (1701-1789), minister of Killin, and poet Dugald Buchanan, published in 1767.

Stuart worked from the Greek, Buchanan improved the Gaelic. This was followed in 1801 by a full Bible translation with an Old Testament largely by Stuart’s son John Stuart of Luss. Prior to this time, Gaelic speakers in Scotland used Irish Gaelic translations.

James Barry commented that, “The amazing thing about these images is the spelling. It was inconsistent, reflecting the end of Classical Irish and the beginning of the Scots Gaelic and Irish vernaculars.”