100 years since the publication in Montserrat of the first volume of the Bible, fruit of the biblical perspective of Fr. Bonaventura Ubach

Monday, August 31, 2026.- This 2026 marks one hundred years since the publication in Montserrat of the first volume of what would become the Bíblia Gran (Great Bible), a Catalan translation of the Bible, with the publication of Genesis, carried out by Fr. Bonaventura Ubach.



This first volume was the prelude to up to six volumes written by Fr. Ubach himself—Exodus–Leviticus (1927), Numbers–Deuteronomy (1928), Genesis (Illustrated volume) (1929), The Psalter (1932), Exodus–Leviticus (Illustrated volume) (1934), and I & II Samuel (1952)—which would eventually form a set of 25 text volumes published between 1926 and 1954, alongside three image volumes, from which the Bíblia Gran emerged, published in 1970 and representing one of the most exhaustive translations of the Bible ever made in Catalan.

In this translation, the determination of its driver in favor of theological and philological rigor and an exuberant photographic illustration was fully expressed.

Br. Xavier Caballé spoke about the biblical perspective of Fr. Ubach in the article that Serra d'Or magazine published for the anniversary last April, highlighting that "it was he who, based on direct knowledge of the original languages, contact with the biblical lands, and experience accumulated in the East, laid the intellectual and methodological foundations for a translation conceived not as a literary exercise, but as a rigorous, collective, and ecclesial endeavor, faithful to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts."