dutch

The Dutch language, also called Nederlands, is spoken by over twenty million people mainly in the Netherlands. It is also spoken in the Flanders region of Belgium, where it is spoken in a form called Flemish. Christianity was introduced to the Dutch by the in the seventh century.

The first Dutch Bible (Bijbel) was produced in 1522. The first authorised translation of the Scriptures, the Statenvertaling, was produced in 1637 and became the standard text of the Reformed Protestant Churches. The Netherlands Bible Society (Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap) was formed in 1814 and produced a new translation known as the NBG vertaling in 1951. The Groot Nieuws Bijbel (Dutch Good News Bible) was printed in 1996, and De Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling (The New Bible Translation or NBV) in 2004. Dutch speaking Christians are mainly Catholic in Belgium and the south-eastern Netherlands and mainly evangelical Protestant, especially Reformed, in the north and east of the Netherlands.