So that ordinary people, with no knowledge of 'foreign' or 'dead' languages can read it easily.
There are probably hundreds maybe thousands of languages that the Bible is not printed in. For example in PNG there are hundreds of languages and not all of them have a translation of the Bible.
Bible
In Carey's lifetime, his mission printed and distributed the Bible in whole or part in 44 languages and dialects.
Buy it.
The Bible holds the record for being printed in the most languages and scripts. It has been translated into over 3,300 languages and dialects, including scripts such as Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, and more.
According to Wycliffe Bible Translators, there is a need for 2200 more languages to have Bible printed for. Taking the usual estimation of 6600 languages in the world, we would say about 4000-5000 languages so far. A strange little fact is that there is actually a Bible translation in Klingon, the Star Trek language. And, just for your own interest, the goal is to have a Bible translation project started in every language by 2025. Primarily in Hebrew and Greek with words from others thrown in such as Aramaic and Chaldean, etc.
One thought:I can provide a partial answer...The Bible was written originally in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and there were already many handwritten copies in these languages and certain Egyptian dialects in existence by the 3rd century. The Wycliffe Bible in 1380 was the first complete handwritten Bible in the English . The first printed Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, came out in 1456, in Latin.
The Bible is the most printed and read book in the world.
There is no book of Eli in the Bible although there is a priest called Eli - see 1Sam.2&3. The Bible has gone through many printings in many versions and many languages since 1450 when the first Bible was printed, (in Latin), which was also the first book ever to be printed.
Readers Digest is printed in 21 languages.
It's impossible to tell, there are so many version in so many languages.
The earliest bibles - indeed all books - were written by hand, the first printed bible was the Guttenberg Bible, printed in 1454 or 1455.