Congratulations To Hard Working Team: Maori Bible Revised

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 34, 17 December 1948, Page 5

Congratulations To Hard Working Team: Maori Bible Revised

Congratulations to a hard-work-ing team were offered by representatives of both Maori and Pakeha organisations following the conclusion of the Maori Bible Revision Committee’s task at Ohope on Tuesday night. Amongst those to speak for the pakeha were the Mayor of Whakatane, Mr B. S. Barry, who said Whakatane felt honoured that the concluding scenes of a great work had been enacted here; Rev H. Hogg, of the Ministers’ Association, who called it “an historic occasion” and said only time and eternity would tell the full value of the work done; Mr H. G. Warren, Rotary Club president, who saw in the Maori Bible yet another link in the brotherhood of man; Rev R. T. Dodds, for the Presbytery, who regarded the work as highly significant for the “great people with whom we share this country, and whose hospitality is so ungrudging and gracious”; Rev J. H. Starnes, convener of the Presbyterian Maori Mission committee, who made particular reference to the work of the Very Rev J. G. Laughton, chairman of the committee, and Sir Apirana Ngata, who had greatly helped to weave into the new translation something of Maori imagery and poetry that ,had never, been achieved by previous translators. Mr Laughton, chairman and convener -of the Committee, said the team had been wisely chosen. It was particularly opportune that the task had been undertaken while Sir Apirana’s unequalled knowledge of Maori literature, poetry, tradition and thought was still available to be so generously and completely given. Of the others he had equally complimentary remarks to make, mentioning as a matter of particular satisfaction and significance that the committee had been dependent for a knowledge of the ancient Greek and Hebrew tongues on a Maori member, Rev T. H. Kaa, of Porangahau, Hawke.s' Bay.Both Mr Laughton and Sir Apirana Ngata said that, though early pakeha translators had ' shown an amazing grasp of the Maopi language, they had’ always left the traces of their tools in that some of their texts were not quite in the idiom of the man whose native tongue it was'. This new version would be in a truer sense a Maori Bible, more satisfying to the Maori ear.

Sir Apirana said the new Bible got' down to the foundations of Christian truth in the Maori’s own language. Some of the earlier translations had been a little crude- in places, had soundec} a bit foreign to an ear attuned from childhood to the expressive beauty of the Maori tongue.