Whakapau ariki – Early Bibles in Māori

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The translation of the whole Bible into Māori happened in 1868, after years of piecemeal and selected translations issued by the various missionary societies from as early as the 1830s. Most of these were produced by the Church Mission at Paihia and printed by William Colenso, the Wesleyan Mission at Mangungu, or Bishop Pompallier's French Catholic Mission at Kororāreka. Because the missions were all based in the North their early translations used Ngā Puhi reo, which resulted in some controversies later on, for it gave Ngā Puhi a linguistic dominance. However, printing the whole Bible was too big a job for the small mission presses and was undertaken by the British and Foreign Bible Society, the evangelical arm of Protestant Christianity, in London.

The 1868 translation built on the combined efforts of early missionaries, but William Williams largely used his own hugely revised version of 1852 as the basis for the New Testament. Colenso criticised Williams for this as he realised that Māori had grown accustomed to the earlier versions and were not happy with changes to passages memorised by heart. The translation of the Old Testament, however, was principally the work of Robert Maunsell, someone who had a scholar's desire for the perfect version, and had been steadily publishing parts of the Old Testament from 1840.

Although Māori were not quick to take up copies of the 1868 Bible, immersed as they were in the conflicts of the 1860s, the Bible did gradually gain the authority of a tapu book. Scriptures were committed to memory for they became waiata as much as readings, and thereby acquired the authority of tradition. So much so that when Robert Maunsell and Leonard Williams revised the Bible for a second edition in 1887, their linguistic changes, which they saw as improvements in accuracy, were rejected by Māori, who not only preferred their well-loved earlier version but believed in its spiritual truth.

Georgia Prince