March 26, 2013
New format Bible launched
A new edition of Te Paipera Tapu has been launched at Te Rau College in Gisborne with a special service and a blessing by Archbishop Brown Turei.
A team from Bible Society New Zealand spent more than a dozen years reformatting the Māori Bible for a new generation of Māori speakers, adding macrons to indicate long vowels and reformatting the text into paragraphs.
This replaces the King James style in which each verse begins on a new line.
Stephen Pattemore, the society's translation services director, says speech marks have been added, which were missing from the 1952 translation which forms the basis of the new edition.
Mr Pattemore says the aim is to make the text clearer and the message more understandable, especially for today's second language learners.
The society has noted a marked increase in demand for Māori Scriptures since the reformatted New Testament was published in 2008.
Copyright © 2013, Uma Broadcasting Ltd