100 Years Of The Maori Bible

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 23

100 Years Of The Maori Bible

(Specially written for "The Press" by KENNETH ANTHONY) This stamp reminds us that English is not the only language spoken in New Zealand. As some of the former colonial territories in the Pacific have secured their independence in recent years, collectors have come to recognise unfamiliar Polynesian words on stamps. In New Zealand, the original Maori inhabitants, and the British settlers who for many years have formed the majority of the population, have been living together in harmony for more than a century. The designs of many New Zealand stamps have been influenced by Maori art and traditions. Now the Maori language makes its first appearance in the stamp album. It says a great deal for the efforts of the pioneer missionaries in New Zealand that more than half the Maoris had been converted to Christianity even before the country was formally annexed to Britain in 1840. Their success is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that, only 70 years previously, Captain James Cook had become the ■WWWVWVWNWMR

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first European to circumnavigate New Zealand. At that time he found that the warlike natives were still at a neolithic stage of development, and practised cannibalism. But before the end of the eighteenth century, Maori chiefs were being Introduced to European civilisation by visiting the British settlement at Sydney in Australia, and white settlers began to appear in New Zealand. One of the missionaries’ first tasks was to master the Maori language. Various parts of the Scriptures were translated into the native tongue. But it was not until 1868 that a complete Maori Bible was first produced, by the British and Foreign Bible Society. On the stamp issued to celebrate the centenary of this event, the Bible is shown opened at the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy—a significant point, because this was the first part of the Old Testament to be printed in Maori in New Zealand. The Maori text has been revised at various times subsequently, by a number of scholars, including, from 1946, members of the Maori race themselves. The modern Maori Bible was issued in 1952.