Hawaiian Bible poetic, accurate

The Star-Bulletin has an interesting story on an effort, funded in part by OHA, to make a voice recording of the entire Hawaiian language Bible. Along with the benefit that this helps to preserve an early, authentic version of the Hawaiian language because "the Bible first published in 1837-39 preserves words and sentence structures no longer in use," there is also this fact, which I have always found fascinating:

The missionaries who translated the Bible were educated in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, Keppeler said. They went straight from Biblical languages into Hawaiian, working with Hawaiians skilled in the oral traditions, he said.

And this:

A person reading the Bible in English may not know that much of the Hebrew Old Testament is poetry. In English, the passages are in prose.

But Hawaiian-language readers know about the poetry, because the Hawaiian Bible retains poetic translations.

The first translation of the Bible that Hawaiians had in their own language was likely much more accurate, in both meaning and form, than the King James Bible or other versions that most English speakers take as, well, gospel. So reading, or in this case listening to, the Hawaiian bible is a way to both learn old Hawaiian, and to access a more accurate version of the Bible. I recently finished reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, so this is particularly interesting in that context. It also reminds me of a manuscript that Kekula has of her great-grand-uncle David Kaonohiokala Bray ("Daddy Bray"), who wrote about the parallels between early Hawaiian religion and Christianity, and how because of these it was a very easy and natural step for Hawaiians to accept the Bible when it arrived, shortly after the kapu had been broken. Despite the harm caused by the missionary families—especially the second generation who became more interested in land and power than righteousness—their contribution to Hawaiian literacy, which, as I understand it, within a generation or so had surpassed every other country in the world in both Hawaiian and English, is something to be appreciated.

The Bible was the beginning of an explosion of reading and writing by 19th-century Hawaiians. More than 100 newspapers were published in Hawaiian up to 1948, Keppeler said. Hawaiians served in both the Union and Confederate navies, writing accounts of the Civil War in their own language, he said.

Posted: Wed - September 27, 2006 at 08:22 AM

getBlogName(); > getCategoryName("C259362623"); >

Hawaiian Bible poetic, accurate

> >