KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM A new edition of Bible scriptures in the Hawaiian language, left, includes diacritical marks to help with pronunciation. A copy of the older version, "Baibala Hemolele," is at right.

By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

At a time when more and more people are literate in the Hawaiian language and new books and periodicals are being published, there's one staple text that is missing from the bookshelves.

There's no Hawaiian-language Bible available in the mass retail market. The American Bible Society's last edition came out in 1985 and has been out of print for years.

There are still treasured copies of "Baibala Hemolele" (Holy Bible) in use by old-timers, particularly in the Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches affiliated with the United Church of Christ, whose services are held in Hawaiian. Those old Bibles are in the classic old format -- paperback book size, tissue-thin paper and small print -- not much different from the original Hawaiian Bible edition that was the work of the first Congregational missionaries to Hawaii.

At a time when many congregations seek to weave Hawaiian prayers into contemporary worship, the need has not been ignored.

This month, a new edition of Christian scriptures in the Hawaiian language will roll off the presses in Taiwan. The publication of "Na Euanelio Hemolele," the "Holy Gospels" of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was funded by an Episcopal Church program, the Commission on Native Hawaiian Ministry.

"There is an immediate need to get this used in churches, to have another venue in which people can hear and read our language," said Malcolm Naea Chun, who learned the language from his grandparents and started on the project more than 20 years ago. "Now there is an opportunity for people to do that in a spiritual context."

KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM Malcolm Naea Chun, pictured at St. Andrew's Cathedral, is publishing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Hawaiian language.

The four evangelists' works are printed in a lectionary-size book, intended for use on the altar, in a layout Chun describes as "looking like poetry. So we can say, don't say you can't read it, that won't work anymore."

But neither larger type nor open layout is the main key to easier reading. It's the use of diacritical marks, those apostrophes and overlines that are a guide to pronunciation and definition. The marks weren't used by the old Hawaiian speakers, but "for people learning the language today, it clarifies the text," he said. The grammatical tools are still under debate and being changed. Chun chose to follow the style used in the Elbert-Pukui Hawaiian Dictionary because it is available worldwide.

Chun was one of the first graduates from the University of Hawaii Hawaiian studies program when he started the laborious typing of Gospels into a computer. He is now a cultural specialist at the UH College of Education.

And into the mix came his activity as an Episcopal layman asked to prepare non-Hawaiian speakers to use the language in church events. For the part-Hawaiian Christian, it is satisfying to hear the language used in St. Andrew's Cathedral, where stained glass and icons memorialize King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, who established the Anglican church in Hawaii.

Episcopal Bishop Richard Chang frequently uses a Hawaiian invocation or benediction.

St. Andrew's Cathedral Dean Ann McElligott, a Midwesterner with recent experience in Australia, tapped Chun's expertise as soon as she arrived last year and makes a sincere effort along the same lines. She said she is delighted with the fact that the Hawaiian language is not gender specific: "We invoke the Parent, the Child and the Holy Spirit. I love that!"

The diacritical marks were Chun's additions, and he has made some corrections of typographical errors, but the translation of the Gospels is that same basic work completed by Hiram Bingham and other missionaries in 1839.

In the process, he came to have a great admiration for the old New Englanders who had to learn a new language and adapt Hawaiian idioms to fit concepts totally foreign to them. Add to that the fact that the missionaries translated from the original Greek of New Testament writers.

An example of cultural adaptation is in Mark's Gospel, a description of women who brought oils and perfumes to prepare the body after Jesus was placed in a tomb. "Hawaiians had no language for embalming; they didn't practice autopsy," Chun said. Bingham chose to use "i'aloa," referring to dried fish, the process of preserving fish by stuffing salt inside. "It's a good example of how well the missionary translators were able to contextualize.

"In the old way of speaking, Hawaiians had a sense of language being directed," said Chun. "For example, when Jesus was speaking to the man up in a tree. This is not used in modern Hawaiian, it shows a way we have become Americanized. We have lost the poetry."

Some examples: "'olelo mai la 'o Iesu" means that Jesus speaks toward the reader. The speaking direction could be "aku," away from the reader, or "a'e," away and in an upward slanted viewpoint, or "iho," spoken to oneself or downward.

Nineteenth-century Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau applauded the original Bible publication as "a great help in educating the people."

UH professor Rubellite Kawena Johnson required her Introduction to Hawaiian language classes to use a Bible as text in the 1970s, Chun said, and that was a factor in the disappearance of the 1966 American Bible Society edition from bookstores.

"Even looking at the Bible as literature, it's not used in classes now, probably because of the perception of separation of church and state," he said.

There was such little demand for the 1985 edition that the New York-based Bible society took them off sale years ago.

"Na Euanelio Hemolele," printed by China Coloring Printing Co., of Taipei, will not be sold in bookstores. It can be ordered from First Peoples Productions, 1620 Halekoa Drive, Honolulu 96821. The $25 cost includes tax and shipping.

The book will be ready in time for Chun to show it off at a gathering later this month of the Anglican Indigenous Network in New Zealand.

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