A new and improved reformatted version of the Cook Islands Maori language bible – Bibilia Tapu – was officially launched at the Edinburgh PIC church in Newton, Auckland on the weekend.
In a ceremony organised by the Cook Islands Religious Advisory Committee New Zealand, members of the clergy from around the motu and from the Cook Islands joined invited guests and the wider Cook Islands community for the blessing.
Among the special guests were his Excellency the King’s Representative from the Cook Islands, Sir Tom Marsters and Lady Marsters, as well as the head of the Bible Society of New Zealand.
The reformatting project was led by the Reverend Robert Robati-Mani and his late wife Marina who began work on the new edition back in 2018 following an invitation from the Bible Society of New Zealand.
The Society had earlier advised Rev Robati-Mani that they could not fill a reprint order of 500 Bibles for the Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC) due to a deterioration of the nearly 50-year old printing plates used to re-publish editions.
The reverend and his wife already had ‘publishing’ experience with Cook Islands Maori language scripture having spear-headed the digitisation of the Bibilia Tapu some years earlier.
The digitisation of the Bible meant scripture and references had to be manually typed up, formatted and coordinated by an army of volunteers from New Zealand, Australia and around the Pacific, representing many Christian denominations.
In his address at the launch, Rev Robati-Mani stressed how that experience set themselves up for the reformatting of the Bibilia Tapu.
“We were blessed in 2017 to launch it (the digital bible) at Takamoa theological College. This is the first time then, as Cook Islanders, we have joined the global world in an electronic field,” he says.
Again, the reformatted Bible project involved many volunteers and experts spread across several countries.
It involved blending the two previous printed versions of the Te Bibilia Tapu together, the original, published in 1888, which was last printed in 1972.
The reformatted Bibilia Tapu includes a new contents page for easy navigation, Roman numerals have been replaced with the Arabic-English numbers while English texts on maps have been replaced with Cook Islands Maori.
Rev Robati-Mani says his team were overjoyed to find Maori name translations on Maps which were only in the 1888 print.
In some instances, where no equivalent Cook Islands Māori word existed for certain biblical or theological terms, Hebrew or Greek words were transliterated and adopted into the religious vocabulary.
The Bibilia Tapu has long held a pivotal role in the preservation of the Cook Islands Maori language given that it was the first text to be translated from the English and widely published.
Rev Robati-Manis says, there were no changes to the text itself although previous ‘printing errors’ had to corrected for the reformatted Bible
The new Bible can be ordered online via the Cook Islands Bibilia Tapu Reformatted Edition 2025 Facebook page.
