First Nations New Testament follows tradition of Indigenous storytelling

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This article was published 28/09/2024 (755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“The Great Spirit loves this world of human beings so deeply he gave us his Son — the only Son who fully represents him. All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end, but will have the life of the world to come that never fades — full of beauty and harmony.”

That’s how John 3:16 sounds in the First Nations Version (FNV) of the New Testament, a “retelling of Creator’s Story” that follows in the tradition of Indigenous storytelling.

The idea for the FNV came from Terry Wildman, 70, an Arizonan who is from the Ojibwa and Yaqui First Nations.

Wildman came up with the idea while serving as a pastor on the Hopi reservation. That’s when he noticed how many Indigenous people had difficulty comprehending the New International Version of the Bible he was using while leading Bible studies with them.

“It’s a nice version, but it just didn’t connect,” he said.

He thought it might help if he used a Hopi-language version of the Bible. But that didn’t work, either — most of the people he was working with couldn’t speak or read Hopi since that ability had been taken away by the boarding schools, many of them church-run, that operated in that country from 1819 to 1969.

“They had never been taught to read or speak the language,” Wildman said. “Colonization and boarding schools took it away, along with identity and culture.”

In the early 2000s, Wildman started rewriting Bible verses in ways he thought would be more culturally relevant and easier to understand. When word got out about his work, he was pressed to do the same thing for the entire New Testament. “I kept resisting it, but people kept saying I should do it,” he said.

In 2012, he finally agreed. Today, the FNV — which is published by InterVarsity Press, with the partnership of OneBookCanada, which specializes in Bible translations, and Wycliffe Bible translators — is the result.

“The feedback has been positive,” said Wildman, noting over 75,000 copies of the FNV have been sold since it was released in 2021. “It’s a best-seller for the publisher.”

Wildman wants to be clear he didn’t create the FNV on his own; he worked with a council made up of Indigenous people from over 25 First Nations in North America, in consultation with biblical scholars.

He also explains that it’s a Bible version in the traditional sense of the word. He considers it a “dynamic equivalence translation,” a process where verses are rendered into words and ideas that make more sense to their audience than a word-for-word literal translation — in this case the audience being Indigenous people.

In terms of tone, Wildman was aiming for how an Indigenous elder tells a story to a younger person. After all, as he put it, the Gospels are a collection of stories about Jesus during his time on earth.

“The goal was to make the Bible more comprehensible to Indigenous people,” he said, adding that the FNV is proving to be popular with non-Indigenous people as well. “They say it helps them see the story in a new way.”

Among the changes that will jump out to readers familiar with the traditional versions of the Bible is the name for Jesus. In the FNV, he is “Creator Sets Free.” God is “Great Spirit” or “Creator.”

One word you won’t find in the FNV is “sin.” It’s not that the concept is missing; instead, you will find the term “broken way.”

“We stayed away from the word ‘sin’ due to the way it was used in boarding schools,” Wildman said of how Indigenous youth were taught that it was a sin to speak their own language, to hold Indigenous beliefs, to have long hair or to hold on to their culture.

“It’s still a trigger word for many people,” he added.

One of the more interesting changes is how the FNV speaks about the Kingdom of God — an archaic term for 21st century people. Instead, it talks about “Creator’s good road,” as in Matthew 6:17 where Creator Sets Free (Jesus) announces that “Creator’s good road from above is close. It is time to change your thinking and begin your great journey.”

As Randy Klassen, Indigenous Neighbours Co-ordinator for MCC Saskatchewan pointed out in the August/September issue of MB Herald Digest, this is a good change since the English word “kingdom” suggests “territory ruled,” more than the power and influence of the Creator. And in the history of European Christendom, “the emphasis on territory (and its conquest) has been a common practice and fatal flaw,” he said — including how the Bible was used to justify the conquest of Indigenous people.

Wildman admits it was a challenge to find right words or terms that would appeal to all Indigenous people in both the U.S. and Canada — there are over 600 First Nations in Canada alone, many with their own unique context and culture. And thinking back to John 3:16, he acknowledges the critique they might not have got it right by focusing on how Creator loves human beings, as opposed to the Indigenous view of Creator loving all of creation — earth, plants, animals, fish and people.

“I don’t think we thought that through,” he said. “We need to live in balance and harmony with each other, the earth and the Creator. We might need to revisit it.”

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