Bible Encyclopedias
Tahitian Version

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The extensive assemblage of islands in which the Tahitian dialect is spoken includes the Society, or Leeward, and the Georgian, or Windward, Isles, with the Low Islands, and the "Paumotu," or Dangerous Archipelago. The largest of the islands is Otaheite, or, more properly, Tahiti, where the Tahitian language, generally considered as the most perfect type of all the Polynesian dialects, remained in its primitive simplicity. To account for this, it seems as if Tahiti had been peopled before any other island of Polynesia, properly so called; that from thence, as from a center, emigrants went to settle on the islands of the surrounding archipelago as far as New Zealand, and that while the Polynesian language became more or less modified by the mode of life called for by the nature of the soil or of the climate, it remained, as stated already, in its primitive simplicity at Tahiti. The Tahitian version was made from the English Bible, with constant reference to the sacred originals. The first portion published was the Gospel of Luke, which appeared in 1818, while in 1838 the entire Bible was published in London under the superintendence of the Rev. Henry Nott. Other editions followed, of which the most important, consisting of a revised edition of the entire Scriptures, was completed in London in 1848. In 1877 the annual report of the British and Foreign Bible Society announced that the committee were bringing out a revised edition with maps, which, according to the report in 1879, had left the press, the edition, consisting of 5000, having been edited by the Rev. A. T. Saville. Up to March 31, 1889, the sum total of-Bibles distributed, either as a whole or in parts, was 57,579. See, besides The Bible of Every Land, the annual reports of the British and Foreign Bible Society since 1860, which are the only source of information. (B. P.)