Paipera Tapu 2012

Paipera Tapu 2012 is the current edition of the Bible in te reo Māori, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand. The story is long: the New Testament was first printed in 1837 and the whole Bible in 1868. After a number of revisions, a committee led by Sir Apirana Ngata completed a full revision of the text and its spelling, first printed in 1952, and that text remains the standard today.

The 2012 edition, from the Bible Society of New Zealand, is not a new translation: it re-presents the 1952 text for the modern reader. It adds macrons (tohutō) marking long vowels, dialogue punctuation, carefully updated spelling, verse numbers and section headings. The New Testament in this format came out first, in December 2008. Its own introduction describes the translation as closely formal, following the structure of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek sentences as far as Māori allows.

This is the Bible Māori churches know, now easier to read aloud, since the macrons settle the length of each vowel. The honest limit comes from the same place as its strength: as a revision of 1952, the language is solemn and at times dated for someone who learned Māori in today's schools, and its loyalty to the shape of the original makes some sentences less natural.

The license is Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-ND 4.0): the text may be read and shared with credit to the Bible Society of New Zealand, but it may not be altered. That is why Midvash presents it exactly as published. The eBible page adds one more condition: no commercial use. So on Midvash it is for free reading only, outside the public API, audio and AI features.