This story is from the Holy Bible

Transcription

1 This story is from the Holy Bible SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH VERSION

2 Simplified English Version for Indigenous Australians Published by The Bible League Inc PO Box 714 Penrith NSW 2751 Freecall: with the support of the GFM Foundation

3 This story is from the Holy Bible SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH VERSION 1

4

5 From the Holy Bible, Genesis chapters 1, 2 and 3 Chapter 1 God made everything 1 First of all, a long time ago, God made everything. He made everything that is in the sky. He made everything that is on the earth. God made all the things that are everywhere. 2 The earth did not have any shape. It did not have anything. The whole earth was covered with deep water. Everything was dark. It was dark all over the water, but God s Spirit moved on the top of the water. Day number 1 3 God said, I want light! Straight away, the light was shining. 4 God looked at the light. The light was good. So God split up the light and the dark. 5 He called the light day-time and he called the dark night-time. This all happened on day number one. There was night time and there was morning time. Day number 2 6 God said, I want something to split the water in half. 7 So God made air to split the water apart. God put some water high up on top of the air, like a big cloud, and he left some water on the ground. He put the air in the middle between the water that was up high and the water on the ground. 8 God called it sky. This all happened on day number 2. There was night time and there was morning time. 3

6 Day number 3 9 God said. I want all the water that is on the ground to come together to one place. This will make the dry ground come up. The water and the ground moved to where God wanted them. 10 God called the dry ground land and after the water moved into one place he called it sea. God looked at the land and the sea and saw that everything was good. 11 God said, I want the ground to grow all kinds of plants that have seeds. I want some plants with seeds to eat, and trees with fruit that have seeds inside. Every seed will grow up like the plant that it came from. And that is the way God made it happen. 12 He made all the plants and the trees come up from the ground. God saw the plants and everything was good. 13 This all happened on day number 3. There was night time and there was morning time. Day number 4 14 God said, I want some lights in the sky. I want the lights to split up the day time from the night time. These lights will tell us the time. They will show the time of the season, the time of the year, and time of day I will put these lights to shine on the earth. God made 2 big lights. He made one light brighter than the other light. This bright light was boss over the day time. We call it the sun, and the other light was boss over the night time. God made stars too, then he put them in the sky. All the lights in the sky were just the way that God wanted them to be. 17 God put all the lights into the sky, to shine on earth. 18 One light shines during the day and another light shines at night. These lights split the day-time from the night-time. 4

7 God saw the lights and saw that they were good. 19 This all happened on day number 4. There was night time and there was morning time. Day number 5 20 God talked again. He said, I want the water to be full of fish and all sorts of living things. I want birds to fly up high in the sky. 21 God made everything that lives and moves in the sea. He made the great big sea animals and many living things that live in the sea. All of these animals had babies just like themselves. God made all the birds that fly. All the birds had babies just like themselves. God looked at all the things he made. God could see that all these things were good. 22 God was good to them and said, I want all of the fish to have lots of babies. Have so many babies that the sea will be full, and I want lots and lots of birds. I want all of them everywhere. 23 This all happened on day number 5. There was night time and there was morning time. Day number 6 24 God talked again. He said, I want the whole earth to be full of animals. I want animals that are wild and animals that are not wild. And I want lizards and insects and other things that move around close to the ground. All the animals must have babies like themselves. And that is the way God made it happen. 25 God made all the animals and lizards and insects and all the other things that move around close to the ground. God made them so they could have babies just like themselves. God looked at the things He made. He could see that everything that he made was good. 5

8 26 Then God talked again. He said, We are going to make some people. I want them to be like us. I want them to be the boss of everything that lives in the sea, and boss of the birds that fly in the sky. I want people to be the boss over all the animals that are on this earth, the animals that are wild and the animals that are not wild, and all the lizards and insects and all the other things that move around close to the ground. I want people to be the boss over them all. 27 So God made people to be like himself. He made a man and a woman. 28 God was good to them and said, I want you to be happy and have kids. I want so many kids that the earth will be full of people. I want you people to be boss over all the earth. You will be the boss over the fish, and boss over the birds that are in the sky, and boss over all the animals that move on this land. 29 God said to the man and the woman, Look, I made lots of plants for you. I made plants that have seeds in them, and trees, too, with fruit on them. You can eat the seeds from plants and the fruit from trees. They will be your food. 30 And I made green plants for the animals to eat. The birds, lizards, insects and other things that move around close to the ground can eat this food too. 31 God made everything just the way he wanted it. He looked at everything he made. Everything was very good. This all happened on day number 6. There was night time and there was morning time. Chapter 2 Day number 7 1 God finished making everything. He finished making the sky, the earth and everything that was on this earth too. 6

9 2 He made everything in 6 days, and on day number 7 God stopped making everything. This was the day God rested. 3 So God made day number 7 good. He finished making everything and rested on day number 7 so he said, Day number 7 has got to be a special day for people to remember God. At first everything was different 4 God made the earth and the sky. This story is about the things he made. 5 At that time God did not send any rain and there were no people on the earth to make the ground right for the plants. So nothing was growing in that land at that time. 6 Water used to come up from under the ground and water the ground. God made the first man 7 God took some dirt from the ground and he made a man out of that dirt. Then God blew wind into the man s nose and made the man alive. Then that man became a living person. The garden called Eden 8 Then God made a garden and called it Eden. It was in the east part of the land. God put the man into that garden. 9 He made pretty trees and fruit trees grow there, and he put 2 special trees right in the middle of the garden. One of these trees was to make people alive. The other tree was to show people what things are good and what things are bad. 10 A river flowed through Eden and watered the garden. Then that river split into 4 rivers The first river was called Pishon. It flowed around the land called Havilah. In that country there was lots of gold and pretty stones, and a good-smelling gum that comes from a tree. 7

10 13 The second river was called Gihon. It flowed all around the country called Cush. 14 The third river was called Tigris. It flowed east of the country called Assyria. The fourth river was called Euphrates. 15 God put the man into the garden and gave him a job. His job was to look after the garden and make sure all the plants grow strong and healthy. The special tree 16 God talked to the man in the garden. He said, You can eat fruit from the trees in this garden. 17 There is only one tree that you can t eat its fruit. You can not eat the fruit from that tree that helps you to know what things are good and what things are bad. I am telling you. If you eat any fruit from that tree you will die. God made the first woman 18 God talked again. He said, It is not good that this man is living by himself. I am going to make someone else to be a mate for the man. This person will be good for the man. 19 So God made all the animals and the birds. He brought every animal and every bird to the man. God wanted the man to give every bird and every animal their names. The man could say any name he wanted for each animal, and those names would stay with them. 20 The man gave each animal a name. He named all the animals and all the birds. That man s own name was Adam. He looked around at all these animals and birds but he could not find a mate that was good for him. 21 So God made the man go to sleep. That sleep was so 8

11 heavy, he could not wake up from it. When he was sleeping, God opened up the man s body and took out one of his rib bones. Then God closed the hole in the man s body. 22 Then God used that rib bone to make a mate for the man. God made a woman from that rib bone. God took the woman over to the man. 23 The man looked at that woman. He said, The woman has come from a part of me. God used my rib bone to make her bones, and he used my body to make her body too. She came from a man s body. She is really my mate so I am going to call her woman. 24 God made that woman out of that man s body. This is why now, a man will leave his mother and father and he will sleep with his wife, and their bodies will be like one body again. The man and the woman did not have any clothes on. They were naked but they were not ashamed. Chapter 3 The snake talked to the woman 1 God made lots of animals, but the snake was the animal that had the most brains. He was really smart. One day the snake went up to the woman and talked to her. The snake said, Eve, is it true that God said that you are can t eat fruit from any of the trees in the garden? 2 The woman said, Not true. We can eat fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But God said that there is only one tree that we can t eat from. We can t eat any fruit that comes off the tree that is right in the middle of the garden. God will not even let us touch that tree. We will die if we eat fruit from that tree! 4 The snake said to the woman, No, you won t die! 5 God 9

12 knows what will happen if you eat fruit from that tree. He knows that if you eat fruit from that tree, you will know what things are good and what things are bad. If you know that, then you will be able to think good, like God himself. The man and the woman did wrong 6 The woman looked at the tree. She could see that it was pretty. The fruit on that tree looked really good. If she ate some of that fruit, then she would know a lot of things and be able to think good. So the woman got some of that fruit and ate it. She gave some of it to her husband, too, and he ate that fruit. 7 Straight away the man and the woman could think good and they knew a lot more things. They knew that they were naked and they felt ashamed. They wanted to make clothes to cover up their naked bodies, so they picked some big leaves from a tree and sewed the leaves together to make some clothes. The man and the woman met God 8 Later on, when it was the cool part of the day, the man and the woman could hear God coming their way. He was walking in the garden. They tried to hide from God, so they got behind the trees in the garden. 9 God called out. He said, Where are you, Adam? 10 The man said, I was listening, and I could hear you coming my way. I was frightened because I am naked. That is why I hid from you. 11 God asked the man, How do you know that you are naked? Did you eat some of that fruit? I told you not to eat any fruit from that one tree. 12 The man answered God. He said, God, you gave that 10

13 woman to me. She was the one. She gave me the fruit from that tree, so I ate it. 13 Then God said to the woman, What did you do? You know you did a really bad thing. The woman answered God. She said, That snake tricked me. That is why I ate the fruit. God judged the snake 14 God said, Snake, you did the wrong thing. I will curse you. I will punish you more than any other animal. From now on you are going to crawl around on your belly. You will always be down in the dust of the ground when you move around. 15 The kids that will come from the woman will hate you, and so will all their kids, and all the people that come from them. People will always be your enemies. And Snake, your kids will hate the woman s kids, and so will all the snake mob that come from them. You snake mob will always be the people s enemies. They will hit your mob s heads and your mob will bite their feet. One day one of her mob will smash your head. God judged the woman 16 Then God talked to the woman. He said, Eve, I am going to give you a lot of trouble. You are going to have a lot of pain when you have a baby. It will hurt you a lot. You really want to have a husband and your husband will be your boss. God judged the man 17 Then God talked to the man. He said, Adam, I told you not to eat any fruit from that tree in the middle of the garden, but you listened to your wife and you ate that fruit. 11

14 So I will curse this ground and make it bad for you. 18 It will have lots of weeds and prickles in it. You are going to have to work very hard for the rest of your life to get your food. You will have to get it from the plants in the ground. 19 It will not be easy for you to get your food any more. You will work so hard that you will get hot and sweaty. You were made from the dirt, and when you die, your body will turn back into dirt. God hunted Adam and Eve out of Eden 20 Adam gave his wife the name Eve. She was the first woman, and all the people in the world have come from her. 21 God made some clothes for the man and his wife. He made these clothes from animal skins and he put them on Adam and Eve. 22 After that God said, These people are like us now. They know what things are good and what things are bad. We have got to stop them from eating any fruit from the other tree in the middle of the garden, the tree that makes people alive. If they eat any of that fruit they will live forever. 23 So God hunted them out of the garden. At first God made the man out of the ground. Later on the man had to dig that same ground outside the garden, and he had to plant food plants there to get his tucker. 24 God made sure that people could not get back into that garden called Eden. He hunted them out of the garden, then he put some of his angels like police around its eastern border. They had long knives that were on fire and they waved these long knives all over the place. This was to stop people from getting near the tree that makes people alive. 12

15 Translation Background The aim of this Simplified English Version of Scripture is to make it easily understood by Indigenous Australians whose mother tongue is an indigenous Australian language. In this translation we modified the English in the direction of the features that are common to almost all Australian languages. This has affected the vocabulary, grammar and rhetorical devices that we have used. We have also followed the principles of meaning based translation wherein we have sought to convey to the readers of this version the same meaning as the original authors conveyed to the original readers, not just in terms of the words used but also of the message contained in those words. The following are some of the more common modifications we have made: Where the grammar of the original has used the passive voice we have used the active voice, since the grammars of most indigenous Australian languages do not have passive voice. Where the original text has used an abstract noun to express a concept that is fundamentally an action or a quality we have used a verb or adjective to translate that concept, since abstract nouns are comparatively rare in Australian languages. Where the grammar of the original has used long and complicated sentences we have conformed to the grammars of Australian languages by using shorter sentences, making other adjustments as necessary to retain the meaning carried by the grammar of the original. Where the original text has implicit information that would not be obvious to our target audience we have made that information explicit. Where the original text has used a word or phrase, the literal translation of which would not be understood by our target audience, we have used an explanatory rendering to convey the same meaning, whether or not it involved more words. Where the original text has used figurative language that would be taken as literal by our target audience we have stated the meaning of the figure rather than its literal form. At any one place in our translation we may have used any combination of the above. We have tried to keep the wording and style of this version as close as possible to that used by Indigenous Australians who know English only as a learned language. Dave Glasgow Translation Team Coordinator

16