Elizabeth Edwards, at the age of 80, has just published her first official Bible translation, known as The Gospels for Hearers. The new translation has been praised by New Testament scholar Paul Barnett, who’s said of The Gospel for Hearers: “This is a significant achievement that deserves widespread application and use.”

The child of missionary parents in China during WWII, Edwards grew up in a concentration camp with her classmates and teachers, before being repatriated to Australia following the war. She’d always been exposed to the beauty of God’s word, but it wasn’t until she studied Greek at the Melbourne College of Divinity after returning to Australia that she began to realise her gift of translation.

The project began as many projects do, with dissatisfaction with the way things are. Concerned with modern translations which “do an awful lot of interpretation”, whenever she was asked to read the Bible in her church at Montrose in Melbourne’s east, Elizabeth would do her own translation from the original “street Greek”, attempting to achieve a more literal translation that would be easy to listen to.

“It’s arisen very naturally from our church at Montrose,” she says. “When I was [on Bible reading] I would always translate it if it was in the New Testament. I was building up a kind of little wad of translations.”

A few years ago a fellow congregation member offered to financially support the publication of the four Gospels. When recuperating from a broken wrist in 2009, Elizabeth (whose usual occupation is wood-carving) took up the project with gusto, hand-writing her translation down while her husband Bill typed up the notes.

The translation is published by Diangellia Press (owned by her son, Chris). The Gospels for Hearers is laid out like poetry in large print, so as to create a lyrical style suitable for reading aloud.

“Bill my husband figured out my handwriting and started typing it out for me. And the way he’s typed it out has a great deal to do with the feel and look of the book and the way it can be read. It reads more like poetry. It’s very easy to read, it sort of draws you on.”

Elizabeth has spent 60 years studying Koine Greek. For four years, she worked under Dr Greg Horsley helping him with his revision of Moulton and Milligan’s Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament. She’s also taught Greek and written commentaries on the Beatitudes and the book of James. She has loved the Greek New Testament ever since she first laid eyes on it.

“To actually read the Greek, it’s so alive … The main thing [The Gospel for Hearers] is doing is trying to be literal, and not offering an interpretation. I have left the metaphors as they are in the original text.”

Chris, Elizabeth’s son and publisher, says there are plans to take the translations on tour for a series of ‘hearings’ in churches and public places around Melbourne in 2014. Large chunks, if not whole Gospels would be read loud at these gatherings. Until then, your only opportunity to hear them read aloud is this Saturday, at the launch of the book at Montrose Uniting Church at 2:30PM. For more information about The Gospel for Hearers, visit the Dianggellia site.