The Bible in Beami (BEOBFB)

Overview

The Bible in Beami is a complete Bible translation in the Beami language, completed in 2000 by Tom Hoey, a pioneer missionary who first trekked into Beami territory in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea around 1971 with two other missionaries. [1] The Beami (also called Biami) people, numbering approximately 5,000, were at the time of contact described as one of the last groups in Papua New Guinea practicing cannibalism. [1] After learning the language, Hoey and his colleagues discovered that Beami oral traditions contained parallels to Genesis narratives of creation and the flood, which aided their outreach efforts. [1] Over the following decades, Hoey translated the full Bible into Beami, with the completed text copyrighted in 2000 and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The translation is written in Latin script, though literacy rates in Beami remain low, estimated at 15-25% of speakers. [2]

Language and People

Beami (ISO 639-3: beo) is spoken by approximately 5,000 people in Papua New Guinea, Map 8. [Glottolog: beam1240]

Publishing and Organizations

Published by eBible.

References