Kerewo Bible (Gospels +)

Kerewo is a dialect of Kiwai spoken on Goaribari island, at the mouth of the River Omati, in the Western District of Papua New Guinea. It is one of several mutually intelligible Kiwai dialects. Parts of the New Testament were translated by Benjamin Thomas (known as Ben) Butcher (1877-1973). He was born in London and became a missionary with the London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1904. He married Lucy Georgina Davidson in 1912 and they had four children. He left the mission in 1938 and they went to live in Australia where he became President of the Congregational Union of Australia from 1948 to 1950. He died in New South Wales in 1973. The Gospel of Mark was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1926. In 1940 a hymnal was published by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company, Ltd. This contained a selection of Psalms, the Christmas story from Luke and Matthew, verses from the Old and New Testaments, prayers etc, preceded by 54 pages of hymns. The 4 Gospels of Matthew (Mataio), Mark (Mareko), Luke (Luka) and John (Ioane) and the Epistles to the Ephesians (Epeso) and Philippians (Pilipi) and 1 John (1 Ioane), were published in 1941 and were called: Iesu Keriso imo pai-dubi naiba kitouti dubu nou pai mea (Gospels and Epistles in Kiwai: Goaribari (Kerawa). They were published in London for teh British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). These were digitised with the help of MissionAssist for the Bible Society in 2021.