Groundbreaking gospels translation by Australian octogenarian is a testament to life From the Greek: Sculptor and translator Elizabeth Edwards in her living room. Photo: Simon Schluter Elizabeth Edwards is no stranger to drama. She spent much of her childhood in a Japanese internment camp in China where the sports teacher was Eric Liddell, the hero of the film Chariots of Fire. Later she fled the highlands of Papua New Guinea crouched on the floor of a car, a baby under one arm and a pile of nappies under the other. The accomplished sculptor had her first child to her present husband, Bill Johnston, 50 years ago when they were theology students in Melbourne, but they went separate ways. Each married and had children with other people before they were reunited in 1993. They tied the knot in 2002 when she was 69. And drama is the key attribute of Edwards' striking new translation of the four gospels of the New Testament from Koine (common) Greek into English, which has won accolades from the academic world. Now living in Melbourne's outer east - her living room a chaos of sculptures, icons, paintings, and with books and papers piled on every available surface - the 80-year-old turned two broken wrists to advantage. Unable to work with wood, she wrote in her cramped, tiny script on foolscap that Bill - a Uniting Church minister and himself a gifted icon-painter and poet - transcribed on to the computer. It has now been published by their son Chris as The Gospels for Hearers. "The gospels were written for reading aloud - that's how they were delivered," Edwards says. There is a huge difference in writing for reading and for speaking, with its emphasis on rhythm, dramatic intensity and human engagement, and this exercised a subtle but powerful influence on her translation. She consulted no other translation, had no political or theological agenda, and was not concerned about being politically correct. She simply ignored the disputes that have made translation fraught since the 16th century. When the Greek is crude, violent, angry or emotionally charged, she sought to convey this honestly and clearly. Edwards read the Scriptures in church for years, and had always done her own translations. Most of her creative energy went into sculpting wood, but in 2009 she broke one wrist, followed a year later by the other. So she began work formally on the gospels. University of New England professor Greg Horsley, one of the leading authorities on New Testament Greek, was impressed enough to order two cartons of the book to distribute to the scholastic community. Sydney Anglican scholar Paul Barnett observes that in the ancient world fewer than 10 per cent of people could read, that even when alone they did it aloud, and that books were extremely rare. Edwards may have produced the first translations based on this insight and others she has worked out over the years, he says. t has been a colourful life for a demure theology student and missionary's daughter. She was born in Linfen, China, and when she was nine, in 1942, the Japanese moved her entire boarding school, staff and students, to a camp. Olympic gold medallist Liddell ran all the sports and, Edwards remembers, he "was an inspiring person, almost a Christ figure in the camp." They were freed on August 12, 1945, by seven American parachutists, who were vastly outnumbered by Japanese guards. Repatriated to Australia, she returned to China with her parents until the communists expelled them in 1951. Edwards met her husband Bill when they were students at Melbourne College of Theology. She became pregnant, but both were promised to other people, whom they married. Her second husband was a Papua New Guinean man, who used the proceeds of the sale of her house to start a successful business in the PNG highlands. But he was extremely violent, forcing her emergency flight crouched on the floor of the car, and eventually back to Australia. Now Edwards is working on the letters of Paul, which form the biggest portion of the New Testament. "You get a real sense of the person speaking," she says. He's very passionate.