The Holy Bible. Photo: Joshimer Biñas, pexels.com
Cambridge based Murray Harris, the only Australasian scholar on the New International Version Bible translation committee, has just published his 22nd book.
Prompted by Jeremy Suisted, renowned New Testament scholar Murray Harris has reworked decades of research into a 59-page book for general readers. Photo: Chris Gardner
An expert in koine – the everyday Greek spoken between 300 BC and 300 AD – Harris helped translate Colossians and Ephesians for the NIV Bible.
His latest work, Compelling Evidence, was written at the suggestion of Jeremy Suisted, a New Zealander who graduated from Trinity Evangelical School in Illinois, where Harris worked for 19 years and now is Professor Emeritus of New Testament exegesis and theology. Suisted encouraged Harris to make his technical research accessible to general readers.
“Murray’s magnum opus was Jesus as God (1992), but you need to know a little Greek to work your way through it,” Suisted said. “That’s what prompted me to talk to him.”
Jeremy Suisted
Suisted, a former youth pastor of Raleigh Christian Centre in Cambridge and now a lecturer at Pathways Bible College in Tauranga and teaching fellow at the University of Waikato, was deeply moved when Harris dedicated the book to him.
Compelling Evidence draws on material from Harris’s earlier works, including Three Crucial Questions About Jesus (2008) and Death, Resurrection, Immortality, Eternity, and the Afterlife (2025).
“I love to look at the evidence, since my background is in the classics and history,” Harris said.
Harris began his career teaching in Auckland and later served as warden of Tyndale House – a world-leading biblical research centre – in Cambridge, England
Today, he is a member of Cambridge Baptist Church, where his new book is available to the congregation.
Although Harris describes Compelling Evidence as evangelistic, most of his writing has been pastoral or theological, with notable contributions in exegetical and apologetical genres. He believes his most enduring legacy may be his insistence on translating the Greek word doulos as “slave” rather than “servant” – a choice explored in his 1999 book Slave of Christ.
“The disciples Paul, Peter, James, and John, all introduced themselves as slaves of Jesus,” Harris said. “Most English translations soften this to ‘servant,’ but there’s a subtle difference.”
However, the tide is turning with slave now being adopted in updated versions of some bibles.
Harris’s work prompted the bible translator Edgar J Goodspeed to remark, “How can it be that in 56 years of writing, I failed to see this gem?”
Holy Bible on Stand. Photo: Pixabay
