Neville’s Lasting Legacy

The Bible was Neville Taylor’s life-blood. Reading, studying, teaching, translating and memorising it was a source of strength to him, a fount of understanding, conviction and inspiration for his roles as a missionary and translator, and a source of joy throughout his life.

His daughter Adrianne said it drew him even closer to the God who speaks through it. “As long as he still had his sight we would often find him reading it,” she said.

Raised in a Christian family, Neville loved God from an early age. For his enthusiasm one time while street preaching, a heckler took his billboard covered in Bible verses and smashed it down over Neville’s head. One of the many preachers he admired was Robert Laidlaw, founder of the Farmers Trading Company; later Neville went on to become a preacher in Open Brethren Churches.

Neville and his wife Evelyn

As a serviceman in the New Zealand Army during WWII, he set the habit of reading the Bible and praying each night before sleep. Posted to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, his landing craft was bombed by enemy planes as they approached. Neville told his son David how terrifying it was, and how he drew strength from the verse, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3 NKJV).

A missionary in Chad for 26 years, Neville and Evelyn dedicated their lives to the Mbai people. While teaching evangelists and Bible school students, he increasingly felt the need to translate the Old Testament into the local Mbai language. He also loved the Psalms and wanted to preach from them.

So in 1960 Neville began translating the Psalms into Mbai with a Chadian national. In preparation he taught himself Hebrew and Greek — quite an achievement for a man who had left school at fourteen. On completing the Psalms in 1965, he set to work with a translation team on the Old Testament, completed in 1972 along with a revision of the New Testament. David said these two projects were the most satisfying achievements of his father’s life.

Neville and his family dedicated their lives to the Mbai people of Chad.

“Translating the Bible was a big part of Dad’s work, and so funding a Bible translation project is something Dad would have wanted.”

It was Neville and Evelyn’s wish that part of their legacy be used for church work in Chad. “The Bible was central to Mum’s and Dad’s life. It is to each of us, their children, as well. Each people group needs to have the Bible in its birth language. The Chadian Arabic language is one of those, so we are thrilled to help in this translation and fulfil the wishes of our father and mother.”

Neville’s passion for the Bible and its translation led him to make a bequest to Bible Society. If you’d like to leave a lasting legacy like Neville did, fill in the form below and we’ll be in touch.