Obituary: Barrie Evans

Senior Bible Translation Consultant Barrie Evans fell asleep, for now, on 30 March 2025. Many in the Bible translation profession are mourning together with his wife, children and wider family. He was one of our most scholarly and thoughtful colleagues, and deeply committed to serving Muslim communities.

Born in 1948 in Kent UK, Barrie learnt German and Portuguese, studied engineering at Cambridge University, worked in transportation computing in Germany, the UK and Iran, and came to faith in evangelical churches. He married a musician, Nancy, and they had three children, Susanna, Miriam and Bryn. Moving to Michigan USA in the early 1980s, they joined the Christian Reformed Church, and alongside his work in transportation, Barrie developed his interest in linguistics into an MA at Michigan State University, and began thinking towards Bible translation, Francophone Africa, Fulani people and specifically Guinea. After learning biblical Hebrew, anthropology at Horsleys Green UK, French in Aix-en-Provence, and extra Greek, he arrived with his family in Guinea with Christian Reformed World Missions in the mid 1980s. And so began a career in Bible translation that has touched scores of projects and many thousands of Bible users. 

In Guinea, Barrie learnt Guinean Fulfulde and wrote a major Teaching Grammar of Pular / Grammaire de la langue pular (Fula) (which, he noted, was his most downloaded publication!), then starting Old Testament translation together with colleagues Ibrahima and Iliyasa, reviewer Lamin Kante and consultant Reinier de Blois. Through the regional Fulfulde Harmonisation Project, Barrie then trained to be a Translation Consultant. The Guinean Fulfulde New Testament translation, a PhD at University College London, and his Consultant qualification were all completed in 1999.

He was now a Bible Translation Consultant with extensive life and work experience, years of local engagement with a Bibleless community and their language, friendships with Muslims, and a broad encyclopaedic scholarship that would enable him to advise translators on details in many different contexts, as well as on the bigger issues of meaning and communication that were so important to him. 

Briefly teaching in Portugal resulted in a regular assignment for 20 years teaching semantics at the Wycliffe Bible Translators centre at Horsleys Green. Thus, Barrie continued to serve both the Fulfulde Harmonisation Project in West Africa and the training and consulting needs of projects in Eurasia, as well as developing academic research on the relationship between linguistics and hermeneutics. 

In 2011, the 'Son of God' or 'Divine Familial Terms' controversy hit the headlines, and Barrie became increasingly involved in the issues as an academic (his research is online here), as a leader (a trustee and then Chairman of Al Kalima) and as a consultant (with Engaging Worlds). He bravely stood his ground at a time when many others were unable or unwilling to do so publicly.

Barrie's last work trip was to Tajikistan, after which he focussed on appreciating and contributing to his local countryside environment in Kent. 

As a translation consultant specialising in semantics, hermeneutics and Muslim audiences, Barrie impacted projects across the globe. This was the fulfilment of a prophecy that had been spoken over him, that his influence would grow and spread like a great tree. But his influence was exercised not in a conspicuous way, but through a quiet intellectual's deep and thoughtful engagement with translators and their contexts. And his commitment to quality in Bible translation was not an abstract academic ideal, but a devotion to the Good News as a transformative message of justice and life to Muslim individuals and communities. 

Tributes have come from Muslims and Christians around the world. To me, as to so many of them, he was a senior scholar and teacher, and a leader in the struggle for appropriate contextualisation of biblical messages. He was an important part of my work life, and always a warm friend. Just 6 weeks before his passing, I participated in a special consultation of Bible translation scholars and practitioners on his important 2006 publication, '"Equivalence" in the presence of "otherness"' . I will miss his wisdom, his insight, and his generous smile.

I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my star, my sun,
And in that light of life I'll walk
Till travelling days are done.