Chinese Bible Research Articles

Anthropological Terms in Chinese Biblical Translations: The Interplay between Catholic and Protestant Versions in Response to Chinese Traditional Cultures

Notwithstanding the considerable attention that Chinese Bible translations have attracted, some important theological issues have been ignored for a long time, one of which is anthropology. The present article focuses on the Chinese rendering of terms in this category. From the attempts in the first three Catholic versions, the Western theory of soul introduced by Matteo Ricci began to influence the connotation of ling 靈 in Chinese biblical texts, though anima and spiritus had not been distinguished or the translations were still obscure in these renditions. Robert Morrison’s version, though heavily dependent on Jean Basset’s translation, was also indebted to Emmanuel Diaz and Louis A. de Poirot in its dichotomous anthropology, developing a ling–rou 靈–肉 (lit. spirit–flesh) dichotomous discourse with his conceptualization of ling 靈. Initiated by the “second generation” of Protestant Bible translators, the renderings of pneuma/ruach and sarx/basar took the indigenized approach that culminated in the Delegates’ Version of the Bible. With the assistance of some Chinese scholars in completing this version, Medhurst launched a dialogue between Christian anthropology and Chinese traditional outlooks of human beings by emphasizing the concepts of shen 身 and xin 心, which had long-lasting popularity in later versions of the Chinese Bible.

중·한 성경 역본 대조를 통한 번역 표현 연구

In this study, looking back on the flow and main translations of the Chinese Bible and Korean Bible translators, especially Chinese Character Bible which had an impact on early Korean Bible translations and even the modern chinese and Korean Bibles. Based on this, we selected the contents of some texts from among the modern Bible translations 『Chinese Union version with New Punctuation』 and 『New Korean Revised Version』, which account for the largest proportion of use in denominations in China, overseas, and Korea respectively, as subjects of comparative studies. Various aspects of vocabulary and grammatical translation expressions related to two traditional translation methods and translation expressions were examined here. This aims to help understand and interpret the style and expression content related to the translation methods of the modern Chinese and Korean Bibles by presenting the linguistic difference between the two languages and also the commonalities and differences in the translation method and translation expression according to the nature of the Bible itself.

Jesuit Louis Antoine de Poirot’s Translation of the Bible: A Comparative Approach to Translation and Rhetoric

Abstract A critical study of the history of the use of language reveals that ideology, religion, and language have usually been intimately linked; this also applies to the topic of “mutual encounters and linguistic exchanges” between China and the West. At the same time, we can affirm that each Chinese encounter with the West represented an encounter with Christians and Christianity. Within this context, this article examines how Jesuit Louis Antoine de Poirot (He Qingtai 賀清泰, 1735–1814), who worked for Emperor Qianlong, composed Guxin shengjing 古新聖經 (Old and New Testament), a translation of the Bible in both vernacular Chinese and Manchu, in the second half of the eighteenth century. Specifically, it focuses on how de Poirot used rhetoric in shaping the language the Jesuits adopted for translating the Bible, as well as for addressing readers in Qing China. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.

Investigating the efficacy of interleaving materials in the preservation of plasticised PVC slip-cover notebooks in Yang Zhichao’s artwork Chinese Bible

Plasticised poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC-P) is known to degrade rapidly and emit acidic gases and, as such, it is ideally stored separately from other materials. However, due to historic or aesthetic value, PVC-P book covers in paper-based collections cannot always be removed or replaced. There is currently a gap in the literature addressing strategies for storing PVC-P associated with paper materials. Prompted by a case study of the Chinese artist Yang Zhichao’s Chinese Bible (2009)—a performance installation artwork of 3000 notebooks including approximately 1000 notebooks with PVC-P covers—three potential interleaving materials (Mylar®, Hollytex® and buffered tissue) were tested to simulate use during long-term storage. Notebooks and PVC-P book covers were purchased and assembled to model stacked storage conditions, and thermally aged at 70°C and 50% relative humidity for 130 days. Before and after ageing, samples were analysed using visual examination techniques, ATR-FTIR spectroscopy, colourimetry and weighing. It was found that all three interleaving materials lowered the probability of ink offsetting. However, cover deformation and a blotchy surface haze were more commonly observed in interleaved samples compared to non-interleaved samples. More research is necessary to identify a suitable strategy to manage PVC-P degradation in close contact storage with paper materials. This study contributes to a better understanding of the storage of plastic-covered books that may be found in libraries and archives, highlighting the complexity of conserving plastic and paper composite materials.

중국어 『성경』 「마태복음」 ‘把’ 사동구의 후속 절 생략 현상 해석

This paper attempts to illustrate and interpret how economic principles, which humans display in various ways, are applied to language. This paper targets causative complex sentences found in Matthew in the Chinese Bible and interprets the phenomenon of frequent omission and/or deletion in subsequent sections when separate clauses are merged in the 把 compound from the generative grammatical point of view. By analyzing clauses of 把 in causative complex sentences in Matthew from the above-mentioned points, the deletions found in the script are categorized into three types. In other words, the “A把B” structure, which is explicitly shown in the antecedent clause, is in some cases omitted entirely in the subsequent clause. In other cases, only the “A把” element is omitted, or the argument element “A” is omitted.

Taiping Ideology and the Rewriting of the Chinese Bible

When the Taiping insurgents overran the ancient Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1853, the barely two-year-old Christianity-inspired armed uprising appeared to be unstoppable, controlling a large area of Southern China south of the Yangtze River. One of the urgent tasks for the leader of this new “Heavenly Kingdom of Peace” ( Taiping Tianguo), the self-proclaimed second son of God, Hong Xiu Quan, was to match his Taiping ideology with the teachings of the Bible—an important source of his inspiration and authority. Two official translations of the Bible were subsequently published by the Taipings, in which much alteration was done in order to promote Hong's brand of theology and beliefs and to remove stories of potential embarrassment for the regime. This article examines some of the major cases of rewriting found in the two Taiping editions, and provides possible reasons for the heavy-handed tampering with the biblical texts.

『개역개정』 로마서에 나타난 ‘오직’의 번역에 관한 고찰

The present study attempts to investigate the usage of 오직 (only) in the translation of Romans. In the 4th edition of the New Korean Revsed Version (2005), 오직 appears twenty times as a Korean counterpart of the Greek adversative conjunctions like δέ and ἀλλά in Romans, e.g., 1:17; 2:8, 13, 29; 3:4, 27; 4:13; 6:13; 7:13; 8:20, 26; 9:7, 8, 11, 16; 11:7; 12:2, 3; 13:14; 14:17. However, 오직 is generally defined in contemporary Korean dictionaries as only or exclusively, while they seldom include but in its semantic force. In fact, the usage of 오직 to translate the Greek adversative conjunctions began to appear from the one-volume edition of Romans (1898). This gives rise to the question why δέ and ἀλλά were translated not as 그러나 (meaning but) but as 오직 (meaning only) in the first place.<BR> To settle this issue, the present article considers the following topics: (1) the influence of the five solae of the Reformation; (2) popular Chinese Bibles such as the Delegates’ Version, the Mandarin Chinese Bible and the Morrison-Milne Version; (3) the Greek and the English Bibles used by the Board of Official Translators; and (4) the Korean-English dictionaries complied by H. G. Underwood and J. S. Gale. From this research, it is found that 오직 in Romans has little to do with the five solae, nor does it reflect influence from the Chinese, Greek or English Bibles used by the missionaries. Rather, it is the Korean-English dictionaries written by Underwood (1890) and Gale (1897) that commonly associated 오직 with the conjunction but as well as only. This explains why δέ and ἀλλά were often translated as 오직 in the one-volume edition of Romans (1898), which has left its trace up to Romans in the NKRV (2005).

Discipled by the West?—The Influence of the Theology of Protestant Missionaries in China on Chinese Christianity through the Translation of the Chinese Union Version of the Bible

Over the last one hundred years, the Chinese Union Version of the Bible (CUV)—translated by Western Protestant missionaries—has enjoyed an unparalleled status as the Chinese Bible or the “Authorized Version” of the Chinese Bible. However, despite such towering significance, no scholarly works to date have systematically examined the influences of Protestant missionary theology on the translation of the CUV and, in turn, on Chinese Christianity. As an introductory attempt to explore this question, this paper first highlights this gap in current scholarship and the importance of filling this gap. Then, it presents four factors and two limitations in examining the theology of the CUV and conducts a case study on the theological topic of dichotomy versus trichotomy in the translation of the CUV along with four other Chinese Bible translations. After examining how the translators’ theology might have influenced these translations, it suggests how such influence through the translation of the CUV might have shaped Chinese Christianity both past and present, thereby demonstrating how the understanding of Chinese Christianity can be deepened by examining the relationships between missionaries’ theology, their Bible translations, and the development of Chinese Christianity.

Первые интерпретации «И цзина» на Западе и в России

The Yi-jing易經(Canon of Changes), or Zhou yi周易(All-Encompassing Cyclical Changes of the Zhou [era]), is “the book of books” of Chinese culture, which is also claimed to be the primary source of binary numeration, first described in the West by Leibniz. He was always interested in China, familiar with the binary code of tri and hexagrams (gua) of the Yi-jing and acknowledged its mythical creator, the ancestor emperor Fuxi, as the discoverer of binary arithmetic, and himself – as the one who found it again after four thousand years. At present, historical data do not allow us making an accurate conclusion about the dependence or independence of this outstanding discovery in Europe from the Chinese prototype. The time of the penetration of the initial information about the Yi-jing into Europe is still hidden by a veil of secrecy. The lack of a message about it in the book of Marco Polo is one of its mysteries. At the same time in the Mediterranean area traces of acquaintance with the Yi-jing studies are visible in such cultural phenomena as astrology and alchemy, Kabbalah and the teachings of Ramon Llull, sextine and hexachord. The beginning of the European study of the Yi-jing was laid by Jesuit missionaries who arrived in China at theend of the 16th century. Among them, by the end of the 17 th century, a whole trend of “Yi-jingists” or “figuralists” was formed. They saw Yi-jing as the Chinese Bible, embodying the original Divine Revelation in the form of the kabbalistic “figures” of the gua and being an expression of the common, sacred and antediluvian “hieroglyphic science” of the ancient world, that is, “Metaphysics of numbers, or general scientific method”, “containing all other knowledge”. Apparentlythe first information in Russia about the Yi-jing was published by the first Russiansinologist, German historian and philologist-polyglot G. (Th.) S. Bayer in the two-volume Museum Sinicum (Petersburg, 1730) in Latin. In Russian the primary in -formation about Yi-jing became available to the reader half a century later owing to the coryphaeus of Russian sinology of the 18th century Aleksei L. Leontiev. In 1782 he published an illustrated and commented translation of a fragment from Yi-jing (named Convenient Base) as an appendix to his translation of the Manchu text of the Statutes of the Great Qing (大清會典Dai-Qing hui-dian). Leontiev mentioned the French abbot who visited St. Petersburg in 1769 as the initiator of his appeal to the Yi-jing, but did not indicate his name. Petr E. Skachkov (1892–1964) agreed with Vsevolod S. Kolokolov (1896–1979) that this abbot was the famous French Jesuit missionary and versatile scientist Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759). However, he died ten years earlier. Most likely the interlocutor of Leontiev was a well-known theologian and economist-physiocrat, French abbot Nicolas Baudeau (1730–1792), who held confidential negotiations with Catherine IIin 1769 in St. Petersburg in connection with the situation in Poland. The secrecy of this mission on the eve of the first partition of Poland fully explains the concealment of his name in 1782 when he was still alive and preparing the second partition of Poland. Apparently, a look at the Yi-jing of the French enlighteners184 and physiocrats, expressed by F. Quesnay (1694–1774) and reported by Baudeauto Leontiev prompted him to link the ancient canon with Statutes of the Great Qing. Vasilii P. Vasiliev (1818–1900) expressed a number of original thoughts about the Yi-jing, which may have influenced the creation of his graphic system of Chinese characters and Mendeleev periodic table. Yulian K. Shchutsky (1897–1938), the first Russian researcher who specially studied the Yi-jing and wrote an extensive monograph about it, strangely ignored the statements of his domestic predecessors, but his innovative approach anticipated the neo-mystic Jungian tendency in Western interpretations of the Canon in the 20 th century. Due to the psychologization and aestheticization of the Yi-jing sanctified by world authorities in this field, after the Second World War this neo-mysticism penetrated the mass Western culture which repeated the initial success prepared by figuralists three centuries earlier on a new level and larger scale.

Exploring Ruist Influences of Moral Self-Cultivation on the Mandarin Union Version of the Chinese Bible (CUV)

AbstractThe influences of Chinese traditional culture, especially the traditional Three Teachings and folk religion, on the Mandarin Union Version of the Chinese Bible (first edition, 1919) and the resulting complications are explicit in some contexts but implicit and subtle in other contexts. Some influences are helpful for Chinese people's proper understanding of biblical truth and theology in a Chinese context, but other influences can be misleading. In this paper, I will examine three translated Chinese phrases in the Mandarin Union Version that show evidence of Ruist influences: (1) “xūxīn de rén” “虛心的人”, in Matthew 5:3, (2) “tiānguó shì nǔlì jìnrù de﹐nǔlì de rén jiù dézháole” “天國是努力進入的﹐努力的人就得著了”, Matthew 11:12, and (3) “lǎoliàn” “老練”in Romans 5:4. Ruist influences is explicit in the first two cases but implicit in the third case, I will first analyze the verses and argue that they reflect the dominant Ruist ideology of moral self-cultivation instead of the biblical vision of transformation by “gracious moral cultivation”. Then I will demonstrate how Chinese readers might respond based on the context of each verse: Some Chinese readers might detect the inconsistenices between the Ruist emphasis on moral self-cultivation and a more general biblical theology, especially in an intertextual context of other Bible passages that explicitly teach the total depravity of human beings (e.g. Romans), as well as reconciliation and redemption by the free gift of Christ's grace for salvation and sanctification (e.g. Ephesians). Other Chinese readers might be misled by Ruist suggestions that they pursue sanctification and transformation only by means of moral self-cultivation that relies solely on their willpower. I will conclude by arguing how mistranslating and misinterpreting these verses can cause possible complications, especially negatively masking behaviour, in the personal and interpersonal spiritual transformation and ecclesiological development among Chinese Christians.

Sola Scriptura's and the Chinese Union Version Bible's Impact upon Conservative Christian Leaders: The Case of Watchman Nee and Wang Mingdao

AbstractThe majority of Chinese Christians can be considered to be theologically conservative. One distinctive feature of conservative theology is Biblicism, according to which Scripture occupies a central role. The Reformation principle of sola scriptura legitimises this conservative stance and calls for a stern application of this principle. As Biblicists, they are discontented with the ‘unbiblical’ practices and ministries of missionaries. On the other hand, missionaries have put forward the Union Version translation project on the basis of the principle of sola scriptura. This article investigates how Watchman Nee (1903–72) and Wang Mingdao (1900–91) were discursively influenced by the missionaries’ Union Version Bible translation project through their different understandings of sola scriptura. For missionaries, sola scriptura required the translation of a faithful and popular Chinese Bible, and Mandarin was deemed an appropriate language for the task. While Nee and Wang did not appreciate the missionary enterprise, for sola scriptura they valued the Chinese Union Version as an outstanding and up-to-date translation of the Scripture. For Nee and Wang, sola scriptura was not only a translation principle, but also a principle underpinning religious life. Conservative Christians’ devotional practice emphasises the memorising of biblical texts and verbalising them throughout the day. This practice resulted in the Union Version, which is written in eloquent modern Chinese, becoming an integral part of Chinese Christian practice rather than a mere translation. Though Nee and Wang accused missionaries of having betrayed the Reformation principle, they were still under its influence thanks to the Chinese Union Version Bible. Also, their teaching on biblical reading had similarities with the medieval monastic practice of lectio divina. In this sense, the Chinese Union Version Bible reveals an interesting integration of Chinese conservative Christian faith, missionary enterprise, sola scriptura, and a monastic style of spiritual practice within the Chinese Church.

The Origin and Development of the Role of the Native Assistant in the Translation of the Southern Min and Union Bible Versions

AbstractIn the nineteenth century, the translators of the Bible in to Chinese were heavily dependent on their “native assistants” or “Chinese co-translators”. The importance of the contributions of these co-translators has long been underestimated. In Fujian, the missionaries adopted a co-translator model which allowed the assistant to take an equal and full role in the task of translation. The intention was that the local Christian community should take over full responsibility for all aspects of Christian ministry and mission. The translation process included the adoption of an easy-to-learn system of Romanisation of the Southern Min vernacular so that the resulting translation was accurate and easily read and understood. This essay looks at these developments in Fujian and on Taiwan, notably the co-operation between Reverend Iû Sūn-ióng, (楊士養牧師) and Reverend Thomas Barclay. In contrast, during the translation of the 1919 version of the Mandarin Bible, the “native assistants” played a lesser role in the production of the final work. Nevertheless, while few Chinese co-translators emerged as a creative force during the translation process, they may have contributed to the written style of the translation, if not the theological interpretation of the Bible in Chinese.

“What Has Jesus to Do with Socialism”? Protestant Intellectuals, Political Use of the Mandarin Union Version, and the Remaking of a Socialistic Jesus in Republican China

AbstractThis article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpreted and appropriated Chinese Gospel texts to refashion the image of Jesus. It argues that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.

20세기 이전 중국어 성서 번역의 역사와 의의

20세기 이전 중국어 성서 번역의 역사와 의의

존 로스 「말코복음」(1887)의 대역 중국어 성서

This research paper is an analysis of the translation of the Bible from Chinese into the Korean language, which began at the end of the 19th century. Two Chinese Bibles from the King James Version will be considered - Medhurst’s translation in 1852 and Bridgman and Culbertson’s translation in 1863. BR In 1885, Ri Jutei translated from Bridgman and Culbertson’s version into Korean.BR In 1887, John Ross also made a translation into Korean from either of the two translations. The Chinese Bible that Ross used as his major source has not been discovered. The purpose of this analysis is to discern which Chinese Bible Ross used mainly for his Korean translation.BR John Ross arrived in Manchuria in 1872 from Scotland, and translated and revised the New Testament from 1882 to 1887, focusing on the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Ross translated from Greek and English into Korean, but for some particular words, from Chinese into Korean. Ross had the help of J. Macintyre and some native Korean speakers.BR The focus of this research is to analyze the adverbs Ross used in his translation. The first part of this project is to compare the adverbs Ross used to the two Chinese Bibles. The second part of the project is to compare the adverbs Ri used to Bridgman and Culbertson’s translation.BR The comparison showed that Ross used 102 different adverbs 738 times. Ri used 131 different adverbs 1,150 times. Ross translated adverbs 612 times from Bridgman and Culbertson’s translation, and those from Medhurst’s 456 times. Therefore, the major source that Ross used was the Chinese Bible translated by Bridgman and Culbertson. Ross translated from the Greek Bible and English Bible, and for certain words, Ross used Bridgman and Culbertson’s translation more than Medhurst’s translation.

Dramatizing the Bible in Chinese: The Making of Martyrdom inThe Story of the Maccabees(1918)

AbstractThis paper investigates the Chinese reception and transformation of the Bible through dramatic texts during the early Republican period, and the ways in which members of the Catholic community attempted to resolve the cultural and moral conflicts, mainly through the lens of the martyrdom narratives in the dramatic textMajiabai’a zhuan(The Story of the Maccabees, 1918). The Chinese playwright Fei Jinbiao, well aware of the contesting moral values in the Chinese cultural contexts, adopted some dramatizing strategies to resolve the moral dilemma among most Chinese audiences. The dramatization of biblical and martyrdom stories in Chinese were employed as a tool of proselytization and religious education in Catholic families and schools. The reading and performing of the dramatic texts on martyrdom also contributed to the identity building of the Chinese Catholic community as a distinctive group on the borders of the mainstream Chinese society. From a broader perspective, the making of martyrdom in Chinese Catholic dramatic texts and the performance of martyrdom stories in China facilitated the “re-membering” of not only the Western saints into the Chinese church but also the Chinese martyrs into the universal Catholic Church.

When Notes Start to Speak: An Investigation of Footnotes and Interlinear Notes in Contemporary Chinese Bible Versions

This article investigates an often-neglected element in Bible translations, namely footnotes and interlinear notes. The notes in Mark from five contemporary Chinese versions are examined through an analytical framework based on Skopostheorie. These notes serve as test cases to illustrate how different versions deal with difficult translational and text-critical issues. In particular the example of the shorter and longer endings of Mark shows the tension between present-day New Testament textual criticism and the conservative mentality of Chinese churches. On the basis of six selected examples, this article concludes that notes should not merely be seen as trivial information but, on the contrary, they can offer a fresh look at the contexts of Bible versions, their skopoi, and their translation decisions. Therefore, in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Bible versions, investigation of paratextual elements should receive more attention than it presently does.

The translation of ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ in the Mandarin Bible Union Version

This study aims to analyse the Chinese translation of ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ in the Mandarin Bible Union Version published in 1919, in order to elucidate both the translation principles used in this Chinese Bible and a controversial issue in Christian theology. The issue in question relates to whether a whole person is made up of ‘two substantive entities’ (‘spirit/soul’ and ‘body’), or ‘three substantive entities’ (‘spirit’, ‘soul’ and ‘body’). Through an in-depth discussion of these Biblical concepts in the Chinese translated New Testament with reference to the Greek originals, the study aims to clarify the various methods by which the terms are translated. The translation of these terms can provide a new perspective on the Chinese Bible’s adoption of particular translation approaches and the ‘new language style’ of the early 20th century, which allows a better understanding of this Bible’s special role in the development of Modern Chinese.

William Dean and the first Chinese Bible. By Chung-Yan Joyce Chan (foreword William H. Brackney). Pp. xxi + 279 incl. 6 frontispieces. Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press/Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, 2014. $35 (paper). 978 0 88146 486 3

William Dean and the first Chinese Bible. By Chung-Yan Joyce Chan (foreword William H. Brackney). Pp. xxi + 279 incl. 6 frontispieces. Macon, G<scp>a</scp>: Mercer University Press/Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, 2014. $35 (paper). 978 0 88146 486 3

인도에서 이루어진 한문 성서의 번역 · 출판 배경과 경위

The first translation of the Protestant Chinese Bible was completed in India in the early 19th century. It has been known as the Marshman-Lassar version. Despite this remarkable event in Chinese Bible translation history, this endeavor for the first Chinese Bible translation had been unknown until it was uncovered through the recent Chinese researches. However, their perspective was limited as their analysis depended mainly on Marshman’s materials.BR The aim of this paper is to reconstruct a broader understanding of Marshman’s version in consideration of the social-political context, and on the basis of 19th century materials by Buchanan, a priest of Church of England and by Baptist missionary. In detail, this paper covers Bible translation efforts of the College of Fort William; how Lassar and Marshman got involved in the translation; and Marshman’s approach to Chinese language study, translation process, and development in printing technology. This comprehensive approach attempts to give an outline of the first Chinese Bible translation in India.BR Chinese Bible translation in India was started by the College of Fort William which promoted Bible translations into eastern oriental languages. Lassar, who was hired for Chinese language teaching and Bible translation into Chinese, was introduced to Marshman under the prospect of a college downsize plan. Under Lassar’s instruction, Marshman learned Chinese language with Confucian canons. In the translation, Marhman’s main work was to revise and improve Lassar’s first translation draft from the Armenian Bible with Greek or Hebrew text. In the process of translation, the movable metal-type printing system was also developed. Finally, this comprehensive approach also examines the main contributors of the first Chinese Bible translation, and thus it is clarified that the Chinese Bible translation in India is a relic of Christian union.