The Contested Origins of the 1865 Arabic Bible History of Christian-Muslim Relations

Editorial Board

David Thomas (University of Birmingham) Jon Hoover (University of Nottingham) Sandra Toenies Keating (Providence College) Tarif Khalidi (American University of Beirut) Suleiman Mourad (Smith College) Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame) Mark Swanson (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago)

VOLUME 26

Christians and Muslims have been involved in exchanges over matters of faith and morality since the founding of Islam. Attitudes between the faiths today are deeply coloured by the legacy of past encounters, and often preserve centuries-old negative views. The History of Christian-Muslim Relations, Texts and Studies presents the surviving record of past encounters in a variety of forms: authoritative, text editions and annotated translations, studies of authors and their works and collections of essays on particular themes and historical periods. It illustrates the development in mutual perceptions as these are contained in surviving Christian and Muslim writings, and makes available the arguments and rhetorical strategies that, for good or for ill, have left their mark on attitudes today. The series casts light on a history marked by intellectual creativity and occasional breakthroughs in communication, although, on the whole beset by misunderstanding and misrepresentation. By making this history better known, the series seeks to contribute to improved recognition between Christians and Muslims in the future. A number of volumes of the History of Christian-Muslim Relations series are published within the subseries brill.com/hcmr.cmr

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hcmr The Contested Origins of the 1865 Arabic Bible

David D. Grafton

LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: 1860 NT, First John 5. “Yūhannā al-ʾAwwalī [First John] 5:7”, Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhallṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, unvoweled, (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grafton, David D., author. Title: The contested origins of the 1865 Arabic Bible : contributions to the nineteenth century Nahḍa / by David D. Grafton. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2015. | Series: History of Christian-Muslim relations ; v. 26 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015035254| ISBN 9789004307070 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004307100 (e-book : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Arabic. Van Dyck. | Bible. Arabic—Versions—History. Classification: LCC BS315.A69 G73 2015 | DDC 220.5/927--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc. gov/2015035254

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. To Douglas P. Grafton (1963–2010) and Cheryl Fackler Hug (1962–2013), who left us too early, and are dearly missed.

∵

Contents

Foreword ix List of Illustrations xii

1 Contested Origins and Contested Contributions 1 American Missions in the Middle East 5 The Arabic Bible 11 Contested Identities within the American Mission 16 Eli Smith 17 Buṭrus al-Bustānī 23 Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī 30 Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck 34 Yūsuf al-Asīr 38

2 The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools and the Press 42 Evangelism through Preaching and Bible Distribution 45 Protestant—Catholic Relations 52 Establishing Schools 56 Challenging Arab Syrian Culture 64 The Transformation of Beirut and the Establishment of Printing Presses 67

3 Debate over the Origins and American Contributions to the Nahḍa 77 The Nahḍa 81 Educational Renaissance 84 Cultural Societies 91 Literary Renaissance 94 The Debate over the Role of the Americans in the Nahḍa 98 George Antonius (1891–1942) 99 Albert Hourani (1915–1993) 103 Abdul Latif al-Tibawi (1910–1981) 109 Yūsuf Nasrallah (1911–1993) and the Oriental Catholic Churches 113

4 Contributions to Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 121 The Bible Societies and Publishing Houses 123 The British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) and the American Bible Society (ABS) 126 The Search for the Text of the New Testament 129 viii contents

Eli Smith and Edward Robinson 137 Biblical Scholarship of the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 139 The textus receptus versus the eclectic text 146

5 The Text of the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 155 The Received Tradition (RT) of the Translation 156 Primary and Secondary Sources of the so-called Van Dyck 161 Smith’s Views on Arabic 167 Choosing the Classical Style 170 Smith’s Method of Translation 175 The Death of Smith and the Appointment of Van Dyck 177 Van Dyck’s Method of Translation 179 The Correction of the eclectic text 185 The so-called Van Dyck Manuscripts 186 “Revised” or “Reviewed” 195

6 Reception of the Translation 202 Publication of the Translation 204 Responses to the so-called Van Dyck 207 A New Translation? 208 The Catholic Response 214 Muslim Responses 215 A Changing Arabic 220

7 Overstated, Overlooked, and Undervalued Contributions 227 Overstated 227 Overlooked 232 Undervalued 234 The so-called Van Dyck 237 Further Research . . . 238

Appendix 241 Bibliography 256 Index of Subjects and Names 271 Foreword

This research began in 2004 at the Evangelical (Presbyterian) Theological Seminary in Cairo, where I was serving as the Director of Graduate Studies. We developed a new required course for the Masters program entitled “Issues and Challenges Facing the Churches of the Middle East.” The intention of the seminar was to provide opportunities for the students from various Middle Eastern backgrounds (including Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan), and international students from all over the world, to reflect critically on social, political, religious and cultural issues in a seminar format. One of the topics that surfaced often was biblical hermeneutics within Muslim majority contexts. One question in particular that was at the heart of the discussions was “How did orthodox Muslim perspectives of revelation affect or impact Christian views of scripture?” In 2007, Nashat Megalaa, who was then a staff member of the Egyptian Bible Society was interested in this topic as it impacted his personal and professional life. He wanted to engage in a study of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, which resulted in his thesis, ‘The Van Dyck Bible Translation after One Hundred Fifty Years’ (2008). His interest prompted me to pursue the topic further as well. It was his research that provoked my own further questions about the translation process and the social milieau that produced this important Arabic Bible translation. This shows that teachers are only teaching when they are learning from their students. For that illumination, I am grateful to him. Throughout this work we use several terms that require explanation. First, while most of the events that take place in this story occur in the modern state of Lebanon, we use the term “Syria” in reference to what once was Greater Syria [bilād al-shām] of the Ottoman Near East. This included what is now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, and parts of Turkey. The term “Syria” has cultural significance rather than national connotations, which would only develop at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Second, the term “Catholic” serves as a reference to the broader Catholic rites; including Latin, Syrian, and Maronite. In various instances “Maronite” is used to specifically reference the indigenous Catholics of Mount Lebanon. Third, “Evangelical” denotes the Protestants of the Middle East as an inclusive refer- ent, and is the official designation among the Middle East Council of Churches. Fourth, the American missionary work in Greater Syria is referenced by the label “American Syrian Mission,” or simply, the “Mission.” This distinguishes the association from other missionary agencies in the Middle East, especially x foreword the American missionary work in Egypt or Arabia, which were also known as the “American Mission” in their own local contexts.1 Finally, several terms are denoted with quotation marks throughout the work; such as “native,” “pagan,” and “Mohammedan”. These are terms that were common in the nineteenth century and often carried pejorative or paternalis- tic connotations. This use of quotation marks demonstrates the author’s distance from any negative stereotypes of such categories, while preserving the nineteenth century language. The Bible translation under consideration is commonly referred to as the “Van Dyck” Bible. Throughout this work we will reference this as the “so-called Van Dyck.” The choice for this appellation is explained in Chapter five. All Arabic words are italicized and transliterated according to the system as outlined by the Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān, the exception being the common anglicized forms for Qurʾan and Hadith. Naturally this work would not have come to fruition without the assistance and support of many people. First, I would like to thank the Board of Trustees of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia who provided a sabbati- cal for me to engage in the travel and primary research in 2012. I am extremely grateful to the librarians at the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Houghton Library at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Near East School of Theology (NEST), Beirut, Lebanon. I especially want to thank the head Librarian of NEST, Martine Charbel-Eid, who was very gracious with her time and support of my work, and Dr. Christine Lindner. Dr. Lindner spent hours working in the rare book room with the physical manuscripts and the digitized copies in responding to my many questions and theories about the Bible translation project during and after my visit. A special word of thanks to Dr. George Sabra, President of NEST for his insights and suggestions, and to Ms. Maruzella Abboud and the rest of the NEST staff and community that once again invited me back and welcomed me into their midst. For those who have had the good fortune of joining the NEST family, you know what an extraordinary community it is.

1 For the official missionary record of the American Mission in Egypt see Andrew Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 1854–1896 (Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904). For a critical engagement of this mission history see Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: missionary encounters in an age of empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). For an evaluation of the American Mission in Arabia see Lewis R. Scudder, The Arabian Mission’s story: in search of Abraham’s other son (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998). foreword xi

There have been many other important individuals who have contributed in various ways to this work, as conversation partners and readers of various portions of this work, including Salam Hanna, Jon Hoover, Emma Loghin, Carol Rowe, David Thomas, and my colleagues at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, especially Karl Krueger, Sharon Baker, and Ron Townsend for faithful responses to my questions and requests for sources at the Krauth Memorial Library. I also want to thank Jayakiran and Mrinalini Sebastian for their ongoing conversations on the issue of missions. Naturally, my family has provided unbelievable support in this endeavor over the years, putting up with my eccentric interests and drives to put the Western missionary experience into a larger frame of context of the stories of the people of the Middle East. Many in my extended family have asked polite questions about my research and smiled, even when they had no idea what I was talking about. My immediate family, including Andrew, Rebekah and Dani, have supported this passion, shared it, and provided the encouragement during long hours of reading, writing and traveling. Of course, without Karla as my partner, much of this work would still be just an idea. Finally, it pains me that two very wonderful people never saw me complete this task, my brother Douglas P. Grafton and sister-in-law Cheryl Fackler Hug, who are greatly missed and to whom this work is dedicated. List of Illustrations

The images from the MSS are used by permission of NEST. 1 Title page of 1860 reprint of Biblica Sacra Arabica Sacrae Congregationis de Propagande Fide Issue Edita. Al-Kitāb al-muqaddas bi-l-lisān al-ʿarabī, vol. 1 (Rome: Typis Sacrae Congregatationis de Propagande Fide, 1671), titlepage. Near East School of Theology, Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 49 2 Title page of 1727 reprint of Biblia Sacra Polyglotta Complectentia Textus Originales Hebraicum, cum Pentateucho Samirtino, Chaldaicum, Graecum. Versionumque Antiqarum Samaritanae, Graecae LXXII Interp., Chaldaicae, Syriacae, Arabicae, Aethiopicae, Persicae, Vul. Lat. Quidquid comparari poterat. Cum Textuum & Versionum Orientalium Translationibus Latinis [ed. Brian Walton] Vol # 1 (London: Thomas Rycroft, 1657), titlepage. NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 131 3 Titlepage of Erpenius’ 1622 edition of Saadias Gaaon. Pentateuchus Mosis Arabice [Thomas Erpenius, trans.] (Leiden: Iohannem Maire, 1622), titlepage, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 145 4 Handwritten note of Cornelius Van Dyck, “Envelope,” n.d., Box V, Item 1, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 163 5 MSS Psalm 1:1–6. “Sifr Mazāmīr maʿa l-Ḥarakāt [Psalms],” n.d., digitized manuscript, AC-36:32:1, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 183 6 1860 voweled NT, Matthew 1:1–14. “Mattá [Matthew] 1:1–14,” Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled, handwritten vowels added by Van Dyck (Beirut: American Mission Press, April 1860), Box V, Item 9, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 184 7 MSS of Hosea 1:10–2:2. MSS AC-36:46, “Hūshaʿ [Hosea 1:10–2:2],” n.d. digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 188 8 MSS of Joshua 1:1–4. AC-36:11:1 Sifr Yashūʿ [Joshua 1:1–4],” [1848–1861], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 190 list of illustrations xiii

9 MSS of Job 1:1–4. AC-36:33:1, “Sifr Ayyūb [Job 1:1–4],” n.d., digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 191 10 MSS of First Timothy 6. AC-36:68:21. “1 Tīmūthāʾūs [First Timothy 6:22],” [1854–1860], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 195 11 1860 NT, First Timothy 6. “1 Tīmūthāʾūs [First Timothy] 6:22,” Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36 Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections], Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 196 12 MSS of First John 5. AC-36:69, “1 Yūḥannā [First John 5:7],” [1855–1860], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 198 13 1860 NT, First John 5. “1 Yūḥannā [First John] 5:7,” Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 199 14 1860 NT, First Peter 5. “1 Buṭrus [First Peter] 5,” Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 200

CHAPTER 1 Contested Origins and Contested Contributions

Henry H. Jessup was an American missionary sent to Syria by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM). He arrived in the spring of 1856 just in time to attend the annual gathering of American missionaries in Beirut. At the meeting, he was introduced to the head of the mission’s Arabic Bible translation project, the Rev. Eli Smith. Reflecting on his first meeting with Smith, Jessup described him as “pale, thin and scholarly.”1 Within a year of their first meeting, Smith would be dead from cancer. Smith’s responsibilities were handed over to another missionary colleague, the medical doctor Cornelius Van Dyck. Van Dyck completed the monumental task on August 23, 1864. Henry Jessup eventually became the self-appointed recorder and historian of the American Syrian Mission. His two-volume work, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, which he completed only months before he passed away in 1910, quickly became the official history of the Mission. This work, belonging to the genre of missionary historiography, is an important record of how the American evangelical missionaries understood their role within the Ottoman Empire. In the history, Jessup chronicles the origin, development and completion of what is now known as the Van Dyck Bible. Writing fifty-six years after the event, Jessup remembers the missionary community’s celebration of the completion of the seventeen-year long translation project.

In the upper room, where Dr. Smith had labored on the translation eight years, and Dr. Van Dyck eight years more, the assembled missionaries gave thanks to God for the completion of this arduous work. Just then, the sound of many voices arose from below, and on throwing open the door, we heard a large company of native young men, labourers at the press and members of the Protestant community, singing to the tune of Hebron, a new song, “Even praise to our God,” composed for the occasion . . . Surely not for centuries have the angels in heaven heard a sweeter sound arising from Syria than the voices of this band of pious young men, singing a hymn composed by one of themselves, ascribing glory and praise to God, that now, for the first time, the Word of God is given to their nation in its purity.

1 Henry H. Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1910), 22.

Hail day, thrice blessed of our God! Rejoice, let all men bear a part. Complete at length Thy printed word; Lord, print its truth on every heart!

To Him who gave His gracious word, Arise, and with glad praises sing: Exalt and magnify our Lord, Our Maker and our glorious King!

Lord, spare Thy servant through whose toil, Thou gav’st us this of books the best, Bless all who shared the arduous task From Eastern land or distant West.

Amen! Amen, I lift up the voice: Praise God whose mercy’s e’er the same: His goodness all our song employs, Thanksgiving then to His Great Name!2

Jessup’s description of this event within his history of the mission is a classic example of nineteenth century Western missionary hagiography, of bringing salvation, freedom, and liberty to the Orient through a divinely ordained plan. His version of the heavens opening to provide the gift of the eternal Word provided exciting reading for the missionary community and its supporters in Europe and the United States. The actual completion of the translation, however, ended with much less pomp and circumstance. Edward Van Dyck, Cornelius’s son, provided his own recollection of the day his father finished the translation to Isaac Hall.

His father remained at work long after the hour for going to dinner—a rarity for his regular habit then—while Edward was waiting below, and busying himself as one who waits. All at once he heard his father’s step upon the balcony, and, all very quietly: “Edward, it is finished. Thank God! What a load is off me! I never thought I was going to live to finish this work.”

2 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 76–77. The hymn originally composed in Arabic, was translated by Jessup. We do not currently have the original Arabic text. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 3

And they went home to dinner, leaving the last words of Malachi in Arabic, just finished, behind them.3

Edward Van Dyck’s memory of his quiet walk home with his father provides a very different image for the conclusion of what has become one of the most influential modern Arabic translations of the Bible than Jessup’s choice to recall the triumphal choral voices celebrating the work. The unheralded and unwitnessed completion of this project by a worn-out doctor, shared only with his son, seems in keeping with the unassuming Cornelius Van Dyck. He was never one to be concerned about his public image or interested in creating celebratory narratives that might garner financial support from an eager American evangelical audience. Since then, the so-called Van Dyck Bible has been emulated as a major success of nineteenth century Protestant mission. A critical investigation into the history of this important Bible translation began early, fewer than twenty years after its completion, when Isaac Hall interviewed Edward Van Dyck in 1883 and presented his findings to the American Oriental Society. Even then, there were questions about this story. Recently, there has been a growing scholarly interest in Western Mission history, especially in Protestant Missions within the Ottoman Empire. There has also been a rising interest in Arabic biblical texts and Arabic translations. This current work, builds on these other studies. However, we hope this research will provide what has been missing to date, that is a critical study of the history of the so-called Van Dyck Bible translation. This study will explore three areas related to the history of this translation. First, how reliable is Henry Jessup’s narrative of the Bible translation? Jessup’s framing of the American Syrian Mission’s translation project is what we will call in this work the Received Tradition (RT). It has been read and used by missionaries, mission agencies, and missiologists, as an important moment in their cherished history of the evangelization of the world; in this case, among Arabs in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, how faithfully does the RT reflect the events that occurred, and to what extent does missionary hagiography subsume the events themselves?

3 Isaac H. Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius V.A. Van Dyck,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 11 (1882–1885), 286. It should be noted that Edward provided an incorrect date of this account to Hall of August 23, 1864. The Mission minutes record Van Dyck finished the translation on August 22 and that the Mission society was presented the final copies on the 23rd. This slight imperfection of memory is important to note, as he also provided an important piece of information to James Denis regarding his father’s use of the textus receptus. This will be reviewed in chapter five. 4 CHAPTER 1

Second, what role did each of the American missionaries and “native” Syrians play in this translation project? Is the Bible translation really Van Dyck’s? In this regard, we have chosen to follow Sara Binay’s terminology in reference to this Bible. In a recent study on the manuscripts (MSS) of the translation, she has raised the question of the original authorship of the “so-called Van Dyck Bible”.4 Her work has been valuable in raising awareness of the now available MSS of the translation. The final question that we wish to explore in this study is what role did the so-called Van Dyck Bible play in the nineteenth century Arabic literary renaissance, known as al-Nahḍa? It has long been asserted, especially by those associated with the missionary and evangelical communities, that this Bible translation was the crowning achievement of the American Mission in Syria and that it was a major contribution to the Arabic literary renaissance of the nineteenth century. How valid is this claim? Each of these three questions will be explored: the legitimacy of the RT, the investigation into the authorship of the translation, and the relationship of the translation to the Nahḍa. This research in Western mission history is also situated at the nexus of several different other areas of study: nineteenth century Ottoman social history of Syria, New Testament textual studies, and Arabic literary studies. Thus, this work is an attempt to pull threads together from different scholarly disciplines while focusing on original archival and textual study. The MSS of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, with the letters, records and minutes of the American Mission in Syria, provide the primary focus for this historical analysis of the translation project within its social framework of nineteenth century Beirut. We hope that this work will further contribute to the ongoing research on Protestant missions in the Middle East. It is our intention that this study will shed further light on the complicated relationships that ensued, and the intricate legacies that resulted from the American-Ottoman encounters of the nineteenth century. Finally, this research might contribute to recent linguistic studies on this Arabic Bible, such as those already published by Khalaf and Kachouh.5

4 Sara Binay, ‘Revision of the manuscripts of the “so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible”: Some remarks on the making of this Bible translation,’ in Translating the Bible into Arabic: historical, text-critical and literary aspects, Sara Binay and Stefan Leder, eds. (Beirut: Herausgegeben vom Orient-Institut Beirut, 2012), 75–84. 5 See for example, Ghassān Khalaf, ‘Tarjamat al-kitāb al-muqaddas ilā l-ʿarabiyya wa-l- maʾatharat,’ in Translating the Bible into Arabic: historical, text-critical and literary aspects, eds. Sara Binay and Stefan Leder (Beirut: Herausgegeben vom Orient-Institut Beirut, 2012), 36–43; Hikmat Kachouh, The Arabic versions of the gospels: the manuscripts and their families (New York: De Gruyter, 2012). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 5

Chapter one provides an outline of this research, including a survey of studies on the American Protestant missions to the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, and the intent to undertake a translation of the Bible into Arabic. It also introduces the five individuals involved in this particular Arabic bible translation project: Eli Smith, Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, Cornelius Van Dyck, and Yūsuf al-Asīr. Chapter two reviews the history and engagement of the ABCFM and the establishment of its American Mission in Syria that commenced in 1815, outlining their intended methods of mission work and goals. Chapter three addresses the important topic of the Nahḍa, focusing on the debates about its origins and the contributions of the American missionaries to the Arab literary renaissance. Chapter four examines the role of New Testament textual scholarship of the nineteenth century as it relates to Bible translations, including debates over the transmission of biblical texts and the search for an authentic New Testament text. These arguments about the compilation of a particular New Testament text had a direct bearing on this Bible translation. Chapter five engages in a study of the methods and principles used by the translators. The American Mission letters, minutes and records, and the MSS of the translation itself provide the primary sources that explore the valid- ity of the Received Tradition (RT), as created and passed on by Henry Jessup and others. Chapter six then gauges the reception of this Bible in the midst of the dramatic changes within the Nahḍa, including Syrian Muslim responses. The final chapter draws conclusions on the three major questions pursued within this research, and offers up possibilities for further research in this area.

American Missions in the Middle East

The American missionary movement of the nineteenth century was a product of the Great Awakening that had swept across England in the middle of the eighteenth century, and then blew across the Atlantic. The North American piety was shaped and molded by America’s most important colonial theologian, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Edwards almost single-handedly birthed the early American Protestant missionary impulse through the publication of his biography of Yale University graduate David Brainerd, who worked among the Delaware Indians.6 Several generations of “warm-hearted” evangelicals were

6 See Joseph Conforti, “Jonathan Edwards’s most popular work: ‘The life of David Brainerd’ and 19th century evangelical culture,” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985): 188–201; and Nathan O. Hatch, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 6 CHAPTER 1 moved by the concept of “disinterested benevolence,” which was developed by Edwards’ colleague, Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803).7 Hopkins encouraged pious Christians to forsake the interests of the world, and to turn their lives over to the cause of proclaiming the Gospel for the conversion of the world. American evangelicals gave their lives over to service and preaching the Gospel in foreign lands. While Americans first looked to the “pagans” of Africa, and later the indigenous tribes in the Pacific, a third focus of mission was directed toward the erroneously labeled “Mohammedans” and the Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Knowing that Palestine and Syria were home already to well-established historic churches of Jerusalem, the American ABCFM looked forward to a true Christian reformation of these churches that would begin in Jerusalem. Rufus Anderson (1796–1880), the General Secretary of the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM from 1832 to 1866, summed up the consistent goal of the American mission to Ottoman Syria.

We may not hope for the conversion of the Mohammedans unless true Christianity be exemplified before them by the Oriental Churches. . . . Hence a wise plan for the conversion of the Mohammedans of Western Asia necessarily involved first a mission to the Oriental Churches.8

The method of American Protestant evangelical work would change dramatically over the years; from public preaching and Bible distribution, to establishing schools and churches, to creating and supporting cultural societies, and ultimately establishing a premiere secular liberal arts institution of higher learning, which included an important medical school that is still in existence today. However, the goals were always the same: to proclaim the Gospel, enlighten the indigenous Christians, and ultimately convert the Muslims and Jews. Yet, there was often disagreement over the best methods to achieve these goals, especially when it came to the ideas of the governing boards, first under the auspices of the ABcFM and then after 1870 when the Mission was transferred

7 For a helpful reflection on the impact of “disinterested benevolence” from the work of Edwards see Joseph Conforti, “Jonathan Edwards’s most popular work: ‘The life of David Brainerd’ and 19th century evangelical culture,” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985): 188–201. For a classic review of the impact of evangelical piety and the concept of “disinterested benevolence” see William Warren Sweet, Religion in the development of American culture, 1765–1840 (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1963). 8 Lyle Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims (Pasedena, Ca: William Carey Library, 1977), 103–104. See also R. Pierce Beaver, “The legacy of Rufus Anderson.” Bulletin of Missionary Research 3, no. 3 (1979): 94–97. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 7 to new ownership of the Board of the Presbyterian Church of America. As these larger mission societies looked back over their own histories from the vantage point of the ascendancy of Western power and eventually Western occupation of the Middle East, they wrote to their own constituencies with a view toward encouraging continued support of Protestant missions. Eugene Stock’s enor- mous three-volume work The History of the Church Missionary Society (1899) and William Strong’s The Story of the American Board (1910) were both written at the occasion of their respective society’s centenaries. Many missionary reflections, as well as historiographical biographies, were published not only to document, but to encourage continued support for what came to be known by 1910 as the watchword of Western Protestant missions—“the evangelization of the world in this generation.” Several of the most important missionary narratives on the work of the Americans in Syria were written during the height of Western Protestant missionary activity, including Isaac Bird’s Bible Work in Bible Lands (1872), E. Prime’s William Goodell: Forty Years in the Turkish Empire (1876) and Henry Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years in Syria (1910). The histories of these mission agencies and the legacies of these missionaries have been well documented and researched. The benefits and results of this American mission to Syria have naturally been highly contested. A.L. Tibawi’s 1966 American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901 has proven to be the cornerstone of a thorough critique of the evangelical American Protestant activity in the Ottoman Empire.

What had the American mission brought to the Near East? The Bible in Arabic had long been in circulation in the region; native schools existed before the arrival of the mission, which merely tried to build on native foundations for its own purposes; convent printing presses were meeting the limited needs for religious literature in Syria before the establishment of the mission press in Malta, which in any case did not print Arabic books before its transfer to Beirut in 1834. None of these was an innova- tion. Rather they were merely tools with which the Americans gradually introduced their Protestant faith, and thereby added yet another sect to an already sectarian region.9

Tibawi’s research is thorough and detailed. It provides a counterbalance to Henry Jessup’s idealistic portrayal of the effort of the American mission in Syria (to which we will return later in this study). Tibawi’s assessment is part of

9 A.L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901: A Study of Educational, Literary, and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 47–8. 8 CHAPTER 1 a larger concern and suspicion regarding American Imperialism. An important critique of Christian missions in the Middle East has been Mustafā Khālidī and ʿUmar Farrūkh’s al-Tabshīr wa-l-istiʿmār fī l-bilād al-ʿarabiyya. Originally published in 1953, it can still be found in updated editions in bookstores throughout the Middle East today.10 While the Arab Muslim perspective of Khālidī and Farrūkh has been overwhelmingly critical of American missionary work, studies from within the Arab Evangelical community have been more nuanced. The Evangelicals, who were recipients of the labors of the American missionaries, have sought to unravel the complicated issues surrounding their communal origins in Syria and Lebanon.11 Most recently, Samir Khalaf and Ussama Makdisi have published helpful studies on the historiography of the American Syrian mission. Their work has focused not only on the documents and papers of the American missionaries but also on the Syrians themselves, especially through the records of the Maronite Patriarchate at Bkerke in the case of Makdisi’s research.12

10 Muṣṭafā Khālidī and ʿUmar Farrūkh, al-Tabshīr wa-l-istiʿmār fī l-bilād al-ʿarabiyya, 2nd ed. (Beirut: n.p., 1957). For the concept of mission as an “intellectual invasion,” see ʿAlī M. Jarisha and Muḥammad Shaykh Zaybaq, Asālīb al-ghazw al-fikrī li-l-ʿālam al-islāmī 2nd ed. (Cairo: Dār al-Iʾtiṣām, 1978). For a short review of Muslim works in Arabic critiquing Protestant missionary see Heather J. Sharkey, “Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: Muslim Responses to Christian Evangelism in the Modern Middle East,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 28: 3 (2004): 112–18. Hisham Sharabi’s Arab Intellectuals and the West: the formative years, 1875–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970) provides a very general overview of the differences between Islamic reformers, Islamic secularists and Christian intellectuals, and their ideas within the Nahḍa. Sharabi tends to generalize and does not deal explicitly with the American missionary presence. He lumps all “foreign-run schools” together as providing foreign ideas through instruction in “European” languages, and does not deal specifically with the American mission or its schools directly. 11 See, for example, the work of Habib Badr, “American Protestant Beginnings in the Middle East (1820–1865),” Theological Review, XIV/2 (1993): 63–86; “American Protestant Beginnings in Beirut and Istanbul: Policy, Politics, Practice and Response,” in Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western missions in the Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006): 211–239; “The Origins of American Protestant Interest in the Middle East (1780–1823),” Theological Review XIII/2 (1992): 79–106; and “The Protestant Evangelical Community in the Middle East: Impact on Cultural and Societal Developments,” International Review of Mission 89 (2000): 60–9. 12 Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American missionaries and failed cvonversion of the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). See also his “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity.” American Historical Review, vol. 102, Issue 3 (June 1997): 630–713. The most recent review of the American mission in Syria has been Samir Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: ungodly Puritans, 1820–60 (New York: Routledge, 2012). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 9

The role of American missions in the Middle East has also given rise to several studies on the religious, cultural and political interactions of the American presence in the Middle East.13 One of the most influential works is William R. Hutchinson’s Errand to the World, in which he argues that American Protestants had developed a spiritualism of “American exceptionalism” and carried their vision abroad. Thomas Kidd’s American Christians and Islam: evangelical culture and Muslims from the colonial period to the age of terrorism and Timothy Marr’s The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism have been important in demonstrating the role of the nineteenth century Awakening and evangelicalism in shaping American Protestant perspectives of the Middle East and its peoples.14 Other research has focused on the role of the American missionaries, their interaction with Syrian literati and the development of Syrian Nationalism. Fruma Zachs’ study, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and merchants in nineteenth century Beirut and Adel Beshara’s The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and identity delved into the collaboration between Eli Smith and Buṭrus al-Busṭānī, among others.15 Mission history aside, most of the academic energy related to American- Middle Eastern affairs over the past thirty years has focused on the cultural and political impact of the United States on the region as a whole. As part

13 See Joel A. Carpenter and Wilbert R. Shenk, eds., Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and Foreign Missions, 1880–1980 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), Mehmet Ali Doğan and Heather J. Sharkey, eds., American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational encounters (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011); Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006) and Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East: American millennialism and mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010). 14 William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant thought and foreign missions (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1993); Thomas S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: evangelical culture and Muslims from the colonial period to the age of terrorism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009) and Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 15 Waheeb George Antakly, “American Protestant Educational Missions: Their influence on Syria and Arab Nationalism 1820–1923” (PhD Thesis, American University of Beirut, 1976); Adel Beshara, The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and identity (New York: Routledge, 2011); Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Christians between Ottomanism and Syrian Nationalism: The Ideas of Butrus al-Bustani,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (1980): 287–304 and Fruma Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and merchants in nineteenth century Beirut (Leiden: Brill, 2005). See also Adnan Abu-Ghazaleh, American Missions in Syria: A study of American missionary contributions to Arab nationalism in 19th century Syria (Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books, 1990). 10 CHAPTER 1 of the growing strategic importance of the Middle East during the height of the Cold War, several American studies appeared, showing the significance of the Middle East for American political agendas. These studies reflected on the history of engagement of the United States with the peoples of the Middle East. David H. Finnie’s Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East, and Joseph L. Grabill’s Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 were influential in shaping the American reflection on the initial missionary and philanthropic interests in the Middle East prior to any imperial or strategic interests of the 1950s. The most engaging of these American histories, however, is still James A. Field, Jr.’s America and the Mediterranean World. Field focuses on the twin activities of missionary labor and commerce as the driving forces of American influence in the Ottoman Empire. He sums up the American encounter with the Middle East as an introduction of the unique American social values of the early nineteenth century, which were a mixture of Calvinist piety and frontier resilience. The Americans believed in the values of hard work, education (including that of women), progress, and individuality, and introduced their views into the complex social matrix of the Ottoman Empire.16 Following the First American Gulf War in Iraq (1991–2) the Middle East captured the attention of Americans, as many wanted to understand why U.S. soldiers had been sent to fight and die in Arab deserts. Atlantic Monthly journalist Robert D. Kaplan completed his sensationalist study of The Arabists in 1993. This book tells the story the American missionary families whose sons and daughters went on to influence American foreign policy, and provided an accessible survey of the long-standing relationships between Americans and the people of the Middle East. This narrative has been followed by the more scholarly works of Little and Lesch.17 While building on this body of literature, the current study is chiefly focused on one specific topic that has begun to attract scholarly attention; that is the

16 James A. Field, Jr., America and the Mediterranean World, 1776–1882 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), 186; David H. Finnie, Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967) and Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1971). See also Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815 (New York; Oxford Univ. Press, 1995). 17 Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: the romance of an American elite (New York: Free Press, 1993); Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and David W. Lesch, The Middle East and the United States: A historical and political reassessment, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2003). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 11 interaction and effect of the American missionaries on the nineteenth century Arabic literary renaissance, known as the Nahḍa. Specifically, this study is interested in the particular role, if any, of the so-called Van Dyck Bible translation on this literary renaissance.

The Arabic Bible

The so-called Van Dyck translation of the Bible has been one of the most widely read and distributed modern Arabic Bible translations in the Arab World. It was not the only translation made during the nineteenth century, however. In fact, there were at least five different translations made under the sponsorship of Western mission agencies or missionaries during this time. These important translations include, the 1822 version made by Nathaniel Sabat and Henry Martyn, the 1857 edition of Fāris Shidyāq and the Oxford scholar Samuel Lee (sponsored by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge), the 1875 “Dominican Bible” translated in Mosul, and finally the “Jesuit Bible” undertaken by Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī and completed in 1878. The Jesuit Bible was updated in 1969, based on the changes made in the 1966 Jerusalem Bible, and has remained the preferred edition for most Latin and Oriental Catholic Churches. Several modern translations have gained prominence among native Arabic speakers since the last quarter of the twentieth century. For example, among Protestants the 1978 Today’s Arabic Version New Testament/Good News Arabic Bible (TAV/GNA), and the 1988 Living Arabic Bible Version or Kitāb al-ḥayāt (LANT/NAB) are widely used. A more recent translation undertaken for the purposes of evangelizing among Arab Muslims is the 2000 Noble Book or al-Kitāb al-sharīf. Among the historic Protestant churches of the Middle East, the so-called Van Dyck has not only been the officially used version in public worship, but in Egypt it has been accepted as the standard Bible for all three branches of the Coptic church (Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox). There it has achieved an historic status similar to that of the authorized King James Bible because of its antiquated Arabic style. The original intent of the 1865 translators was to provide a high quality standard of Arabic that could easily be disseminated to the larger public. In this regard it succeeded. Both well-educated and illiterate Arabic speaking Christians have memorized the passages from this Bible over the generations. The so-called Van Dyck version of the Lord’s Prayer has been prayed from memory for over one hundred and fifty years. However, the current antiquated style of the nineteenth century Arabic is no longer the vernacular and does not sit well next to the widely used Modern 12 CHAPTER 1

Standard Arabic or even most modern dialects. As a result of this, there was an initiative of the Bible Societies of Lebanon and Egypt in the first decade of the twenty-first century to undertake a more modern translation of the Bible that might be more palatable to native Arab speakers. In a study of the Van Dyck Bible in Egypt, Nashat Megalaa of the Egyptian Bible Society argued that at least within Egypt there is a need for a new present-day translation because of the dramatic changes in the Arabic language over one hundred and fifty years.18 As we will see in Chapter six, this critique of the style of the Arabic of the so- called Van Dyck is not a new response, but occurred even before the Bible was published. Yet, the antiquated style of the so-called Van-Dyck translation has become in many quarters associated with the mystical language of a heavenly revealed Book. Whereas Muslims ponder the muqaṭṭaʿāt, mysterious Arabic letters at the beginning of several surahs, or the meaning of some mutashābihāt verses of the Qurʾan, some Arab Christians have come to accept that revealed books are by their nature linguistically other. The traditional Islamic understanding of the Qurʾan as God’s literal speech prohibits any need to change or translate God’s words. Living in the midst of a predominantly Muslim culture where Qurʾanic Arabic is considered the standard of the language, and where it is generally accepted that the Qurʾan is the literal speech of God spoken in Heaven (Q 12:1; 85:22), Arab Christians have been reluctant to change their written text lest they be charged with corruption (taḥrīf ) of a “heavenly revealed” scripture. In other words, because the Arabic text of the Qurʾan is fixed, any changes to the Arabic text of the Bible would open Christians up to charges of corrupting their scripture. Translations of the Qurʾan into other languages have been traditionally either forbidden or frowned upon, and non-Arabic versions of the text are generally not considered genuine versions of the Holy Book. Throughout the twentieth century, however, many Islamic organizations have realized the importance of providing translations of the Arabic text for purposes of daʿwah (propagation). Thus, many “translations” or “explanations” of the Holy Qurʾan have appeared.19 Such translations are still not considered authentic copies of

18 Nashat Habib Megalaa, ‘The Van Dyck Bible Translation After One Hundred Fifty Years’ (Cairo, Egypt: Unpublished Masters Thesis from the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, 2008). 19 See for example, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1930), The Holy Qurʾan: Translation and Commentary by Abdullah Yusuf ʿAli (1937), The Noble Qurʾan in the English Language by Muhammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan (1996), and An Interpretation of the Qurʾan by Majid Fakhry (2002). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 13 the Qurʾan, however. Conversely, Christians have historically sought to translate their scripture into various languages, in what Lamin Sanneh calls the “translatability” of the New Testament. “Scriptural translation,” he writes, “is the vintage mark of Christianity, whereas for Islam universal adherence to an untranslatable Arabic Qurʾan remains its characteristic features.”20 The Apostle Paul, who produced the earliest writings considered as Scripture by Christians, asked that his Greek letters be read aloud to Christian communities (Col. 4:16). In some cases, such as in Antioch, this called for some form of oral translation of his written text to an audience from Greek to Aramaic. In addition, Acts 2 tells the story of Jews from different parts of the world hearing Jesus’ disciples preaching in “their own native languages” (Act. 2:9).21 From the very beginning, Christians believed their preaching was to be expressed in the various languages of its believers. The church first conveyed the texts of the early church (gospels and epistles) through the lingua franca of the Empire, which was Greek. They then translated that common Koine Greek into the indigenous languages of both the messengers and hearers. Thus, the Scripture of the Christian Church was translated, first orally, then in written forms, into Aramaic (and its derivative Syriac), Armenian, Latin, and then Coptic and Ethiopic, to name a few examples. It seems the written scripture within Christianity served a different purpose than that of the Qurʾan and reflects a different understanding of revelation (waḥy) and language. For Christians, Scripture was in practice and intent to be translated not as something that “came down” but that was shared “across” cultures. Given the prominence of translating the Christian scriptures into vernacular languages, scholars have long wondered why we find no clear Christian scriptures in Arabic until after the coming of Islam in the seventh century CE. Currently there is no physical proof of an Arabic Bible until the ninth century CE.22 There are, however, several references to the presence of an Arabic Bible before the ninth century. The first reference comes from Muslim tradition which notes that Waraqa ibn Nawfal, the cousin of Muḥammad’s wife

20 Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 211. 21 See David D. Grafton, “The Arabs of Pentecost: Greco-Roman Views of the Arabs and their Cultural Identity,” Theological Review 30/2 (2009): 183–201. 22 Two important minority perspectives on this topic come from Anton Baumstark and Irfan Shahid, who argue for a pre-Islamic Arab Christian Bible. See Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2013); Irfan Shahīd, “Islam and Oriens Christianus: Makka 610–622 AD,” in The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam, eds. Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark Swanson, and David Thomas (Brill: Leiden, 2006), 24. 14 CHAPTER 1

Khadījah, had made a copy of the Christian scriptures. Another Muslim tradition notes that the ʿAmr bar Saʿd bar Abī Waqqās asked John, Patriarch of Antioch (631–648), to make a translation into Arabic but to take out any references to the Trinity. The tenth century al-Fiḥrist records that the ʿAbbasid Caliph al-Ma⁠ʾmūn (813–833) had Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Salām make a translation of the “Torah, the Gospels, and the books of the prophets and disciples.” Finally, there is a tradition that the eighth century John, Bishop of Seville, made an Arabic translation from the Vulgate. However, in each of these cases, there are no other references to these events, nor any copies found.23 Some of the earliest Arabic biblical texts or manuscripts known to date are now located in the Vatican library. Vaticanus arabicus 13, originally from the monastery of Mar Saba outside of Jerusalem, contains the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, as well as the Psalms and possibly dates to the 8th century. Sinai arabicus 151, dated from roughly 867 CE, includes a copy of the Epistles of Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and the Acts of the Apostles. MS. Borg. arabicus 95, also thought to have originated at the monastery of Mar Saba and dated around 885 CE, includes the four canonical Gospels. Several other important ninth century Arabic manuscripts of the Bible include Sinai arabicus 155, Sinai arabicus 154, Gregory-Aland 0136 and 0137. An Arabic codex obtained by Constantin von Tischendorf, now in the library at St. Petersburg, contains the Pauline epistles originally copied from the Peshitta.24 Hikmat Kachouh has made a systematic study of these earliest Arabic manuscripts of the Gospels that is groundbreaking in the field of Arabic biblical texts.25 However, there still is no physical evidence of widespread usage of Arabic translations of scriptures among Jewish and Christian communities until the ninth century CE. In addition, the two most prominent Arabic biblical texts used by Arabic speaking Egyptian Jews and Christians throughout the medieval period was the Pentateuch translated by Saadia Gaon in the tenth century, and the Gospels by Ḥibat Allāh ibn al-ʿAssāl in the thirteenth century. With the advent of the printing press in Europe in the sixteenth century several polyglot Bibles were produced for the scholarly study of biblical

23 Bruce M. Metzger, “Early Arabic Versions of the New Testament,” in On Language, Culture, and Religion: In Honor of Eugene A. Nida (Matthew Black, ed. Paris: Mouton, 1974), 158–9. The best, concise discussion of the possibility of a pre-Islamic Bible to date is in Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2013), 41–53. 24 Metzger, 161. 25 Hikmat Kachouh, The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: The manuscripts and their families (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 15

manuscripts. These works contained various version of the Bible in parallel columns. The Genoa Polyglot of 1546 contained Saadia Gaon’s Arabic Pentateuch. The Paris Polyglot of 1654 and the London Polyglot that followed contained the complete Bible in Arabic, including Saadia Gaon’s Pentateuch and a compilation of the various Arabic MSS noted above.26 The first complete printed Arabic Bible, however, was not disseminated until the forty-six year translation project of the Latin Propaganda Fide was completed in 1671. This Bible became the most commonly used text by Roman and Eastern Catholic churches, as well as by the early Protestant missionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Not satisfied with this Catholic Bible, however, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in England supported the translation work of the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch to produce another translation. This translation was completed in 1725 but consisted only of the Psalms and the New Testament. The SPCK editors considered the quality of the translation poor and the Bible never gained prominence. As noted above, the nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic explosion of Arabic Bible translations that were printed, exported, and distributed by mission agencies to Arabic-speaking Ottomans throughout the empire. The famous British missionary Henry Martyn and Nathaniel Sabat produced an Arabic translation from Persian. Due to Martyn’s premature death, however, the translation was not published in a complete form until 1822.27 A wooden translation of the Bible translated by Fāris Shidyāq under the auspices the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) was published in London in 1857. For reasons that are not yet clear, the translation never achieved legitimacy nor was it put into any significant circulation. Perhaps this was because of Shidyāq’s ultimate conversion to Islam in Tunis in 1860, which may have prompted the Society to distance themselves from his translation.28 The respective societies that produced these editions, the American Protestants and the Roman Catholic Jesuits, intended to bring about the conversion of Oriental Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Of course, such translation projects were occurring within the broader spectrum of international politics. While European nations were jock- eying for position to gain a political upper hand to influence Ottoman policies during the intrigues of the “Eastern Question,” Western mission agencies and

26 Kilgoue, 387; John Alexander Thompson, The Major Arabic Bibles: Their origin and nature (New York: ABS Press, 1956), 19. 27 Thompson, 14. 28 Walid Hamarneh, “Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq,” in Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1850– 1950 vol. 3, ed. Roger Allen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 325. 16 CHAPTER 1 religious societies were also contending for position to gain the spiritual oversight of Eastern souls.29 Americans perceived of themselves as morally supe- rior to the European nations that were involved in imperial designs with the Ottoman Empire, but they were, nevertheless, quite involved in socio-political intrigues.

Contested Identities within the American Mission

By the middle of the nineteenth century, as the ABCFM provided significant funds and personnel for its mission to the Oriental Churches, they hoped that a new Bible translation would finally bring light to the East. Henry H. Jessup, the primary biographer and historian of the American Syrian mission, describes the American civilizational role in this way.

[The] young American disciples of Christ, who knew, by experience, the length and breadth and height and depth of His love, were not to be deterred by any obstacles . . . Those were the days of darkness, but there was light in the dwellings and in the hearts of those young men and women, and those who came after them. The mustard seed which they brought with them, had in itself the germ of life and growth and expan- sive power. They came to lay again the old foundations, or to clear away the debris and rubbish of ages which had covered out of sight and of mind the Rock, Christ Jesus.30

The British missiologist Andrew F. Walls has argued that while the narratives and stories of British and American missionaries articulated their belief in an inevitable and unstoppable Christian mission to Africa and the Orient, their records were written primarily for internal consumption of home constituencies who shared their own religious zeal and cultural values. The authors often engaged in hyperbole and took extreme liberties simply to tell a good story. What was often lost in such histories; however, were the identities and contributions of the “natives.” Walls’s re-reading of mission history has helped to remind researchers that the recipients of European imperialist projects and American religious-cultural missions were not simply passive objects of

29 The concept of the “Eastern Question” was developed by Viscount Stratford Canning, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. See Stratford de Redcliffe, The Eastern Question (London: J. Murray, 1881). 30 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 30. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 17

history, but actors in their own right, responding to the movements of history and creating their own futures.31 This researcher has been the fortunate recipient of this perspective, and has utilized the helpful methods of Postcolonial studies that have striven to uncover the voices of those whose identities and contributions were either neglected or ignored.32 This research seeks to examine the Bible translation project undertaken by the American Syrian Mission of the ABCFM from 1848 to 1865 based on this paradigm of mission studies. To this point, the previous narrative of this Arabic Bible translation has been told through the work of one of the primary storytellers of the American Mission, Henry Jessup. The investigation here seeks to look behind missionary hagiography, and argues that the Syrians engaged in this translation project were never simply passive receptors, but active agents in creating and reformulating ideas and concepts. One of the primary resources for such a re-telling of this history is the MSS of the Bible translation itself. The Arabic MSS convey a very different story than that of the Western Received Tradition. Before we begin to examine the MSS evidence, however, it would be helpful to provide an introduction of the five individuals who contributed to this translation project, in order of their participation: Eli Smith, Buṭrus al-Busṭānī, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, Cornelius Van Dyck, and Yūsuf al-Aṣīr.

Eli Smith

Eli Smith (1801–1857) was born in Northford, Connecticut. He came from simple means, and his pious, hardworking farm family aspired to provide an education for Eli. Smith fit the basic profile of the earliest generation of American missionaries reared in New England Congregationalist families who studied at Yale University and then Andover Seminary, the first theological institution founded in the United States in 1807. It was at Andover Seminary where Smith met the young budding biblical scholar Edward Robinson. They formed a friendship that would last their entire lives. When he graduated from Andover, Smith was ordained and called by the ABCFM. Because of his skills in biblical languages, Smith was sent by the mission agency in 1827 to assist the work of Daniel Temple at the mission press in

31 See, for example, William R. Burrows, Mark R. Gornik, Janice A. McLean, eds., Under- standing World Christianity: The vision and work of Andrew F. Walls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011). 32 Jonathan Ingleby, Beyond Empire: Postcolonialism & mission in a global context (Milton Keynes: Author House, 2010). 18 CHAPTER 1

Malta. While there were high hopes for the distribution of evangelical literature for Muslim consumption, most of the material published in Malta was in Italian, Modern Greek, and Modern Hebrew, and thus had limited circulation for Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. In preparation for his work, Smith was sent to Cairo with the assistance of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary Samuel Gobat, to begin to study Arabic. After a short time in Egypt, he left for Beirut to continue his language studies there. This opportunity was cut short, however, as the Americans in Syria relocated to Malta out of fear of Turkish reprisals on Europeans, whose governments supported Greek independence during the Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire.33 Because Americans did not have any consular representation at this point, they were under the protection of England and thus known as “English.” Upon returning to Malta, the Prudential Committee instructed Smith to assist the new missionary printer Homan Hallock, who had arrived with two new sets of Arabic fonts for the press.34 Smith responded to the Committee that he did not feel sufficiently prepared in Arabic, nor did the Mission have a suitable indigenous translator to help in publishing Arabic works, to carry on this work. His concerns were rebuffed, and he was told to continue the work, regardless. In 1829, Smith gladly took up the opportunity to travel once again, this time to Greece with Rufus Anderson. Anderson had arrived in Malta for an important conference on the future direction of the ABCFM work in the Ottoman Empire. The two traveled to Greece after the Greek uprising to ascertain the possibility of mission work there. While in Greece, Anderson asked Smith to take up another sojourn to make preliminary inquiries into the possibility of starting up a mission among the Nestorians in Persia. Smith left immediately with fellow missionary H.G.O. Dwight in 1830. After two years, Smith and Dwight returned to Malta where they prepared a report, now in the form of the travelogue Researches through Asia Minor, and into Georgia and Persia.35 He returned to the U.S. to oversee its final publication and also to look for a wife. (Exclusively male mission boards of the nineteenth

33 Kamal Salibi and Yusuf K. Khoury, eds., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria 1819–1870, vol. 4 (Amman: The Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies 1995), 286–91. 34 See J.F. Coakley, “Homan Hallock, punchcutter,” Printing History 45, vol. 23 no. 1(2003), 18–41. 35 Eli Smith and H.G.O. Dwight, Researches of the Rev. E. Smith and Rev. H.G.O. Dwight in Armenia; including a journey through Asia Minor, and into Georgia and Persia, with a visit to the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians of Oormiah and Salmas (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1833). Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 19 century often encouraged young male missionaries to find a suitable wife before they embarked on their mission assignments.) Smith was successful on both accounts. Leaving his manuscript for publication, he returned to Malta in 1832 with his new wife, Sarah Lanman Smith. Less than two years later, however, Smith was once again on the move, having the responsibility of transporting the Arabic press from Malta to Beirut in 1834. To this point, his career had been less productive than the Prudential Committee had hoped for its Mediterranean Mission Press. It had been a series of seemingly disparate journeys. In Beirut, Smith was in charge of the Arabic press, where he focused on printing materials for the fledgling American Mission schools. It was here that Smith demonstrated his perfectionist stripes. He was unsatisfied with the Arabic fonts that Hallock brought to Malta and set out to develop a new Arabic font. He began collecting different examples of fonts from Arabic texts throughout Syria. In 1836, he and Sarah set out for Smryna where they were to link up with Hallock, so that the printer might turn the new Arabic samples into punches for the press. However, the journey proved to be disastrous. On their voyage from Beirut to Smryna their ship sank. While the Smiths were rescued from the wreck, Eli lost all of his fonts. More importantly, Sarah eventually succumbed to to the effects of exposure after being shipwrecked on a remote coast in the Aegean. She died shortly after their arrival in Smryna.36 Only two months after Sarah’s death, Smith set off to Istanbul where he immediately began collecting fonts once again. He returned to Smryna with a new set of fonts which Hallock began cutting into punches. Smith then traveled to Beirut where he continued to oversee the work of the Mission Press. He was not in Beirut long when Smith once again took up the opportunity for travel. This time Smith joined up with his long-time friend and colleague Edward Robinson for a tour of the Holy Lands, a journey that they had talked about undertaking back in their days together at Andover. Throughout his travels, Smith continued to receive updates and drawings of the punches that Hallock was working on in Smryna.37 After completing the tour with Edward Robinson throughout Greater Syria, Smith decided to accompany Robinson back to Germany where they would spend some time writing up their notes and completing Biblical Researches in Palestine. Smith took with him Hallock’s punches, which included 1,200 different fonts, to Leipzig where they were cast

36 Coakley, 23; and Margaret R. Leavy, “Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible,” Yale Divinity School Library Occasional Publication, no. 4 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Divinity School, 1993), 13. 37 Coakley, 26. 20 CHAPTER 1 at the foundry of Karl C.P. Tuchnitz. Smith returned to Beirut in 1842 with the new Arabic fonts to continue directing the Mission Press. Smith’s drawings and Hallock’s cuttings resulted in what has come to be known as the “American Arabic font” which was used in several Arabic presses at the end of the nineteenth century. However, the output of the American Mission Press throughout the 1830s and 1840s was anemic. This was due to several factors. First, the Mission did not have a qualified staff. While Smith was put in charge of the press, he was no professional printer. The Mission Press in Beirut did not have a qualified printer until the arrival of George Hurter in 1841.38 In addition, Smith insisted there be qualified Arabic “correctors” and “copyists.” Moreover, when there was a fully functioning staff, he complained about the time that it took him to oversee the whole editorial process. 39 Second, the civil wars between the Druze and Maronites in 1840 and 1845 forced the American missionaries to relocate, or disrupted their normal work rou- tines in Beirut. Third, the Prudential Committee was experiencing difficult economic times throughout the 1840s. Funding support was at an all-time low and mission projects had to be scaled back. Thus there were little funds to support publication and translation projects. Fourth, Rufus Anderson continually reminded the missionaries that they were first and foremost “preachers of the word” and not printers or teachers. Smith was required to hold services and preach at various stations of the mission throughout Syria, in addition to his duties at the Mission Press. Due to his ability in Arabic, Smith was in constant demand by the mission for these preaching and pastoral assignments, as well as requests for him to undertake reconnoitering missions for the ABCFM.40 These travels reduced his time at the press. Because he was then the solely qualified person to oversee the work of the Mission Press, output dropped dramatically. Smith’s travel exploits were legendary among the missionary community and its supporters. He had undertaken several significant tours throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He traveled with Rufus Anderson to Greece and Asia Minor, surveying its lands for possible ABCFM mission stations in 1829. He traveled with his colleague Dwight to Armenia and Persia in 1830–31. He undertook two extensive journeys in Palestine and Greater Syria with Robinson in 1838 and later in 1852. Having persevered through

38 Geoffrey Roper, “The Beginning of Arabic Printing by the ABCFM, 1822–1841,” Harvard Library Bulletin 9: 1 (Spring 1998), 60. The other ABCFM missionary printer, H. Hallock, was stationed in Smyrna. 39 Smith to Anderson, undated, 185; ABCFM 16.18.1. v. 4. Syrian mission, 1847–1859, v. 1. 40 Leavy, 14; Tibawi, 96. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 21 many territories and villages that rarely encountered a European let alone an American, Smith was able to converse freely in Arabic. Thus, by the time that Henry Jessup arrived in Beirut at the start of his own missionary career, Smith was admired by the missionary and foreign expatriate community in Syria. Smith was a perfectionist. As the director of the Mission Press, he felt the need to review the proofs of any item that was being published, regardless of its topic or form. He insisted on the best possible style and presentation. In fact, it was solely because of his persistence throughout the years that the mission was able to secure a good Arabic font for printing purposes. He continued to implore the ABCFM for further funding and opportunities to publish a wide variety of Arabic religious texts. Smith believed that for the Mission’s publishing house to be effective, they needed to provide works in Arabic that reflected the local culture and dialect of the Syrians. From the time of his arrival in Malta in 1826 until he hired Buṭrus al-Bustānī in 1844, Smith continued to lament the absence of a qualified Arabic linguist and translator. A native-Arab speaker was needed, not only to help produce quality Arabic text, but to assist with the important role of being in conversation with Arab Syrian society. In an exasperated tone Smith wrote, “I wish not to forget that while the press governs public opinion, it is not independent of it. Should ours get a character for inaccuracy, its publications would not be sought after, whereas if it should be as highly esteemed for taste and correctness by the people for whom we print . . .”41 It is in this regard that Smith’s active involvement in the earliest cultural societies in Syria should be viewed. Smith was one of the founding members in 1847 of al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-l- iktisāb al-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn [Syrian Society for the Acquisition of Sciences and Arts. His interest in Arab culture is evidenced through the presentations undertaken by this society, later published by Buṭrus al-Bustānī in Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyya al-sūriyya.42 Having traversed much of Greater Syria, as well as Armenia, Egypt, and Anatolia, Smith experienced Middle Eastern cultures and societies on a broader scale than most of his missionary colleagues of his time. Rufus Anderson reminded Smith, however, that the function of the Mission Press was only as a supporting role to provide biblical texts or religious literature that could promote conversion to establish self-supporting, self- governing, self-propagating Syrian evangelical congregations. The Prudential Committee was not interested in any form of a cultural renaissance in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Committee did respond to the argument

41 Leavy, 10. 42 Buṭrus al-Bustānī, al-Jamʿīyya al-sūriyya li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn, 1847–1852 (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrá, 1990). 22 CHAPTER 1 from the missionaries that the best tool for conversion was a new Arabic Bible. Therefore, the missionaries wrote to the Prudential Committee stating that they needed more funds to undertake their most important missionary task, a translation of the Bible. The American Mission then appointed Smith as the lead missionary for the Bible translation project in 1847. Smith focused his energy on what would be his last missionary endeavor before his death in 1857. He finally began to wed his scholarly ability and perfectionism with the Mission’s desire for a new Arabic Bible.43 This work allowed him to focus on translating the Scriptures into the language and cultural idioms of Arab Syrian culture. He was only able to do this, however, because of the assistance of his close friend Buṭrus al-Busṭānī. In reading through Smith’s formal correspondence of the Mission, as well as his personal letters within the archives of the ABCFM, it is clear that he was held in high esteem by his colleagues, the Syrians with whom he conversed, and even by Rufus Anderson.44 Smith was recognized and appreciated for his abilities and outlook. His communication with Anderson in Boston ranged from official reports of the mission stations in Syria to current social issues. He would often translate local letters and fatwas of important clergy and sheikhs related to the religious atmosphere within the Empire and forward them on to Anderson so that he was aware of local issues and events. Smith held ongoing conversations with a wide array of Syrians, including Protestants, Greek Catholics, some Maronites, and even a Samaritan Priest. His lengthy correspondence, with the Greek Catholic Mīkhāʾīl Mashāqa during his time in Damascus is of particular interest. Mashāqa eventually converted to Protestantism. Letters between Smith and Mashāqa, between Smith and the Greek Catholic Patriarch, and Mashāqa’s journal found in the archives of the ABCFM will undoubtedly provide further information about Mashāqa’s life and his conversion to Protestantism.45 Here is another indigenous story waiting to be told, whether the Greek Patriarch or Smith will be the protago- nist is yet to be seen.

43 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 1–4. 44 Unsorted Arabic correspondence. ABCFM archives, 50 and 60, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 45 Fruma Zachs, “Mīkhāʾīl Mishāqa—The First Historian of Modern Syria,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies vol. 28, no. 1 (May, 2001), 72–3. For the personal correspondence between Smith and Mashāqa see ABCFM 50, boxes 1–3. The correspondence between the two are scattered throughout the collection. For other correspondence see Smith to Anderson, January 27, 1849; and Smith to Anderson; ABCFM archives, v. 5 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859 v. 2; microfilm A467: Reel 544; entries 182–187. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 23

Smith was a deeply committed puritan “Bible man.” He was no theological pluralist, and was deeply committed to converting both “fanatical” Muslims and “nominal” Oriental Christians to the evangelical faith. He firmly believed the “heathen world” was in need of salvation. Yet, one can see a softening of his evangelical fervor throughout his life. In 1832, while Smith was in the U.S. editing Researches in Armenia before heading out to Beirut for the first time, he preached a sermon entitled, “Moral and Religious Condition of Western Asia.” Here Smith preached to a supportive constituency in order to drum up support for the work of the ABCFM.46 And yet, when we compare this with the personal correspondence of Smith during the 1840s and 1850s while in Beirut, the Arabic poetry presented to him by acquaintances, as well as the calligraphic verses he penned from the Qurʾan, we find a man much more attuned to the people and culture of the Syria, than a heavy-handed pietistic American missionary seeking to civilize the Arabs. A poetic eulogy of Smith’s life by Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, cited below, provides a window into the effect that Smith had on those around him that is not reflected in the official correspondence of the mission society.

Buṭrus al-Bustānī

Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–1883) is certainly the most famous Syrian to be connected with the American Syrian mission and this translation of the Bible. While he is noted in the missionary records, somewhat hesitatingly, as a participant in the Arabic Bible translation, he is most well-known by the Arabic-speaking world for his Arabic dictionary, Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ, and the first modern Arabic encyclopedia, Dāʾirat al-maʿārif. In addition, he had a vital impact on the popu- larizing of the new literary genre of Arabic journals in Syria that propelled the literary Nahḍa. He has been called the “grandfather” of the publishing movement by Kamāl al-Yāzijī.47 According to Adel Beshara, Buṭrus al-Bustānī was one of the leading ruwwād al-Nahḍa [pioneers of the Renaissance].48 He is also well known for developing the concept of modern Syrian Nationalism. In fact, the phrase ḥubb al-waṭan min al-īmān [Love of nation is an article of faith] was the byline of his popular journal Nafīr Sūriyya that appeared in 1860. His ideas, however, were not limited to the written page. In 1863 he founded the short- lived but important al-madrasa al-waṭaniyya [the National School], which was

46 Eli Smith, Missionary Sermons and Addresses (Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1833), 13–84. 47 Fāʾiz ʿAlam al-Dīn Qays, Athar al-Muʿallim Buṭrus al-Bustānī fī l-nahḍa al-waṭaniyya fī Lubnān (Beirut: Dār al-Fārābī, 2005), 89. 48 Sheehi, 61. 24 CHAPTER 1 open to male students of any sect in Syria. The philosophy of the school was to teach the love of Syrian culture, history and language, rather than sectarian views.49 Thus, he is anything but a passive participant in the transformation of Syrian society in Beirut during the nineteenth century. From the American Mission’s perspective, however, he was somewhat of a disappointment and was unpopular with many of the later missionaries, precisely because his vision was not confined to the creation of an indigenous Syrian Protestant community. He held on to what Makdisi calls an “ecumenical humanism.”50 At one point, the American mission hoped he would become the first Syrian pastor ordained by the Mission. However, for reasons that are not entirely clear, this was not to be. Nevertheless, he was the chair of the committee of the Beirut congregation that petitioned the Mission to become the first Syrian Protestant congregation, now known as the National Evangelical Church of Beirut. Bustānī came from a prominent Maronite family from al-Dubbiyya, in the Chouf of Mount Lebanon. He attended the important Maronite school at ʿAyn Waraqa, where his studies included Syriac and Latin. Bustānī obviously demonstrated sufficient promise in his education that he was selected to go to the Maronite College in Rome. According to George Antonius, however, Buṭrus’ mother despaired of the thought of her son being so far away, and so he stayed in Mount Lebanon to become a teacher at ʿAyn Waraqa.51 When a joint expedition of European forces expelled Ibrāhīm Pasha from Syria in 1840, Bustānī’s life changed dramatically. The Western powers used this moment as an opportunity to occupy Beirut as a base for political activities in the Arab world of the Ottoman Empire. This created a significant international presence in Beirut and plunged what had once been a small fishing village into the realpolitik of the “Eastern Question.” The British, French, Austrians, and Prussians would need native Arabic speakers to help them navigate local politics, and Bustānī took advantage of this. He moved to Beirut and became a translator for the British army.52 He worked as a dragoman at the British embassy, and eventually was appointed as the American consul in 1857.53 To supplement his income, he was also hired to teach Arabic at the

49 Anīs Khūrī al-Maqdisī, al-Funūn al-adabiyya wa-aʿlāmuḥā fī l-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya al-ḥadītha (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1963), 187–8. 50 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 14. 51 Antonius, 47. 52 Jurjī Zaydān, Tarājīm mashāhīr al-sharq 3rd ed. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa al-Hilāl, 1922), 27. 53 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 127; Qays, 45. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 25 small American mission seminary in Beirut. This was more than likely because of his connection with Eli Smith. It was in Beirut that Bustānī was exposed to a wide variety of ideas and people who helped to shape his life and thinking. It was at this point that he became Eli Smith’s Arabic tutor.54 Whether he learned English sufficiently to be bi-lingual during this time, or whether he had learned the language earlier is uncertain. It is hard to imagine, however, that the British or Americans would have hired him if he had limited English skills then. There is no doubt that during his early years in Beirut Bustānī forged an important relationship with Eli Smith and the two began to exchange religious and cultural ideas. It was, ultimately, through this friendship that he met his wife, Rachel. She was one of the first young women admitted to the American girls’ missionary school opened by Sarah Smith and lived with the Smiths.55 Thus, the Smiths and the Bustānīs were intimately tied together. Smith also was instrumental in providing professional opportunities for him with the mission. He more than likely arranged for Bustānī to teach Arabic to the recently arrived missionaries, including Cornelius Van Dyck. As they both were new to Beirut, Bustānī and Van Dyck also struck up a relationship that would last their whole life.56 While there is no clear indication of why or how Bustānī became a Protestant, it was certainly through his relationship with Smith and Van Dyck. Henry Jessup provides a remarkable account, much like that of the first Protestant martyr, Aʿsad Shidyāq, of Bustānī’s conversion story. Jessup records that Bustānī came to an understanding of “the doctrine of justification by faith” while reading the Syriac Bible at ʿAyn Waraqa. He fled the Maronite school and sought refuge in the home of Eli Smith who protected him for two years from “the spies of the Maronite patriarch.”57 This story might be suspect, as no other source mentions this. Rather, it seems that his interest in evangelicalism was a gradual process due to his continuous conversations with Smith and other missionaries.58 His “conversion” and association with the American

54 Abdul Latif Tibawi, “The American Missionaries in Beirut and Butrus al-Bustani,” Middle Eastern Affairs St. Anthony Papers 16 (1962), 157. 55 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 159; Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 129. Contra Qays, 46. See Christine Lindner, ‘The Flexibility of Home: Exploring the Spaces and Definitions of the Home and Family Employed by the ABCFM Missionaries in Ottoman Syria from 1823 to 1860,’ in Sharkey and Doğan, 51. 56 Zaydān, Tarājīm mashāhīr al-sharq, 52–70. 57 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 484. 58 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 158. 26 CHAPTER 1

Protestant community certainly caused a scandal within the Bustānī family, where Buṭrus’ uncle, Abdullah al-Bustānī, was the Maronite bishop of Saida.59 Buṭrus al-Bustānī quickly became the most prominent Syrian associated with the American Mission. He helped to lead worship services and preach in Beirut, Abieh, and Kfar Shīma, several missionary outposts. In 1844, when a community of Greek Orthodox in Ḥāṣbayya approached the Mission with the possibility of their converting to the evangelical faith, Bustānī offered his services to go and preach to them.60 However, nothing came of the offer. Tibawi notes that Smith suspected the community was hoping to avoid heavy taxation of the government by coming under the English millet, or legally recognized minority community.61 In any case, the Maronite-Druze disturbances of 1845 caused enough unrest and turmoil that such a switch of communal allegiances was not possible. In 1846, the Mission appointed Bustānī as an assistant to the young and recently arrived Dr. Cornelius Van Dyck, to work at the men’s seminary in Abieh. It was here that the two began to develop a deep relationship.62 Smith also contracted Bustānī to assist with translations at the Mission Press. The first project undertaken by both Smith and Bustānī was the pamphlet called Kitāb al-bāb al-maftūḥ fī aʿmāl al-rūḥ, published in 1843, which was an apol- ogy for Protestant beliefs. After this, he would go on to translate and edit other works for the Mission Press for use in the Mission schools: including Pilgrim’s Progress, History of Redemption, and a textbook on Arabic grammar.63 By 1848, Bustānī was employed specifically to work with Smith on the translation of the Bible. Bustānī was also one of the most influential Syrians in establishing the Evangelical Church of Beirut. The congregation consisted of nineteen male members and four women. Under his leadership, they forwarded a petition for recognition as a congregation to the American Mission in 1848, which

59 Stephen Sheehi, “Butrus al-Bustani: Syria’s Ideologue of the Age,” in The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: histories, pioneers and identity, ed. Adel Beshara (New York: Routledge, 2011), 58. 60 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 159. 61 Tibawi, American Interests, 110. For a thorough review of the millet system see Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The functioning of a plural society (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982). One of the most detailed overview of the development of rights and responsibilities granted a minorities under the Ottomans is Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press,1983). 62 Qays, 50; Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 160. 63 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 160. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 27 was accepted. As a result, the first Syrian Protestant congregation was created. Because of his activities and leadership, Smith and Anderson had hoped that Bustānī would consider entering the ministry to become the pastor of the Evangelical Syrian Church.64 On his visit to the Mission in 1844, Rufus Anderson met Bustānī and perceived in him the great hope of the new evangelical church. For Anderson, Bustānī was one of the best chances for establishing a self-supporting, self-propagating, self-governing Syrian Protestant church. Eventually, however, the Mission refused to ordain Bustānī in 1857. This has proven to be one of the great mysteries of Bustānī’s life, or more accurately, in the history of the American Mission in Syria. Eli Smith had noted in a private letter to Anderson in 1857 that he was disappointed in Bustānī’s ministerial pursuits. There were some in the Mission who thought that Bustānī was interested in too many worldly pursuits.65 In that same year, Bustānī was offered the position of Consul General for the U.S. government, a post that needed to be filled by an Ottoman subject. Bustānī was one of the most likely nominees for this post in Beirut. However, the American missionaries encouraged him not to take this, as they felt that this would distract him from his ministry, and would entangle him in the politics of the empire. In their view, this was not the life of a “man of the cloth” or a “Bible man.” Nevertheless, Bustānī took the post.66 Bustānī responded to this rebuff with great frustration, and began to pull away from his ties to the Mission. In addition, after Smith’s death in 1857, the American missionaries released Bustānī from the Bible translation project. The refusal to ordain him was an obvious breaking point for Bustānī with the Mission, and so he left to organize his own school, the “National School.” By this time, Bustānī had begun to develop his own broader vision of Syrian Nationalism, rather than the specific commitment to an evangelical church. However, he did continue to maintain a distant relationship with the Mission, the international community in and around Beirut, and at least for a few years, the Syrian Protestant College. We can assume that upon Eli Smith’s death, Bustānī felt he needed to cut his ties to the Mission. And, after the 1860 civil war, Bustānī clearly devoted the rest of his life toward developing a national Syrian identity, as opposed to the smaller evangelical community as espoused by the American Mission. Clearly, the American “Bible Men” felt his interests were not “pious” enough.

64 Tibawi, American Interests, 131. 65 Tibawi, “American Missionaries,” 158. 66 Tibawi, “American Missionaries,” 178. 28 CHAPTER 1

It is understandable that he would no longer have felt any loyalty to the Mission after Smith’s death. Smith was the original bond that held Bustānī’s interest in the Mission. Yet, as the one who helped to organize the first Syrian Protestant congregation in Beirut, who was identified to become the first Syrian Protestant pastor, and almost succeeded in converting the entire Greek Ortho- dox village of Ḥāṣbayya, it is still unclear why he was refused ordination and in many ways shunned. Later missionaries thought that Bustānī had betrayed the ideal of the Mission in abandoning the fledgling evangelical community. As we do not have any remnants of the correspondence between Bustānī and Van Dyck, we do not know how Bustānī felt about being removed from the translation project by Van Dyck in 1857. Given the important and close friendship between Van Dyck and Bustānī from 1840 onward, this action by Van Dyck was surprising. Bustānī’s story is still waiting to be heard. According to Tibawi, Bustānī’s work on the Bible translation was not a major focus of his life’s work, and did not take up too much of his time, nor was it ever a major part of his important literary endeavors. Rather, says Tibawi, this was a “leisurely pursuit.”67 While Tibawi’s comment should be considered an under- statement, it is true that Bustānī was ultimately more interested in developing other literary pursuits. Bustānī’s interests were much deeper than publishing religious tracts by the Mission. He was an intellectual and “man of letters,” who pursued the ideas that Ussama Makdisi calls his “ecumenical humanism.”68 Certainly this would have been a major disappointment for Rufus Anderson. Bustānī was the founding member of the al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-itkisāb al-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn, a small intellectual group formed chiefly around the missionaries, in late 1846 or early 1847. Smith, Van Dyck, and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī were also founding members.69 This society would go on to have a profound impact on Bustānī’s life and thinking, publishing several of his presentations on Arab culture and identity, the importance of which is yet to be fully explored.70 Bustānī was also a founding member of the interfaith al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya in 1857, which was officially recognized by the Ottoman government in 1868.

67 Tibawi, “American Missionaries,” 165. 68 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 14. 69 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 161. 70 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 139. Pierre G. Raffoul has demonstrated that further research on the proceedings from this society will bear fruit regarding not only Bustānī’s views, but the role of the society in shaping nineteenth century reform. See Pierre G. Raffoul, Butrus al-Bustani’s Contribution to Translation, Journalism, and Cultural Activities, in Butrus al-Bustani: Spirit of the age, ed. Adel Beshara (Melbourne: IPhoenix Publishing, 2015): 131–54. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 29

While this particular society included 150 members from various religious communities, it was not comprised of foreigners—including the American missionaries.71 These cultural societies proved to be an important social spaces where Bustānī began to develop his ideas of conscience [ḍamīr], progress [taqaddūm], civilization [tamaddun], pride in Arab Syrian culture [adab], and love of the Syrian Nation [ḥubb al-waṭan].72 It was through these societies, during some of the most tumultuous socio-political periods of Syria’s Ottoman period, where he was able to find and develop his own voice and perspective. As Fruma Zachs has pointed out, Bustānī was far from an individual dependent on the good graces of the missionaries and the Protestant community for his identity and well-being. Rather, he was fully integrated into the well- developed “middle stratum” of Beiruti society of the mid-nineteenth century. His participation in the arts and literature of Beirut are well documented. His journals Nafīr Sūriyya, Ḥadīqat and al-Jinān all extolled the virtues of a cosmopolitan Beiruti society that was looking forward to a bright future of idealistic Arab nationalism. Zachs’ views are contrary to Kamal Salibi, who believes that Smith and Van Dyck had the most influence over Bustānī and Yāzijī, and thus implying the missionaries had a great impact on the Nahḍa through them.73 While his work at the publishing house of the American Mission was an important part of his intellectual growth, Bustānī recognized that he was limited by the Mission’s continued need to define itself as a community over and against other nation building agendas of economic, philanthropic, political, or cultural efforts. The missionaries were interested in creating evangelical Christians out of “nominal” ones. Bustānī, however, was ultimately interested in creating a Syrian identity from within the competing identities of the Maronite, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Sunni and Shiʾa communities. At some point, the missionary call to be a “light to the gentiles” and be set apart was counter to the rising chorus of Syrian intelligentsia who were calling for national unity through Bustānī’s revitalization of adab al-ʿarab [Arab culture].74 As Makdisi has demonstrated, Bustānī’s publication of Qiṣṣat Asʿad al-Shidyāq in 1860 was a clear reframing of the story of the “martyrdom” of the first Protestant convert in 1830 as told in A Memoir of Asaad esh Shidiak; An Arab young man of the Maronite Roman Catholic Church, in Syria by Isaac Bird in 1827. Bustānī’s interest was not in denouncing the Oriental despotism

71 Georgescu, 17. 72 See Oddbjørn Leirvik, “Conscience in Arabic and the Semantic of History of Damir,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 9: 2 (2009), 31; Sheehi, 63. 73 Kamal Salibi, A Modern History of Lebanon (New York: Frederick Paeger, 1965), 146. 74 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 73. 30 CHAPTER 1 of the Maronite Church but rather, he “underscored the deliberate individual choices” of Asʿad. He wished to argue that this story “was a bold declaration of the possibilities of the new nineteenth century ‘age’ of knowledge, reform, light, and liberation.”75 Between the Mission’s refusal to ordain him in 1857 and the civil war in 1860, it was clear that his path was diverging from the ideals of the American Mission. Bustānī saw the possibilities of a renewed sense of Arab identity within a Greater Syria at a time in which the Ottoman Empire was seeking to find its own way as a modern, reformed Empire that was a full participant in the European international political arena. Unlike other important Arab nationalists who touted either political or religious ideologies, Bustānī was interested in developing a renewed Arab social-cultural identity. He was truly a rāʾid al-Nahḍa. However, if one were to read only Jessup’s account of his life, the story is very different.

Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī

Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–1871) was the second Syrian to take part in this Bible translation project. According to Fayiz Qays, Yāzijī was a “published poet, a precise linguist, and a grammarian. There was no-one better or more qualified in Arabic than him.”76 Sasson Somekh considers Yāzijī as a neo-classic poet who sought to revive Abbasid-style classical poetry within the new medium of nineteenth century public literary production.77 It was because of his linguistic skills and abilities that Smith hired him for the new Mission printing press. Yāzijī was a Greek Catholic from a prominent family in Kfar Shīma in Mount Lebanon. As a young man, he was sent by his family to the court of the Emir Bashīr al-Shihābī II (1767–1850) at Bayt al-Dīn to serve as an official secretary. Bashīr was a patron of the arts, gathering around him court poets and scholars. It was during this period that Yāzijī gained prominence for his skills in Arabic and poetry, especially through the development of maqāmāt, or rhyming prose. He would eventually go on to have a wide-ranging impact on his students or other writers throughout the Nahḍa.78 As the Emir of the Chouf, Bashīr II struggled with the prominent feudal lords of the region, and lived a life in continual contention for power with other

75 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 200. 76 Qays, 37. 77 S. Somekh, The Neo-classical Arabic poets in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. M.M. Badawi (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 42–3. 78 Salibi, Modern History, 95; Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 28–32. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 31 leading families. The feuds between these leading Maronite and Druze families provided the backbone of the socio-political structure of Mount Lebanon during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. With the rise to power of Muḥammad ʿAlī in Egypt and the invasion of Syria by his son, Ibrāhīm Pasha, Bashīr had little choice but to support Ibrāhīm by providing taxes and conscripts for the Egyptian army. Forced conscription always proved to be a sore spot for the independent Druze, and this created resent- ment that eventually undermined his authority and rule. Following the removal of Ibrāhīm Pasha from Syria, Bashīr’s days were numbered. He was summoned by the British to Beirut where they sent him into exile on Malta.79 Yāzijī and many others at Bayt al-Dīn suddenly lost their court patron. Like Buṭrus al-Bustānī, he found himself moving to Beirut in 1840. He was immediately in demand as an Arabic teacher by the Europeans in the city because of his competence in Arabic. Given that the two teachers ran in the same literary circles in Beirut, it is most likely that Bustānī recognized Yāzijī’s presence in Beirut and arranged for him to work with the Mission. He contracted with the American Mission Press to work as a proofreader and a teacher in one of the Mission schools, and then as one of the members of the Bible translation project in 1848 until Smith’s death in 1857. However, this was not his only employ. He would move on to teach in the “National School” of Buṭrus al-Bustānī, the “Patriarchal School” of the Greek Catholics, as well as the Syrian Protestant College. Clearly he was sought after for his linguistic knowledge and abilities.80 Yāzijī was not only a teacher, however. He continued to write throughout his career. His most important contribution to the literary renaissance was Kitāb faṣl al-kiṭāb fī uṣūl lughat al-aʿrāb, which was published by the Mission Press. Other important contributions included Kitāb al-Jummāna fī sharḥ al-khizāna and Kitāb majmūʿ al-adab fī funūn al-ʿarab, and a commentary on the poetry of al-Mutannabbī, which he never finished but was eventually completed by his son as al-Urf al-ṭayyib fī dīwān Abī l-Ṭayyib in 1882.81 He was also a contributor to Bustānī ‘s Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ.82 Throughout his life, both at Bayt al-Dīn and in Beirut, Yāzijī was at the center of a cohort of scholars and poets. In Beirut he was known for holding salons in his home, where he gathered other Syrian literati to discuss important

79 Salibi, Modern History, 44. 80 Paul Starkey, “Nāsīf al-Yāzijī,” in Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1850–1950, vol. 3. ed. Roger Allen (Wiesbaden: HarrassowitzVerlag, 2010): 377. 81 Georgescu, 7–8; Starkey, 378. 82 Qays, 37. 32 CHAPTER 1 intellectual matters of the day. He was also a founding member of al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-itkisāb al-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn. According to Graf, he was a major intellectual in developing new thinking in Arab culture [adab] in the Nahḍa, before many of the Syrian literati emigrated to Egypt in the 1880s. With his focus on traditional maqāma as a literary device, he continued to refine classical Arabic styles. However, as new styles of Arabic literature were developed in the 1870s and 1880s through journals, newspapers, and serialized novels, Yāzijī “remained stuck in an older literary style.”83 Graf’s observation of Yāzijī’s style is corroborated by Smith’s own concerns. Smith writes:

His criticisms undergo a thorough discussion, often consuming much time, and special caution is constantly observed lest he sacrifice any important shade of the inspired idea to the niceties of Arabic grammar or taste, which, after all, are not essential. Yet it is my aim to let no phrase finally pass which does not receive his approbation. Master as he is of Arabic grammar, and richly as his mind is stored with Arabic words, it was soon found that in terms of natural history and certain other sciences, as well as in the technicalities of different trades and professions, and in other like matters, his knowledge was indistinct and often very defective.84

In a private latter written to Rufus Anderson in 1855, Smith noted that he often had to revise the work of Yāzijī at the Mission Press; that

If put into Nâsîf’s hands, as they leave it, a translation would come out, in very many passages, wide of the original meaning, and the force of the sentiment be lost. Even he needs constantly looking after, or he does his work carelessly, and the more so, the older he grows. This part of my work I think some of my brethren do not perhaps fully appreciate.85

The concern that Yāzijī would subject important Biblical terms and ideas to Arabic phrasing and rhyming schemes of the maqāmāt rather than utilizing a more direct translation of the Greek or Hebrew words as provided by Bustānī is certainly the main reason that Van Dyck did not renew his contract. (This

83 Georg Graf, Geschichte Der Chrstlichen Arabischen Literatur, vol. 4 (Citta del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1951), 319. 84 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 9. 85 Smith to Anderson, October 1855, ABCFM 16.8, microfilm A467, Reel 542. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 33 issue will be taken up in Chapter five.) As an example of Yāzijī’s Arabic literary style, we return to the eulogy of Eli Smith mentioned above. This rithāʾ format is a forty-four verse panegyric written in the neo-classic style. It provides a view not only into the skill and ability of Yāzijī, but also provides insight into his relationship with Eli Smith:

The grave rejoiced and cheered when his body came to rest in it. We asked the grave what benefited it to be united with this man of wisdom. O you happy grave, I wonder if any palace or country has ever had some- one like him. God has bestowed upon you a guest toward whom you should be hospitable And know the dignity of the person who rests inside you; whose great status has been known by the elite and leaders. Protect every bone of his body for it is of great value.

O you who became drunk, although drunkenness is not your custom. You drank a wine from which no one can get sober after drinking. I see you so close to me and yet so far, for you are the furthest person from earth. Your sleep will end on the Day of Judgment. Woe to me, for your absence will continue forever. Why are your eyes still closed and my eyes are left with pain? Where are your fingertips that used to write in ink words of truth and wisdom? Where is the tongue that was used as a source of fresh water that watered all around it? Where is the heart which was as bright as a star that shines in the darkness? Where is your great determination that can be compared to the determination of an army? Who can carry the heavy load that you had been carrying, and whom can we trust during the difficult times? (vv. 23–38)86

86 Eulogy of Eli Smith by Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī. ABC 60, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missionaries (ABCFM) Archives, Houghton Library Archives, Harvard University, Boston, Trans. by Wagdy Elisha and David D. Grafton. 34 CHAPTER 1

Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck

Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck (1818–1895) is undoubtedly the most famous person associated with this translation, chiefly because the Bible has come to be known by his name. Within Arab Protestant communities (and even within the Coptic Orthodox Church) the Bible is affectionately called the “Van Dyck.” Thus, his name carries with it a sense of honor and prestige among the Arab Evangelicals. He was well known among the Syrians of his day who “loved him.”87 His funeral in Beirut in 1895 was attended by religious leaders from different communities, demonstrating his impact on the broader landscape of Syrian society. Van Dyck was born in Kinderkook, New York, the son of Dutch Reformed parents. He studied medicine at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, but like so many deeply moved by the Great Awakening in the U.S., he aspired to be a missionary. He arrived in Beirut on April 2, 1840 only twenty-one years old, the youngest missionary sent out by the ABCFM. He was originally chosen to be a medical missionary, having recently obtained his medical license. However, his colleagues quickly discovered his keen intellect and mind for languages, including Hebrew, Greek, French, Italian and German, and later Syriac. He would go on to become remembered as the most accomplished Arabic speaker of the American Syrian Mission.88 Because of his linguistic skills and affable personality among the Syrians, he was quickly appointed as the head of the men’s seminary in ʿAbeih and was then ordained by the missionaries on January 14, 1846. It was at the seminary where he continued to learn Arabic from Buṭrus al-Bustānī. Here the two struck up a deep relationship. Van Dyck was quite “liberal” compared to the New England pietists of the Mission.89 Unlike the “Bible men” who wore their black and brown western clothes, Van Dyck took to wearing the aba, and even smoking the water pipe (certainly not respected among the missionary community).90 One of Van Dyck’s most important students, Jurjī Zaydān, who would later go on to be one of the most prominent Christian Arab contributors to the Nahḍa, wrote that Van Dyck was “of noble character, magnanimous, generous, very charitable,

87 Jurjī Zaydān, The autobiography of Jurji Zaidan, trans. by Thomas Philipp (Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, Inc., 1990), 56. 88 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 73. 89 See Samir Khalaf, “Protestant Images of Islam: disparaging stereotypes reconfirmed,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 8, no. 2 (1997), 211–229, and his more recent work Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820–60 (New York: Routledge, 2012). 90 Philip K. Hitti, Lebanon in History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957), 464. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 35 gentle and sociable.” He was “liberal in thought and word and did not mind speaking out frankly about things which his colleagues and others in the group of ministers avoided discussing.”91 An important aspect of Van Dyck’s personality was not only his innate sense of navigating Syrian culture, but also his training as a medical doctor. His work as an instructor in the Medical School of the Syrian Protestant College helped him to embody the early evangelical notion that science had the power to reveal God’s handiwork. His earliest Arabic translations were a geography and algebra textbook. Between 1886 and 1889 he published a series of Arabic textbooks under the series title al-Naqsh fī l-ḥajar, which focused on the natural sciences. Ironically, these were not printed by the Mission Press but by a former student of his at the Syrian Protestant College, Khalīl Sarkīs’s press at al-Maṭbaʿa al-Adabiyya, .92 Two issues that point toward Vany Dyck’s “liberal mindedness” are worth mentioning. The first, of course, is his appointment of Yūsuf al-Asīr, a Sunni Muslim sheikh to the translation team in 1858. This decision must have raised many eyebrows among the missionary community. Yet, it is only briefly mentioned in the Received Tradition of Jessup.93 This cursory reference is worthy of notice and will be explored later in this research. The second event is one that occurred later in his life. This involved the famous speech supporting evolution at the graduation of the Syrian Protestant College in 1882. This event created nothing less than “discord and rebellion” against the “authority of the College.”94 Edwin Lewis, an ordained missionary, doctor, and popular professor of chemistry who had arrived in 1870, was invited to give the commencement address at the Syrian Protestant College. In this speech, he reviewed the role of Darwinism, and implied that it had positive effects in scientific thought and for education. This was an extremely hot topic among traditional and conservative Christian communities in the United States, including many on the Board of Directors then in charge of overseeing the College. In the speech, Lewis referred to the work of Sir Charles Leil, who developed the theories on the evidence of geological formation. Leil argued for an ancient dating of the

91 Jurjī Zaydān, The autobiography of Jurji Zaidan, trans. by Thomas Philipp (Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, Inc., 1990), 56. Zaydān’s original autobiography was not published in Arabic until 1966 by Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd in Lebanon. This English edition is a translation of Zaydān’s own written text, rather than the published Arabic version. 92 Dagmar Glass, Malta, Beirut, Leipzig, and Beirut again: Eli Smith, the American Mission and the spread of Arabic topography (Beirut: Orient-Institute Beirut, 1998), 27. 93 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 107. 94 Daniel Bliss to the Board of Managers, July 10, 1883 (Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Syrian Protestant College). 36 CHAPTER 1 earth as opposed to Ussher’s biblical chronology, which stated that according to Genesis the world was created in 4004 BC. Lewis scoffed at the Creationists, who held to a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis and the literal creation of the world in seven days. He stated that these were people whose

minds were busy with trifles and futile ideas, the most famous of which was their belief that the earth has been in existence only for a few thousands of years and that it used to be greatly agitated, destroying everything on its surface, and then it used to subside, allowing new creatures to be born on it and so forth until it attained its present feature in a rela- tively short period as compared to the true period.95

The commencement speech created a stir among the members of the missionaries, faculty, Board, and students of the College. Stephen B.L. Penrose, Jr., in his 75th anniversary history of the Syrian Protestant College remarked that Henry Jessup had submitted a report to the Board that unless something was done by the Board, there would be negative repercussions among the general populace in Syria.96 The Chair of the Board of Managers, Dr. William A. Booth in New York, asked Mr. Lewis to forward a copy of the speech translated into English. According to the official board minutes, Lewis complied. He also sent along his resignation letter to the Board. The acceptance of his resignation resulted in a student protest, forty of whom summarily left the college. The angry medical students delivered a letter of protest to the faculty communicating their disagreement with the resignation of Mr. Lewis, who was “under suspicion of having passed wine at a table to which certain Franks were invited . . . [and] also has been charged with setting forth Darwin’s infidel opinions in the last annual address.”97 Obviously, there had been some disagreements between Mr. Lewis and the Mission and the College prior to the commencement address. This event would ultimately lead Board to issue a “statement of principles” that was to be signed by each faculty member from then on.98 In response to these events, Cornelius Van Dyck and his third son, William Van Dyck, who was also a doctor, also resigned from their positions at the

95 Edwin Lewis, “Knowledge, Science and Wisdom,” Annual Reports of the Board of Managers of the Syrian Protestant College 1886–1902, appendix, 247–256. 96 Stephen B.L. Penrose, Jr. That They May Have Life (New York: Trustees of the American University of Beirut, 1941), 44. 97 Ibid. 98 Syrian Protestant College, Annual Report, July 17, 1884. See the appendix for the “statement of principles,” Nadia Farag, “The Lewis Affair and the Fortunes of al-Muqtataf,” Middle Eastern Studies 8, no. 1 (Jan., 1972), 73–83. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 37

College (but still remained members of the American Mission). Van Dyck’s resignation from the College sent shock waves through the missionary community, where he had been considered one of the pillars of the mission community. In addition, with the loss of two missionary instructors, the College had to find qualified medical teachers who were fluent in Arabic! They could not do this and had to begin the following year by teaching the curriculum in English. With the departure of Lewis and the Van Dycks, the students raised a concern that their exams would now be taken in English rather than Arabic, and would not be recognized by Istanbul nor certified by the Empire. Eventually, the “rebellion” spilled over into the literary department, where Jurjī Zaydān, a student of Cornelius Van Dyck’s, was involved. Zaydān would see to it that the speech was published in his journal, al-Muqtaṭaf, of which he was the chief editor.99 The magnitude of this event is gauged by the fact that it is not recorded in Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years, Frederick Bliss’s Reminiscences of Daniel Bliss, or S.B.L. Penrose’s That They May Have Life.100 The absence of this event in these sources suggests both the pain and embarrassment that the event caused the American Syrian Mission. (This is especially the case for Jessup, who had allegedly stepped in to insist on some form of disciplinary action against Edwin Lewis, which finally led to Van Dyck’s own resignation.) Van Dyck’s resignation from the College was not only a result of this one event. However, this one event was more than likely the straw that broke the camel’s back. There had been a growing tension between Van Dyck and some of his colleagues within the administration of the College, now under the auspices of an independent Board of Managers free from control of the ABCFM. In 1880 the administration of the College had decided to change the medium of instruction from Arabic to English. Van Dyck was vehemently opposed to this decision. He alludes to these tensions in his resignation letter:101

The course taken by Dr. Bliss and Dr. Post for some time past in College matters, and the fact that I differ from them radically as to the principles which should guide the Faculty in the management of so important an institution, have led to such a divergence between us, that, finding myself powerless to remedy a state of things which I truly deplore, I can no longer consistently retain my connection with the College.102

99 al-Muqtaṭaf (August 1882). See Thomas Philipp, “Jurji Zaydan’s role in the Syro-Arab Nahda,” in Beshara, 79–90. 100 A.L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria 1800–1901 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 244. 101 It is well known among the Protestant of Lebanon and Syria community that Bliss and Van Dyck did not like each other. Interview with Dr. George Sabra, January 31, 2013. 102 Cornelius Van Dyck, Resignation letter, December 18, 1882. 38 CHAPTER 1

Upon leaving the college, Van Dyck created further animosity with the institution by privately instructing those medical students who had left the College. He then began to offer his services at the Greek Orthodox hospital in Beirut, where he helped to build an additional ward onto the existing hospital building to serve more patients. Van Dyck’s resignation and his subsequent work with the Greek Orthodox Community were even more shocking when, after his death, the Greek Orthodox community erected a bust in his honor in 1899. At this ceremony, members of many different religious sects were present in recognition of the work and dedication of Van Dyck to the people of Syria. This demonstrates his standing and recognition even among the “nominal Christians” of the land. Van Dyck, like Buṭrus al-Bustānī, had a broader vision of their work among the different communities than did the American Mission.

Yūsuf al-Asīr

The final individual associated with the so-called Van Dyck Bible is the Syrian Muslim sheikh Yūsuf al-Asīr (1815–1889). He is the least well known of all the participants in the history of the translation project, but in many ways, he is its most significant. His role in the translation as a Muslim sheikh is an important testimony to the opportunities that were available during the Nahḍa due to the relationships established between the “middle stratum” of literati, and because of the openness of the Islamic Reform period. This research deals mainly with the period of socio-political transformation in Beirut during the late Ottoman Empire as a result of the military occupation by Ibrāhīm Pasha (1832–1840), foreign intervention, and the subsequent transformation of Syrian society. This period of Syrian history provided a social context for the genesis of the Nahḍa until it shifted to Egypt in the late 1870s. The Egyptian interregnum overturned the semi-feudal organization in and around Mount Lebanon, and provided templates for creating community councils (meclis) in which varieties of different religious communities were represented.103 While the Egyptian occupation was transforming Syrian society, there were broader military and political reforms sweeping through the Ottoman Empire. Known as the Tanẓīmāt, these changes were carried out between 1839 and 1876 by the Ottoman Sultan and his leaders. The intention of the political restruc- turings was to re-create the Ottoman Empire from a medieval Muslim empire

103 See David D. Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 65–74. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 39 into a modern Islamic nation-state that could compete with Europe.104 Sultan Abdul Hamid ultimately ended the reform experiment with his annulment of the 1876 constitution and the resulting censorship of published materials. This set in motion the migration of Syrian writers and artists to Cairo in the 1870s and 80s. Within the broader Sunni Muslim community of the Empire, the nineteenth century was a transformative period. It has come to be known as the Islamic Reform period.105 Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muslim sheikhs and scholars began to reflect on the role of Islam and its roots as lived out in the “spirit of the age.”106 In as much as North American Christianity responded to the debates about Darwinism and evolution in the widely pub- licized Scopes Trial in 1925, Muslims responded to Western imperialism and technology with a vigorous examination about the role of religion in a modern world.107 Western dominance provided the impetus for Muslim thinkers as to how to respond to a changing world. Within the Arab world, the Islamic Reform period of Muslim intraflection went hand in hand with the Nahḍa. Muslim writers and artists were able to take advantage of the presence of the establishment of imperial schools, and the growing number of printing presses and journals, all of which provided and created new audiences for these scholars. We will explore the origins and effects of the Arabic Renaissance further in Chapter three. The most important Muslim Reformers during this period were Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) and Rashīd Riḍa (1865–1935).108 Another important Syrian

104 Grafton, 75–77. See Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (New York: Gordian Press, 1973); Carter Vaughn Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Port, 1789–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Moshe Ma‘oz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840–1861: The impact of the Tanzimat on politics and society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). 105 For background in the Muslim thought of the Reform period, specifically in response to the Tanẓīmāt David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and social change in late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 106 Hourani, 276–7. 107 This is, of course, Albert Hourani’s concern in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age; that is, the development of “Islamic Modernism,” its roots, sources and conversations partners, including European science, Nationalism, and Arab Christian thinkers. See, iv–v. 108 Charles C Adams, Islam and modernism in Egypt: A study of the modern reform movement inaugurated by Muhammad ʿAbduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), and Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The political and legal theories of Muhammad ʿAbduh and Rashid Riḍa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), esp. 103–52; 187–208 are still classic studies in nineteenth century Islamic reformist thought. An important Egyptian 40 CHAPTER 1 from Damascus who was thoroughly involved in the Islamic Reform movement was Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (1866–1914).109 Yūsuf al-Asīr, although not as prominent among the larger reforming circles, was nevertheless incredibly influential among Syrian Christians because of his contribution to this Bible translation. While the late twentieth century saw the rise of Islamic radical- ism and the hardening of lines between religious communities in the Middle East, the life of Asīr hearkens back to a day when influential “men of letters” from the “middle stratum” of society in Beirut, regardless of their confessional origin, met and shared ideas.110 Yūsuf al-Asīr is certainly to be noted as the first Muslim to be openly associated with the American Mission. His connection with Van Dyck deserves further research. It is not without consequence that Van Dyck upheld a previous agreement between Smith and Bustānī and politely released the latter from his duties of the translation after Smith’s death. Van Dyck also released Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, the most prominent Christian Arabist of his day. While there is clear justification for such actions, as will be reviewed in Chapter five, Van Dyck then hired Yūsuf al-Asīr. He did this because he wanted a native Arab speaking Muslim without any preconceptions about previous Christian terminology or Arab Christian cultural baggage.111 The choice of Asīr was forward thinking on the part of Van Dyck, as well as representative of a much more open middle- class mentality than the Protestant missionaries may have appreciated. Asīr was born into a middle class Sunni family in Sidon. He received a traditional Muslim education in the madrassa before going to al-Azhār in Cairo, where he focused on the study of kalām and Arabic literature.112 Asīr came of age in the Egypt of Muḥammad ʿAlī. ʿAlī set up schools and an Arabic press to modernize his territory of the Ottoman Empire. ʿAlī was responsible for sending several cohorts of young Egyptian Muslims to Europe to learn all they could about modern scientific methods of military warfare. These students brought back some of the best French and Italian Enlightenment literature, which fil- tered its way not only through the military barracks but into al-Azhār as well. After Asīr’s studies, he came back from Egypt and served as a mufti in Tripoli, and then as the Mufti of Acre. His keen mind was soon discovered and he was sent to the new Ottoman Teachers College in Istanbul, one of the new

Muslim reflection on ʿAbduh is: ʿAbbās Maḥmūd ʿAqqad, ʿAbqarī l-iṣlāḥ wa-l-taʿlīm, al- ustadh al-imām Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1969). 109 David Commins, “Reformers and Arabists in Damascus, 1885–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 4 (1986), pp. 405–25. 110 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 15–26. 111 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 29. 112 Abu-Ghazaleh, 40. Contested Origins And Contested Contributions 41 government Tanẓīmāt schools, where he held the Chair of Arabic literature for three years. He came back to Beirut when he began working with the American Mission in 1858, first on the Bible translation, and then teaching at the Syrian Protestant College as a professor of Arabic.113 Asīr was also a founding member of the Muslim Jamʿiyyat al-funūn [The Arts Society], along with Saʿid Ḥamāda, Ibrāhīm al-Aḥdab, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qabbānī. He would also become the editor of Qabbānī’s newspaper Thamarāt al-funūn [Fruits of the Arts].114 As a literati, Asīr was committed to the literary renaissance and seemingly had no difficulty working with the Protestants. This is evidenced by the fact that the Muslim sheikh contributed several hymns for the hymnbook of the new Protestant Church: lil-Rabb majd fī l-masāʾ, Ya-Masīḥ al-rabb, Yā Yasūʿ Ism al-duʿāī and ʿAẓm al-jibāl.115 A review of these hymns displays an interesting perspective on inter-faith relationships between Christians and Muslims during the Nahḍa and the common theological and social ideas in which at least one Muslim found opportunities to explore common ground.

ʿAẓm al-jibāl (#461)

The greatest mountains and the widest seas, Were made from sand and rain. From small seeds were the trees created And from seconds the longest ages. Such are our sins, though small they be, Cause misfortunes that corrupt the pure. The seed of charity from the hand of youn ones; From you my Lord are given as fruit to people.

Asīr’s association with, and contribution to, the newly emerging Protestant community in Beirut gives credence to what Abdulrazzak Patel calls the “interreligious cultural space” of the Naḥda.116 Now that we have introduced the important individuals in this story, we shall introduce the broader narrative of the American Syrian Mission.

113 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 41. 114 Cheikho, Majānī al-ādāb, vol. 2, 75–77. 115 Kitāb al-tāranīm al-rūḥiyya (Beirut: American Mission Press, 1949). Thank you to Salam Hanna for alerting me to these hymns, and to Dr. George Sabra for assistance in the translation. 116 Abdulrazzak Patel, The Arab naḥdah: The making of the intellectual and humanist movement (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 36. CHAPTER 2 The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools and the Press

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, mission to the Holy Lands had become an obsession for American evangelicals who were driven by a spiritual zeal to occupy Jerusalem. The American missionaries were not alone in their missionary commitment to recover the Holy Lands, nor would they be the last Protestant missionary society to set its heart on establishing the Kingdom of God on earth in Jerusalem. In fact, the Americans would look to their immediate Protestant predecessors for guidance and assistance. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) had already begun its Mediterranean Mission in 1815. William Jowett, the first missionary of the CMS, had traversed West Asia and published his findings in Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815–1820.1 The Basel Mission Society had also sent Christopher Burckhardt to Jerusalem in 1818. The New England Evangelicals, however, added their own particular stamp on Christian mission history. The Americans emitted a confident, if not naïve, frontier spirit that had previously tamed the New England wilderness and now turned this spirit outward toward the Ottoman Empire.2 They did not only carry with them a firm conviction in the Gospel of Jesus Christ or in the necessity of some kind of conversion experience or process; but they were also armed with the memory of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop’s calling to be the “city on the hill.” They understood their place in the New World as proof of providential favor. Building on Perry Miller’s influential phrase “errand to the wilderness” that described this New England self-identification, William Hutchison labeled this American spiritual frontier mentality turned outward as an “errand to the world.” The American experience of carving out a Calvinist “city on a hill” in the New World of New England provided fuel for the spiritual fire for the “transporting of a message and witness to unknown, possibly fearsome, and uncivilized places.”3 This activism did not only anticipate the coming millennium when they believed

1 This first volume would be followed by Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land in 1823 and 1824 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1825 and 1826). 2 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 69. 3 William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant thought and foreign missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 5.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi ��.��63/9789004307100_003 The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 43 that Christ would return and usher in the end times, but provided impetus to undertake the necessary activity to move history forward toward this end goal. There was no place more ideal for a future “city on a hill” than Jerusalem itself. No person affected the American theological and missionary landscape of the eighteenth century more than the New England preacher Jonathan Edwards. His biography of David Brainerd, missionary to the Cherokee Native Americans, captured the hearts and imaginations of born again Christians during the colonial revivals. This biography was standard reading for students at Andover Theological Seminary in Boston, the mecca of Congregationalist pietists. It was from Andover Newton that the ABCFM, the first voluntary American mission association, would look to send out its young men to the far corners of the world to take part in a “great harvest.” Edwards was one of the leading contributors to the American experience of the First Great Awakening, which took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. A Second Great Awakening at the end of the eighteenth century, led by Edward’s colleague, the Congregationalist Samuel Hopkins, directed his hearers to repentance and action in preparation for the return of Christ. Christians were to divest themselves of all worldly interest and to give all for Christ, which became known as “distinterested benevolence.” Millennialist interpretations of the Christian scriptures also began to take on popularity during this evangelical movement. Revivalist preachers used passages from Daniel and Revelation to interpret world history and predict the Second Coming of Jesus, who would rule on earth for a millennium. It was Jerusalem, the place of his crucifixion and resurrection, to which Jesus would ultimately return. Thus, according to millennial piety, Jerusalem was seen as “the centre of the world.”4 Therefore, it was to Jerusalem that the Americans would go to preach the Gospel ready to give up their lives to the cause. But unlike other places around the world that were filled with the “heathen” and their barbaric ways, Jerusalem and the Orient was the home of the Abrahamic faiths. The “stubborn” Jew would be restored to Jerusalem, the “fanatic” Muslim would be overthrown, and the “ignorant” Oriental Christian would come to accept the Gospel, free from the trappings of Tradition and Popery. In 1818, the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM voted to send its two first missionaries to the Middle East with a goal toward establishing a station in Jerusalem, Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons were charged with enlightening the “nominal” Christians of the Near East, who would then evangelize among

4 Salibi and Khoury, eds., The Missionary Herald 18 (1822), 19. See Yehoshua Ben-Arieh and Moshe Davis eds., Jerusalem in the mind of the Western world, 1800–1948 (West Port, Conn.: Praeger, 1997). 44 CHAPTER 2 the Jews and Muslims.5 In his commissioning sermon at the Park-Street Church in Boston, 1819, Levi Parsons cried out

Surely the day so long desired by the people of God is beginning to dawn! The darkness and gloom of this long and dismal night are retiring before the light of truth. The blessed Gospel has commenced its gradual, yet irre- sistible progress. The Holy Spirit is carrying on among them [the Jews] a work of grace. The sacred Scriptures are circulated, and received, with the most animating prospect of success. Jewish children are receiving a Christian education; and are thus secured from the most bitter prejudices against the name of Jesus.

In addition, in his sermon at the Old South Church in Boston on the very same day Pliny Fisk chimed in

All these sects, though they call themselves Christian, are still destitute almost entirely of the Scriptures, and deplorably ignorant of real Christi- anity. They embrace probably more than half the population of the whole country. Are not churches that are more highly favored, under some obligation to provide pastors and Bibles for their benighted brethren?6

However, the American missionaries did not only set out to bring the truth of the Gospel to the perishing world, but in the words of the Prudential Committee chairman Rufus Anderson, the New England Missionaries of the ABCFM were bringing truth, liberty and progress.

The whole mingled population [of the Orient] is in a state of deplorable ignorance and degradation, destitute of the means of divine knowledge, and bewildered with vain imaginations and strong delusions.7

Upon her arrival in Beirut in 1834, Sarah Lanman Smith, one of the early ABCFM female missionaries, and Eli Smith’s first wife, described her evangelical Protestant missionary calling in a similar vein as “arising from the ignorance

5 Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 15. 6 Levi Parsons, “The Dereliction and Restoration of the Jews,” and Pliny Fisk, “The Holy Land an Interesting Field of Missionary Enterprise,” in Holy Land Missions and Missionaries, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 16 and 28, respectively. 7 Prudential Committee Report of 1819, as cited in Khalaf, “Protestant Images of Islam,” 211. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 45 and deceit of a population destitute of that civil and religious freedom, furnished only by the diffusion of God’s word.”8 This chapter will review the presence of the American missionaries in Syria, giving particular attention to their method of mission work. The focus of this chapter will be on evangelistic work through the distribution of Christian Scriptures, the founding of schools, and the establishment of the American Mission Press in Beirut. These last two methods, education and publications, served as the basis of their cultural interaction with Syrian society and the claim that their work contributed to the nineteenth century Arabic literary renaissance. Our primary interest will be the impact of this work on the culture of the late Ottoman Empire in a tumultuous nineteenth century.

Evangelism through Preaching and Bible Distribution

After spending time in Malta to meet with William Jowett, the chief missionary of the CMS, Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk headed to Smyrna, a major seaport of the Ottoman Empire that had already seen its share of American merchants and traders.9 Thus, it is no accident the missionaries chose this port to begin their journey. The cosmopolitan city of Smyrna allowed for easy access to the Ottoman Empire and a safe place for the missionaries to set up their own oper- ations, relying on the good will of both American and British expatriates. The first American merchant to reach the Ottoman Empire appears to have been A. Perkins from Boston, who arrived in Alexandretta in 1676.10 By the time Parsons and Fisk arrived, however, there were at least two well-established New England trading houses in Smyrna. The Offley and Langdon families of Boston had set up an international import-export business, dealing mostly in Chinese opium and American Rum. On his arrival in 1830, Eli Smith had less than flattering reflections for his fellow New Englanders:

You may suppose that we were gratified to meet the productions of our own country in this commercial market. . . . In the first caravanserai we entered, the day after reaching Tiflis, we stumbled upon a hogshead of New England rum! What a reproof to the Christians of America that, in

8 Edward W. Hooker, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith (Boston, 1840), 182. 9 See Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776– 1815 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995); A.L. Tibawa, American Interests in Syria, 9. 10 David Finne, Pioneers East: The early American experience in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 25. 46 CHAPTER 2

finding fields of labor for their missionaries, they should allow themselves to be anticipated by her merchants, in finding a market for their poisons! When shall the love of souls cease to be a less powerful motive of enterprise than the love of gain?11

Setting their moral and pious sensitivities aside, the first ABCFM missionaries settled themselves in this busy naval mercantile center attempting to learn Greek. From Smyrna, Parsons made his way to Jaffa and then to Jerusalem, arriving in 1821. He visited with the important ecclesiastical leaders, who received him warmly if not inquisitively. Parsons stayed for only a short while in Jerusalem before returning to Smyrna. The travels took their toll on Parsons who became weak and contracted a fever. The two Americans then decided to move to Alexandria where the climate was drier during the winter. Nevertheless, Parsons died shortly after his arrival there. Between 1822 and 1824 Pliny Fisk took up an itinerant life, moving from the CMS center in Malta, to Beirut and then Jerusalem with several other missionaries from the CMS and the London Jews Society.12 In 1824, he returned to Jerusalem once again, this time with a new ABCFM recruit, Isaac Bird. Their primary objective was to preach and pass out religious tracts to the Greek and Armenian Christians. However, Jerusalem was not the majestic city they presumed it would be, nor were they received with open arms as they had assumed. The Turkish government forbade foreigners from residing in Jerusalem without written permission and they had worn out their welcome with the local Orthodox prelates, who had them arrested for disturbing the peace. It was only due to the intervention of the British Consul that they were freed and sent on their way.13 Because of the hostility they received from Eastern Christian leaders, as well as the realities that Jerusalem was an inhospitable place, off the main supply routes of most other major cities and outside any sphere of British protection from bandits or other social disturbances, they reluctantly decided that the small port at Beirut offered a more suitable staging post. The harbor at Beirut allowed for easy access for merchant ships, supplies, and navies for protection, if needed. Beirut was, then, developing as a mercantile city, link-

11 Eli Smith and H.G.O. Dwight, Researches of the Rev. E. Smith and Rev. H.G.O. Dwight in Armenia; including a journey through Asia Minor, and into Georgia and Persia, with a visit to the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians of Oormiah and Salmas (Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1833), 43; also cited in Finnie, 31. Tiflis is now recognized as modern day Tiblis. 12 Anderson, History of the Missions, 15–21. 13 Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 25. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 47 ing the interior Mount Lebanon and Damascus to the coast and from there on to international markets. In addition, the mountains to the east of the city provided shelter from the summer heat. However, it was here in 1825 that Pliny Fisk succumbed to fever only six years after he left New England. In 1822, the ABCFM sent two missionary couples to the Ottoman Empire. William Goodell and his wife, Abigail Perkins Davis, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Bird set out from New England as the “reinforcements” for Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons. Although the original aim of the Mission had been for the Goodells and the Birds to “occupy” Jerusalem, after the experiences of Fisk and Bird in 1824, they knew that this would not possible. They now decided to set up a formal missionary station in Beirut. Living with the British consul, Mr. Abbott, the two missionary families took up the main task of learning Arabic and Armenian, respectively.14 The Mission records are silent at this point, on whether Mrs. Bird and Goodell engaged in language study. Nevertheless, the women focused their energies among some “neglected children” in the village.15 However, because of the political instabilities of the Greek revolt, the precarious nature of the seaport due to Greek pirates, and the possibility of Ottoman reprisals on foreigners for England’s support of Greek independence and the attack on the Ottoman fleet at Navarino Bay, the American missionaries redeployed back to Malta in 1827. The CMS had chosen Malta, which had been occupied by England in 1819, as a suitable base for their mission work. There they could set up printing presses for their Bibles and tracts and then distribute them throughout the Mediterranean. This decision had a major impact on numerous other mission societies, including the London Jews’ Society (LJS), as well as the ABCFM. Malta became a missionary island in the midst of the Ottoman sea. At this time, the Americans had the opportunity to meet the CMS missionaries Samuel Gobat, Christian Kugler, J.R.T. Lieder, Theodor Müller, and W. Krusé who were sent out to Abyssinia and Egypt, and John Nicolayson of the LJS, going to Jerusalem. It was at this time that the Birds and Goodells were joined by Eli Smith, fresh from Andover Seminary. The official records of the ABCFM celebrate this initial stage of the American Syrian Mission. According to Rufus Anderson, between 1823 and 1827 the Mission had thirteen schools with six hundred students, including one hundred girls.16 A.L. Tibawi, however, has argued that such establishments could

14 E.D.G. Prime, Forty years in the Turkish Empire: memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D. (Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1891), 79. 15 Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 32. 16 Anderson, History of the Missions, 44. 48 CHAPTER 2 hardly be called schools.17 Given the lack of resources and a general infrastructure for establishing an ongoing curriculum, Anderson’s record, which was based upon the missionaries’ letters and reports, must be judged as highly exaggerated. While they may have counted roughly six hundred bodies that had inquired about the schools, actual annual attendance at this point must have been much less. Even if we compare this number with those reported by the ABCFM schools in the Sandwich Islands in 1841, which was near eighteen thousand students, the impact of the Syrian schools at this stage was minimal. It is significant that in the memorial edition celebrating fifty-years of the ABCFM’s missions around the world that the Syrian Mission schools are not mentioned at all.18 As we shall see below, however, the schools would receive much more attention and funding throughout the 1830s. Because the missionaries could not yet preach in the local languages, their primary evangelical focus was distributing Bibles that had been printed in Malta by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). This Bible was the 1671 Arabic Bible translated under the patronage of the Congregatia de Propaganda Fide, the organization within the Vatican responsible for evangelizing among the Eastern Rite churches to bring them back under the fold of Rome. The BFBS edition, however, had been modified by the missionaries, removing the Old Testament Apocrypha, which the Protestants did not consider containing authentic books of the Bible. Naturally, the distribution of this revised version of the Catholic Bible aroused some concern among the local Catholic and Orthodox clergy. Ultimately, the Maronite Patriarch, the Latin Papal Vicar for Syria and Palestine and the Dean of the College of the Congregatia de Propaganda Fide, anathema- tized the newly arrived Americans, who were then under British protection. The Maronite prelate did not take kindly to foreigners using a “corrupt” version of their scriptures. It is worth quoting at length the words of the Patriarch as recorded by Isaac Bird, in Bible Work in Bible Lands.

May the apostolic benediction and heavenly grace descend abundantly and abide community, the Maronites who inhabit the towns and villages in every direction and of every rank and condition; the Lord God bless them. Amen. . . . We inform your love that the artful deceiver and enemy of goodness and enemy of the human race never ceases to inform his deadly poison into the members of the mystical body, . . . This he does

17 Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 64. 18 Rufus Anderson, Memorial Volume of the First Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston, Mass.: Missionary House, 1863), 305. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 49

ILLUSTRATION 1 Title page of 1860 reprint of Biblica Sacra Arabica Sacrae Congregationis de Propagande Fide Issue Edita. Al-Kitāb al-muqaddas bi-l-lisān al-ʿarabī, vol. 1 (Rome: Typis Sacrae Congregatationis de Propagande Fide, 1671), titlepage. Near East School of Theology, Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 50 CHAPTER 2

sometimes by himself and sometimes by means of his followers the heretics, the impious enemies of the Roman Church, the mother and mis- tress of all churches and their guide, that he may thus, by deceits of various kinds, turn Christians astray and lead the simple into error. And now (may God confound him!) he has instigated in these days some persons of the English nation, called Bible men—i.e., followers of the Bible— who have arrived lately in the country, and they have come to the village of Antoora under the character of disseminators of their corrupt faith, clad in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. And they have begun to travel among our community, the Maronites, pretending that they wish to amuse themselves and see the country, but their heart is full of evil and treachery. They bring with them books of the Old Testament and the New, printed in various languages—Syrian, Arabic and others. These also are of different sorts, some of them replete with errors and some of them correct to the parts that are printed, by which they have omitted seven holy and divine books . . . And, not content with all this, they are continually endeavoring to obtain, if possible, some of the children of our people, and send them to their country that they may there drink in the poison of their perni- cious doctrines and return to disseminate it in this country among our people the Maronites.19

The quote, as presented here, is not an attempt to display any form of self- righteousness of the Patriarch and his ignorance of the truth of the Bible in Bird’s eyes. Rather, Bird’s recasting of the Patriarch’s papal bull points out that the American missionaries perceived their work solely in terms of bringing the true Gospel of repentance to individual nominal Christians through the clear written words of the Scriptures, as opposed to the human traditions and sacri- leges of the Roman Church and its hierarchy. It is also important to note here the social context. The “Bible men” were associated not with the Scriptures, but with the “English nation,” and they were dangerous to the “Maronite nation.” In many respects, it was not what they were preaching but how they were preaching. Without regard and respect to traditional culture, the Americans subverted local etiquette by crossing inter-sectarian communal boundaries without seeking permission or guidance from the head of each millet. Rather they went directly to members of each religious community. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch forbade their members,

19 Isaac Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1872), 133. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 51 under penalty of excommunication, from attending American schools or reading tracts and Bibles, which they considered “the poison of heresy” to Greek Orthodox children.20 Coming from their New England Protestant culture where the Bible was utilized as the primer for education, the American missionaries believed that learning to read the Bible was synonymous with moral, ethical, and cultural development. It was the basis to any “civilizing” impulse. The New England Primer that taught American colonists to read and write went hand in hand with its emphasis on the theological categories of individual sin and repentance. Through this educational process, a regenerated Christian was being taught to read the Bible, as well as being schooled in a moral and upright Christian life within society. Once the repentant sinner converted to Christ, their new lives would bear fruit that would become evident in society. The Second Great Awakening in the North American colonies carried with it an educational impulse to affect the spiritual edification and moral progress of the whole person. Historian of the American education system, Lawrence A. Cremin, has noted that the early Republican ideal of education, which was heavily influenced by the New England experience, “consisted of the diffusion of knowledge, the nurturance of virtue (including patriotic civility), and the cultivation of learning.”21 This inculcation of belief, virtue, knowledge and morality was all wrapped up in a process that employed the Bible as the primary text, and was a tightly controlled social atmosphere conducive to educational and religious study. Thus, it was important for the school to provide communal space for living, eating, worship, social activities, as well as classroom instruction.22 This atmosphere would provide the opportunity for a community of pious Christians to work together in support of an industrious and “happy” nation. For example, Archibald Alexander, a prominent North American evangelical theologian, argued in A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion that the social-spiritual development of the Christian faith in individuals contributed to their success and progress as a society.23 His work was an important religious manual among early nineteenth

20 Tibawi, American Interests, 79. 21 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The national experience 1783–1876 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980), 148. 22 Cremin, 406. W. Clark Gilpin, ‘The Creation of a New Order: Colonial Education and the Bible,’ in The Bible in American Education: From source book to textbook, eds. David L. Barr and Nicholas Piediscalzi (Fortress Press: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1982), 9. 23 Archibald Alexander, A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion (Princeton, N.J.: D.A. Borrenstein, 1825). 52 CHAPTER 2 century American religious leaders. This cultural educational perspective is reflected in the reports of the Mission to the Prudential Committee, where in 1836 they voted that: “Instruction in the principles of Christianity shall occupy a prominent place amongst their studies during the whole course, and the Bible alone shall be the basis of their religious education.”24 The American missionaries brought with them to Syria the intuitive belief that in learning to read the Bible the Syrian would inevitably become a successful, productive, and enlightened Christian.

Protestant—Catholic Relations

The Maronite Patriarch’s papal bull recorded above demonstrates one of the important difficulties that would face American Protestant work in Syria, that is, the tenuous and acrimonious relations with the Latin Catholic and Maronite Church representatives. From the very beginning of the American Protestant enterprise to the Ottoman Empire, the missionaries were instructed to enlighten the Oriental Churches of the East so they might ultimately carry the true light to the “Mohammedans.” Rufus Anderson put it this way:

We may not hope for the conversion of the Mohammedans, unless true Christianity be exemplified before them by the Oriental Churches. To them the native Christians represent the Christian religion, and they see that these are no better than themselves. . . . It is vain to say, that the native Christians have so far departed from the truth that they do not feel the power of the Gospel, and that therefore the immorality of their lives is not to be attributed to its influence. The Mohammedan has seen no other effect of it, and he cannot be persuaded to read the Bible to correct the evidence of his observation, and perhaps also of his own painful experience. Hence a wise plan of the conversion of the Mohammedans of Western Asia necessarily involved, first, a mission to the Oriental Churches.25

Anderson’s ruminations on the work of the ABCFM in the Ottoman Empire reflect four implicit assumptions of the American Syrian Mission. First, the ultimate goal was converting Muslims. Because it was illegal to preach in public, unlike in the other contexts in which the ABCFM had sent missionaries,

24 Tibawi, American Interests, 83. 25 Anderson, History of the Missions, 1. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 53 the Americans undertook what Lyle Vander Werff calls the indirect “via Eastern Churches” method of Muslim evangelism.26 It would only be through an enlightened Oriental Church that Muslims would be able to experience the Gospel in their own culture. The second underlying assumption of the American Syrian Mission was that Oriental Christian immorality was directly connected with a lack of commitment to a true evangelical Christian lifestyle. This was tied to their own experience from New England. The third assumption, closely linked to the previous one, was that only through teaching and preaching the Bible could the missionaries produce contrite conversions to the Gospel. A fourth underlying assumption of the ABCFM’s mission work was a particular American Protestant disdain for the “Romish Church.” Because the Protestant tradition had its origin in a tumultuous separation from the Latin Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, most of the Protestant communities in Europe held on to their pejorative views of the “superstitions” of the Latin Catholic Church. While Martin Luther never held back his invective tongue against the Roman Pope, American Protestants developed an additional contempt for the Papal Throne, that is, the belief in its despotic character. It is for this reason the American missionaries focused on the indigenous Oriental Churches of the Ottoman Empire and held the Latin Church and its missionaries in contempt. In fact, the Americans would find it more palatable to take up work among the heretical “Nestorian” Church of the East than among the Latins.27 The Americans, as well as the British from the CMS, wasted little time resur- recting the Protestant-Catholic acrimonious relationship in their work among the communities of the Ottoman Empire. They believed the missionary activity of the Latin Catholic missionary orders (for example, the Dominicans, Lazarists, and the Jesuits) were the chief obstacle to their own mission. In addition, the Maronite Patriarch symbolized the worst of Oriental despotism and Catholic “popery” and was responsible for keeping his people mired in ignorance. The initial controversy over the distribution of the “error filled” Protestant Bible, which we have already reviewed above, was only the first of three early controversies that set the tone of Protestant-Catholic relations in Syria. The second controversy between the American Protestants and the Maronite Catholics occurred two years later, in 1825, when the fiery missionary Jonas King penned his Waḍāʿ, what has come to be known as his “Farewell Letter,”

26 Lyle L. Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims: The Record (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2000), 102. 27 Anderson, History of the Missions, 164–223. 54 CHAPTER 2 on the eve of his departure from Syria to work in Greece. King, another of the early Andover graduates, arrived in Syria in 1822 as the replacement to Parsons who had just recently died. King had been in Paris studying eastern languages when he received a request for his missionary services. In Paris, he had displayed a keen ability of speaking several languages, and was appointed as the Professor of Oriental Languages at Amherst College. However, he never took up that position. Rather, he agreed to a three-year contract with the ABCFM to work in Syria, having raised money for his salary through the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Despite his public uncompromising belief in evangelical Christianity, King had managed to befriend a good number of Maronite ecclesiastics, as well as the young student from the ʿAyn Waraqa, Asʿad Shidyāq, during his first months in Syria. This was because of his gregarious and forth- right nature. He was well known for speaking and writing what was on his mind. After the initial three years, King decided to leave Syria and head to Greece to begin a mission there during the Greek War of Independence. In conversation with his Maronite interlocutors, King wrote his “Farewell Letter” stating his positions of why he could never be a Catholic. The letter included thirteen objections to Catholicism. Some of the most important objections included the primacy of the Pope, the merits of the saints, the authorization of the “persecution and extermination of Protestants,” and that the Roman church forbade its members from reading the Bible.28 King asked his newly found friend, Asʿad Shidyāq, to polish up the Arabic letter before it was sent to the Maronite Patriarch. According to Henry Jessup, it was in his editing of King’s letter that Shidyāq became convinced of the truths of the evangelical faith and converted.29 King’s epistle was popular among the Protestant missionaries in Syria. The letter was seen as the new evangelical manifesto. It was published and then circulated in Arabic. Of course, the letter drew a critical response from Buṭrus Abū Karam, the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, as well as from the Syrian Catholic Patriarch Buṭrus VII. It is possible that Buṭrus Abū Karam was publicly responding because he felt he needed to clear his reputation. It was rumoured he did have Protestant sympathies, which he developed after a visit to England, and because of his association with William Jowett of the CMS. Nevertheless, the letter became a flash point of controversy, drawing clear lines in the sand between the two communities. While King did make important theological

28 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 39–40; Jonas King, The Oriental Church and the Latin (New York: John A. Gray & Green Publishers, 1865), 13–33. An Arabic version of the “Farewell letter,” or “Positions of Jonas King to his friends in Palestine and Syria,” is found in the ABCFM Archives, MS Arab 67. 29 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 40. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 55 arguments, the manifesto’s most important impact was that it made a direct attack on the authority of the Oriental Catholic prelates and their power over their own flock.30 This was not perceived by the prelates as an opportunity for two individual theologians to debate the truth, but their authority was at stake, and thus the honor of their community. The final controversy between the American missionaries and the Maronites was a direct result of King’s “Farewell letter.” As mentioned above, Jessup would claim that it was Shidyāq’s reading of the letter that provoked his conversion to the evangelical faith. His conversion would draw the ire of the Maronite Patriarch, who called the young man to the Papal seat in Qannubīn so he might account for himself and recant of his new faith. Patriarch Yūsuf Ḥubaysh imprisoned Shidyāq for his insubordination, when he refused. In 1827, under custody of the Maronite Patriarch, he died. The manner and cause of his death is still debated. The death of Shidyāq created the longest lasting rift between the Protestants and the Maronite community with the Latin Catholic missionary orders. For the Protestant missionaries, Asʿad Shidyāq became the first Protestant convert and martyr to the true faith, while the Latins and Maronites saw the missionaries as a dangerous moral and spiritual threat to their communities. The story of his “martyrdom” first appeared in a serialized fashion in the ABCFM newsletter, the Missionary Herald in 1826, and throughout his captivity in 1827 and 1828. Thus, Americans who read the news of the Herald were able to follow along in the details of the episode as it was unfolding. After Aʿsad’s death, the story was retold in A Memoir of Asaad esh Shidiak; An Arab young man of the Maronite Roman Catholic Church, in Syria by Isaac Bird and Henry Harris Jessup in 1827. The story was once again recounted by Isaac Bird in his work, Martyr of Lebanon in 1864, and still again in Henry Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years in Syria. Ussama Makdisi has reviewed the historiography of the American Syrian Mission related to this account, and remarks that

the Americans deliberately crafted a narrative of his martyrdom that bore little resemblance to the history and context within which Asʿad had met his wretched fate. . . . Both the early evangelical and later, modern versions of the story were calculated to translate American moral, spiritual, and cultural superiority over the East, presumably felt by American readers, into continued support for the missionary enterprise to the East.31

30 Tibawi, American Interests, 37–8. 31 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 141, 203. Makdisi’s work compares the role of the missionary literature with story as told and published by Buṭrus al-Bustānī in Qiṣṣāt Asʿad al-Shidyāq 56 CHAPTER 2

The early antagonistic views of the American missionaries did not set a positive tone for future work in the region. These three controversies would set the stage for the fractured Protestant-Catholic rift in Syria (which would not be overcome until 1990 when the Oriental Catholic churches joined the Middle East Council of Churches, sitting at the same table as the Protestant churches of Syria and Lebanon). As time went on, however, the American Syrian Mission recognized its mistakes and intentionally avoided any public controversy with the Maronite Patriarch or the Latin Catholic missionaries, even though they still considered them an obstacle to their work. This anti-Catholic predisposition was certainly the reason that Henry Jessup did not mention Cornelius Van Dyck’s work with the Greek Orthodox community after his resignation from the American Syrian Protestant College in 1882.32 The event was simply too painful and embarrassing. While the American missionaries believed that their confrontation with the Latin Catholic missionaries and the Maronite Patriarch was a struggle for theological truth, they did not fully grasp the socio-political context in which they were working. While many of the Oriental Catholic church leaders were willing to listen to the merits of the missionaries’ arguments on doctrine and the Bible, the prelates and bishops could not allow the foreigners to gain access to their own flocks for which they were responsible within the larger Ottoman social millet system. It was this all-pervasive social identity, to which the Americans were at first oblivious, that created tension between the local communities and the Americans’ view of religious education.

Establishing Schools

In 1821, the year that Levi Parsons and Pliny Smith arrived in the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks commenced their war of independence from Ottoman rule. The American Syrian Mission whole-heartedly supported this revolt of “liberty” for Christians against a “despotic” Muslim empire. The revolt, however, would dramatically affect the Mission. In October 1827, the Greek revolt spilled over into an international incident because of European interests as part of

(1860). Makdisi remarks that for al-Bustānī, Asʿad’s “embrace of Protestantism, and his persecution . . . underscored the deliberate individual choices made by both Asʿad and his Maronite contemporaries” in protest of blind obedience to “tradition” as part of the revival of Arabic culture and movement toward a modern Arab society (200). The tragic tale was one of blind obedience to tradition and authority, and not Catholic superstition. 32 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 666. This story will be explored in Chapter five below. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 57 the “Eastern Question.” French, British, and Russian ships collaborated in a devastating attack on and defeat of the entire Turkish fleet in Navarino Bay. Fears of reprisals against British subjects within the Ottoman Empire, under whose protection the American missionaries were, prompted their transfer to Malta. Malta had been the original site of the Anglican CMS Mediterranean Mission and was still the site of both the BFBS and the ABCFM printing presses. Thus, Malta seemed the best and easiest choice for relocating. It served as a major Christian missionary port throughout the nineteenth century, as it was close to Italy and France and was occupied by Britain. It was from here that the American missionaries distributed copies of the Bible published in Hebrew, Greek, Armenian and Turkish, as well as other religious literature in Arabic. During this period of waiting in Malta, the American missionaries took the opportunity to evaluate the previous six years of missionary work and developed a new strategy. The Americans realized that their knowledge of the local languages was inadequate for effective itinerant preaching. In addition, public preaching, which had been a mainstay of most ABCFM missionary work in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Africa, was not socially or legally acceptable in the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Rather, they had thus far opened several small schools to teach young Syrian boys the Bible. They now decided to focus on establishing a school system to create an indigenous evangelical community of committed Christians. This initiative was placed under the leadership of Isaac Bird and the newcomer George Whiting. In addition, the Mission decided that if the printing press was to be successful, they needed to begin printing their own material in Arabic. A young Eli Smith, who had arrived fresh after graduat- ing from Andover in 1826, was called by the Prudential Committee and sent to Malta to assist the work of the printing press for this specific purpose. However, Smith would only remain in Malta for less than a year before he traveled to Cairo and then Beirut for Arabic language study. After a short stay, he continued his travels, accompanying Rufus Anderson to Greece to explore options for the ABCFM there. He then continued with another sojourn, this time to Persia to explore opportunities for a mission to the Nestorians. When the Americans finally returned to Beirut from Malta in 1830, they began to enact their plan for Bible-based schools. By 1834, they had opened six schools and by 1835 they had ten, including a boarding school for boys in Beirut.33 Several new missionaries joined the Mission in Beirut, including Eli Smith and his first wife Sarah Lanham Smith. Of course, there were already established schools in Syria at the time. There were traditional Ottoman Sunni katātīb schools throughout the major cities of

33 Antakly, 73; Tibawi, American Interests, 80. 58 CHAPTER 2

Syria that focused on memorization of the Qurʾan. The Christians too had their own confessional schools, the most prominent being those of the Maronites and those set up by the Latin Catholic missionary orders. The most important Maronite institution of learning was that of ʿAyn Waraqa. The Maronite College in Rome, which had been established in 1584, educated some of the brightest Maronite patriarchs and bishops. As a result of this, throughout the eighteenth century a strand of Maronite educators returned from Rome to open schools in Ḥūqā, Bqarqāshā, ʿAyn Ṭūrā and Zghartā. At the end of the century, Maronite Patriarch Yūsuf Isṭifān had opened the seminary at ʿAyn Waraqa, which would go on to produce a number of very important scholars, including Buṭrus al-Busṭānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they opened other schools in Kafarḥay and Rūmiyya. The Greek Catholic community also had its own school at ʿAyn Trāz and the Greek Orthodox opened their seminary at Balamand in 1833.34 While Emir Bashīr al-Shihābī’s rule (1788–1840) did provide stability for a cultural revival in Mount Lebanon, the territory under his rule, society still func- tioned along feudal lines. Thus, these Christian schools had a limited impact, being open only to the sons of sheikhs and landed nobility. The Maronite College did produce graduates who would return to provide important leadership for their communities. However, Kamal Salibi is correct in his assertion that it “would be wrong to imagine that, before the nineteenth century, the establishment of Maronite [or Greek] schools in Lebanon had led to any general spread of literacy or advanced knowledge in the country.”35 Rather, it was not until the Egyptian invasion of Syria in 1832, which involved the political impact of Ibrāhīm Pasha’s social reforms and European interest in the “Eastern Question,” that there would be a significant impact on society as a whole. As luck would have it, the American missionaries had positioned themselves in Beirut at this important historic juncture. The Egyptian invasion of Syria and its short interregnum jump-started the Nahḍa in Syria. Ibrāhīm Pasha’s economic, administrative, and social reforms had a stabilizing affect on civic life and encouraged the development of schools. As Moshe Maʿoz has stated,

34 Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 125–26. 35 Salibi, Modern History, 125. See also Boutros Labaki, Education et Mobilité Sociale Dans la Société Multicommunautaire du Liban (Frankfurt: Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, 1988). The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 59

. . . under the rule of Ibrāhīm Pasha, the Syrian population enjoyed for the first time considerable security of life and property, greater justice and opportunity for legal redress, and a more equable system of taxation. The public security which was established in the countryside and along the roads made it possible for agriculture and commerce to flourish.36

It was Ibrāhīm Pasha’s reformist rule that led to the downfall of the feudal system and created the opportunity for the rise of inter-confessional politics. District councils were established in which representatives of the major religious communities were given vote and voice. This was a radical change from the traditional feudal system of the classical Islamic legal system.37 While new local administrative councils did not create confessional equality (Jews and especially Protestants suffered from lack of representation due to their low numbers), it did provide opportunity for each religious community to take some matters into their own hands, including establishing their own schools.38 George Antonius has correctly posited, “had it not been for Ibrāhīm Pasha’s reforms in the sphere of education—foreign missions could not have made the inroads they did into the structure of Syrian society. His changes caused sufficient changes to allow foreign missions a genuine chance.”39 With the arrival of Ibrāhīm Pasha in Syria in 1832, Syrian society began to change dramatically, and traditional feudal society in and around Mount Lebanon began to fall apart.40 Ibrāhīm Pasha created administrative councils (meclis) that consisted of leading representatives from different communities. This provided both an opportunity and desire for various communities, the Druze and Greek Orthodox specifically, for greater self-rule and control. Previously, power had been in the hands of the traditional landowners. He also supported and facilitated the growth of international commerce, mainly through the silk trade, which attracted more European merchants. This created a sudden rise in opportunities, especially among the Maronites, Greek Catholics, and Greek Orthodox. As the new merchants arrived, they sought

36 Maʿoz, Ottoman Reform, 15. 37 David D. Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon: Political Rights in Islamic Law (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), 67–8. 38 Protestant missionaries complained often about the resources that the other religious communities received from their European sponsors. See David D. Grafton, “The First Lutheran Missionaries in the Church Missionary Society in Palestine: 1851–1898,” Aram 25 (2013). 39 Antonius, 35. 40 Khalaf, 114. 60 CHAPTER 2 out coreligionists to serve as their intermediaries and business partners. This provided the opportunity for the foreign powers to exploit their interests with their newly adopted minority communities. For example, Maronite Catholic missions had been supported by the French, Greek Orthodox projects were funded by the Russians, and the Druze communities backed by the British. The Ottoman Sultan, Maḥmūd II (1808–1839), also organized various administrative councils within the Ottoman governmental system, which supported this semi-autonomous political confessional structure. His rule initiated an Empire- wide series of military, political, and legal reforms known as the Tanẓīmāt.41 Samir Khalaf is correct that the Egyptian invasion in 1832, and then the re-establishment of central Ottoman authority with the help of the Western powers in 1840, challenged the old feudal system of conflict and confrontation between landowners of various confessions, particularly Maronite and Druze. “[I]ntermittent feuds, personal and factional rivalry between bickering feudal chieftains and rival families vying for a greater share of power and privilege in society” was now transformed into inter-confessional conflict in what was to become known as Lebanon.42 By 1840, high taxation rates and mandatory conscription by Ibrāhīm Pasha brought confessional loyalties to the fore. The Druze, resentful of the rise of Maronite and Greek power, took up arms. This sectarian conflict was all the excuse that Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia needed. They combined with Ottoman forces to oust Ibrāhīm Pasha. Southern Syria was opened up to direct European influence. Building on the previous meclis scheme, the European powers also cemented a new representative governmental system on the territories of Mount Lebanon among the Maronites, Druze, and Greeks. Between 1842 and 1860 Mount Lebanon was organized according to a structure in which each religious community had a representative to the Ottoman governor of Syria, known as the qāiʾmaqāmiyya.43 Ultimately, as each religious community flexed its own political and economic muscles within a geographically and economically limited region, inter-sectarian bitterness rose. This led to several Druze and Maronite conflicts in 1842, 1845 and especially 1860 where the hostility quickly spilled out of Mount Lebanon to Dayr al-Qamār, Zahlé, and over to Damascus where Christians were massacred by mobs of Sunnis. The

41 Stanford J. Shaw, “The Central Legislative Councils in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Reform Movement before 1876,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan., 1970), 51–84. 42 Samir Khalaf, “Communal Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Lebanon,” in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews, 107. 43 Grafton, 72–3. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 61 work of the American Mission was interrupted by these Maronite-Druze civil wars. The scouring of much of Mount Lebanon by armed militias prompted the immediate intervention of the foreign powers, including the Austrians, and British, as well as the Ottomans who sought to re-establish order.44 Many of the missionary schools were disrupted and closed, only to be re-opened and then closed once again. In addition, the mission suffered from financial difficulties faced by the Prudential Committee during a recession in the United States.45 The French responded to this last outbreak of violence in 1860 by landing troops in Beirut in order to protect minorities. The British followed suit by sending their own troops. The Ottomans, who naturally wanted to maintain their own imperial control, attempted to force another political and administrative re-structuring of Mount Lebanon. They sent the minister Fuʾād Pasha to quell the violence. However, an international commission was quickly put together by the interested European nations that forced the creation of another new political structure. The mutaṣarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon was developed as an autonomous unit that encompassed all the various religious communities, whose Ottoman Governor was to be a non-Lebanese Christian Ottoman reporting directly to the Porte in Istanbul. For the first time in Ottoman history, a Christian governor was recognized as the senior political officer.46 The mutaṣarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon was clearly created because of European pressure on the Ottoman Empire to both modernize and protect its minority populations. Because of their investment in the local minority communities, interest in Syrian markets, as well as the need to continue to keep up with the imperial politics of the “Eastern Question,” Austria, Britain, France, and Prussia all devoted considerable political consular attention to Syria, and the interior Mount Lebanon. The focus of these dramatic political events centered on the port of Beirut. It was within this tumultuous period that the American missionaries, whose mission headquarters was now in Beirut, found themselves amidst larger international issues. They were now able to carve out their own recognized communal space in a changing Syrian society and a rapidly modernizing international port. Within this complex international system, the American missionaries had no American diplomatic protection, and thus, relied on support from the British consul in Beirut. Nevertheless, the ABCFM continued to export more missionaries to organize and staff their schools. A.L. Tibawi notes the focus of the missionary schools was a product of Rufus Anderson’s insistence that

44 Salibi, Modern History of Lebanon, 43. 45 Antakly, 82. 46 Grafton, 80. 62 CHAPTER 2 education was specifically for the purpose of spiritual conversion.47 Anderson was the driving force behind the official mission policy of the American Syrian Mission. However, he would eventually come to loggerheads with the Syrian missionaries over this policy. Anderson writes:

Education, schools, the press, and whatever else goes to make up the working system, are held in strict subordination to the planting and building up of effective working churches. But though held strictly in such subordination, we see in it the utmost latitude for the exercise of a wise discretion in the conduct of missions. The governing object to be always aimed at, is self-reliant, effective churches. . . . The use of schools and the press comes under the question, how far they are subservient to the great end, namely the rapid and perfect development of churches.48

Conflicting views on Christian mission impacted the relationship of the Prudential Committee with its most seasoned veterans, especially Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck.49 Anderson insisted that resources should only be committed to those activities that brought about spiritual edification. The missionaries in Beirut saw this as a short-sighted policy.50 They believed that any effective mission would have to provide broader educational opportunities for any new adherents of the Protestant community. In 1846, the American Syrian Mission focused its energy on opening a seminary to train future Protestant leaders. This seminary, located in Abeih, was originally organized and run by Cornelius Van Dyck and Buṭrus al-Busṭānī. By 1858 there were thirty additional schools, with plans for a female seminary in Sūq al-Gharb.51 With Anderson at the helm of the Prudential Committee, there was a constant struggle over the focus of Christian education. Yet, while there was pressure from the ABCFM to focus on spiritual matters and the raising up of an

47 Tibawi, American Interests, 64. 48 R. Pierce Beaver, To Advance the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Rufus Anderson (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), 99. 49 This policy debate over the schools was not only limited to the Syrian Mission. For an excellent review of this see Cemal Yetkiner, ‘At the Center of the Debate: Bebek Seminary and the Educational Policy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1840–1860)’, in Sharkey and Doğan, 63–83. 50 See here the very helpful chapter by Marwa Elshakry, “The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism,” in Sharkey and Doğan, esp. 174–77 where she reviews the debate over the role of education in evangelism. 51 Tibawi, American Interests, 143. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 63 indigenous Arab evangelical church, by 1840 there were dramatic challenges from English, French, Prussian, Russian, and Scottish missions targeting their own variously adopted communities within the Levant.52 In addition, local Syrian communities began to found their own indigenous schools.53 If the Americans wished to preserve even their own primary educational endeavors, they would need to provide a curriculum that included some form of broader secular education.54 There was no escaping this fact in the new Syria after 1860. These social and political conditions would lead to the consideration by the American missionaries in 1862 to petition the Prudential Committee for the creation of a school of higher learning that promoted a liberal arts education. Naturally, under Anderson’s leadership, the committee rejected this petition. The American Board’s Prudential Committee understood this to be outside the role of the evangelical mission to preach and teach the Word of God, and refused to participate or support the endeavor. Their decision led to an inevitable break between the missionaries and the ABCFM. In 1865, the Mission association voted to “go it alone” and create an independent board to support a Syrian Protestant College. It would open the following year under the presi- dency of one of the American missionaries, Daniel Bliss.55 The College was to provide a broad-based Christian liberal arts education, including a new medical and science department.56 The Syrian Protestant College, along with the French St. Joseph University originally founded by the Jesuits in 1875, would become the most important progressive institutions in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Arab Middle East. While it may be a coincidence that Rufus Anderson resigned as the General Secretary of the Prudential Committee in 1866 the same year the Syrian Protestant College opened in Beirut, it is not surprising. He had argued vehemently against mission as any kind of civilizing

52 See Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); John P. Spagnolo, France and Ottoman Lebanon 1861–1914 (Oxford: Ithica Press, 1977); Mordechai Eliav, “German Interests and the Jewish Community in Nineteenth Century Palestine,” in Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, ed. Moshe Ma‘oz (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 423–41; Martin Tamcke and Michael Marten, Christian witness between continuity and new beginnings: Modern historical missions in the Middle East (Münster: Piscataway, N.J., 2005). 53 Tibawi, American Interests, 163. 54 Tibawi, American Interests, 160. 55 See S.B.L. Penrose, That They May Have Life—The Story of the American University of Beirut 1866–1941 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1941). 56 Ferderick Bliss, The Reminiscences of Daniel Bliss (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1920), 167. 64 CHAPTER 2 agent. Nevertheless by 1866, the American Syrian Mission was fully invested in the cultural and educational development of Syrian society. Regardless of any measured impact of early Protestant education or even evangelical spirituality on Syrian society, the American Protestant educational activities did prompt Roman Catholic missionaries and others to follow suit. The most prominent endeavor was the reestablishment of the seminary at ʿAyn Ṭūrā by the Lazarists, while the Jesuits opened schools in Beirut, Bikfāyyā, Dayr al-Qamār, Ghazīr, Jazzīn, Sidon and Taʿnāyil.57 Latin Catholic educational missions had certainly started earlier than the mid-nineteenth century.58 However, with the establishment of the new mutaṣarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon following the 1860 civil war, French influence increased dramatically. Catholic missionary orders found support and stability to expand their own missions and schools through the presence of a web of French catholic networks. This proliferation of foreign-run schools prompted the indigenous ecclesiastics and notables to look for opportunities and press the local Ottoman authori- ties for their own schools. Thus, the Maronites, Greek Catholics, and the Greek Orthodox, began to open day schools for boys and girls. Even the Muslim Sunni Society of Benevolent Intentions opened schools for both boys and girls in Beirut, Sidon, and Tripoli.59

Challenging Arab Syrian Culture

The Americans arrived in Syria and then had a steep cultural learning curve, although they rarely recognized this. Pliny and Smith, as well as Goodell and Bird, realized the first challenge was to learn the local languages. However, that challenge was merely a means to an end, of being able to preach and teach the Bible to gain converts. It does not appear from their writings that these early missionaries recognized that any form of cultural interactions would prove important for their work. Rather, references to the Syrian culture of the day were littered with derogatory and pejorative comments. In fact, their naiveté regarding Syrian culture was one reason for their lack of early success in gaining converts. It was not because of language issues that they were not successful, but because they did not grasp the important differences between nineteenth

57 Salibi, Modern History, 138. 58 See Jacques Thobie, Les intérêts culturels français dans l’Empire ottoman finissant: l’enseignement laïque et en partenariat (Paris: Peeters, 2008). 59 Salibi, Modern History, 140. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 65 century American pietist Protestant culture and nineteenth century Arab Syrian confessionalism. The Americans unknowingly challenged local culture in several ways. First, as a novel religious community in a land of multiple confessional communities, the missionaries did not grasp the complexity and importance of communal identity, as opposed to individual spirituality. The Americans adopted that Maronite Patriarch’s derogatory slur, biblishiyyūn, as a badge of honor. While the missionaries agreed wholeheartedly with the Patriarch himself that they were “followers of the Bible” as opposed to those that were the “followers of the Patriarch” or “followers of Rome,” there were important social and political consequences. The Maronite Patriarch’s point was that these men were from a different community. Within the tightly configured inter- confessional mosaic of the Ottoman Empire, social boundaries were rigid. The Americans, recent rebels against the English Crown, were still known by their legal status as “English”—engliziyyūn—and still under the protection of the British consul. The Americans, with their New England frontier individualism, were blind to these important social constructs of Ottoman society. They saw the authority of the religious and tribal leaders as authoritarian and despotic, and in many ways, they were. However, in this highly structured millet system, one could not simply dissociate from one’s millet for personal or private spiritual reasons without social and political repercussions. This was lost on the Americans. Ussama Makdisi’s Mal Artillery of Heaven: American missionaries and the failed conversion of the Middle East provides an evaluation of the early work of the ABCFM missionaries and their early preaching and Bible distribution. Makdisi argues that the narrative of Asʿad Shidyāq’s martyrdom, which would be retold and rewritten throughout the years within the American Mission, was used for both recruitment and fundraising purposes. It was utilized by Americans back home to encourage them regarding the righteousness of their mission. The reality of Shidyāq’s martyrdom, however, was that while the early Americans intended to “warm hearts” and create faithful Christians out of “nominal” ones, their work was not only fraught with interreligious tension, but impacted the balance of political power as well. An example of this impact on the socio-political system took place in 1835. The Druze community from ʿAlay signalled their willingness to convert to Protestantism en toto, that is, as a whole village. This seemed like an incredible opportunity for the Americans. However, their hopes were dashed when it turned out that the sheikh of the community was primarily interested in keeping his community exempt from Ibrāhīm Pasha’s compulsory conscription. 66 CHAPTER 2

The sheikh assumed that by becoming part of the “English” millet, they would be protected.60 This episode was repeated in 1844 in what is known as the “Hasabaya Affair,” where the Greek Orthodox village of Hasabaya indicated their desire to become Protestants. This prompted a social conflict with the Greek Orthodox community from nearby Zahlé. They appealed to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Damascus, the Turkish Pasha of Damascus, several local Druze Sheikhs, and Mr. Wood, the English consul in Beirut.61 Even Lord Palmerston of the British government became involved by invoking the Ottoman government to protect their religious minorities. The second cultural problem faced by the Americans was their adoption of the boarding school method for their schools. The traditional American puritanical concept of education relied on a complete and controlled social, religious, physical, and educational regimen, where the tutors regulated a student’s total life. This cut against the grain of local culture where the extended family had an important psychological and social control over its younger members. There had been, of course, military boarding schools organized by the Ottomans for those going to officers’ school. Ibrāhīm Pasha, too, created a limited military boarding school scheme for Damascus, Antioch, and Aleppo, as well as one in Cairo, but these efforts were limited to the families of nobility whose sons were slated for the military.62 The students were not procured from the smaller villages of Mount Lebanon where the Americans began working. The Catholics did have their monasteries and convents, where individuals were separated from their families for religious reasons. However, usually the eldest male guardian of the family granted permission to release anyone to the authority of the church. Within this social context, the missionary boarding schools created turmoil within families who were encouraged to send their sons, and later daughters, to live and learn outside the control of their tightly knit family. The final intercultural clash centered on gender. With the arrival of several missionary wives in the early 1830s, including Sarah Lanman Smith, the new- lywed spouse of Eli Smith, there was a new emphasis on opening several girls’ schools. In addition to teaching domestic skills and the proper puritan role of the woman in her household, the missionary wives were fully committed to enlightening and regenerating the lives of Syrian woman.63 The education of Arab women proved to be a flash point in American-Ottoman relations. The

60 Anderson, Oriental Churches, 236–40; Tibawi, American Interests, 77. 61 Anderson, Oriental Churches, 264–70. 62 Tibawi, American Interests, 68–9. 63 Antakly, 82. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 67

Americans were critical of the social and educational standing of the Syrian women. For the Americans, the ideal faithful evangelical woman was fully educated to read and write with considerable acumen in order to manage the household and raise children to read and write. While this particular gendered role eventually led some American Protestants to support women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century, these early nineteenth century evangelical missionaries believed the woman’s role was within the sphere of the household, where she should be literate, educated, and confident, so she would be spiritually strong. The sensitivities of Eastern and Western gender roles were not a novel problem. As noted previously, the Latin catholic missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth century also directly engaged Syrian women. Especially in the city of Aleppo, the Jesuits and Capuchins were not only successful in creating opportunities for women to learn to read but founded convents, which introduced a new social institution for Syrian society. Here, young woman were encouraged by the Catholic missionaries to enter the convent, with their family’s permission, of course. This provided them a new sense of freedom from family male dominance. They were under the tutelage of a new male patriarchy in the convent, but they were freed from the daily oversight of their family. This created anxiety and tension between leading Syrian Christian families and the Church. Fathers of important families complained to their local notables about their women being led astray and the convent was ultimately held in suspicion by the community.64 Thus, the Americans were not alone in their clashes with local culture. Gender roles would be contentious in both Protestant and Catholic missions. The Americans, however, did have their own unique cultural challenges, as they had no indigenous ecclesiastical or political leaders from whom they might find support and protection. On the contrary, from the very beginning of their mission they alienated the local clergy. It was only with the transformation of Syrian society in the middle of the nineteenth century that they found any success.

The Transformation of Beirut and the Establishment of Printing Presses

The first Americans to engage in relations with the Ottoman Empire were merchants. Even before the establishment of the Republic, American colonial

64 See Bernard Heyberger, trans. Renée Champion, Hindiyya, Mystic and Criminal, 1720– 1798: A Political and Religious Crisis in Lebanon (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), 13–15. 68 CHAPTER 2 merchants had been sailing under the British flag. Following the Barbary Wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the War of 1812 with Britain, American merchants were finally able to ply Mediterranean waters with some confidence in setting up their own profitable trade within the Mediterranean Sea. The American missionaries of the ABCFM followed the coattails of these merchants to use the well-established commercial town of Smyrna as their starting point. Adventurous tourists then followed the missionaries in the middle of the nineteenth century. Only then came a minimal diplomatic presence.65 While the opening of the East had occurred forty years earlier, with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798, it was not until the 1830s that the Ottoman Empire became more accessible for European and American missionaries. This was due both because to Muḥammad ʿAlī’s rule over Egypt and Syria where he encouraged the use of Beirut as a port for goods coming from Damascus and a transit post for the silk production in Mount Lebanon, as well as to steamships delivering cargo and passengers more quickly and safely. The population of Beirut exploded from 8,000 persons in 1825 to 50,000 in 1858 and 70,000 by 1863.66 Many of the new arrivals throughout the 1840s and 1860s were seeking refuge from the inter-confessional struggles occurring in Mount Lebanon. Because of the unstable political situation in the interior and the economic activity of Beiruti notables, Beirut quickly surpassed Acre, Sidon, Tripoli, and even Aleppo as the prominent port city of the eastern Mediterranean. Much of this had to do with the movement of prominent Maronite and Greek Orthodox families who relocated to Beirut and continued their businesses there.67 By 1863 a major road, train line and the telegraph were built, linking Damascus and Mount Lebanon to the port and the rest of the Empire. This allowed for easy transport of goods to and from the interior. Numerous Syrian merchant families from different confessions began to pool their resources in support of the growth of the Beiruti mercantile economy, creating what has come to be known as the “Merchant Republic.”68

65 David Finnie, Pioneers East: The early American experience in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967), 250–257. 66 Hanssen, 141. 67 Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth Century Beirut (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 65. Fawaz provides helpful examples of important families that became the center of Beiruti society, but also maintained their important ties and presence in Mount Lebanon; such as the Abelas, Medawars, Sursocks, Bustros as well as the Bayhums. See 91–96. 68 Michael C. Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Modernization in Lebanon (New York: Random House, 1968), 20; see also Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: the making of an Ottoman provincial capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 29. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 69

It was during this time that the Western European powers (Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia) began to take an interest in the port city of Beirut. Because of the “opening” of Beirut as an international mercantile city, there were a growing number of American and European travelers and tourists. Their imaginations and curiosities had been piqued about the Orient and the Holy Lands, and they came in increasing numbers. The American presence was still much smaller than the French, British, or even Russian. However, individual American travelogues combined a unique sense of adventure with evangelical piety that saw multiple religious opportunities. No publication sums up the early American Orientalist reflection of this time more succinctly than that of Edward Robinson. Robinson, a professor at Andover, was accompanied by Eli Smith, his former student and now missionary of the American Board, to travel and chart the biblical geography of the Holy Lands in 1838. His Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petrae: A journal of travels in the year 1838 became the foundational work for the establishment of modern Biblical Archaeology. Robinson also provided some keen insights into the socio-political context of the Egyptian occupation of Syria.

In one respect, the energy of Muhammad ʿAly deserves all praise; although the severity by which it is attended may not always be the most justifi- able. He has rendered the countries under his sway secure; so that travelers, whether Orientals or Ranks, may pass in their own dress throughout Egypt and Syria, and also among the Bedawîn of the adjacent deserts, with the same degree of safety as in many parts of civilized Europe.69

An important component of Ibrāhīm Pasha’s rule in Mount Lebanon was his ally Emir Bashīr al-Shihābī. The preeminent sheikh in all of Mount Lebanon, Shihābī managed to take advantage of Ibrāhīm Pasha’s larger Syrian occupation. He not only established a strong political base at Bayt al-Dīn but also expanded the commercial profits of the predominantly Christian towns of Dayr al-Qamār and Zahlé. These towns provided the foundation to develop the “middle stratum” of Christian families who would utilize Beirut as a port for their commercial enterprises.70 With the arrival of Ibrāhīm Pasha and his enlightened ideas of economic and social prosperity, the atmosphere in Syria suddenly changed. A sense of stability and openness replaced the previous uncertainty of clan rule. By 1834,

69 Robinson and Smith, 44. 70 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 15–26; Philip K. Hitti, Lebanon in History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957), 421. 70 CHAPTER 2 more European nations began sending diplomatic and military missions to Beirut for both political and economic reasons. They wished to support their own interests within the Ottoman Empire. Even the United States sent two ships to Beirut during the summer of 1834, as an attempt to display its own presence.71 This period had a dramatic impact on American Syrian Mission, not only because of their developing work with the new schools, or because of the arrival of a new printing press in Beirut in 1834, but because the missionaries now felt confident to put forward their own requests for support to the recently arrived American government ministers. The first American minister to the Ottoman Empire, David Offley, arrived in Istanbul and the first American vice-consul, Jasper Chasseuad, was established in Beirut in 1836. This American diplomatic presence was the direct result of the 1830 Ottoman- American Treaty, which was a long overdue result of the Barbary Wars from the turn of the eighteenth century.72 The American missionaries now began to send requests for their government to petition the Ottoman government in favor of recognizing a Protestant millet, and thus, tacitly recognizing the work of the missionaries. The 1830s proved to be a hopeful period as opposed to the 1820s where they lived in political uncertainty. This was a period in which the Mission seemed to be gaining traction, as they believed society was beginning to open up to the possibility of evangelical enlightenment. While the official U.S. policy toward Americans in the Ottoman Empire, including the missionaries, was to provide assistance and protection as needed, the government was not eager to become involved in the complicated matters of inter-confessional issues, even though they may have been sympathetic to the Christian missionary cause. The American Minister in Istanbul, David Porter, was a close associate with the ABCFM missionary William Goodell. They ran in the same social circles within the capital. Nevertheless, Porter was compelled to write on numerous occasions to his subordinate, the American Consul in Beirut, warning him that the American missionaries had no business interfering with “rites and religion of any person living under the authority of Turkey.”73 The missionaries obviously disregarded this political warning and continued to press forward with their preaching and evangelizing, especially among the Druze communities in Mount Lebanon.

71 Anderson, Oriental Churches, 231. 72 Leland J. Gordon, “Turkish-American Treaty Relations,” The American Political Science Review vol. 22, no. 3 (Aug., 1928), 711; Little. 73 Tibawi, American Interests, 94. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 71

This period provided the opportunity for the Americans to begin focusing on their long lost love, printing the Bible for dissemination. While the ABCFM had established a printing house in Malta in 1826 and had a fully trained printer in Homan Hallock, it was not until the arrival of Eli Smith that the Mission was to move forward with its intentions to publish works in Arabic, and then only slowly. Until that time, most of the printing done by the Mission Press was in Armenian, Italian, and Greek. The low output of Arabic material was a result of both the lack of individuals competent in the Arabic language, as well as the poor Arabic fonts that were available. Because of increasing pressure from the Prudential Committee that the Mission in the Ottoman Empire was not producing, they sent the then Under Secretary of the Committee, Rufus Anderson to Malta to hold a conference with the missionaries in 1828. It was at this point that it was decided to split the Mission into three basic efforts: one for the Greek and Armenian communities in Smyrna to be headed by Goodell; the second for the Arabs in Beirut, initially headed up by Bird; the third, an additional station, was to be pursued once again in Jerusalem, this time under William Thomsen. The work of the Mission Press then would be split as well, the Armenian and Greek materials to be printed in Smyrna, which would be overseen by the printer Homan Hallock, and the Arabic materials would be printed under the competent eye of Eli Smith in Beirut.74 However, when the Smiths arrived in Beirut, the American Mission Press was not the only printing press in town. In fact, there were already at least five different printing presses in action which were focused upon printing Christian religious material for use primarily within their own communities.75 Smith was keenly aware that the better Arabic fonts of the other presses made the quality of those Arabic publishing much more desirable. He was reticent to begin mass publication of Arabic material, as he understood that a low grade Arabic font would actual do more harm than good in terms of its reception among the indigenous readership. In a letter to the Prudential Committee, he pleaded for a careful use of the press:

I wish not to forget that while the press governs public opinion, it is not independent of it. Should ours get a character for inaccuracy, its publications would not be sought after, whereas if it should be as highly esteemed for taste and correctness by the people for whom we print as for example that at Venice is by the Armenians, our books would go into market under very desirable advantages. . . . If we are to do anything in (Arabic), I am

74 Coakley, 23. 75 Tibawi, American Interests, 72. Anderson mentions “at least six,” Oriental Churches, 230. 72 CHAPTER 2

convinced that a translator and corrector must be permanently connected to the establishment & educated to his business.76

Under Smith’s guidance, the goal of the publishing house was to begin publishing textbooks and materials for their Mission schools. Up to this point, the Mission was using material that had already been printed by the BFBS and the LJS in Malta; including reprints of the 1671 Arabic New Testament, Psalter and other selections of religious literature; such as Pilgrim’s Progress, The Dairyman’s Daughter, and even copies of Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Finally, they reprinted several textbooks that had been previously published by the CMS, including textbooks on world history, geography, astronomy, Arabic grammar, and a dictionary.77 Smith was dissatisfied with the quality of Arabic publications as well as the Arabic fonts that had been used by the Mission Press. He began to collect a number of handwritten patterns of Arabic script. In a journey to meet with Homan Hallock in Smyrna, Smith and his wife Sarah Lanman Smith were shipwrecked. He lost all the patterns in the tragedy that ultimately claimed the life of Sara. Eventually, Smith continued to Istanbul to collect more Arabic patterns. Upon returning to Smyrna, Smith set Hallock to work creating the punches based on his patterns. Smith decided, however, that a commercial foundry was needed for completing the 1,200 letters and vowels for the set. Following a sojourn with his long time friend and biblical scholar, Edward Robinson, the two concluded their pilgrimage in Leipzig where the font was cast at the foundry of Karl C.P. Tauchnitz in 1838.78 Tauchnitz had already printed Flügel’s edition of the Qurʾan in 1834 and had experience in working with Arabic.79 Known as the “American Arabic” font, this typeset would become the standard font for all publications of the American Syrian Mission Press in Beirut, including various versions of the Arabic Bible, until it was eventually elec- trotyped in New York by Cornelius Van Dyck in 1867. The font was also used by Bustānī for many of his publications, even at his own press, al-Matbaʿa al-Maʿārif. The reformist Sunni sheikh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Thabbānī used the font for his journal Thamarāt al-funūn, while Nimr and Ṣarrūf used it for al-Muqtaṭaf

76 Margaret Levy, “Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible,” Yale Divinity School Library Occasional Publication, no. 4 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Divinity School, 1993), 10. 77 Tibawi, American Interests, 64; Levy, 12. 78 Coakley, 11. 79 Dagmar Glass, Malta, Beirut, Leipzig, and Beirut again. Eli Smith, the American Mission and the spread of Arabic topography (Beirut: Orient-Institute Beirut, 1998), 21. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 73 in 1875 and 1885, respectively.80 Thus, the font was widely used in both Beirut and Cairo during the nineteenth century Nahḍa. Yet, the Mission Press never really “delivered” for the needs of the Mission schools, nor did it achieve the overall purpose of creating an evangelical community in the eyes of the board of the ABCFM. Between 1836 and 1838, the Mission Press experimented with previously published material from the CMS, including printing a hymnbook, a catechism, pamphlets of the Psalms and the “Sermon on the Mount,” as well as an Arabic grammar, a book on arith- metic (written by Smith) and another on geography. Nevertheless, their other published materials were merely reprints from the British and Foreign Bible Society from Malta.81 The Mission Press itself had printed only a few items by the end of 1842, including a reprint of the Psalms, and its work was suspended in 1843. Only two books were printed in 1844 and 1845.82 The work of the press was thoroughly hampered by several problems. First, the press was inactive for a good bit of time throughout the 1830s. Smith not only oversaw the Mission Press, but he was also required to undertake preaching and numerous itinerant missionary trips. Smith’s travels, first with Dwight to Armenia and Persia in 1831–32, then with Edward Robinson throughout Syria in 1838, and then again in 1852, all interrupted his work at the press. Second, there were few other capable missionaries, local translators, or correctors to oversee translation projects. It was not until 1841 that Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus al-Bustānī were both hired as correctors and proofreaders by the Mission Press. Third, there was the never-ending problem of a lack of finances to purchase materials and print them. Fourth, like other ministries of the mission, activities were often suspended because of social or political instability. Finally, the removal of Ibrāhīm Pasha by the Europeans and Turks from Syria in 1840 created instability between the Druze and Maronites in Mount Lebanon. The missionaries once again relocated, this time to Cyprus. The schools and the Mission Press were closed down during this time. It was in the early 1840s that the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM became dissatisfied with the progress of the Mission. Rufus Anderson returned to the field in 1843 to investigate what was to be done with the Mission and to decide whether it should be shut down altogether. As already noted Anderson’s view of mission concentrated on preaching and conversion. He did not see the purpose in developing schools nor in an extensive press, if such material was already available through the BFBS and LJS. Anderson pressed the missionaries

80 Dagmar, 25–30. Al-Thabbānī also used the fonts for kitāb al-hijāʾ li-taʿlīm al-aṭfāl in 1878. 81 Tibawi, American Interests, 82, 85. 82 Tibawi, American Interests, 105. 74 CHAPTER 2 to focus on preaching, and if educational institutions were deemed necessary, they should be limited to religious instruction only. Due to Anderson’s insistence, in the early 1840s the focus of the Syrian Mission had shifted once again to preaching and spiritual conversion. Thus, the seminary in Abeih was re- opened in 1844 with Cornelius Van Dyck and Buṭrus al-Bustānī being assigned as the primary instructors. This mission was successful and did create a local evangelical community. Ultimately, this led to the establishment of the first Syrian Protestant congregation, the Evangelical Church of Beirut, in Abeih in 1847. The congregation consisted of nineteen members, including Buṭrus al-Bustānī. While Anderson and the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM presumed the Mission would move forward with the previously agreed focus of raising up indigenous evangelical pastors, realities on the ground moved the Mission Press in other directions. The social and political constraints, as well as the broader interests of Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck after him, contrived to provide a different niche for the press. As has already been noted, between 1840 and 1860 Mount Lebanon was plagued by political instability and scattered inter-confessional violence that destabilized society. By the time of the 1869 civil war in Syria, many of the schools had been closed down or had dramatically shrunk in numbers; and most of the missionaries withdrew to the safety of Beirut. In addition, throughout the 1860s, the ABCFM experienced severe financial crises due to the impending American Civil War. This created financial realities from which the Mission could not move forward in the manner in which it had been conceived by Anderson in 1843. The period between 1840 and 1860 destroyed any hopes the Prudential Committee had of creating a successful mission throughout the villages of Syria. However, it created a turning point for new possible endeavors. While much of Mount Lebanon was forced to deal with these inter-confessional tensions, Beirut reaped the benefits of a wave of immigration. Many people came to Beirut looking for both stability and employment. It was during this period that the locus of power shifted from wealthy Maronite and Druze land-owning families to the urban merchant class in Beirut, Tripoli, and Sidon. The semi-feudal system was quickly replaced with the “merchant republic.”83 The increased attention by the foreign powers in Syria, especially France and Britain, brought about an increase in foreign presence in Beirut. With the increased international presence came the need for the foreign consuls to employ indigenous dragomen and other assistants. It was during this time that both Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī came to Beirut, and ultimately found themselves in the employ of the American Syrian

83 Hudson, 20. The American Syrian Mission: Evangelism, Schools And The Press 75

Mission Press. Their presence would provide the opportunity for the native language expertise for which Smith had long been looking.84 After 1843 and throughout the 1850s, the Mission Press continued to re- publish religious material. However, under Smith’s leadership the Mission established its first original monthly journal in 1851 called Majmūʿ fawāʾid, which focused upon disseminating evangelical principles and beliefs. This was followed in 1863 by a smaller periodical, Akhbār ʿan intishār al-injīl.85 Nevertheless, there was still a continuing need for general educational works in Arabic, especially for the students at the seminary. In 1854, Van Dyck himself began translating texts for the seminary and schools, including one on algebra and geography. The further publication of nonreligious and more culturally ori- ented material, continued to grow. Then, in 1857, Eli Smith died. Cornelius Van Dyck was appointed his successor, and continued to follow Smith’s precedent. Beginning in 1858, the Mission Press began to publish several non-spiritually related books that were authored or edited by Bustānī and Yāzijī. In 1859 and 1860 Bustānī edited Ṭannūs Shidyāq’s Kitāb akhbār al-aʿyān fī jabal Lubnān, as well as Dīwān al-Mutanabbī, and Nubḍat tawārīkh min dīwān al-shaykh Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī. He also published his famous Khuṭba fī ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya and his own Arabic textbook on mathematics. As a result of the civil war of 1860, Bustānī published the re-telling of the story of the first Protestant convert Asʿad Shidyāq in Qiṣṣat Asʿad Shidyāq. While this story had already been serialized by the Mission in the Missionary Herald, primarily for a sympathetic American constituency, Bustānī’s version focused on the story of a national hero who employed an enlightened faith over and against blind obedience to authority, rather than the traditional tale of a pious evangelical martyr.86 All of these publications were in contradiction with Anderson’s policy of using the Mission Press only for religious purposes. The rise in importance of Beirut not only changed the focus of the American Syrian Mission and its press, but it also provided the opportunity for the establishment and further development of other presses. A.L. Tibawi’s research has shown that the Bulaq Press in Cairo began exporting its publications to Syria during the thirties. Ottoman administrators in Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia, Tripoli, Jaffa, and Gaza requested books for use both within government schools and among the aristocracy. The requests included a wide range of subjects: math, medicine, history, geography, as well as a small number

84 Leavy, 10. 85 Filip Tarrāzi, Tarīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿaal-Adabiyya, 1913), 53; Tibawi, American Interests, 165. 86 Makdisi, 204. 76 CHAPTER 2 of religious texts. These lists, argue Tibawi, demonstrate a robust activity of Christian and Muslim literati and notables who were engaged in a wide variety of educational pursuits.87 Thus, there was an increased market for reading material, which spurred the publishing industry. The Jesuit Press began in 1848, and the Syrian al-Maṭbaʿ al-Sūriyya followed in 1857. By 1868, there were sixteen different presses in Syria.88 In addition, throughout the 1870s several presses were opened up by Syrian Protestants or former students of the Syrian Protestant College. Ultimately, the Mission Press simply could not keep up with the needs and tastes of a Syrian society and a changing metropolitan Beirut that were enam- oured with the fantastic discoveries of European history and science. The Press did continue to produce textbooks for the Mission schools and by 1866 the texts for the Syrian Protestant College, but usually without any profit margins. (This included losing sales on Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī’s Faṣl al-kitāb fī uṣūl lughat al-ʿarāb in 1875.) Low production and difficulties of remaining financially solvent led to a new debate within the mission board of the Presbyterian Church, which had taken control of the American Mission in 1870, as to whether the Mission Press should be discontinued or turned over to an indigenous Protestant entity. The irony of this is that while the mission boards may have considered the educational and publishing endeavors not part of their work within the Ottoman Empire, the Syrian students of the Mission schools and the Syrian authors of the Mission Press would go on to provide important contributions to the Arab literary renaissance. While the Mission society continually tried to produce effective religious literature, they believed that the publication of the Arabic Bible was truly the only source of any consistent income or created any recognizable name for the Mission Press. According to Henry Jessup, the publication of the Bible by the Mission Press was the pinnacle of their work by which they could then achieve their goal of evangelizing the peoples of the Holy Lands, as well as providing an unsurpassable contribution to the Arabic renaissance. The American Press in Beirut has been at the very center of the debate or question over the origins of the nineteenth century Arabic revival. Did the Mission Press have a direct impact on the role of the Nahḍa? It is to this question that we now turn.

87 Tibawi, American Interests, 70. 88 Tibawi, American Interests, 183. CHAPTER 3 Debate over the Origins and American Contributions to the Nahḍa

The nineteenth century was a critical period for the Ottoman Empire. Known as the “sick man of Europe,” the empire had been in a state of decline. A slow deterioration of the administration from within ate away at the infrastructure of a once mighty empire. Ill equipped rulers, a powerful military class that sought its own preservation, and a corrupt taxation system all collectively brought on a terminal illness. Externally, the rise of European nationalism and expansion, combined with the rise of advanced technology in weaponry and naval power, created a high-stakes game of international politics that eventually led to European occupation of most of the Empire after World War I. While the Empire had twice been at the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth century, in the eighteenth century it witnessed several major defeats at the hands of the Russians and French. The Empire, more than likely, would have collapsed from the onslaught of a multifaceted European attack much earlier than the twentieth century, if it had not served an important role for the British and French in buffering Russian advancements in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The dominant European powers of the time played a “cat and mouse” game with one another, using the “sick man” to keep the other nations at bay. Stratford Canning, the longtime British Ambassador to the Ottomans, and a primary strategist behind the “Eastern Question” laid out what would be the hallmark of British foreign policy:

That Turkey is weak, fanatical, and misgoverned no one can honestly deny; to my apprehension it would be a great and hazardous mistake to infer from its condition in those respects that the best way for England is to leave it entirely alone. . . . The Eastern question is a fact, a reality of indefinite duration. Like a volcano, it has intervals of rest; but its outbreaks are frequent, their occasions uncertain, and their effects destructive. The chief Powers of Christendom have all, more or less, an interest in the fortunes of an Empire which from being systematically aggressive has become a totter- ing and untoward neighbour. Its struggles for life, the agonies of its dis- solution, could not fail to throw all Europe into a state of hurtful agitation, if not into one of general hostilities. Ambitions, jealousies, apprehensions,

and other conflicting passions would be roused into fearful activity, and the consequence of fermentation so violent and extensive may well be dreaded.1

This international context is what prompted England and France to go to war with the Ottomans against the Russians in the Crimea from 1853–55. One important aspect of the “Eastern Question” was the collective imposi- tion by the foreign European Powers to adopt minority communities within the Empire. The protection of these communities became leverage to manipu- late the Ottomans into various policies and actions. For example, article 13 of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 between the Ottomans and the Holy Roman Empire declared that “the Habsburg ambassador was empowered thence- forth to seek redress of injuries to Catholics in Ottoman lands.”2 The Treaty of Kuchük Kaynarja in 1774 declared the Russian Czar was the spiritual head of all the Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman Empire. This humiliating treaty undermined centuries of Islamic socio-political organization that held indigenous Middle Eastern Christians as dhimmīs in an Islamic Empire.3 European interest in the Empire, principally in the port cities of Smryna and later Beirut, was not due to religious or nationalistic zeal alone, but was also economic. The Venetians, Genoese, and French had been trading in Smryna and Istanbul since the sixteenth century. The British Levant Company arrived in the eighteenth century, while the Americans began to arrive in small numbers in the early nineteenth century. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s occupational government of Syria, which lasted from 1832–1840, standardized export tariffs and import taxes. These regulations were advantageous to both indigenous Syrian merchants and international trade companies. Beirut, especially, reaped these benefits, serving as a direct link to the interior of Syria for the export of cotton, wool, and silk.4 Thus, an important part of the “Eastern Question” was the competition for international markets around the Mediterranean. The adopting of minority communities was of particular advantage to various wealthy notable

1 Stratford Canning, The Eastern Question (London: John Murray, 1881), 6–7. 2 Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 154. 3 Youssef Courbage and Philippe Fargues, Christians and Jews under Islam, trans. by Judy Mabro (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 22–5. 4 Charles Issawi. “British Trade and the Rise of Beirut, 1830–1860,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (Jan., 1977), 93–4. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 79 families who utilized their protection as opportunity to engage in profitable trade and commerce.5 While the European governments saw the “Eastern Question” as an opportunity for political influence and economic gain, British and American Protestant missionaries experienced the decline of the autocratic Ottoman Empire as Divine Providence that was opening the Muslim world for Christian evangelization. Thus, they had little patience for the politics of the “Eastern Question” and became increasingly frustrated with ministers and consul generals who did not wholeheartedly support their work. On many occasions, they appealed to the British, and later American, consuls to provide protection for their work among these minority communities, specifically for the Druze and the recently established Protestant community. On at least one occasion the Americans appealed directly to the ABCFM, who in turn pressured President Van Buren to apply consular protection for their work in 1842.6 The biblical scholar Edward Robinson, who undertook a survey of the Middle East with Eli Smith in 1838 and published his findings as Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia, Petraea, was sorely disappointed in the British political stance:

That England, while she has so deep a political interest in all that concerns the Turkish empire, should remain indifferent to this state of things in Syria, is a matter of surprise. . . . The English Government needs to take but a single step, and that unattended by danger or difficulty. It needs simply to obtain, for native Protestants, the same acknowledgement and rights, that are granted to other acknowledged Christian sects. Such a request, earnestly made, the Turkish government could not refuse.7

Responding to the dramatic decline of his Empire, Sultan Selīm III (r. 1789– 1807) commenced the Tanẓīmāt. These reforms began within the military. He invited French advisors to help train his officers. In order for the Ottomans to acquire the latest methods and techniques in military warfare, they were required to learn engineering, mathematics and other sciences. Most of the books and manuals to be used were written in French. Therefore, Selīm had to create a new educational system for the military in which the foreign languages were taught. This new curriculum not only provided opportunities to

5 Issawi, 99. 6 Finnie, 256. 7 Edward Robinson and Eli Smith. Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea. A journal of travels in the year 1838 (Boston, Crocker & Brewster, 1841) 464–6, as cited in Finnie, 131. 80 CHAPTER 3 absorb technical information but also allowed them the opportunity to read French literature, along with a range of eighteenth century ideas France had to offer. The Tanẓīmāt continued under Sultan Maḥmūd II (r. 1808–1839) and Muḥammad ʿAlī of Egypt (r. 1805–1848), who not only received European advisors, but sent young statesmen, mainly from elitist families, to study in Italy and Europe to learn all that they could from Western culture, forms of government, and military matters. These first civil servants were tasked with translating medical and military manuals.8 The most prominent of these young Egyptian individuals was Rifāʿa Rāfīʿ al-Ṭahṭawī, to whom we will return later in this chapter. These early students who traveled to study in Europe led the way by envisaging the need for various further reforms within the Empire. Once they found themselves living in Western countries, the dramatic differences between a modernizing Europe and the Ottoman world became all too real. There grew an awareness of the capacity of Europe (through the intellectual ideas of the Enlightenment and the technology of the scientific and industrial revolutions) as well as the Empire’s stark inability to keep pace with Europe. These ideas that brought massive cultural changes within the Ottoman Empire have been well documented.9 However, it was Muḥammad ʿAlī and the Egyptian occupation of Syria from 1832 to 1840 that provided the backdrop by which Syrian society was dramatically transformed. While the Tanẓīmāt focused on governmental regulations and reforms for ruling the Empire, a social reform took place within Syrian, and later Egyptian society, that brought about a cultural and literary renaissance, known as al-Nahḍa. This chapter will examine the origins of these social changes and the debate surrounding the American missionary contribution to the Nahḍa. We will focus on the views of three authors: George Antonius, Albert Hourani, and Abdul Latif Tibawi who directly address the role of the American missionaries in the Nahḍa. We will also briefly review the arguments of Jerôme Chahīne, who provides an important counterargument, lifting up the Catholic and Jesuit role in the renaissance. One of the major questions of this research focuses on the impact of the American Syrian Mission and its sponsored translation of the Bible into Arabic

8 J. Brugman, An introduction to the history of modern Arabic literature in Egypt (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984), 6. 9 See the publication of the dated but important 1966 Conference on “The Beginnings of Modernization in the Modern Middle East in the Nineteenth Century.” William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers, eds., Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East; the nineteenth century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 81 during this period. It would be disingenuous to claim that the Nahḍa was solely a result of the introduction of European and particularly American cultural production due to the presence and activity of the missionaries. Rather, the missionaries established themselves at a time in which the Nahḍa had already begun to take hold in Beirut. As it turned out they would play an important role in this renaissance. However, they were not the center of the Arab search for meaning and identity in the nineteenth century.

The Nahḍa

The nineteenth century within the Arab Middle East is known as the period of the “Arab Renaissance,” or the Nahḍa. It is a period of history marked by an eruption of Arabic literature and Arab cultural production. Before this period, Arabic literature was confined primarily to material written by religious scholars, philosophers, and scientists in manuscript form. With the development of modern government schools in Egypt and Turkey, sectarian or mission schools, the proliferation of printing presses, and the use of different forms of written media by governments civil servants, various new forms of Arabic literature appeared. The advent of private non-governmental publications, including journals, newspapers, novels, poetry, and translations of both Western and classical Arabic texts, transformed the role and form of Arabic, as well as created new publics that both wrote and read these new genres. As Constantin Georgescu has argued:

The newly translated stories acted as catalysts: they attracted new readers, enlarged the intellectual circle, and contributed to the circulation of newspapers because they satisfied the public’s interest as the readers found in them enjoyment and diversion. Furthermore, these stories described events, situations and difficulties with which the audience could identify their own circumstances and hardships. The newspapers and the translators also brought new forms of literature such as the drama, the novel, and the short story to the attention of the Arab public.10

10 Constantin I. Georgescu, “A Forgotten Pioneer of the Lebanese nahdah: Salim al-Bustani (1848–1884) (PhD Dissertation, New York University, 1978), 21. 82 CHAPTER 3

The Nahḍa has its roots in the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798.11 The sudden and dramatic impact of the French occupation provided a crisis moment for Arab elites. The Muslim scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (1753–1825), responded to this invasion in his work Ajāʾib al-athār fī l-tarājim wa-l-akhbār. These reflections might summarize the Arab Muslim elite’s anxiety over a modern world guided by European science and technology. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s successful retaking of Egypt for the Sultan, and his subsequent mission to send Egyptian youth to study in France and Italy, was critical to establishing an indigenous Arab reawakening similar to the effects of the Renaissance on a European Christian medieval culture. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the medieval Catholic social culture was challenged by both intra- ecclesial debates (the Reformation) and extra-ecclesial authority (Humanism and Secularism). Eventually, Europe responded by creating a hybrid secular- sacred culture based on a variety of forms of Catholic and Protestant states through the Treaty of Westphalia in 1638. Certainly, the French invasion of Egypt provoked a dramatic moment of anxiety about a new and uncertain global world. However, similar to the previous European crisis of identity, the Arab Nahḍa was not simply about the clash of monolithic civilizations and an Arabic reaction, but rather an authentic response to re-create identity in the modern age.12 This was a period of constructing new meanings in the rūḥ al-ʿaṣr [spirit of the age] for Arabs of the Levant and Egypt.13 There were multiple fronts in this important century of change. The Arabs sought a new identity free from Turkish rule. The Christians of the Middle East sought to create their own identity free from Islamic order. The Arab Sunni Muslims looked within their own tradition for answers to reform a medieval legal system.14

11 M.M. Badawi, ed., Modern Arabic Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 4. 12 See Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī, al-Turāth wa-l-ḥadātha (Beirut: Markaz dirāsāt al-waḥda al-ʿarabiyya, 1991). 13 Hanssen, 13, n. 52. 14 See Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The political and legal theories of Muhammad ʿAbduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966). Sharabi’s Arab Intellectuals and the West, provides a similar framework for the response of Arab intellectuals to Europe. While Sharabi’s work deals with the later Renassiance period and not with its genesis, we find his categories to be too rigid. While he is correct in his assess- ments of the origins of the intelligentsia, we would argue that there was much more cross fertilization of ideas (including art, philosophy, and political ideologies) than his framework of Islamic Conservatives, Reformists and Secularists, and Christian Westernists Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 83

While the French occupation may have created the original impetus, it was Muḥammad ʿAlī who put the renaissance in motion. Once he consolidated power in Egypt and wrested it free from the Ottoman Empire, he moved forward quickly to glean from France all the technical information he would need to run a modern nation state. He created a cadre of European educated civil servants who could assist in modernizing the Egyptian state. Because of this, Adnan Abu-Ghazaleh has called the Albanian ruler of Egypt “the father of modern Arab renaissance.”15 The most famous of these young Egyptians was Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–1873). He was twenty-five when he was sent by Muḥammad ʿAlī as the imam for the first cohort of Egyptian students to study in France. Upon his return to Egypt, Ṭahṭāwī published Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz in 1834, which was a reflection on his journey and encounter with Europe. It was well received by Muḥammad ʿAlī and became extremely popular throughout the Empire. Ṭahṭāwī was then put in charge of the Egyptian Language School and directed the translation of many Western texts to be published in the government printing press in Bulaq, a section of Cairo. While the Nahḍa begins and later ends in Egypt, it was the Syrian (and later Lebanese) authors who contributed directly and formatively to this renaissance. The importance of Ibrāhīm Pasha’s rule for the opening of Syria as well as the international impact of the “Eastern Question” has already been noted above. In addition, because of the social disturbances in Mount Lebanon throughout the 1840s and up until the 1860 civil war, Beirut continued to grow as an international port. Thus, the Vilayet of Beirut was the cauldron out of which the renaissance could boil over. It was mainly because of the increasing censorship of the new Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1876 that many Syrian writers immigrated to Cairo, where the Nahḍa continued in full-force through its numerous newspapers and journals published there. Jurjī Zaydān noted in his final volume of Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya in 1914 that the Nahḍa was still in process.16 We might then suggest that Ṭahṭāwī’s Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz signifies the beginning of the formal Nahḍa in 1834, which then comes to a close with the Egyptian Minister of Education Ṭaha Ḥusayn’s extremely controversial Fī l-shiʿr al-jāhilī [On Pre-Islamic Poetry] in 1926. Both of these publications demonstrate the popularization and dissemination of Arabic

(or secularists (see pp. 6–10). Certainly, the Muslim and Christian intellectuals in this earlier period in Beirut do not adhere to such a clear framework. 15 Abu-Ghazaleh, 13. 16 Jurjī Zaydān, Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya, vol. 4 (Cairo, 1957), 9. 84 CHAPTER 3 literature, and the development of different mediums and audiences.17 This period saw the transformation of Arab society from medieval, rural, and feudal to modern, urban and cosmopolitan. In this regard, the renaissance took several different forms: educational, cultural, and literary. It is our interest, at this point, to place the American Syrian Mission and its work in context with the broader manifestations of the early Nahḍa, between the 1820s and 1860s.

Educational Renaissance

From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the transformation of Beirut after the 1860 civil war, there was a proliferation of educational institutions throughout what is now Lebanon. While the American, French, and Scottish missionary schools continued to recruit their own students, the Syrians also developed their own schools. Originally, the Syrian religious schools were confessionally specific, serving members of only one religious or ethnic community. Some of them began to display nationalistic and reformist tendencies based on the changes undertaken within the Empire. However, it was not until Buṭrus al-Bustānī opened his non-sectarian national school in 1863 that a private educational institution was available to students regardless of their confessional status. The Ottoman Law of Public Education in 1869 required that all provincial capitals in the Empire had to have a secondary school. In 1883, al-madrasa al-sulṭāniyya was established in Cairo, with Muḥammad ʿAbduh providing lectures on Islamic philosophy.18 The school was known for its Islamic reformist curriculum. Despite it being an Ottoman imperial school, it graduated several prominent Arab nationalists, including the Syrian Druze emir Shakīb Arslān. However, two of the most prominent institutions of higher learning in Syria that were products of this period were the Syrian Protestant College and St. Joseph University.19 It is noteworthy that a Protestant and Catholic University have

17 Hussein’s book created a massive outcry by religious leaders in Egypt. While there certainly had been resistance to the general populace engaging in non-religious literature and the use of the printing press for popular consumption throughout the nineteenth century, Fī l-shiʿr al-jāhilī prompted a vitriolic Islamic reaction which was harnessed within the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. 18 Hanssen, 174–5. 19 The other important missionary college in the Empire was Robert College in Istanbul, which has continued to this day as a private Turkish institution of higher learning. See John Freely, A Bridge of Culture: Robert College, Bogaziçi University: how an American Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 85 long stood toe to toe in attempting to provide leadership by educating Syrian elites. While St. Joseph has been noted for its support of Lebanese particular- ism or nationalism, primarily through its relationship with the Maronite community in Lebanon, the Syrian Protestant College (now known as the secular American University of Beirut) has been well known for its pan-Arab nationalism, including support for Palestinian nationalism. The Syrian Protestant College was the culmination of the American Syrian Mission’s school system. It was, however, also the product of stark disagreements between the ABCFM and some of the senior American missionaries, as noted in the previous chapter. Above the gate of the college along Bliss Street are inscribed the words of Jesus: “that they may have Life and have it more abundantly . . .” This inscription at the college was intended to have a dual meaning: life free from sin as well as free from ignorance. Both meanings worked hand in hand within the spiritual life of the nineteenth century American missionaries.20 This North American evangelical piety assumed that increasing knowledge of the world would lead to full knowledge and proof of God’s existence and the revelation of the Bible. In her perceptive research, Marwa Elshakry has shown the importance of science as an underlying framework within the curriculum of the Syrian Protestant College and its impact on the Arab world.21 While its impact is evident, the method of this type of education was hotly debated within mission circles. The American Board, under the guidance of Rufus Anderson, argued against any form of “civilizing mission.” While Western knowledge and technology was a wonderful gift of God’s Providential wisdom, it was not the source of spiritual sanctification. Anderson was clear that if the American Mission felt the need to establish schools, it was for one purpose only. They were to raise up indigenous pastors, evangelists, and congregations. The point of mission, he wrote in 1855, “should not be to liberate, to educate, to polish but to convert men.”22

college in Istanbul became a Turkish university 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Bogaziçi Universitesi Yayinevi, 2012). 20 See Lawrence A Cremin, American Education, the National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). 21 See her “The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism,” in American Missionaries in the Middle East: foundational encounters, eds. Heather J. Sharkey and Mehmet Ali Doğan (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2011), and Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 22 Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Syrian Mission Held in September and October, 1855, On Occasion of the Visit of One of the Secretaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston, 1856) 9, as cited in Marwa Elshakry, “The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism,” in Sharkey Doğan, 176. 86 CHAPTER 3

At this point, it would be helpful to return to the development of the ABCFM schools and their impact on Syrian society. When Bird and Goodell set up a school in Beirut in 1825, they utilized the Lancasterian Method of education that became popular in the early years of the nineteenth century in the U.S. This method, established by Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838), provided direct instruction and overall ethical guidance to students in a controlled environment. They believed that this system provided a holistic method to incul- cate religious and moral values in young persons.23 Advanced students were groomed to become the guides and teachers of lower level students. This method provided opportunities by which the missionaries could indoctrinate the brightest of their pupils to become the evangelists, and fulfill the ideal of raising up indigenous evangelical congregations. William Goodell expressed his hope in this system to his constituency back in New England:

I love to think of these schools, particularly the business of instructions thus taken away from bigoted and vulgar minds, and put into the hands of those who are more liberal and enlightened, and who teach something besides the liturgy and mummery of the church; and we hope and pray that many of the rising generation may be a generation to praise God.24

It was not the method of education that concerned Rufus Anderson but the content. As has already been noted, Tibawi has argued that the American missionary schools were small in number and limited themselves to the use of religious literature and instruction.25 He also argued that most of the early secular material published by the Mission Press was simple textbooks for use in these schools. While this is true, Tibawi discounted secular literature and did not consider the role of the sciences as part of a New England Puritan piety, which believed in the new scientific discoveries and the industrial revolution as opportunities to bear witness to the Creator. This is what Ussama Makdisi has labeled an “evangelical modernity.”26 geography, astronomy, mathematics, and the burgeoning field of science were understood in the early part of the

23 Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: evangelicals, reformers and education in nineteenth-century Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 24–5. See also Dell Upton, “Lancasterian Schools, Republican Citizenship, and the Spatial Imagination in Early Nineteenth- Century America,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 55, no. 3 (Sep., 1996), 238–253. 24 EPrime, 129. 25 Tibawi, American Interests, 64. 26 Ussama Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity,” American Historical Review, vol. 102, Issue 3 (June 1997), 712. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 87 nineteenth century as proving the existence of God and the Bible. While the early twentieth century witnessed debates between the Bible and science, a century earlier some evangelicals were championing the scientific discoveries in an early from of the “intelligent design” argument. This included some of the prominent American missionaries in Syria. John H. Westerhoff III has noted the important role of such an education for shaping a moral and spiritual life during the middle of the nineteenth century:

The natural world can be properly understood only in relationship to God. Everything in creation is grounded in and expressive of God’s purposes. Humans are called to be stewards of God’s creation; they are not to misuse nature for their own benefit. Respect not control, is the proper relationship . . . Further, God reveals himself in nature.27

The first American Mission secondary school in 1835 began utilizing the sciences, with Eli Smith teaching geography and astronomy.28 Smith would go on to spend several years exploring the Near East with his colleague, the biblical archaeologist, Edward Robinson. During their travels, they collected and documented geographic information in what they believed was a scientific expedition of the Holy Lands, which was published as Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions. Robinson and Smith believed that by using the latest scientific methods, including their knowledge of geography, that they could prove the truths of the Bible. Another major proponent of this scientific piety bearing witness to the truths of the Bible was Cornelius Van Dyck. His earliest translated books into Arabic were algebra and geography textbooks.29 His view on the importance of the sciences for matters of faith became clear early on in his missionary career when he suggested the Mission Press publish translations of William Paley’s Natural Theology and Evidences of Christianity.30 In this work, Paley argued that the creator was evident through the effects of creation. As a trained medical doctor, naturally Van Dyck would have been drawn to the argument of the order of systems and organisms. This belief in the importance of science for establishing morals and beliefs is shown when, in 1876, he assisted Fāris Nimr

27 John H. Westerhoff III, ‘The Struggle for a Common Culture: Biblical Images in Nineteenth- Century Schoolbooks’, in Barr and Piediscalzi, 29. 28 Anderson, Oriental Churches, 231. 29 Tibawi, American Interests, 135. 30 Elshakry, 183, 206 n. 88. See also David N. Livingston, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The encounter between evangelical theology and evolutionary thought (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987). 88 CHAPTER 3 and Yaqʿūb Ṣarrūf in establishing the journal al-Muqtaṭaf. The journal originally focused upon scientific thought, including explaining the specifics of Darwinism.31 The missionaries faced increasing misgivings about their textbooks and reading material produced from the Mission Press from the elders of a complex and deeply suspicious confessional system in the rural areas of Mount Lebanon. They also faced criticism from Rufus Anderson as well. He continued to communicate his concern over what he felt to be the unnecessary endeavors on the use of published educational materials for the schools, rather than for preaching or developing evangelical literature. This continuing tension between Anderson’s vision of mission work and the missionaries desire to achieve their educational goals on the ground in Syria prompted an appeal by the missionaries in their annual letter to the Prudential Committee in 1841:

There are many advantages growing out of an extensive system of well conducted schools. It puts into circulation, in the most profitable manner, the best books, and opens the way for their introduction into the families and among the friends of the pupils. It gives us something to do with, and say to, a great number of people, a good occasion to visit them, and a fruitful and profitable theme for conversation about that which most deeply interests all parents, the welfare of their children. It will likewise naturally moderate prejudice and conciliate favor, two objects of very great importance to a stranger. Our schools also, if properly conducted, must always have a tendency to enlarge the minds of the scholars, and thus give the right direction to the coming tide of the rising generation. Nor should it be forgotten that there are multitudes that will never be taught to read at all, unless in schools conducted by the missionaries. Here they have the word of God put into their hands, and are taught to read it and understand it. Nor is there any difficulty in the way of rendering these schools really and truly religious, except what is found in our own inability to visit them sufficiently, and in the character of the masters. There is still another reason why we regard a system of common schools with favor. It enables us to select the best and the most promising lads for our seminary and receive them farther advanced in knowledge than could otherwise be found.32

31 Farag, “The Lewis Affair,” 73–83. 32 Missionary Herald XXXVII (1841), 302–3. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 89

Apparently, however, the missionaries were not of one mind. Henry Jessup provided a dissenting voice to the earlier plea above and support for Anderson’s vision:

Schools have been looked upon as vital to missionary success, and yet only as a means to an end, not as the end itself . . . to lead men to Christ and to teach them to become Christian peoples and nations. When it goes beyond this and claims to be in itself an end; that mere intellectual and scientific eminence are objects worthy of the Christian missionary, that it is worthwhile for consecrated missionaries and missionary societies to aim to have the best astronomers, geologists, botanists, surgeons, and physicians in the realm for the sake of scientific prestige and the world-wide reputation; then we do not hesitate to say that such a mission has stepped out of the Christian and missionary sphere into one purely secular, scientific, and worldly.33

Two events that display the conflicting views of education and the role of science as a witness to the power of God were the missionary responses to the lunar eclipse of 1876 and the Lewis Affair at the Syrian Protestant College in 1882. In 1876, there was a partial lunar eclipse. The Protestant editors of the journal al-Muqtaṭaf used an almanac to explain the science behind the eclipse and to prove to their readers that science taught “the designer of all designs . . . Therefore those who prevent people from pursuing the sciences, stand against God and all that He has revealed.”34 The editors, Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf and Fāris Nimr, were former students of Van Dyck who had encouraged their scientific explorations within the journal. Henry Jessup, however, saw this event not as an opportunity to explore the God’s creation through scientific observation, but rather to display the truth of the Bible in the face of Oriental ignorance:

It would astonish a schoolboy to hear of the blunders and lack of knowledge shown by even those who are considered learned. Comets, eclipses, meteors and all unusual sights in the sky, are looked upon by the majority of the people as portents dire and terrible, produced by some malign spirit, who thus seeks to foretell wars, pestilence and famine. But men and women who have been educated and instructed in the Bible, have

33 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 592. 34 Al-Muqtaṭaf 1 (1876) as cited in Elshakry, 188. 90 CHAPTER 3

learned to look with satisfaction and delight upon these phenomena, and by their calmness, and evident interest, disarm the fears of their less intelligent neighbors.35

The second event that demonstrates a particular nineteenth century view of science as proof for the Christian faith was the famous 1882 commencement speech at the Syrian Protestant College by the professor of geology and chemistry and ABCFM missionary Edwin Lewis entitled al-Maʿrifa al-ʿilm wa-l-ḥikma [Knowledge, Science and Wisdom]. In his speech, Lewis referred to Charles Leyll’s Principles of Geology (1830–33) that noted, “the laws of the universe always function according to a systematic routine.” Lewis then followed this comment with a reference to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859), noting that scientific observation and collection of data can provide the “causes for existence.” For Lewis, this scientific method could aid humanity in understanding God and his designs that “dominates this universe and man- ages its affairs.”36 The speech, however, caused a stir among some of the faculty and the board of the College who saw a distinct difference between science and the religious truths of the Bible. As a result, Lewis was forced to resign. The resignation prompted a student boycott as they were upset that one of their favorite teachers had been sacked. The board would not back down, and eventually several students were expelled, including Fāris Nimr. Angry at the shortsightedness and authoritarian manner of the board and administration, Cornelius Van Dyck and his son, William Van Dyck, both resigned from the college and the missionary association.37 While the missionaries and their supporters in America were divided over the use and role of science in education, the explosion of nineteenth century scientific discoveries did find a welcome reception among reformist Arab Christians and Muslims, including the Egyptian reformer Muḥammad ʿAbduh, who, in his risālat al-tawḥīd argued that science provided for the unification of reason and revelation.38 The journal al-Muqtaṭaf became one of the leading

35 Henry H. Jessup, Syrian Home Life (New York, Dodd & Mead, 1874), 145 as cited in Khalaf, “Protestant Images of Islam,” 225. 36 Al-Muqtaṭaf 7 (1882); 158–167; Minutes of the Board of the Syrian Protestant College, 1883, 247–56. 37 William was a strong proponent of Darwinism, and had actually corresponded with Darwin. Farag, “The Lewis Affair,” 75. 38 Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Risālat al-tawḥīd; trans. I. Musaʿad and K. Cragg (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 49. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 91

Arabic periodicals to promote scientific experimentation as a part of a new modern age.39 While the original Mission schools used the Bible as the primary text, later missionaries integrated scientific discoveries as an avenue for religious proof texting. Like-minded Islamic reformers also saw the same opportunities throughout this period.

Cultural Societies

Even before the rise of Islam, Arabs were recognized for their poetry and panegyric odes. The rise of Islamic civilization encouraged the development and retelling of the classical stories, such as Majnūn Layla and The Arabian Nights. Poetry and stories were shared in the court of the rulers, even though they were often frowned upon by religious scholars. In the eighteenth century, literary salons grew in popularity among the upper class. By the nineteenth century, traditional religious poetry and ancient moral fables were remolded by neo-classic poets and Arab nationalists who set up their own non-religious literary societies. George Antonius has credited the “American led” al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-iktisāb al-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn [Syrian Society for the Acquisition of Sciences and Arts] as the genesis of the Arab Nationalist movement, based on the ideas of Buṭrus al-Bustānī.40 While these societies did contribute to Arab Nationalist discourse, our interest here is primarily with cultural production and the transformation of Arab society in Beirut from a feudal millet system to a cosmopolitan “cultural awakening.”41 According to Antonius, the Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyya al-sūriyya was instigated by Bustānī and Yāzijī in 1847 (only one year before the Bible translation project) and supported by the American Syrian Mission. The membership of the society included the two Syrians, the American missionaries William Thomson, Eli Smith, and Cornelius Van Dyck, and several other unnamed Christians from different communities (Protestants, Greek Orthodox, and Greek Catholics).42 This society had a limited existence, more than likely due to the pressures from

39 Hanssen, 171. 40 Antonius, 13; Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 139. See also Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Christians between Ottomanism and Syrian Nationalism: The Ideas of Butrus al-Bustani,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (1980): 287–304. 41 Ami Ayalon, “Private Publishing in the Nahda,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 40, no. 4 (Nov. 2008), 561. 42 Antonius, 51. Contra Youssef Choueiri, Arab History and the Nation State: A sutdy of modern Arab historiography, 1820–1920 (New York: Routledge, 1989), 51–2. 92 CHAPTER 3 other responsibilities of its members, rather than from any ideological differences among its members, and was disbanded by 1852. Buṭrus al-Bustānī was the recording secretary and eventually published the papers given at the meetings in Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyya al-sūriyya.43 While the society was exclusively Christian, the papers published by Bustānī show the wide-ranging interests of the missionaries and their converts, including geography, history, and poetry.44 These literary and historical interests of Smith and Van Dyck are consistent with their particular nineteenth century evangelical piety that understood the sciences as an avenue into understanding and proving the Providence of God. Fruma Zachs has proved the importance of this society on Bustānī’s thinking in his book Khuṭba fī ādāb al-ʿarab in 1859.45 Zach’s research has specifically pointed to the impact of Eli Smith on him as a writer and thinker. However, we should not perceive Bustānī as a passive recipient of particular missionary ideas here, or place the locus of attention on the missionaries (as Antonius has done). Rather, it is important to recognize the opportunity provided by this society for Bustānī to begin his creative public engagement in the Nahḍa. Bustānī engaged Smith and Van Dyck’s social and spiritual values and would remodel them into an indigenous Syrian identity, addressing the cultural and political transformations taking place in nineteenth century Beirut, the Levant, the Arab World, and the wider Ottoman Empire. Although this literary society is the first to be noted, it was not the only one in Beirut. The Société Orientale was founded for the Maronites by the Jesuit Henri de Prunières in 1850.46 Other societies were soon organized in Beirut, including several exclusively Muslim as well as inter-sectarian ones; the most prominent being Bustānī’s inter-sectarian al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya [The Syrian Scientific Society] in 1857. Bustānī was able to create and direct a successful organization that comprised over one hundred members, including a number of important young Syrian Muslim notables, such as the Druze Amīr Arslān, and the Sunni Ḥusayn Bayhum.47 The society focused on the role of progress, modernity and civilization; all of the prominent themes reflected in al-Bustānī’s writings in his journal Nafīr Sūriyya.

43 Buṭrus al-Bustānī, al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn, 1847–1852 (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrā, 1990). 44 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 137–45. 45 Zachs, 148. 46 Antonius, 52; al-Mashriq XII (1909), 32–8. 47 Hanssen, 169. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 93

The Muslim Jamʿiyyat al-funūn [The Arts Society], founded by Saʿd Ḥamāda, Ibrāhīm al-Aḥab, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qabbānī and Yūsuf al-Asīr, was intended to continue the conversations among progressive Muslim minds in Beirut, after the disbanding of al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya. An important member of this society was Yūsuf al-Asīr, the scholar who assisted Cornelius Van Dyck in the final translation of the Bible. The society became quite influential through Qabbānī’s mouthpiece, the newspaper Thamarāt al-funūn, which began in 1875. Qabbānī continued his ideas of reform and progress in a new society called Jamʿiyyat al-maqāṣid al-khayriyya al-islāmiyya [The Islamic Benefit Society] in 1878.48 While the rest of Mount Lebanon struggled through the intermittent inter- confessional violence from 1840 to 1860, Beirut was being transformed from a small village into a provincial cosmopolitan capital of the Empire. The city benefited from the presence and migration of Syrian notables from the interior who gathered frequently for social, economic, and cultural reasons. After the 1860 Druze-Maronite civil war, coffee houses appeared in public spaces, supplementing private salons in upper class homes.49 The changing social dynamics created opportunities for gatherings that spurred these societies to develop. The gatherings of Syrian elites during the collapse of the “sick man” of Europe assisted in the articulation of some form of Syrian Nationalism. A prominent proponent of Syrian Nationalism was Fāris Nimr. Nimr had a direct influence upon his own student at the college, Ilyās Maṭar, who would go on to write al-ʿUqūd al-durriyya fī tārīkh al-mamlaka al-sūriyya in 1874, which reflected on the role of history as a “mirror in which one may observe the conditions of kingdoms and nations.”50 While it is true these societies often served political purposes, they also provided opportunities for individuals to explore new ideas and to discuss some of the changing realities of the scientific discoveries of the long nineteenth century. Butrus al-Bustānī was instrumental in developing the Arabic concepts of social and political iṣlāḥ [reform], as well as taqaddūm [progress] and tamaddun [civilization].51

48 Hanssen, 170. 49 Hanssen, 199. 50 Chouieri, 49. 51 Stephen Sheehi, “Butrus al-Bustani: Syria’s ideologue of the age,” in Adel Beshara, ed., The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and identity (New York: Routledge, 2011), 63. 94 CHAPTER 3

Literary Renaissance

No other issue has affected the development of the Nahḍa more than the printing press in disseminating diverse written forms of cultural production. The nineteenth century was truly more a revolution for the Arabic language than a “renaissance.” This period provided fertile soil for the growth of various kinds of literature in Arabic, including new forms of poetry, prose, short story, the dictionary, the encyclopedia, essays, and public opinion pieces, for use beyond traditional non-religious or scholarly purposes.52 These new genres took on different formats within newspapers, journals, and pamphlets, which were produced for a new and wider readership. Hala Auji’s recent research has shown that the development of print publication did not solely create opportunities for producing knowledge, but enhanced such opportunities for a broader audience as well.53 This creation of new avenues and opportunities for a larger public to gain access to information through a wide variety of written media created the new industry of bookselling and the novel profession of journalism. Eventually, this access to the written word by various classes undermined the authority of those who had traditionally monopolized knowledge, including the Muslim ʿulamāʾ and the Christian prelates.54 Throughout the Arab Muslim world, classical Arabic ( fuṣḥa), was based upon the clever use of rhyming schemes, a rich vocabulary, and effusiveness of words. Expositors of the language focused on eloquence and presentation.55 Known as adab literature, this form of cultural production reached its peak during the ʿAbbasid Empire (750–1258). The use of the printing press, however, transformed the popular use of the language to a khabar form, a shorter, less lavish use of the language. Authors and publishers no longer had the time or ability to create works of art for peers; rather they were meeting deadlines to

52 The Islamic tradition had long used biographical dictionaries, but nineteenth century dictionaries had non religious functions. 53 Hala Auji, “Between Script and Print: exploring publications of the American Syrian Mission and the nascent press in the Arab World, 1834–1860,” (PhD Dissertation: State University of New York, Binghamton, 2013). I am extremely gratefully to Ms. Auji for her conversations and willingness to share her dissertation research with me. 54 Auji, “Between Script and Print,” 54; Reinhard Schulze, “Mass Culture an Islamic Cultural Production in the 19th Century Middle East,” in George Stauth, Sami Zubaida, eds. Mass Culture, Popular Culture and Social Life in the Middle East (Frankfurth am Main: Harrassowitz Verlage, 1987), 26–28. 55 F. Gabrieli, “Adab.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. Brill Online, 2013. (http://reference works.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/adab-SIM_0293) [accessed 24 April 2013]. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 95 provide detailed information to a wide variety of readers for a range of purposes. Newspapers and journals did not have the space to provide elaborate descriptions or display calligraphy within confined spaces on the page.56 With a growing readership of diverse backgrounds and nationalities, standard linguistic references needed to be utilized for the sake of comprehension for a new readership. This was the beginning of a modern standard Arabic. In addition, this period saw the growth of neologisms, the introduction of foreign words into the Arabic language. Because of the impact of Europe and its political ideals, new terminology was needed to express ideas that had no Arabic equivalents, or antiquated words needed new meanings. Ṭahṭāwī and Bustānī introduced French Enlightenment ideas of nationalism and patriotism into an Arabic idiom. Nimr and Ṣarrūf familiarized readers with scientific concepts to build on classical philosophical Arabic. Salīm al-Bustānī, Buṭrus’ son, introduced serialized novels, short stories, and poetry for entertainment purposes.57 In short, the movement from the classical adab literature to khabar forms within the limited space of printed media vulgarized classical Arabic for a wide readership. Ami Ayalon has summed up this social and cultural transformation well.

Premodern Arabic was a rich language with an elaborate lexicon and a vast structural capacity for self-expansion. Scientific, human, social, political, or artistic notions were elegantly expressed. Like every language, Arabic reflected the views and attitudes of society, a reflection, in turn, of socioeconomic and political realities. Words had connotations rooted in society’s values, often of a conspicuous Islamic nature with harmony between conception and expression. Under the impact of modern developments, however, this harmony was lost, with the result that the language lost a good deal of its expressive vigor.58

Muḥammad ʿAlī had begun using the Bulaq press in Cairo to print military and government manuals and text books, as well as a weekly newsletter, al-waqāʾiʿ al-miṣriyya, to provide official government news and information to officials in 1813.59 In Syria, however, the printing press was used initially for religious purposes. When Pliny Fisk arrived in Beirut in 1825, there was a

56 Auji, 59–60; Ayalon, 180. 57 Constantin I. Georgescu, ‘A Forgotten Pioneer of the Lebanese nahdah: Salim al-Bustani (1848–1884)’ (PhD Dissertation, New York University, 1978), 20. 58 Ayalon, Press in the Middle East, 183. 59 P.J. Vatikoitis, The Modern History of Egypt (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 168. 96 CHAPTER 3 small Greek Catholic printing press in Shweir that had been operating since 1751, and a Maronite press in Koshaiya. Their primary focus was on printing religious material, including lectionary readings for communal use.60 After establishing the American Mission Press in Beirut, the Jesuits opened another catholic press in 1848. However, Khalīl al-Khūrī, a Greek Orthodox, established his al-Maṭbaʿa al-Sūriyya in 1858 and began publishing the first Beiruti news journal Ḥadīqat al-akhbār. As the editor, al-Khūrī focused on both international and local civic issues, including concerns related to the government responsibility of housing, sanitation and safety in Beirut.61 After the 1860 civil war numerous presses opened, including al-Maṭbaʿa al-Umūmiyya, Maṭbaʿa al-Maʿārif, al-Maṭbaʿa l-Adabiyya, and the Sunni Maṭbaʿat Jamʿiyyat al-Funūn of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qabbānī, which began publishing Thamarāt al-funūn in 1875.62 At the end of the long nineteenth century there were at least twenty- two printing press in operation.63 The American Syrian Mission Press was the first publishing house in Beirut itself. According to Henry Jessup, it was Smith’s Arabic American font that became the “best Arabic type in the world” that assisted this explosion of Arabic publication.64 The centerpiece of the Mission Press was the publication of the Arabic Bible, which became the “best-selling book in Syria and Egypt.”65 For Jessup, the Bible was certainly the answer to the problems of an ignorant East in need of spiritual enlightenment. From the very beginning, the Mission’s primary interest was to distribute the Bible (in various forms) to indigenous peoples of the Middle East. It was the hope of the Mission that by relocating the Mission Press from Malta to Beirut in 1834 they would be able to accomplish their mission more expeditiously among the Arab populace. However, as we have noted in the previous chapter, most of the literature published by the Mission Press until the 1860s was limited in number and focused chiefly on textbooks for the Mission schools. While a Syrian readership grew and engaged with various different written medium, Protestant religious material, including the Bible, was not consumed in large numbers by society, despite the best efforts of the missionaries. According to Tibawi, “There is no evidence that the

60 Jessup, vol. 1, 27, 72. See Cheikho, al-Mashriq 3 (1900), 251–57; 501–2; and Joseph Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban (Harissa, Liban: Imprimerie de S. Paul, 1948), 355–59. 61 Hanssen, 6, 123. 62 Tibawi, American Interests, 166. See Cheikho, al-Mashriq, III (1900), 998 for a list of the presses in Beirut. 63 Tarrazi, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʿarabiyya, vol. 4, 4–8. 64 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 362. 65 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 78. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 97 press had been an instrument in reviving a ‘largely forgotten’ or rabidly vanish- ing’ Arabic heritage.66 We shall return to this debate about the reception of the Bible in Chapter seven. Nevertheless, contrary to Tibawi’s claim that the early published religious literature of the American Mission had a limited affect on society at large, the American Syrian Mission Press did serve as a catalyst in the broader cosmopolitan life of Beirut in the midst of dramatic social changes. It was through the work and initiatives of Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck, and their Syrian friends and colleagues, both Christian and Muslim, that a variety of materials were published from the middle to late part of the nineteenth century in Beirut. For example, in 1851, Eli Smith published four issues of Majmūʿ fawāʾid, which was a compilation of “religious, historical and cultural material.”67 While limited in number and circulation, it displays Smith’s perspective of what Henry Jessup pejoratively referred to as a “broad view of mission.”68 That is, that Christian values could influence Syrian society, as a whole, rather than simply raising up evangelical congregations. This is also reflected in Bustānī’s publication of the lectures given at al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn. The ideas germinated at these early meetings found their way to larger audiences of Syrian society. That there were a large number of Syrian Christian journalists and authors who were either associated with Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck as colleagues or students from the early days of the Syrian Protestant college, is without question. They included, of course, Buṭrus al-Bustānī who edited Nafīr Sūriyya, al-Jinān, al-Janna, and Lisān al-Ḥāl with Khalīl Sarkis; and the students and lecturers of the Syrian Protestant College, Ya⁠ʾqūb Ṣarrūf and Fāris Nimr who published the important al-Maqtaṭaf. In addition, we can certainly add the Yāzijī family and their relationship first with Smith and then with the Bustānī family at the National School.69 The primary influence of the khabar works, which transformed Arabic literature and Syrian society through newspapers, journals and other forms of written material, should be credited to the network of Syrian elites and literati who lived in a tightly-knit social network of well-connected families, business persons and patrons in and around Beirut.70 Most of the early weekly and monthly journals and newspapers in Beirut focused on “municipal” and

66 Tibawi, American Interests, 308. 67 Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East—A History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 34. 68 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 22. 69 Ayalon, 268. 70 Hanssen, 159. 98 CHAPTER 3

“provincial self-determination” within Ottoman and international politics.71 Ultimately, the development of various journals and publications throughout the last half of the nineteenth century created an inter-confessional competition that, according to Ami Ayalon, “had constructive results in generating a seminal education and cultural contest of ideas,” of which the Americans were one part.72 The Americans, specifically Smith and Van Dyck, had an important role in the cacophony of voices, but they were not the only ones, nor did they have the ear of most Syrians. Moreover, they were not participants in creating a modern standard Arabic for popular consumption within the newspapers, journals, poetry, and prose that was developing throughout the second half of the nineteenth and on into the twentieth century. Their role was limited to preserving some form of fixed standard of Arabic through their translation of the Bible to which we will turn in the next chapter.

The Debate over the Role of the Americans in the Nahḍa

In reflecting on the seventeen year Arabic Bible translation that culminated in 1865, Henry Jessup wrote, “No literary work of the century exceeds it in importance and it is acknowledged to be one of the best translations of the Bible ever made.”73 Naturally, such a grandiose claim is open to scrutiny. We now turn our attention to this important debate about the role of the American Syrian Mission in the Arabic literary revival. We will examine the arguments of four different individuals who have weighed in on this issue, George Antonius, Albert Hourani, Abdul Latif Tibawi, and Jerôme Chahīne. These authors have been chosen because they represent different schools of thought on the role and influence of the American missionaries. Antonius represents the first school, arguing that the American missionaries were the instigators of the Nahḍa. The second school of thought, that of Albert Hourani, allows for the American influence as one major social movement among other political events. A.L. Tibawi represents a school that denies the importance of the American missionary role altogether. Finally, Chahīne represents the Catholic perspective, returning the antecedents of the Nahḍa to an earlier century.

71 Hanssen, 52. 72 Ayalon, 34. 73 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 77. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 99

George Antonius (1891–1942)

Building upon Jessup’s claim that the American Syrian Mission was of monumental importance in affecting the literary revival was the work of George Antonius. Antonius was from a Greek Orthodox family from Mount Lebanon. He was raised, however, in Alexandria, Egypt, where he went to school at Victoria College before enrolling in King’s College, Cambridge, England for university. As an English-educated Syrian scholar, he was well acquainted with the ways and means of British society in Egypt and the British Empire. He entered the service of the British government during World War I and remained there until 1930. Antonius’ The Arab Awakening, which he wrote following his retirement from civil service, was an extremely influential work, not only among Arabs or within the literary societies in the Middle East, but within the diplomatic corps of the British and American Foreign Service personnel of the pre and post-World War II era. Published in 1938, The Arab Awakening is a history of the “Arab National movement,” as he calls it. It is a dramatic account that describes the “inevitable” rise of the Arabs, a once proud and pure race, from under the oppressive rule of the Turks. The book reads like a James Mitchner novel, moving from the pre-history and geographic settings of Arabia, up to the important political events of World War I and the Arab uprising under Sharif Hussein. Antonius intended The Arab Awakening to provide intellectual fuel for the argument of a free and united Arab Nation after sixteen years of French and British U.N. mandates over a number of disparate Arab countries following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The book reaches its crescendo and conclusion where all post 1948 Middle Eastern political stories end: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In response to Theodor Herzl’s widely used phrase, “The Land without a People, for a People without a Land,” Antonius countered:

There is no room for a second nation in a country which is already inhabited, and inhabited by a people whose national consciousness is fully awakened and whose affection for their homes and countryside is obviously unconquerable.74

The Arab Awakening became very popular within British diplomatic circles and was well received by American consuls who were busy constructing an

74 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamilton, 1938), 409. 100 CHAPTER 3

American Middle East policy in the aftermath of World War II.75 Antonius’ presentation of the prominent role of American missionaries in the revival of the Arabs was not lost on the American diplomatic corps.76 The foundation of this pan-Arab movement rested on the historic “mother tongue” of Arabic that was reawakened in Syria in the 1830s, argued Antonius. After what he calls a “false start,” through the short but important rule of Ibrāhīm Pasha in Syria (1832–1840), the work of the American missionaries revived what he believed to be the true heritage of the Arabs—their language.77 The fervent and practical engagement of the American missionaries prompted the revival of the Arabic language through the establishment of their schools and the printing press. It is necessary to quote Antonius at length here to appreciate the force of his argument about the Mission and its long-term cultural effects.

The [Arabic] language itself had degenerated. Even in the early stages of the spread of arabisation, a divergence had appeared between the Arabic spoken in rural or tribal districts and the more grammatical idiom used by the literate classes in the towns. With the passage of the centuries, the cleavage had become more marked and had led to the growth of a set of spoken idioms showing considerable deviations from the standard forms. This process was a natural one, and harmless enough so long as Arabic culture remained active and flourishing and the traditions of the classical age alive. But with the decay of Arab power and civilization, which received their death-blow with the Ottoman conquest, those traditions were lost and the live spoken idioms threatened to swamp the standard language and taint it with their own debasement . . . To make matters worse, the literature of the classical ages had vanished from memory and lay buried in oblivion. The patterns of literary expression were lost and the spiritual influence of a great culture removed; and, however

75 William L. Cleveland, ‘The Arab Nationalism of George Antonius Reconsidered’, in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, eds. James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 84–6. 76 For a lively work on the relationship between the American missionary families and the early American diplomats, see Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The romance of an American elite (New York: Free Press, 1993). 77 For a review of the social and political changes implemented by Ibrāhīm Pasha. See David D. Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon: Christian Political Rights Under Islamic Law (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 65–73. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 101

missionaries might exert themselves to teach, minds remained starved and ideas stagnant.78

Certainly many have taken issue with Antonius’ claim that prior to the arrival of the missionaries Arab society was a wasteland of culture. However, Antonius saw a direct link between the small school organized by Isaac Bird and William Goodell in 1824 and the crowning achievement of the missionary school system, the Syrian Protestant College that was founded in 1866. The College, now known as the American University in Beirut, would go on to educate many of the future leaders of the Arab nation states. “Without school or book, the making of a modern nation is inconceivable,” Antonius wrote.79 Supporting Antonius’ view, George Antakly has argued that “The young Syrians who studied at American schools were prepared to fill positions in the professions and government, and they became leading members of the literary societies which paved the way for political activities of the 1870s.”80 The American missionaries, however, were never interested in such large political Arab Nationalist aspirations. Rather their intent was to provide opportunities for the local Syrian communities to be able to read the Bible and to counter the work of the Catholic Church, to free it from the “tyranny” of Popery. One extremely common theme throughout the American Protestant missionary material was their dramatic struggle against the hierarchy of the Maronite Church and the Jesuit missionaries. William Thomson, one of the American missionaries, conveyed this idea to his American constituency:

Protestant religious books and Scriptures, printed by Protestants, are rejected, by a general law among all sects of Papal Christians. This prohi- bition by the priesthood is regarded by many of the people as tyranny. The people are not wanting in a desire to know the reason of things, and form their inquisitiveness we judge that a great amount of latent talent would be brought to light, if they had but the advantage of good schools, books, and apparatus.81

From their perspective, nothing good could ever come from Bkerke or through the insidious influence of the French Catholic missionaries. In reflecting on

78 Antonius, 39. 79 Antonius, 40. 80 Antakly, 90. 81 Kamal Salibi and Yusuf K. Khoury, eds., Reports from Ottoman Syria 1819–1870, vol. 2 (Amman, Jordan: Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 1995), 391. 102 CHAPTER 3 the role of the Maronite Church, Henry Jessup wrote, “[t]hey kept the people in ignorance, and allowed of no schools, excepting those for training up a priesthood.”82 The Protestant-Catholic rift was the single most important issue noted in the early American missionary literature in Syria, even more so than the “fanatical” Muslims were. As both Makdisi and Khalaf have pointed out, these disagreements did not stem only from religious piety or theological perspectives but cultural issues.83 In many ways, Beirut was the focal point of the struggle for cultural identity in a rapidly changing and globalizing Syria. The Americans believed that they championed a non-imperialistic spiritual truth that would not only lead to individual salvation for its adherents but enlightenment and progress. As they saw it, the French inspired Maronite Church stood for old world tyranny and despotism.84 Antonius eloquently and persuasively makes his argument about the importance of this American influence through the Syrian Protestant College for the modern revival of the Arabs:

When account is taken of its contribution to the diffusion of knowledge, of the impetus it gave to literature and science, and of the achievements of its graduates, it may justly be said that its influence on the Arab revival . . . was greater than that of any other institution.85

To be fair, however, Antonius does hint at the possibility that both the French Jesuit missions in Syria, including the establishment of the Maronite College at ʿAyn Waraqa, did encourage the “study of Arabic literature.” He notes that “most of the men who in the first half of the nineteenth century rose to distinction in

82 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 217. 83 See Samir Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820–60 (New York: Routledge, 2012) and Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven. Makdisi centers the Protestant- Catholic rift on the death of the first Protestant convert, Asʿad Shidyāq, and its retold narrative within Protestant circles. 84 It is important to note that the Americans did see the distinctions between the views of the Maronite Patriarch, bishops and priests and the different Latin Catholic missionary orders whereupon there were often disagreements. See the Missionary Herald, vol. 41 (1845), 354–7, as cited in Salibi, 463–8. For an important study on the relations between the Jesuits and the Maronites of Aleppo in the 18th century see Akram Found Khater, Embracing the Divine: Passion and politics in the Christian Middle East (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011). Nevertheless, they were all seen as part of a tyranni- cal Church. 85 Antonius, 42. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 103 the world of letters and scholarship had their schooling in it.”86 However, he does not proceed further than this mere acknowledgment. Rather, he notes the effects of the Jesuits were “localized,” “slight,” and “incidental.”87 Antonius makes the point that when the initial Catholic missions to Syria set up their schools in Zagharta in 1735 and ʿAyn-Waraqa in 1789, the seeds were simply not ready for an Arabic renaissance to sprout. The general low level of education was predicated by the fact that there were no books available. Even with the creation of the printing presses of Muḥammad ʿAlī in Cairo and Sultan ʿAbdülmečid in Constantinople, there was no demand for books by the local populous. Antonius remarks that between 1822 and 1830, Muḥammad ʿAlī’s Bulaq press put out about fifty books in Arabic, Persian and Turkish.88 The implication by Antonius is that the mere establishment of the printing press, whether in Cairo, Beirut, or Constantinople, was not sufficient to create a literary renaissance. It would take the combination of the printing press along with the schools that would affect change. The American Syrian Mission Press, with its new “Arab American” font as developed by Eli Smith and the Mission Press printer Homan Hallock did just that, according to Antonius.

Albert Hourani (1915–1993)

Albert Hourani, in his seminal work Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798– 1939, notes the important role that Maronite and Greek Catholic communities played in the emergence of aristocratic Syrian families and their leadership in society. Hourani points out that the establishment of Maronite and Greek Catholic colleges in the eighteenth century contributed to the education of scholars who were conversant in European languages and tradition, as well Syriac and Arabic. These colleges helped to create a cadre of educated Syrian scholar-priests who served as bridges of learning and diplomacy between the Arabs and Europe. The emir of Mount Lebanon, Fakhr al-Dīn, used the Maronite ecclesiastics in his foreign diplomatic and economic exchanges with Europe. It was through this early connection that ideas about the role and identity of Lebanese Catholic historians, including that of the Maronite Patriarch Isṭifān al-Duwayhī (1629–1704), began to assert the initial seeds of nationalistic identity and carried “the flame of Arabic literature was carried to

86 Antonius, 38. 87 Antonius, 45. 88 Antonius, 38. 104 CHAPTER 3

Lebanon.”89 However, Hourani argued that the advent of new Arab ideas that developed into full-blown nationalistic identities in the nineteenth century Nahḍa originated along two parallel tracks: within the rule and administration of the Egyptian Muḥammad ʿAlī, and within the Ottoman imperial Tanẓīmāt. It was the Albanian-born Ottoman general, Muḥammad ʿAlī, who after his consolidation of power in Egypt in 1805, began to set up his own independent kingdom as a nominal territory within the Ottoman Empire. ʿAlī set the ball rolling by sending a cohort of young Muslim state employees to Europe to study and work, first in Italy and then in France. Having witnessed first-hand the importance of French scholarship and learning not only among Napoleon’s cadre of Orientalists who came to study ancient Egypt, but more importantly by a modern French army, the Viceroy of Egypt realized the importance of education for his new state. While ʿAlī’s primary concern was to learn modern European methods of military warfare and government administration, his project led to an unexpected flowering of Ottoman Muslim reflections on the ideas of French Enlightenment thinking. The individual most responsible for opening Egypt to French thought was the young Rifāʿa Rāfīʿ al-Ṭahṭawī. Ṭahṭawī lived in Paris from 1826 until 1831. As an al-Azḥar trained imam, he was sent by Muḥammad ʿAlī to serve as the spiritual leader for the other Egyptian army officers and civil servants who went to study and learn from the French. It was in Paris that Ṭahṭawī was deeply moved by eighteenth century French Enlightenment ideas, particularly through the works of Rousseau and Montesquieu. Upon his return home to Egypt he published his experiences in a very popular work, Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz ilā talkhīṣ Bārīz. ʿAlī was presented a copy of the work. He recognized Ṭahṭawī’s intellectual potential and appointed him as the chief translator of a new madrasa al-alsun wa-l-tarjamat [School of Languages and Translation]. While the focus and interest of the government was to translate works on geography, mathematics, and military manuals, Ṭahṭawī interjected his interests by supervising the translations of books on European philosophy and history. Some of the books he translated himself were Tārīkh al-falāsifa al-yūnāniyyīn and al-Dirāsāt al-ūlā fī l-jughrāfiyya al-ṭabīʿiyya.90 Over the course of his career within the Egyptian government, he oversaw the publication of other classical Arab texts, including those of the 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldūn.91 Ṭahṭawī was clear that it was vital

89 Hourani, 56. 90 Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī, An Imam in Paris: Account of a stay in France by an Egyptian cleric (1826–1831) (Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz aw al-dīwān al-nafīs bi-īwān bārīs) trans. Daniel L. Newman (London: Saqi, 2004), 46–7. 91 Hourani, 69–71. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 105 for both the civil rulers and the Muslim religious scholars to “come to terms with the new learning” of the modern age.92 Once the genie was out of the bottle, there was no getting it back in. He was instrumental in re-interpreting classical Islamic categories based on French political terms. For example, Ṭahṭawī believed the French notion of participation in the public sphere for the common good, and promotion of dignité, égalité, and liberté were ideas that also had deep roots in Islamic thought within the legal concept of maṣlaḥa [public interest]. Reading through French enlightenment thinkers, he reflected on the concept of “natural law” as explaining the underlying principles of sharīʿa.93 He utilized Ibn Khaldūn’s notion of ʿaṣabiyya [group identity] to interpret French notions of patriotism, and would later advance the phrase ḥubb al-waṭan [love of the nation]. In fact, one contemporary commentator calls Ṭahṭawī the “father of Egyptian Nationalism” because of the nationalist poems he wrote in 1856.94 While it is clear that Ṭahṭawī was instrumental in jump-starting a revival in publishing both new and classic Arab texts for consumption among government officials and educated elite, the question remains open how widespread and effective his views were in Syria before 1860, when Bustānī began publishing his ideas after the 1860 civil war.95 Ṭahṭawī’s Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz ilā talkhīṣ bārīz appeared in 1834, three years after his five-year sojourn in France, but it was not a best seller by any means. It was, however, extremely popular with Muḥammad ʿAlī who had it translated into Turkish and distributed to the higher echelon of the Egyptian bureaucracy. ʿAlī even sent copies to Istanbul for review, where it more than likely had some impact on the reforms of Sultan Mahmud II.96 However, it was al-Ṭahṭawī’s later work, Manāhij al-albāb al-Miṣriyya fī mabāhij al-ādāb al-ʿaṣriyya, which was published in 1870, where many of his social and political ideas were thoroughly explored and became widely known.97 According to Hourani, Muḥammad ʿAlī and his sons Ibrāhīm and Saʿid, and grandson Ismāʿīl, can take credit for developing a vision of reform by invest- ing the Egyptian government in educating young civil servants like al-Ṭahṭawī. In addition to sending officers and students to Europe, Muḥammad ʿAlī created a new education system for his aristocracy. The madrasa jihādiyya was

92 Hourani, 76. 93 John J. Donohue, ed. Islam in Transition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 13. 94 Muḥammad ʿImāra, ed. Al-Aʿmal al-kāmila li-Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī, vol. 1 (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-nashr, 1973), 80. 95 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 148. 96 Ṭahṭāwī, 44. 97 Ṭahṭāwī, 67. 106 CHAPTER 3 organized in 1825 to provide a modern education of science and European languages for the sons of the Turkish, Georgian and Kurdish aristocratic families.98 While Muḥammad ʿAlī’s educational endeavors were limited in scope, and were not aimed either at the Egyptian populace or at broader Arabic literary endeavors, they dramatically impacted at least one person, Ibrāhīm Pasha. These early years of rich government modernization provided Ibrāhīm the stimulus for his own social reforms enacted during his rule of Syria. This then, directly affected the work of the American Syrian Mission, and the indigenous work of the likes of Buṭrus al-Bustānī. The second parallel track that encouraged the further development of the Nahḍa, according to Albert Hourani, was the Ottoman Tanẓīmāt undertaken within the Ottoman Empire from 1839–1876. Similar to Muḥammad ʿAlī, the Ottomans realized that their government beauracracy, especially the army corps, was in need of a modern education for its officers and civil servants.99 A key moment in creating this Ottoman reform, argues Hourani, was the Hattī Hamayun of Sultan ʿAbdülmečid in 1856. The declaration provided for the formal recognition of all subjects of the Empire, regardless of their religion. The Hattī stated that individuals were recognized by the Sultan as equal subjects under his rule, rather than as members of individual religious communities with their own communal laws. This pronouncement wiped away centuries of Islamic tradition of the millet system, where subjects had status based on the confessions to which they belonged.100 More, importantly for the purposes of this research, however, the proclamation provided the stipulation that leadership of each confession should be shared among the laity and not only be invested within the traditional ecclesiastical leadership of each millet. According to Hourani

It is not an accident that a number of those who were to become famous as writers broke away from their communities into the comparative freedom of the new Protestant community created by American and British

98 Ṭahṭāwī, 24. 99 Still a classic study on the Tanẓīmāt is Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (New York: Gordian Press, 1973). Of particular interest is Carter Findley’s study in the recruitment and education of Ottoman civil servants during the Tanzimat, where he argues that those recruited during this period developed a “worldly literary culture (adab).” Carter Vaughn Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 36. 100 See Maʿoz’s arguments regarding the rise of non-Muslim civil servants within Ottoman bureaucracy after the Hattī Hamayūn. Maʿoz, Ottoman Reform, 192. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 107

missionaries, and recognized by the sultan in 1850; and that in their writing can be seen an ‘anti-clerical’ element absent from that of their Muslim contemporaries.101

This curious statement indicates there was a sense of skepticism of the authority of the traditional religious leaders, many of whom were against the modernizing reforms. One of these famous writers to which Hourani next refers is Buṭrus al-Bustānī. Hourani notes that the concept of ḥubb al-waṭan min al-īmān [love of nation is an article of faith], became the byline of Bustānī’s journal Nafīr Sūriyya in 1860. This phrase was later utilized by the Young Ottomans in their construction of an ethnic Turkish nationalism in the 1870s, as well as by the Egyptian Reformer Rifāʿa Rāfīʿ al-Ṭahṭawī in Manāhij al-albāb l-miṣriyya fī mabāhij al-ādāb al-ʿaṣriyya.102 While the emigration of Syrian “men of letters” to Egypt from the 1840s onward has been well documented, thus affirming a strong link between Syrian and Egyptian ideas that were free-floating during the middle of the nineteenth century, more research is needed to determine the impact of one on the other. It remains to be seen whether Ṭahṭāwī had a direct influence on Bustānī. Hourani then comes full circle. There is an organic development of the Nahḍa in his thinking, which commences in Egypt, moves outward, and then returns. These renaissance ideas created new political structures within the Empire that recognized the various communities as equal by the Sultan, at least in theory, and eventually made it possible for the creation of a recognized Protestant community in 1850. The recognition of the Protestant millet created legal space for the American missionaries to work on behalf of the community, which then provided the opportunity for Bustānī and others to develop and publicize their views. It was through these new literary opportunities that the Syrian Christians began to express an Arab nationalism bent on subvert- ing Ottoman patriotism. Thus, it was the likes of Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, who through their original work published at the American Mission Press were the contributors to an Arab literary renaissance. This intellectual process impacted another Syrian Christian who ended up in Egypt. Jurjī Zaydān, a former student at the Syrian Protestant College and of Cornelius Van Dyck, became a prominent author and journalist in Egypt during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. In his review of the history of the Arabic language, Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya,

101 Hourani, 96. 102 Hourani, 101 and 72, respectively. 108 CHAPTER 3

Zaydān carefully places the emergence of the Nahḍa within the socio-political contexts of both Syria and Egypt in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He notes the importance of mercantile and religious associations with Italy that helped to establish Aleppo as an important trading and religious center of learning by the end of the seventeenth century.103 However, Zaydān argues that the end of the Mamluk era in Egypt was a chaotic time that the French were able to exploit. The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798 and the presence of French “men of learning” provided an opportunity for inquisitive minds and new ideas. However, it was Muḥammad ʿAlī who used the opportunity to create a new opportunities for a modern Egyptian nation. He exploited the existing relationships with Italy and France.104 There had already been Italian traders in Egypt for several hundred years, and there was a direct link through the Italian community. The French connection was later fully exploited when Muḥammad ʿAlī sent his contingent of students to France in 1826. As one of the students of the Syrian Protestant College who did emigrate to Egypt in the late nineteenth century, Zaydān explores the interconnected- ness of events within the government of the Ottoman Empire and its effects on both Syria and Egypt, as well as the impact of migration of Syrian writers and thinkers to Egypt during the reign of Muḥammad ʿAlī. Like Hourani, he sees these political events as crucial for the Arab renaissance. For Zaydān the international context of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire provided an atmosphere in which the Nahḍa began to take root. He notes four events in particular. First was the creation of the Bulaq Press by Muḥammad ʿAlī. Second was the development of the educational and legal reforms of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Tanẓīmāt. Third was the developing role of Beirut as a cosmopolitan city. By 1860, Beirut had been opened up to commerce and rail. These new modes of transportation carried not only a wide variety of newly available goods, but novel ideas as well. Finally, the last factor noted by Zaydān was the modern government schools in Egypt and the private schools in Syria, including the missionary schools.105 In this regard, Zaydān closely mirrors Hourani’s interpretation of the origins of the Nahḍa. As a contemporary of the Nahḍa, Zaydān believed the Arab world was entering into a modern era [al-madaniyya al-ḥadīthiyya] and that the renaissance was affecting all aspects of life: economic, political, social, educational, philosophical, literary (including innovative publishing houses, journals, genres, and literary societies), and religious. As a Christian, he was attuned to the emerging religious reformist thought

103 Jurjī Zaydān, Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya, vol. 4, 4th ed. (Cairo: al-Hilāl, 1957), 8. 104 Zaydān, 7. 105 Zaydān, 14. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 109

taking place within Egypt through the teaching of Muḥammad Abduh. Living in the midst of the renaissance, and contributing to it through his writing as a journalist; he saw the events as a radical breaking with the past and the creation of a new era. For Hourani, then, the American missionary movement in Syria may have been an important participant to the renaissance, but it did not have any impact on the wider political events. Arabic Thought recognizes the multiple activities of “Lebanese Christians” and reformist Muslims within the locus of a vortex of ideas in Egypt who responded to their changing socio-political context and re-imagined their world. The American missionaries were one important factor influencing a larger cultural reformation.

Abdul Latif al-Tibawi (1910–1981)

Contrary to George Antonius and Albert Hourani is the spirited argument of Abdul Latif Tibawi. In his 1971 article “Some Misconceptions about the Nahda” in the Middle East Forum, Tibawi states emphatically the conjecture that the Nahḍa originated with the foreign missionaries, and then spilled out to the Syrian Christians to the rest of the Middle East, is nothing but a “fanci- ful picture.”106 Rather, he argues that both Antonius and Hourani exaggerate the role of both the Protestant community and the American missionaries in the Nahḍa. Tibawi points out that there were well-established printing presses in the Middle East long before the Protestants set up their first station in Malta in 1821. There were also, he argues, Arab literati who were active in writing and publishing before the American Syrian Mission Press came to Beirut in 1834. To support his argument, he reasons that even if the Mission Press was so important to develop Arabic publishing, its impact was limited to printing pamphlets and editions of the Bible for its own small school system to propagate a sectarian faith. He writes:

There was nothing in the curriculum related to political or economic ideas. Arabic was taught largely as grammar, rhetoric and poetry, but not literature as such. So far as can be discovered none of the teachers, native or American, edited any Arabic classic.107

106 Abdul Latif Tibawi, “Some Misconceptions about the Nahda,” Middle East Forum 47 (1971), 17. 107 Tibawi, “Misconceptions,” 17. 110 CHAPTER 3

The correspondence of the ABCFM, and especially that of the General Secretary, Rufus Anderson, would confirm this claim. Anderson’s primary agenda was the spiritual liberation of Syrian souls and not cultural production or literary education. When the presses were up and running, the missionaries were under strict orders to print only religious material. The missionaries responded to the Prudential Committee back in Boston that they would be more effective in helping “natives” read the Bible in Arabic, if they could teach them to read in the first place! Eventually Anderson relented and the Mission Press then began printing textbooks for their schools. Tibawi notes that whereas the American Syrian Mission Press was focused on religious education, the printing press of Bulaq had been pumping out Arabic classics, such as al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima and Asfahāni’s Aghāni.108 Tibawi seems quite offended that the Americans would have rescued a lost “Arabic literary heritage” when they were not even interested in the greats of Arab history. His more detailed study of the American Syrian Mission, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901: A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work, is an important critique of Antonius’ narrative regarding the importance of the mission on Syrian society at large:

It is fair, therefore, to dismiss the claim often made that the American press was instrumental in reviving a ‘largely forgotten’ or ‘rapidly vanish- ing’ Arabic heritage. Neither by design nor by accident, as its history has shown, was the press an agency of revival of classical Arabic literature, to say nothing of other branches of Arab culture. . . . The American press had from the beginning concentrated on the diffusion of translated Protestant religious literature, a translation of the Bible, and a few ele- mentary school books.109

As we have already noted, in addition to his refutation of the importance of the Mission’s literary output was his assertion that the Mission schools had little or no effect on Syrian society. Because of the consistent pressure from the ABCFM to focus solely on preaching and religious education, the missionaries eventually broke ranks from the mission board to create the Syrian Protestant College. This was because the Americans could not compete with the curricula at the English, Scottish Protestant, and other Catholic schools.110 In other words, according to Tibawi, if the Americans succeeded with the Syrian Protestant

108 Tibawi, “Misconceptions, 16. 109 Tibawi, American Interests, 252–3. 110 Tibawi, American Interests, 305. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 111

College, it was simply because they betrayed their missionary roots of preaching, evangelizing, and raising up an evangelical Christian community. It was never the original goal of the American Syrian Mission to open schools with any form of secular or liberal arts education. The establishment of the College was the result of dramatic changes within the social and political context of Syria, over which the Americans had no control, but to which they responded. What Isaac Bird and William Goodell found as a dirty, backwater town in 1823 was, by 1865, a vibrant international city at the center of the “Eastern Question”. Beirut was no longer the mud-walled drab village, but a teaming cosmopolitan city wired into the economic and political international infrastructure of the Mediterranean, with a vibrant port and rail depot. From the interior of Syria, displaced persons had begun moving to Beirut in 1840 and continued until the disastrous massacres of 1860.111 Stories of the tragedies of 1860 had reached numerous constituencies in Europe and North America, leading to a slew of mission agencies opening a wide variety of relief ministries in and around Beirut, including the German Kaiserworth deaconesses. Syria was now feeling the full effects of the “Eastern Question” and so a flood of international foreign consulates needed local support staff and labor. The worldviews and later expectations of so many Syrians had now been impacted by the outside world because of inter-confessional conflict, international politics, trade, and exposure to various languages and cultures from Europe. Thus, there was now a steady request from villages for the missionaries to open “American” schools. If they were not willing to acquiesce, the Jesuits who had reestablished themselves were more than willing to help French supported schools. The Americans had to adapt to the changing context. By 1866, the missionaries broke away from the policy and Prudential Committee of the ABCFM and opened their own Syrian Protestant College. Its graduates included many of the top intelligentsia, professionals, and political leaders of much of Greater Syria, even today. The conflicted identity of the Syrian Protestant College, as either a religious institution or a secular nationalist school of higher learning, indicates the struggles of the missionaries and the debate over the American Syrian Mission’s role in the Nahḍa, which Tibawi has noted. The college was to be the culmination of a mission policy of establishing Protestant education in Syria. Yet, its goals of higher education as understood by the Mission association were no longer limited to “religious” edification, but to educate the whole student as a well-rounded, moral modern “citizen.” While the missionaries had assumed that a thoroughly “liberally” educated Syrian

111 See Leila Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994). 112 CHAPTER 3 would lead to their acceptance of the Gospel, the socio-political developments of the Ottoman Empire had created broader concerns for which the graduates of the Syrian Protestant College (as well as the Mission schools) focused their energies. By 1863, Bustānī had already opened his own National School. He had no reservations about offering a secular curriculum that was open to all confessions. It was Buṭrus al-Bustānī and other students of the College who would go on to foster the Arab literary revival of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as provide the important ideas for the political cause of Arab Nationalism. As Samir Khalaf has noted, it was truly the circle of Yāzijī, Bustānī and Yūsuf al-Asīr out of which

some of the most regenerative and vibrant forces of ideological and intellectual changes were generated. They were instrumental by virtue of the secular and liberal causes they embraced, in reshaping the structure of society and inciting public debate on contested issues. Many of the region’s outstanding journalists, public intellectuals, teachers, scholars and heads of voluntary associations can be traced to this circle.112

We now move to Tibawi’s final critique of the American Mission in Syria. He wrote that if it was the original design of the missionaries to wake the “nominal” Christians of the Orient out of their slumber to provide an evangelical witness to the Muslims and Jews, then the mission failed miserably. By 1881, after sixty years of work, the total number of “native” Protestants was 1,542, rising to about 7,000 by the beginning of the twentieth century.113 Leaving aside any dispute of accurate numbers, Tibawi’s point is still well taken. The mea- ger number of converts in Syria was always a point of concern of the ABCFM. The missionaries constantly had to justify their apparent lack of success. 114 In fact, the lack of significant numbers of converts was almost sufficient reason for the Prudential Committee to close the Mission on at least two occasions. Thus, Tibawi argues the American missionary enterprise found itself drifting along with the currents of the day, carving out a small niche for an evangelical community and eventually gaining legal recognition within the Sunni Islamic Ottoman Empire. However, their ability to impact Syrian society was minimal and, according to Tibawi, did not have enough strength to create or advance

112 Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries, 237. 113 Tibawi, American Interests, 303. 114 Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries, 215–21. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 113 the ideas of the Nahḍa. If anything, the missionaries merely took advantage of the socio-political forces around them to achieve a modicum of success.115

Yūsuf Nasrallah (1911–1993) and the Oriental Catholic Churches

To this point, the debate about the Nahḍa has centered on the role of the American Syrian Mission. Such a focus, of course, reveals a particular bias of the place of the American evangelical mission. Yūsuf Nasrallah (1911–1993), a Greek Catholic scholar of Arabic Christian literature, has provided an invaluable resource on the cultural impact of the publications of the Oriental Catholic Churches of Syria in L’imprimerie au Liban.116 Nasrallah argues that the impact of printing in Syria had its origins in two locations, the monasteries and the presses under the patronage Fakhr al-Dīn ibn Maʿan (1572–1635). Fakhr al-Dīn was a Druze emir of the Chouf who preceded the Shihābī family. It was his treaties with Italy, specifically with the Medici family of Tuscany, which propelled Mount Lebanon forward into the world markets. This international connection also brought with it an “intellectual revolution” that opened Lebanon and the Oriental Catholic clergy to the renaissance in Europe.117 This political and economic relationship eventually led the Medici family to underwrite the costs for an initial Arabic Bible translation from the Vulgate. These connections between the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Latin Catholic Church, initially through the Capuchins and the Jesuits, and later through the indigenous Oriental Rite Catholic Churches themselves, provided numerous opportunities for young Syrian priests to study in Europe and to develop translation projects throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1566, a catechism of the Catholic Church, Iʿtiqād al-īmān al-urthūduksiyya al-rūmāniyya, was published in Arabic.118 This was

115 Henri Lammens has claimed that by the beginning of the twentieth century, half the population of Syria had been educated in French schools, and the other half were split between Ottoman schools and the other private schools, including the American Mission schools. Henri Lammens, La Syrie, précis historique (Beirut: Imprimiere Catholique, 1921), 201. 116 Yūsuf Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban (Beirut: Fahkr UNESCO, 1948). See also Nasr Allah, Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’Église melchite du Ve au XXe siècle: Contribution à l’étude de la littérature arabe chrétienne (Louvain: Paris, 1983). 117 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, xvi. 118 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, xviii. 114 CHAPTER 3

followed by a work on the Arabic language in 1624, a work on apologetics and philosophy in 1637, a Church history text in 1653, and finally a catechism in 1640. These were all translated under the patronage of the Maronite College in Rome.119 The Maronite College was founded in 1584 as a result of the strong ties between the Maronites and the Roman Church. The Maronite Patriarch Mikael I officially accepted the authority of the primacy of the bishop of Rome, and entered an official relationship with Pope Gregory XIII. The College served as a catalyst for young Maronite priests and scholars to work on Arabic texts in Rome.120 According to Nasrallah, and others in this school, the College was the primary genesis of the Nahḍa. However, the role of Fakhr al-Dīn in this Roman—Maronite connection has yet to be explored. Aside from the opportunities the Maronites had in Rome to publish new texts in Arabic, several other Oriental Catholic communities established a number of other printing presses. The Greek Catholic Bishop of Aleppo, Malātios Korme and his successor, Makārios Zaʿīm, both supported and financed an Arabic press in Bucharest. There they published a Psalter and other apologetic materials in 1747.121 The first Arabic works printed in Aleppo were under the patronage of the Greek Catholic Patriarch Athanasius Dabbas (1647–1724). These works included a liturgy in 1701, “Prayers of the Hours” in 1702, a Psalter in 1706, and the Gospels in 1708. By 1711, the press was transferred to Balamand in Mount Lebanon.122 The Greek Catholics founded another press at the monastery of St. John in Shweir. It originated under the patronage of Abdallah Zakher (1680–1748), who was known for his philosophical and intellectual endevors.123 Nasrallah concludes his study noting how important the international association between Europe and the Oriental Catholic communities contributed to new and fresh thinking that moved back and forth between the continents. Travel, study, education, technology and financial agreements all worked together to breathe life into the Oriental Catholic Churches. Nasrallah writes:

119 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, 10–11. 120 See Nasir Jumayyil, Les échanges culturels entre les Maronites et l’Europe: du Collège maronite de Rome (1584) au Collège de ʿAyn-Warqa (1789) (Beyrouth, Liban: Imprimer Gemayel, 1984). 121 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, 14. 122 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, 21. 123 See Joseph Elie Kahale, Abdallah Zakher, philosophe, théologien et fondateur de l’imprimerie arabe en Orient: son époque, sa vie, ses œuvres (Paris: Denair, 2000). Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 115

Nous nous restreignons cependant, aux oeuvres qui eurent de l’influence sur la formation des élèves orientaux, ou qui profitèrent à leur commu- natuté. . . . Les autres élèves de Rome qui retournèrent au Liban, infuse- ment àleur Église une remarquable vitalité.124

Several other authors have delved into the importance of the Oriental Catholic traditions in printing. Iliya F. Harik’s Politics and Change in a Traditional Society Lebanon, 1711–1845 is a careful study of Maronite society in eighteenth century Mount Lebanon. It provides another important piece of evidence regarding the active role the Maronite Church played in the origins of the Nahḍa. Harik’s study examines the transformation of society form the semi-feudal iqṭāʿ system up to the development of the qāʾimaqāmiyya of Mount Lebanon in 1842. Harik notes that the rise of a strong Maronite ecclesiastical identity was impacted by the fall of the traditional land-owning nobility in the seventeenth century. This socio-political change provided the opportunity for the Church to reform its own administrative structure and take on further leadership roles in society. Eventually, the Church leadership emerged as political leaders by the beginning of the nineteenth century, just as the American missionaries began arriving.125 Whereas the Church had been subservient to both Druze and Maronite wealthy families, such as the Khāzins and Shihābīs, by the late eighteenth century it began to emerge as its own power base with political influence.126 It was, by this time, the longstanding opportunities that had been created by the Maronite College in Rome that provided an important stimulus for the leadership, which made it possible for the Maronite leadership to assert its own authority. The Maronite College not only served as a location for Maronite scholars, but it recruited, educated, and graduated several important bishops and patriarchs, such as Isṭifān al-Duwāyhī (1629–1704) and Yūsuf al-Tiyyān (1796– 1808). As Maronite leaders returned to the Mountain, they worked with the Jesuits to found a number of important schools at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries: ʿAyn Waraqa, ʿAyntura, Kfayfan, Farhay, al-Rumiyya, and Rayfun, among others.127 Contrary to the claims of the early American missionaries, that the Catholic institutions were sources

124 Nasrallah, L’imprimerie au Liban, xxxiii. 125 Iliya F. Harik, Politics and Change in a Traditional Society Lebanon, 1711–1845 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968), 165. 126 Harik, 95. 127 Harik, 162. 116 CHAPTER 3 of superstition, the schools provided opportunities to study logic, philosophy, theology, and European languages. In fact, ʿAyn Waraqa has been called the ‘Sorbonne of the East’ during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.128 Graduates of these schools included Tannūs al-Shidyāq (1794–1861), Bishop Niqūlā Murād (d. 1862), Yūsuf Kāram (1823–1889), and of course, Buṭrus al-Bustānī. These individuals would go on to influence Maronite identity, as well as the political ideologies of Greater Syria or particular Lebanese nationalism through their thinking and writing. For Harik, these nationalistic ideas originate within the socio-political context of Mount Lebanon and are only peripherally impacted at a later date by any foreign presence, including the Jesuits, let alone the American missionaries. Of course, the most famous of these early Catholic scholars was Jirmānūs Farḥāt (1670–1732). Farḥāt was from Aleppo, and eventually became the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo. He attended the Maronite College of Aleppo, established by Isṭifān al-Duwāyhī, where he studied Arabic, Syriac, Latin and Italian. He was one of the founding members of a scholarly society that was interested in translating Syriac liturgical, philosophical, and theological texts into Arabic. During his time in Aleppo, he founded the famous Maronite library, where he collected important Syriac and Arabic manuscripts. According to Nihād Razzūq, Farḥāt completed a translation of the New Testament from Syriac, as well as a massive commentary on the Gospels.129 One of Farḥāt’s works was a treatise on preaching in Arabic as an art form, called Faṣl al-kitāb fī al-waʿẓ. This was an especially important cultural advancement and led the revival of Arabic among the Arab Christians of Syria. Finally, Farḥāt’s Arabic grammar, Miṣbāḥ al-ṭālib fi baḥth al-maṭālib, became an important reference for the nineteenth century literary renaissance. Buṭrus al-Bustānī edited and published it in 1854. Many of Farḥāt’s other works would also be translated throughout the nineteenth century.130 Jerôme Chahīne (1941–), in his al-Masīḥiyya wa-l-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya, provides another important counterbalance to this American-centered debate.131 Chahīne notes that the Arab World’s introduction to the “sciences and the

128 Patel, 43. Patel’s primary reference for his work here comes from Jibrān Masʿūd, Lubnān wa-l-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya al-ḥadītha (Beirut: Bayt al-Ḥikma, 1967). 129 Nihād Razzūq, Jirmānūs Farḥāt: Ḥayātuhu wa-āthāruhu (Al-Kaslik: Jāmiʿat al-Rūḥ al- Qudus, 1998), 44–5; as cited in Razzaq, 46. 130 Razzaq, 53–4. 131 Jerôme Chahīne, “al-Masīḥiyya wa-l-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya” in al-Masīḥiyya ʿabr al-tārīkh fī l-mashriq. Ḥabīb Badr, Saʿad Salīm, and Jūsīf Abū Nahrā, eds. (Beirut, Lebanon: Middle East Council of Churches, 2001), 797–823. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 117 development of inventions” in the nineteenth century had their origins with the Jesuits in the sixteenth century.132 The creation of this college, argues Chahīne, was the impulse that pushed forward for the formation of further Maronite colleges in Syria, including ʿAyn Waraqa in 1789, Mar ʿAbdā in 1830, Rayfūn in 1832 for the Maronites, ʿAyn Trāz in 1811, and Dayr al-Mukhalis in 1828 for the Greek Catholics.133 Following the 1860 civil war and the founding of the Syrian Protestant College, the Jesuits also opened St. Joséph College in 1875. Chahīne underlines that the most important Syrian Protestants of the Nahḍa, Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Fāris Shidyāq, were both educated at ʿAyn Waraqa, where Bustānī especially learned the fine arts of Arabic grammar, Syriac, Latin, and Italian and was schooled in philosophy and theology.134 In addition, Chahīne notes the importance of the Jesuit education and role of Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī (1847–1906), who would go on to develop his own translation of the Bible, begun in 1878 and completed in 1882.135 This assertion is echoed also by Constantine Georgescue in his research into the role of Salīm al-Bustānī.136 Thus, there is significant support that the Jesuit and Maronite educational institutions of the eighteenth century did provide fertile ground for the later nineteenth century literary renaissance among the Francophone and Catholic communities in Syria. Chahīne is careful to note that the first Arabic press created was the Syrian Orthodox press in Aleppo in 1706 and that at least two other presses began printing religious material in Mount Lebanon in 1722 and 1753. While he recognizes the importance of the Protestant printing press in Beirut and the various Protestant journals and newspapers there, including the majmūʿ fawāʾid of Eli Smith, he notes that the first indigenous Christian periodical printed in the Ottoman Empire, however, was that of Rizqallah Ḥawssūn in Aleppo in 1855.137 For Chahīne, the nineteenth century was a period in which Arab culture had to navigate its way between Ottoman nationalism and Western liberalism. Arab Christians had the added struggle to find an identity within a dominant Islamic culture. While on the one hand, Arab Christians supported the ideals of the secular French Revolution that would respond to religious “fanaticism”; on

132 Chahīne, 799. 133 Chahīne, 800. 134 Chahīne, n.3, 824. 135 It is significant that Henry Jessup in his Fifty-Three Years does not mention this translation of the Bible. 136 Constantin Iuliu Georgescu, “A Forgotten Pioneer of the Lebanese ‘Nahḍa’: Salīm al-Bustānī (1848–1884),” (PhD Dissertation: New York University, 1978), 3. 137 Chahīne, 803–4. 118 CHAPTER 3 the other hand they also sought liberation from “European imperialism.”138 If the American missionaries are to be thanked for providing any benefit to Syrian society, it would be for the establishment of their schools. The Americans, as well as the Jesuits at an earlier period, all provided new opportunities for education. According to Chahīne, the missionary role is recognized at best as a secondary influence in reviving Arab society. An important aspect that is often overlooked by both those who deny the importance of the Catholic schools and those like Chahīne who favor the role of an indigenous Syrian Catholic base for the Nahḍa is the rule of Bashīr al-Shihābī. It was Shihābī who stabilized the political situation of Mount Lebanon. His rule provided for the rise of the prominent Christian towns of Dayr al-Qamār and Zahlé as economic centers. He was also a patron of the arts. According to Philip Hitti, as well as Fruma Zachs, Shihābī supported a cadre of literati, many of whom were educated at ʿAyn Waraqa; including Buṭrus Karāma, Niqūla al-Turk, Amīr Ḥaydar Aḥmad al-Shiḥab, Ṭannūs al-Shidyāq, Nāṣif al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus al-Bustānī, of course.139 al-Shihābī’s local school provided an important foundation for the study of Arabic, sciences and history, as well as serving the religious purposes for the Church. Shihābī patronized these literati, who were the core of an indigenous movement that was only exported out of Mount Lebanon after the fall of Ibrāhīm Pasha and subsequently Shihābī himself in 1840. Many of these “renaissance men” found their way to Beirut to continue their scholarly pursuits and interests, including Bustānī and Yāzijī. Thus, while the American Mission may have provided opportunities for the activities and further thinking of Bustānī and Yāzijī, they certainly did not discover them. Rather, Bustānī and Yāzijī, who were already well known and respected, were looking for a new professional life in the Beirut. While the American missionaries may not have been impressed with the “popish” religious material used by the Oriental Catholic and Orthodox communities because of their own religious inclinations, there is sufficient evidence to note that there had been important moments of intellectual and artistic activity within these communities long before the nineteenth century. In fact, there is enough evidence to note the important cultural, linguistic and religious activity of the Maronite and Greek Catholic communities as early as the seventeenth century. While this work has not delved deeply into the history of the Maronite College of Rome, its origins and effects, this Catholic school had a significant impact on several major communities of Syrian Christians, especially in Aleppo. This activity, however, would only be exploited in the

138 Chahīne, 823. 139 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 28–32. Debate over the Origins & American Contributions to the Nahḍa 119 middle of the nineteenth century when printing presses began to make the previous work available to wider audiences. In all four schools of thought reviewed above, the Syrians were not passive agents with regard to the changes and challenges of nineteenth century Syrian society. They responded to the changes of Ottoman society and the growing international climate of a burgeoning urban Beirut, which included a small American missionary presence and a long-standing Latin Catholic mission in the interior of Syria. The Syrian Christians replied to these social and political changes by creating their own “discursive fields” of literary and political material with what Sabry Hafez calls “dynamic inter-textuality.”140 That is, while the Syrian Christians engaged with the politics and piety of the Catholic and Protestant missionaries, they did so with their own language and intellectual resources. Taking advantage of the new opportunities of the liberal Egyptian governance systems in the Levant, the presence of multiple national spheres of influence following the 1840 ouster of Ibrāhīm Pasha, the development of diverse educational institutions, the growing opportunities of printed material in Beirut, and eventually the general freedom of expression through newly established journals first in Beirut and then in Cairo, the Arabic Nahḍa was birthed by a variety of different “texts.” It was through these various social, political, educational, and literary “texts” that Arabic literature thrived. We would agree with Fruma Zachs that the American missionaries “encouraged a process of local dynamics already underway, but did not initiate it.”141 In the words of Abu-Ghazaleh, “The American mission simply built on existing foundations for the purpose of creating another religious sect in the area.”142 Their publications were limited in number and were aimed at the small community of Evangelicals and students within the Mission schools. Here A.L. Tibawi is correct. Their impact was important, but not pervasive. The American impact was more a result of their Syrian associates of the Mission (individuals like Bustānī, Yāzijī,) and the students of the Syrian Protestant College (Mikhāʾīl Mashāqa,143 Fāris Nimr and Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf). Rufus Anderson of the American Board had insisted that the resources and energy of the mission go toward raising up an indigenous self-supporting,

140 Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A study in the sociology of modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1993), 27. 141 Zachs, 150. 142 Abu-Ghazaleh, 31. 143 Fruma Zachs, “Mīkhāʾīl Mishāqa—The First Historian of Modern Syria,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 28, no. 1 (May, 2001), 70. 120 CHAPTER 3

self-governing, and self-propagating church. The missionaries did succeed at that, but not in the scale that he had hoped. Compared to the work of the ABCFM in other parts of the world the American Syrian Mission had little to show for its work. As already noted, if raising up an indigenous church to witness to the evangelical faith among the “nominal” Christians and “fanatic” Muslims was the object, then they failed. Their numbers were anemic compared to the “success” of ABCFM missionaries in other parts of the world. Anderson was not interested in taking part in any form of a cultural or literary renaissance—but rather a spiritual one. Rather ironically, however, the one major impact the Mission had on the Nahḍa was its creation of a liberal arts education enshrined in the curriculum of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. This would eventually become the American University in Beirut; and its sister school, the American University in Cairo, charted by the American Mission in Egypt in 1914. These universities were the “unexpected consequences” of the missionary activity.144 Rather than contributing to the raising up of an evangelical community, or even reinvigorated ancient churches, these schools fostered a sense of Arab Nationalist identity and thought. Even more ironic is that such ideals developed under the aegis of an English language curriculum, much to the dismay of Cornelius Van Dyck. What then can we say of the American role in the literary Nahḍa and the most important spiritual project of the Mission: the translation of the Bible? How much did the so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible contribute to the Nahḍa?

144 Sharkey and Doğan, 3. CHAPTER 4 Contributions to Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship

One of the important facets of the so-called Van Dyck translation that has been neglected in scholarly research is its importance to nineteenth century text critical scholarship of the Bible. It has been a basic assumption that Arabic biblical texts were of late origin and thus had little to contribute to the knowledge of Biblical textual studies. While the focus of research on the Arabic Bible has usually involved interest on whether its origin pre-dates or post-dates Islam, Hikmat Kachouh’s recent research into the families of Arabic Gospel manuscripts provides new and exciting possibilities for renewed research on the Arabic Bible.1 This debate over the “archetypes” of the Arabic Bible is an interesting one.2 It is argued here that a thorough review of the sources utilized in the translation of the so-called Van Dyck Bible is another important layer in the construction of the Arabic biblical text; at least as far as the New Testament manuscripts are concerned. As part of a worldwide Protestant movement of evangelization, the ABCFM established priorities for publishing and distributing the Bible and religious tracts as its method of Mission. They were not alone. The ABCFM was part of a larger Western Protestant missionary effort. Mission agencies garnered significant resources of personnel and finances to undertake such monumental tasks. Evangelical supporters in their home countries were encouraged to forward their tithes and gifts for the important task of saving perishing souls by providing lost nations with the Word of God. In 1847, the American Syrian Mission sent an impassioned appeal to the Prudential Committee to commit itself to undertake such a new translation of the Bible in Arabic:

1 Kachouh., 326. 2 A proponent of the Arabic Bible pre-dating Islam is Irfan Shahīd. See his important voluminous work Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volumes 1 & 2 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995). For the post-Islam argument see the work of Sydney H. Griffith, “The Gospel in Arabic,” Oriens Christianus 69 (1985), 126–167. For an overview of the debate see David D. Grafton, “The Politics of Pre-Islamic Arab Christianity in Contemporary Western Scholarship,” Theological Review, vol. 34, no. 1 (April 2013): 3–21.

The Arab translator is interpreting the lively oracles for forty millions of an undying race whose successive and ever augmenting generations shall fail only with the final termination of all earthly things. Can we exaggerate on such a theme? Is it easy to overestimate the importance of that might power that shall send the healing leaves of salvation down the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Niger; that shall open living foun- tains in the plains of Syria, the deserts of Arabia and the sands of Africa; that shall gild with the light of life the craggy summits of goodly Lebanon and sacred Sinai and giant Atlas? We think not. These and kindred thoughts are not the thoughtless and fitful scintillations of imagination, the baseless dreams of a wild enthusiasm. To give the Word of God to forty millions of perishing sinners . . .3

This request was not unique during this age of Protestant mission. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Bible was translated into four hundred and forty-four new languages by missionaries or under the patronage of mission agencies.4 These organizations were able to undertake and carry out these translations because of a well-connected network of Bible societies and printing houses around the world. The ABCFM’s work within the Ottoman Empire produced at least two such major Bible translations, one in Armeno-Turkish and the other in Arabic.5 The missionaries who engaged in such tasks were usually recognized by the histories of their mission agencies as those who gave of their life work for completing such translations. Yet, translations were rarely the work of one sole individual. Usually, the translation process involved an association of missionaries working together, as well as the vital participation of indigenous persons who were more often than not recent converts. These indigenous Christians were uniquely skilled and inherently knowledgeable about a local language and culture. However, they were rarely given credit for their work in the official historiographies of the mission societies or within the literature published for supporting churches. This, of course, has fed into a colonial understanding of mission.6 This was certainly the case with the two

3 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 68. 4 United Bible Societies, Scriptures of the World (New York: American Bible Society, 1992), 40–55, as cited in William A. Smalley, Translation as Mission: Bible translation in the modern missionary movement (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1991), 33. 5 Justin Perkins, ABCFM missionary in Russian controlled Urumia, also translated the Bible into Eastern Syriac in 1852. 6 See specifically Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible,” 681, n. 4, where he provides references for the debate over the role of missions and colonialism. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 123 translations of the ABCFM in the Ottoman Empire, the Armeno-Turkish Bible, and the so-called Van Dyck Bible. The so-called Van Dyck translation did not only involve a team of translators; which included Syrians and Americans, who were both Christian and Muslim, nor did it only involve the evangelical mission and Bible societies set up to support and provide for the development and publication of the new Arabic Bible. Rather, the translation process involved a cohort of academic and ecclesiastical biblical scholars around the world at an important time when there were critical discoveries of biblical manuscripts taking place. The project also took place during a significant Euro-American debate about the original text of the Bible itself. This chapter will examine the role of bible societies in supporting the work of the so-called Van Dyck translation, the important relationships that were fostered between the ABCFM missionaries Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck with biblical scholars in Europe and America, and the Bible’s location within the broader debate about the text of the New Testament. The debate about the original text of the New Testament within the American Syrian Mission and the supporting Bible Societies almost brought the translation to a halt in 1857.

The Bible Societies and Publishing Houses

The American Syrian Mission was a direct result of the Great Awakening in England and the North American Colonies. In chapter two, we reviewed the effects of the theology of puritan New England based primarily on the thinking of Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins on missionary efforts.7 It was the widespread cultural-religious perspective of the possibilities of a moral “city on a hill” turned outward and imagined as the “errand to the world” that fueled the fire of the New England missionaries. The first American mission society, the ABCFM, saw early success in places like India and Hawaii. It was in 1818 that the ABCFM decided to look eastward toward the Holy Lands. They were not alone, however. Rather, they followed in the wake of other mission agencies from Britain and the Continent. While the Ottoman Empire struggled to respond to the vicissitudes of the international political and military turmoil of the modern age, including its own transformation from a medieval Islamic Empire to a modern nation as part of the world community of new nation states, it was subjected to an invasion of independent mission societies that formed their own “benevolent

7 Field, Jr., America and the Mediterranean World, 71–74. 124 CHAPTER 4 empire” built on Hopkins ideal of “disinterested benevolence.”8 The Moravians were the first to send missionaries to Egypt and the Holy Lands in 1739. The Scottish Edinburgh Mission Society sent out missionaries to the Ottoman Empire in 1802, the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (the LJS) to Jerusalem in 1809, the Anglican Church Missionary Society to Malta in 1815. German Pietists from the Basel Seminary were sent to the Caucasus in 1822 and Egypt in 1826.9 Setting out from Boston, the ABCFM missionaries felt confident in their role of propagating the truth of the Gospel free from nationalistic or imperial entanglements. While they may have been citizens of a nation that was not party to the “Eastern Question” or other political intrigues in the rising Imperial age, the Americans were complicit in an international system of actors living and working within the Ottoman Empire under Western national protection who would dramatically impact Ottoman Society. The Americans came with their own particular cultural perspectives of an “evangelical modernity” that combined secular and sacred spheres into one lifestyle and left its imprint on Syrian society. Called the “Bible men,” they adhered strictly to the Christian Scriptures as the sole medium to introduce and perpetuate the Christian message. Thus, the ABCFM, along with the CMS and LJS, all concentrated their energies and resources on distributing the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, they quickly focused their attention on developing indigenous translations. William Goodell had been instructed in 1825 to concentrate on learning Turkish. During his early tour in Syria he had begun translating the New Testament into Armeno-Turkish with help from the Armenian Orthodox convert John Wortabet. Goodell spent his time at Malta translating the New Testament, which was completed in 1830.10 It was not until 1841, however, that the Old Testament was completed and the whole Bible—without the Apocrypha—printed in Armeno-Turkish.11 In 1831, Goodell was instructed to proceed to Istanbul to set up a mission to the Armenians in the Ottoman capital. The Turkish press was to be relocated to Smryna while the Arabic press,

8 Peter J. Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 2. 9 See David D. Grafton, unpublished paper, ‘For God and which Country?: Lutheran Pietists and their role in the 19th Century Anglican Mission Societies in the midst of the “Eastern Question, 1825–1898,’ Western Missions in the Levant, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, 18–20 July 2011, forthcoming in Aram. Julius Richter, A History of Protestant Missions in the Near East (London: Fleming H. Revell, 1910), 92–9. 10 Prime, 110. 11 Prime, 266. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 125 with Eli Smith, was to be moved to Beirut. In addition to Goodell and John Wortabet’s work, the Armenian Catholic priest Hovhannes Zohrabian had begun a translation of the Bible into Western Armenian in 1821. The BFBS supported his work and published it in 1825. A revision of the edition was undertaken by the ABCFM in Smryna in 1841.12 The ABCFM and CMS missionaries in the Ottoman Empire recognized that the Latin Catholic missionaries had preceded them by hundreds of years and that an Arabic Bible was already in circulation. The Protestant presses in Malta decided to reproduce or repackage the 1671 Arabic “Romish Bible” that was already in use among the Latin and Oriental Catholics without the Apocrypha. However, they were not satisfied with this particular translation. It was held in suspicion of “papal” errors. In referring to the widespread use of the “Romish Bible” Eli Smith wrote that

in the Epistles, though isolated texts generally convey nearly the sentiment of the original the meaning is often not clear, and the argument of continuous passages is not unfrequently [sic] lost. In fact, the more abstruse and doctrinal parts of Paul’s Epistles lose in it almost all their force. Of the prophetical and poetical portions of the Old Testament much is either without force, in bad taste, or absolutely unintelligible. The whole version is not in a classical style. The structure of the sentences is awkward, the choice of the words is not select, and the rules of grammar are often transgressed.13

At its spring meeting in Beirut in 1847, the American Syrian Mission put forward a resolution to the Prudential Committee that it was time to consider pursuing a new Arabic translation of the Bible. Eli Smith was nominated to undertake this task. The specific story of this translation will be taken up in the next chapter. At this point, it is important to note that such a resolution was only possible because of the available resources of the American and British Bible Societies. The ABCFM had already worked with the ABS and the BFBS to underwrite the costs of publishing various versions of the new translations. These translation projects required a network of printing and publishing

12 Manuel M. Jinbachian, ‘Modern Armenian Translations of the Bible’, in Armenia and the Bible: papers Presented to the International Symposium Held at Heidelberg, July 16–19, 1990, ed. Christoph Burchard (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1993), 102. 13 Eli Smith, Report “On the Existing Arabic Versions of the Scriptures,” March 6, 184; RG115, Box, 123 Arabic Bible Translation 1844+; The National Archives of the PC (USA), The Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 126 CHAPTER 4 houses, distribution centers that took advantage of the growth of commerce, industry, and technology in a modern global world. It also required indigenous Christians who could distribute these Scriptures to local communities (known as colporteurs) in formats that were acceptable, affordable, and practical. The sole function of the Bible societies was to assist in this endeavor.

The British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) and the American Bible Society (ABS)

An important result of the Great Awakening in England was an intense desire to form voluntary societies, free from ecclesiastical control of any state church or denomination that would support the work of domestic and foreign missions. In the spirit of ecumenical collaboration that was sweeping Great Britain, the Society for the Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) originated as a mission in 1698 to distribute Christian religious literature, first in England then in Wales. Among the many different freestanding associations that would come into existence during this period was the BFBS. Organized in 1804, its sole purpose was “to encourage the wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment.”14 The BFBS wanted to be a supporting organization to those mission agencies that already had missionaries or projects in place around the world. It provided agents to work with other societies “to provide their equipment, to prepare their way, to lighten their labours, [and] to give their work breadth and permanence.”15 Organized as an inter-denominational association that supported the work of other agencies in distributing the Bible under the rising aegis of the British Empire, the BFBS ensured that it would be the most influential Bible Society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The society decided from the very beginning that it would not involve itself in the ecclesiastical matters or affairs of any one denomination and that it would seek a broad-based coalition of support among “conformist” and “non-conformist” church bodies. The genius of its organization was that while it had no confessional stance it did allow auxiliary societies to be associated with a wide variety of particular Christian perspectives or national missions. The same evangelical awakening that created the BFBS as a voluntary association of like-minded Christians to support the distribution of the Bible in

14 William Canton, The Story of the Bible Society (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1904), 12. 15 Canton, 327. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 127

England took hold in the United States as well. The American Bible Society (ABS) was organized in a Dutch Reformed Church in lower Manhattan and ratified at the New York City Hall in 1816. With representatives from the Episcopal, Congregationalist, Reformed, Presbyterian and Society of Friends (Quakers) as well as those from various local Bible Societies, the ABS saw as its mission the distribution of the Bible primarily on the frontier of North America, and among the Native Americans and immigrant communities along the Eastern seaboard.16 The Americans modeled their own association after that of the BFBS and, at least until the 1870s, worked congenially with their British counterparts.17 Sometimes, however, the presence of the different societies working with the same missionary circles did produce undesired competition. The presence of ABS and BFBS agents on the ground in Syria with their growing American and British nationalistic tones of the mid-nineteenth century eventually led to an uneasy and strained relationship between the two organizations.18 Upon completion of the so-called Van Dyck the ABS and BFBS began charging different prices which caused difficulties for the American Syrian Mission society in selling the editions among the local populous.19 Nevertheless, by the time the so-called Van Dyck Bible was completed in 1865, there was a substantial infrastructure of Bible societies and their agents to be exploited for the purpose of publishing and disseminating various editions of their new translation. The American desire to support the distribution of the scriptures for foreign missions developed from a natural progression of the American settlement westward and then south of the U.S. border into Central and South America, and among the fledgling American merchant ships moving east. When local Bible Society auxiliaries began to abandon their attention to sailors, among whom they found little return for their efforts, the ABS decided to focus its own energies on providing support for American foreign missions. To this purpose they then began to appoint ABS agents to live abroad in 1832, who in effect became missionaries themselves.20

16 Lewis Birge Chamberlain, The Birthplace of the Society, Centennial Pamphlet no. 5 (New York: American Bible Society, 1916), 7–9; Otis Dwight, The Bible Among the Nations (New York: American Bible Society, 1915), 12. 17 Peter J. Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible business in nineteenth-century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 40, 253. 18 Eric Fenn, ‘The Bible and the Missionary’, The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3, ed. S.L. Greenslade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 392; Wosh, 253. 19 Letter from Mission Society to BFBS. RG115 The Arabic Bible, The National Archives of the PC (USA), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Presbyterian Historical Society, 24 January 1876. 20 Dwight, 14; Wosh, 107. 128 CHAPTER 4

The broad-based ecumenical perspective of the Bible societies, however, did not prohibit several important controversies about translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible throughout the world, omitting the Apocrypha, and the insistence on using the Received Text, or textus receptus, which served as the basis for the 1611 King James Bible. Both of these issues impacted the work of the American Syrian Mission. It has long been noted that Jerome’s Latin Vulgate had as its basis for the Old Testament the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, rather than Septuagint (LXX), or the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. According to tradition, the LXX was completed by seventy-two Jewish scribes in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt (287–47 BC).21 This Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures included fifteen books that are not found in the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Jewish Bible (Tobit, Judith, additions of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 & 2 Maccabees, 1 & 2 Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh). Nevertheless, when Jerome completed his work, he included these fifteen books, now known as the Apocrypha, in the new Latin version of the Bible. The Protestant Reformers, however, did not consider the Greek Apocrypha as Scripture, arguing that it was not part of the Jewish Canon.22 In 1825, several auxiliaries of the Scottish Presbyterian Church withdrew their support from the BFBS due to a controversy over the inclusion of the Apocrypha in some published editions of the Bible by the society. During the debate the board of the BFBS decided, finally, to add a clause to its constitution that it would not only insist on publishing and disseminating the Scriptures “without note or comment,” but also only those “excluding the circulation of the Apocrypha.”23 Even with this decision, the Scottish churches

21 For a helpful review of the traditional sources of the tradition of the translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha see Achille Vander Heeren, “Septuagint Version,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912) (Online version: http:// www.newadvent.org/cathen/13722a.htm) [accessed 10 May 2013]. 22 Martin Luther did translate the Apocrypha but placed it in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments He considered them “useful” for reading but not as Scripture. The translations of the Bible that excluded the Apocrypha included Jacob van Liesveldt’s 1529 Antwerp Dutch translation, the Swiss-German Bible in Zurich 1527–29) and the Geneva Bible of 1599. “Introduction to the Apocyrphal/Deuterocanonical Books,” The New Oxford Annotated Bible, eds. Bruce Metzger and Roland E. Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), iii–xiii AP. 23 Canton, 120. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 129 did not return to the society and began publishing their own editions of the Bible. The exclusion of the Apocrypha was a major point of debate between the newly arrived American missionaries in Syria, Isaac Bird and William Goodell, and the Maronite Patriarch Yūsuf Ḥubaysh. The Patriarch delivered a papal bull declaring the Protestants heretics for giving out “books of the Old and New Testaments printed in several languages including Syrian and Arabic which differ from one another, some replete with errors and others incorrectly copied regarding what is printed, for they have deleted from these books seven sacred and divine books . . .”24 The Apocrypha was not included in Arabic Bibles that were published by the BFBS and distributed by the American missionaries, nor was there any intent on including it in the translation begun by Eli Smith in 1847. The other major controversy to confront the Bible societies was that of the use of an eclectic Greek text of the New Testament as opposed to the Received Text, or the textus receptus. Early in their development, the Bible societies had to make important decisions about policies on the method of translation and the particular biblical texts to be considered authoritative for the use in translation. These decisions were critical when the new biblical manuscripts were being discovered in the nineteenth century. These discoveries posed particular problems for various segments of the Protestant community in North America and Britain that saw independent textual research on the Bible to be an assault on the authority of the Church and Scripture. This debate had an important impact on the American Syrian Mission’s project. It is important, then, to put the so-called Van Dyck translation into the broader context of nineteenth century biblical scholarship.

The Search for the Text of the New Testament

The early part of the nineteenth century witnessed the explosion of New Testament textual studies. Scholars in England and Germany began scouring the major museums, libraries, and monasteries of the world looking for ancient manuscripts of the Bible. This research was part of a larger Western Orientalist project that engaged in the pursuit of cultural knowledge through the collection and translation of Oriental texts. This scholarly pursuit worked hand-in- hand with the expansion of European empires around the world. Napoleon’s conquering of Egypt in 1798 opened the floodgates for the Société d’Egypte to

24 Makdisi, The Artillery of Heaven, 95–6; Bird, Bible Work, 133. 130 CHAPTER 4 scour the ancient ruins and temples of Egypt, leading to Champollion’s quintessential Orientalist find, the Rosetta stone. This led to the creation of Oriental studies that focused its research on ancient texts. The Bible was not free from such scholarly interests. The study of the Bible in the nineteenth century, however, was built upon the preceding work of scholars and ecclesiastics who published polyglot texts in the sixteenth century. Polyglots were Bibles that had several original source languages in parallel columns. The Complutensian Polyglot was published under the direction of Cardinal Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, in 1522. It included the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Aramaic Targum of Onkelos, the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, and finally a version of the Greek text of the New Testament.25 Several other versions followed this seminal polyglot, including the Paris Polyglot, which was completed in 1645. However, the London Polyglot became a most important tool of early Biblical studies. Brian Walton completed this six-volume edition of the London Polyglot with the assistance of numerous Orientalist Scholars, including Bishop Pockocke, Edmund Castell, and Samuel Clarke, among others. Completed in 1657, the London Polyglot included parallel columns of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Samaritan Pentateuch, Aramaic Targums, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Latin of Montanus, the Syriac Peshito, Arabic, Persian versions of the Gospels, and various Ethiopic texts. In response to this proliferation of texts, however, Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir published their own Greek New Testament in 1624, using the previous work of Theodore Bezae (1519–1605) of Geneva. Bezae based his New Testament text on an important family of Byzantine manuscripts reported to be from the 5th century, codex Cantabrigensis and codex Claromontanus. Bezae’s New Testament became known as the textus receptus. It became the standard Greek text used for translating the King James Bible, and thus became the standard translation for the work of the BFBS and ABS during the early nineteenth century.26

25 Erasmus of Rotterdam actually raced to publish his own edition of the Greek text in 1515 based upon several ancient manuscripts. His fourth edition of 1527 actually utilized the Complutensian Polyglot to make several revisions. Robert F. Hull, Jr., The Story of the New Testament Text: Movers, materials, motives, methods, and models (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 37; Bruce M. Metzger, and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 139. 26 Bezae utilized the fourth edition of Erasmus (1527) and Stephanus (1551), respectively. While both Erasmus and Stephanus are critically important to the development of a text, it was Bezae’s publication and compilation of the Greek text that became the standard. See Metzger, 148–50. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 131

ILLUSTRATION 2 Title page of 1727 reprint of Biblia Sacra Polyglotta Complectentia Textus Originales Hebraicum, cum Pentateucho Samirtino, Chaldaicum, Graecum. Versionumque Antiqarum Samaritanae, Graecae LXXII Interp., Chaldaicae, Syriacae, Arabicae, Aethiopicae, Persicae, Vul. Lat. Quidquid comparari poterat. Cum Textuum & Versionum Orientalium Translationibus Latinis [ed. Brian Walton] Vol # 1, (London: Thomas Rycroft, 1657) titlepage. NEST Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 132 CHAPTER 4

By this time, there was a widespread and growing interest in the various Testament manuscripts that made up the composite New Testament text. There were no original autographs of the manuscripts of the various books of the New Testament, but only copies. These copies had hundreds and thousands of variant readings. As part of the overall European interest in texts and manuscripts, ecclesiastics and freestanding scholars in universities throughout Europe who were fascinated by these textual variants began to group them into various families of texts with similar readings. Their interest was to get as close as possible to an accurate reading of the original manuscripts of the authors of the New Testament. To accomplish this, they combed the libraries around the world looking for the various manuscripts. By comparing the different manuscripts, they tried to isolate patterns, or families of texts, with similar variant readings of the Greek texts. Karl Lachmann (1793–1851), a German philologist, began a textual cold war by publishing a Greek edition of the New Testament in 1831, using only Greek uncial texts that could be dated from before 380 CE. Uncials were those manuscripts composed only of capital letters, which were considered an older form of acceptable Greek writing. His rationale was that the older texts were more correct and therefore more authoritative than later ones, and that these older texts would provide an eye into the original text of the New Testament. His assumption that the older texts were more authoritative has stood, for the most part, as an acceptable standard for many textual scholars.27 His efforts were followed by Constantine von Tischendorf (1815–1874) who single-handedly put New Testament textual studies on the map due to his publication of an edition of the famous 4th century Codex Sinaiticus. Tischendorf discovered this important codex in 1859 during a trip to the library of St. Catherine’s monastery in Egypt. This codex, along with Codex Vaticanus, which was located in the Papal Library in Rome, provided two almost complete 4th century texts of the New Testament that had similar variant readings. Scholars have argued that these two codices provide a clue to the development of the biblical text. Based on his finds, Tischendorf published a critical edition of the New Testament in 1841 (and released seven subsequent editions until 1872). In addition, he published editions of the Septuagint in 1850 and a first edition of the sixth or seventh century Codex Clarmontanus in 1852.28 These books helped to overturn most of the scholarly thinking about the

27 Hull, 77. 28 See Matthew Black and Robert Davidson, Constantin von Tishcendorf and the Greek New Testament (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1981). Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 133 original text of the New Testament and challenged the authority of the Received Text. An English colleague of Tischendorf’s was Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813– 75). A steady and careful scholar, Tregelles spent most of his time and energy reviewing previous published editions of the New Testament and began publishing his own critical review of the NT text in 1854.29 However, his edited text was not completed until 1872. In compiling his edition, Tregelles down- graded the authority of the textus receptus, believing it to be a late source. Another important edition of the New Testament text that came out the previous year was that of the Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford (1810–1870). While Tischendorf and Tregelles were classic academic scholars, Alford was a priest who understood his work as “discovering the genuine word of God.”30 He believed he could get as close to the original text of the evangelists and apostles as possible. However, Brooke Foss Wescott (1825–1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828–92) set the standard for modern scholastic New Testament textual study. Although, as we shall see below, this standard was and continues to be highly contested among a significant evangelical community that continues to adhere to the Received Text. Wescott and Hort used the previous work of Lachmann, Alford, Tregelles, and Tischendorf to publish The New Testament in the Original Greek.31 Wescott and Hort’s thesis, much like that of Lachmann, believed the older uncials manuscripts of Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were the most authentic readings of that ancient text as opposed to the Byzantine texts that had been used for the Received Text, or the textus receptus. Wescott and Hort’s version became known as the eclectic text, combining groups of different families and providing a variety of critical apparatus noting variant readings. Because of this advancing scholarship, there had been growing conversation among biblical scholars and ecclesiastics in Britain during the 1850s about revising the 1611 Authorized King James Bible that had been based upon the textus receptus. According to the Swiss born American Church Historian Philip Schaff

29 Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London: S. Bagster and Sons, 1854). Tregelles reviews the texts and methods of Lahmann and Tischendorf on pp. 97–129. 30 As quoted by Metzger, 174. 31 Brooke Foss Wesctott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (Cambridge: Macmillan and col, 1881). 134 CHAPTER 4

The ‘received text’ was hastily derived, in the infant period of the printed Bible, from a few and faulty cursive MSS., when the best uncial MSS. and the older versions (except a corrupt text of the Vulgate) were not yet known, before the patristic quotations were examined, and before even the first principles of textual criticism were understood.32

Schaff’s words reflected the dominant thinking of the time regarding both the status of biblical textual studies, as well as the need for a new translation of the Bible in English.33 However, his was not the only view. Rev. Frederick Scrivener, a member of the Revision Committee, published his A Supplement to the Authorized English Version of the New Testament in 1845 and argued for maintaining the textus receptus as the standard text of the New Testament. His book was followed, however, by a slew of publications by many different authors in 1856 and 1857 calling for a new English translation based on many of the new textual finds in biblical studies.34 This debate about the text of the New Testament eventually involved the BFBS and the ABS. Their translations of the Bible had followed the textus receptus. To allow variant forms of the Greek New Testament for translation purposes could lead to widely divergent readings that would cause confusion among different missionary agencies and the communities in which they were working. Scrivener’s publication led to a decision by the American Bible Society to undertake its own study and form its own Committee on Versions. This committee included, among others, Edward Robinson, Eli Smith’s former teacher and life-long friend. The committee spent three years working on proposals for changes to the Authorized Version, including correcting printer errors. The committee also developed standards for formatting; including the translation of proper nouns from the Hebrew, and column and chapter headings. In 1858, the Committee on Versions of the ABS canceled its plan to publish a revision of the New Testament due to disagreements from a significant number of

32 Philip Schaff, Introduction on the Revision of the English Bible (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), xxv. 33 Two prominent antagonists to the scholarly consensus of textual critiques were Dean William John Burgon, who published The Revision Revised (London: John Murray, 1883), and Frederick Henry A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (London: E. Millner, 1861) and The New Testament in the Original Greek According to the Text Followed in the authorized Version, Together with the Variations Adopted in the Revised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902). 34 See the listing of published works dealing with this issue in Richard Chenevix Trench, On the Authorized Version of the New Testament in Connection with Some Recent Proposal for Its Revision (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1873), 188–9. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 135 supporters of the original Received Text that regarded the 1611 King James Version to be a God-inspired English translation.35 However, the ABS did set up rubrics for future translations that were to be subsidized and printed; which included standards for “typography, orthography, capital letters, words in ital- ics, punctuation, hyphens and brackets.”36 Of course, these issues focused on formatting rather than on the substance of the text itself. In England, the ongoing debate over the text of the Bible led to the formation of a Revision Committee appointed by the Anglican Church in 1870. The committee included scholars from other British denominations, as well as group of twenty-six “American Revisers.” Cornelius Van Dyck was invited to take part in this work due to his work on the Arabic Bible translation.37 The committee’s mandate was to undertake a revision of the English Authorized Version of the Bible that considered the changes in the English language since the seventeenth century, as well as the current state of biblical scholarship. However, the committee was cautioned to make only those changes that were deemed necessary based on overwhelming evidence of the new texts. The British Revision Committee concluded its task in 1888 with a Revised English Bible published by Oxford University Press. The new English Text did take into account the recent textual discoveries, and thus the new version received a good deal of public criticism not only for abandoning the textus receptus, but also for destroying the meter and prose of the King James Version.38 Eventually, the BFBS published its own edition of the Bible in 1904 that included descriptions of the differences between the scholarly eclectic texts and those used in the Authorized Version. By 1957, the BFBS Greek text had included variant readings from these eclectic texts in its apparatus.

35 Schaff, xxx–xxxi. See the Report of the History and Recent Collation of the English Version of the Bible: presented by the Committee on Versions to the Board of Managers of the American Bible Society (New York: American Bible Society, 1851), and the Report of the Committee on Versions (New York: American Bible Society, 1858). 36 American Bible Society, The Manual of the American Bible Society (New York: American Bible Society, 1893), 43. 37 The Old Testament committee included: Thomas J. Conant, George E. Day, John De Witt, William Henry Green, George Emlen Hare, Charles P. Krauth, Joseph Packard, Calvin E. Stowe, James Strong, Cornelius Van Dyck and Tayler Lewis. The New Testament committee included Alfred Lee, Ezra Abbot, G.R. Crooks, H.B. Chackett, James Hadley, Charles Hodge, A.C. Kendrick, Matthew B. Riddle, Charles Short, Henry B. Smith, J. Henry Thayer, W.F. Warren, Edward A. Washburn, Theodor D. Woolsely, and Philip Schaff. Schaff, xvi–xvii. 38 Hull, 84–5. 136 CHAPTER 4

These developments in biblical textual criticism and the debates over the establishment of an accepted Greek text of the New Testament were important to the work of Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck as missionaries working under the aegis of the ABCFM. Eli Smith began working on the translation project as Tischendorf, Tregelles and Alford were in the midst of their own research. He took advantage of their innovative work. While the ABCFM missionaries may have been living and working in the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire, far from the universities of England, the Continent and North America, they were very much connected and tied into this network of biblical scholars and involved in the textual debates of the day. The libraries of Smith, Van Dyck, and the other ABCFM missionaries in Syria demonstrate that they used many of the latest publications of biblical textual study available during their time.39 In addition, both Smith and Van Dyck remained in contact with these biblical scholars as they engaged in the translation process and on occasion had advanced printings of their editions even before they were published, thanks to the generosity of Edward Robinson. Van Dyck himself described this technical process of translating the Old Testament, utilizing most of the tools with the mission’s disposal:

In the first place, [the translation] must be carefully made from the Hebrew, then compared with the Syriac version of the Maronites, and the Septuagint of the Greeks; the various readings given, and in difficult places the Chaldee Targums must be consulted, and hosts of German commentators, so that the eye is constantly glancing from one set of characters to another: then after the sheet is in type, thirty copies are struck off and sent to scholars in Syria, Egypt and even Germany. These all come back with notes and suggestions, every one of which must be well weighed. Thus a critic, by one dash of his pen, may cause me a day’s labour . . .40

Within the records of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, there are remnants of these returned comments from Gustave Flügel, Fleischer, and Rödiger, as

39 The library of the Near East School of Theology holds many of the works purchased and used by the missionaries, then donated to the mission library. The collection of scholarly works of the day is truly quite remarkable and demonstrates their commitment to serious scholarly study. 40 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 75. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 137 well as members from other British missionaries in the region.41 These detailed letters and comments regarding particular renderings of words and phrases once again shows, along with Van Dyck’s participation in the American Old Testament Committee for the Revision of the English Version of the Bible, that this translation process was part of a larger ecumenical and scholastic enterprise taking place in the middle of the nineteenth century throughout Europe and North American. However, no one biblical scholar of the day had more of a profound effect on Eli Smith and the so-called Van Dyck translation than Edward Robinson did.

Eli Smith and Edward Robinson

Edward Robinson (1794–1863) has been called the “Father of Biblical Geography.”42 Caught up in the inquiry of nineteenth century biblical criticism, Robinson was troubled by the lack of credible scholarly research on the geography of the Bible. His travels to Syria and the Holy Lands in 1838 and 1852 were intended to undertake a survey of the local topography and archaeo- logical sites, comparing them with the references in the Bible to promote “the study and illustration of the Holy Scriptures.”43 His work was foundational for the study of the biblical archaeology in Greater Syria. Because of his attention to the latest research in the Bible from Europe, he was the best-known American biblical scholar during the first half of the nineteenth century. He managed to combine a conservative New England Calvinism with Germany critical scholarship.44 Robinson was from a puritan Congregationalist background in Connecticut. He was schooled in the classical languages and began his first teaching position in Hebrew at Andover Seminary when Eli Smith was a student. Robinson was only seven years Smith’s senior, and they struck up a friendship that was to last their whole lives. Before Smith graduated from seminary and left for Malta,

41 PHS RG115, 2/113. Gustave Flügel to Van Dyck (September 24, 1864), Fleischer to Van Dcyk (July 21, 1864), Rödiger (August 17, 1864), and Charles Sandrexki of the CMS in Jerusalem to Van Dyck (April 14, 1864). 42 James B. Pritchard, Archaeology and the Old Testament (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958), 57–58. 43 Robinson and Smith, xiii. 44 Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 111–24. 138 CHAPTER 4 the two of them had talked at length of someday taking a trip together through the Holy Lands. In 1837, Robinson was appointed as a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. It was at this time that he arranged to undertake a tour of Egypt and Syria to examine traditional biblical sites and the geography of the Holy Lands. Robinson began his travels in 1838, mainly because Ibrāhīm Pasha’s occupation had made such journeys possible. In reflecting on the opportunities for safe travel in the 1830s in Palestine Robinson wrote, “He [Ibrāhīm Pasha] has rendered the countries under his sway secure; so that travelers, whether Orientals or Ranks, may pass in their own dress throughout Egypt and Syria, and also among the Bedawîn of the adjacent deserts, with the same degree of safety as in many parts of civilized Europe.”45 Robinson reached out to his former student Eli Smith, who was by now living in Beirut and knowledgeable of the language and cultures of Arab Syria. Smith would serve as his guide and Arabic interpreter. Robinson wrote this of Smith:

I count myself fortunate in having been thus early assured of the company of one, who, by his familiar and accurate knowledge of the Arabic language, by his acquaintance with the people of Syria, and by the experience gained in former extensive journeys, was so well qualified to allevi- ate the difficulties and overcome the obstacles which usually accompany oriental travel. Indeed, to these qualifications of my companion, combined with his taste for geographical and historical researches, and his tact in eliciting and sifting the information to be obtained from an Arab population, are mainly to be ascribed the more important and interesting results of our journey.46

A.L. Tibawi bristled at such Orientalist historiography. In fact, as a graduate of the American University of Beirut, he devoted his life to the repudiation that foreigners have recovered the lost secrets of language and culture that were never lost in the first place, but were simply unknown to these foreigners.47 This debate aside, Smith had a direct impact on Robinson’s research, helping him to navigate the terrain, serve as a cultural guide, as well as an interpreter, eliciting information from local Bedouin and sheikhs. Smith kept his own diary of the journey with his own notes of the places visited and turned it over to

45 Robinson and Smith, 43. 46 Robinson and Smith, 2. 47 Tibawi, “Misconceptions about the Nahda,” 16. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 139

Robinson when he was writing up the “Researches.” Following the completion of a draft, Smith had the opportunity to review and help edit the book, a skill for which he was known. Edward Robinson served as a teacher, friend, and men- tor to Smith, connecting him to the international network of European biblical scholars working on biblical manuscripts at the time, including Gesenius, Tholuck, and Rödiger in Germany.48

Biblical Scholarship of the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation

While Smith and Van Dyck have been credited with completing the translation in the Received Tradition of the missionary histories, several other Syrians were integral parts of the translation team. Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and Yūsuf al-Asīr provided original translation, expertise, and guidance, which will be reviewed in the next chapter. Of these three, however, only Bustānī had worked directly with the original biblical languages. Having been taught Syriac, Latin, and possibly Italian at ʿAyn Waraqa, he began to study Hebrew and Greek as part of the project.49 Tibawi has claimed that neither Bustānī nor Smith had any background in the biblical languages and had to use dictionaries and lexicons for simple comparison of various words.50 The evidence as presented here, however, does not bear this out. First, Smith would have been required to work with original biblical languages under the leadership of Moses Stuart at Andover Seminary, where he became well acquainted with the latest research on German Biblical criticism.51 Second, Smith’s listing of resources that were used to assist him in his work indicates a fairly high level of linguistic ability. Smith was known for his commitment to detail and thoroughness in his work, both as the editor of the Mission Press and in his translation of the Bible. In March 1854, he provided a detailed report to the ABCFM of

48 Robinson and Smith, 3. 49 While it is most certain that at ʿAyn Waraqa the curriculum would have included Syriac and Latin, it has been claimed that al-Bustānī knew Aramaic, Italian and French and then studied Greek and Hebrew at the mission. However, there is no evidence of his knowledge of such languages nor that he did not know Greek or Hebrew until he arrived at the mission. Leavy, “Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible”, 15. Abdul Latif Tibawi, “The American Missionaries in Beirut and Butrus al-Bustani,” Middle Eastern Affairs St. Anthony Papers 16 (1962), 157. 50 Tibawi, “The American Missionaries,” 162; American Interests, 123. 51 Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 47–8. 140 CHAPTER 4 the resources that he collected and used for his part of the translation.52 These works were then made available to Cornelius Van Dyck when he took over the translation project. After completing the translation, these resources were left in the American Mission library and eventually were placed in the Library of the Near East School of Theology, where this author had the chance to review many of them. The list of resources that Smith and Van Dyck provided underlines that they availed themselves of the then latest biblical scholarship, including what were to become controversial resources. The “helps,” as Smith called them are of four categories, 1) grammars, 2) lexicons, dictionaries and concordances, 3) commentaries, and 4) other translations of the scriptures. These works were a combination of English, German, Latin, Greek, ancient Hebrew, Arabic, Karshuny, and at least one dictionary in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. Below is a list of those sources provided by Smith in his 1854 handwritten report to the ABCFM. The works are arranged here within each category and then in alphabetical order, according to the English alphabet. Where possible, we have made connections with the authors of these critical texts:

Grammars: • Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der Hebräischen Sprache (1817) by Willhelm Gesenius (1786–1842). Gesenius was an influential German Orientalist scholar and professor of Theology at Halle. Emil Rödiger and Johann Christian Frederic Tuch were among his students. • Ausführliches Lehrbuch der Hebräischen Sprache des Alten Bundes (1844) by Heinrich Georg Ewald (1803–1874), professor of Old Testament at Göttingen. This was originally published in 1827. The eighth edition was finally published in 1870. Smith managed to obtain the latest edition available before beginning the translation. • A Critical Grammar of the Hebrew Language, 2nd ed. (1842) by Isaac Nordheimer, Jewish Professor of Hebrew at Union Theological Seminary and University of the City of New York. This edition was more than likely obtained through Edward Robinson who began his teaching at Union in 1837, the year before Nordheimer’s first edition was published. • Grammar of the Chaldee Language as contained in the Bible and the Targums (1851) by Johann Buxtorf (1564–1629).

52 ABCFM 16.8.1, 5, #209; also located in PHS RG 115, 123, report dated March 30, 1854. This report is repeated in several places; Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 3–5; Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 71–73; Leavy, “Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible,” 16–9. Both utilized the report submitted by Smith in the ABCFM archives. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 141

Lexicons, Dictionaries and Concordances: • Concordantiae Particularum Ebraeo Chaldaicarum (1734) by Christian Nold (1626–1683).53 • A Dictionary of Persian, Arabic and English (1811) ed. by John Richardson (1740–1795), from Lexico Arabico-Turcicum (1680) by Francisci a Mesgnien Meninski (1623–1698). • Lexicon Arabico-Latinum (1837) by Georg Wilhelm Freytag (1788–1861). • Lexicon Syriacum (1788) by Edmund Castel (1608–1685). • A Greek-English Lexicon (1843) by Henry George Liddell (1811–1898) and Robert Scott (1811–1887). • Hebräisches und Chaldäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament (1825) by Julius Fürst (1805–1873) from the University of Leipzig; along with the English translation by Samuel Davidson of A Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament in 1848. • Kitāb al-ṣaḥāh fī al-lugha wa-ṣiḥāh al-ʿarabiyya by Ismāʿīl ibn Ḥammād al-Jawharī (d. 1002).54 • Kitāb taʿrīfāt (1845) by ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī (1340–1413). • Kulliyyāt (1837) by Abū al-Buqāʾal-Husseinī. • al-Miṣbāḥ al-munīr fī gharīb al-sharḥ al-kabīr by Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Fayyūmī (d. ca. 1368).55 • al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ wa-l-qābūs al-wasīṭ fī mā dhahaba min lughat al-ʿarab shamāṭīṭ by Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Fayrūzābādī (1329–1414).56 • Novus Thesaurus Philologico-Criticus (1820–21) by Johann Frederic Schleusner (1759–1831). • Thesaurus Philogicus Criticus Linguae Hebraea et Chaldaea Veteris Testamenti (1851) by Gesenius. This was never completed by Gesenius before his death but was finished by Emil Rödiger (1801–1874), and published it in part beginning in 1851. Rödiger sent a copy of the completed grammar to Smith in 1852, presumably through Edward Robinson during their 1852 journey. Rödiger was in contact and communication with both Smith and Van Dyck

53 Christian Nold’s name Latinized is Christiani Noldii. Smith’s handwritten report was transcribed by into a typescript report as “Noldin,” which was copied by Henry Jessup in his 1900 Documentary History and his 1910 Fifty-Three Years. Leavy transcribes it as “Holdin,” Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible, 16. 54 AB-61, NEST Catalog of Manuscripts, Theological Review IV/1–2 (1981), 17. 55 AB-1, NEST Catalog, 1. 56 AB-67, NEST Catalog, 19. 142 CHAPTER 4

throughout the translation process. Rödiger had an extensive correspondence with Van Dyck on various issues of translation, the letters of which are located in the archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society.57

Edward Robinson, Smith’s professor and colleague, published Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldean Lexicon in English in the U.S. in 1834, and his Greek and English Lexicon in 1836 and brought a copy for Smith in 1852. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, who published his own Greek New Testament text (see below) also edited Gesenius’ Thesaurus in 1859 and published this in England (as he found Robinson’s American edition lacking).

Commentaries and other References (Historical and Linguistic): • Antiquitates sacrae veterum Hebraeorum (1712) by Adriaan Reland (1676–1718). • Azhār al-afkār fī jawāhir al-aḥjār by Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Tīfāshī (d. 1253).58 • Biblisches Realwörterbuch (1848) by Georg Benedict Winer (1789–1858). • Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1845) by Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849). • Beiträge zur Historisch Kritischen Einleitung ins Neue Testament (1828) by De Wette. • die Genesis (1852) by Franz Delitzch (1813–1890). • De Hebraicae Typographiae Origine ac Primitiis (1776) by Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi (1742–1831). • Die Völkertafel der Genesis (1850) by August Wilhelm Knobel (1807–1863). • Glossa Ordinaria of the Church Fathers.59 • Kommentar über die Genesis (1838) by Johann Christian Frederic Tuch (1806–1867). • Mā lā yasaʿu al-ṭabība jahluh by Yūsuf ibn Ismāʿīl al-Juwaynī al-Kutubī (ca. 1310) MSS from 1785.60 • Manhaj al-sālik ilá Alfīyyat Ibn Mālik by ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ushmūnī (1435–1494).61

57 PHS RG 115, 123, Arabic Bible Translation 1844+. 58 AP-13, NEST Catalog, 60. 59 Smith’s report does not mention any particular manuscript or publication, and the author was unable to find any record of this in the library of the Near East School of Theology, which holds most of the library of the American Mission. 60 AP-33, NEST Catalog, 66. 61 AB-61, NEST Catalog, 17. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 143 • Mughnī al-labīb ʿan kutub al-ʿārīb by ʿAbd-Allāh ibn Yūsuf Ibn Hishām (1309–1360).62 • Pentateuch oder die fünf Bücher Mosis (1820) by Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller (1768–1835). • Sharḥ al-kāfiyya al-ḥājibiyya by Uthmān ibn ʿUmar Ibn al-Ḥājib (1175–1249).63 • Sharḥ kitāb talkhīṣ al-miftāḥ by Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd ibn ʿUmar al-Taftāzānī (1322–1389).64 • Sharḥ mukhtaṣar al-maʿānī w-al-bayān li-talkhīṣ al-miftāḥ by al-Taftāzānī.65 • Sharḥ tashīl al-fawāʾid by Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Damāmīnī (1361–1424).66 • Supplementa ad Lexica Hebraica (1792) by Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791). • Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacræ Scripturæ (1669–76) by Matthew Poole (1624–1679).

Translations: • Biblia Polyglotta (1811), a reprint of the London Polyglot (1657) edited by Brian Walton (1600–1661).67 • al-ʿAhd al-jadīd li-rabbinā Yasūʿ al-masīḥ (1727), from the London Polyglot with “alterations made by Solomon Negri” [Sulaymān al-Aswād al-Dimashqī (1665–1727)].68 • Evangelion Greek Catholic lectionary readings translated from the Peshito in Arabic (1776).69 • Hexaplorum Origenis (3rd century), edited by Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–1792). • Kitāb al-muqaddas, Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide (1671).70 This was an edition of the “Romish” bible printed by the BFBS in Malta.

62 AB-52, NEST Catalog, 16. 63 AB-20, NEST Catalog, 6. Smith references the “Milla Jâmy on Ibn el-Hajeb” which the cata- loger recognizes as possibly [Sharḥ] mi’l-ʿAjamī [ʿala] Ibn al-Ḥājib. 64 AB-69, NEST Catalog, 19. 65 AB-3, AB-40, NEST Catalog, 1 and 13, respectively. 66 AB-50, NEST Catalog, 15. 67 Darlow and Moule, #1663, 68. 68 Smith, 1854 Report, ABCFM: 116.8.1, #209, PHS RG 115, 123; Darlow and Moule, #1655, 67; see also Davidson, Text of the Old Testament, 78. 69 Darlow and Moutle, #1661, 68. 70 Darlow and Moule, #1652, 66. 144 CHAPTER 4 • Novum D.N. Jesu Christi Testamentum Arabice (1616). The Arabic version of the London Polyglot edited by Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624).71 • MSS of Maronite Karshuny lessons (ca. 1810) translated from the Peshitta (5th cent.).72 • Three variant MSS of Tawrāt Mūsa al-nabī (ca. 1327, 1850 and 1850) originally translated by the Samaritan Abu Saiʾd (ca. 1070).73 • Tawrāt Mūsa al-nabī al-ʿaẓīm originally located in the London Polyglot translated by Saadah Gaon (ca. 892–942), edited and published by Thomas Erpenius in 1622.74 • Vetus Testamentum Graece (1850) by edited by Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874).

In addition to these items, Cornelius Van Dyck, in his 1863 report, clarifies further several additional resources used by himself, and possibly by Smith.75 • Biblia Hebraica (1839) by Everardus van der Hooght (1642–1716). • Introduction to the New Testament (1836) by J. Leonhard Hug (1765–1846). • An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (1828 ed.) by Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780–1862).76 • De Origine et Indole Arabicae Librorum V. Testament Historicorum Interpretationis Libri duo (1829) by Emil Rödiger (1801–1874). • Tawrāt Mūsa al-nabī al-ʿaẓīm an 1851 reprint of Arabic of the London Polyglot translated by Saadias Gaon (ca. 892–942), published in Leiden.77

A review of these translation aids demonstrates a great deal of care in what Isaac Hall calls a “rare and curious collection” of textual and linguistic works, and what Jessup noted as “a library of the best critical books on the Semitic

71 From a manuscript copied in the monastery of St. John in the Thebaid, AD 1342, including the four Gospels. 72 K-3 (S-C 1810), NEST Catalog of Manuscripts, Theological Review IV/1–2 (1981), 121. 73 AC-1, AC-2, AC-3, NEST Catalog, 19–20. 74 Darlow and Moule, #1645, 65; Samuel Davidson, The Text of the Old Testament Considered (London: Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), 78–9. 75 Cornelius Van Dyck, Report, PHS RG 115, 123, report dated April 29, 1863. This report is repeated in Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 15–18. 76 The 10th ed. of 1856 was enlarged to include two other volumes written by Samuel Davidson and Samuel Tregelles. 77 Darlow and Moule, #1682, 71. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 145

ILLUSTRATION 3 Titlepage of Erpenius’ 1622 edition of Saadias Gaaon. Pentateuchus Mosis Arabice, [Thomas Erpenius, trans] (Leiden: Iohannem Maire, 1622), titlepage, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 146 CHAPTER 4 languages, and on the text of the Scriptures.”78 As Smith noted in 1854, however, “the whole of this valuable apparatus is, of course, not consulted upon every passage. Many works are only occasionally referred to, and others but rarely.”79 We will return to the issue of the translation process and the role of the other Syrian translators in the next chapter. However, the list of resources and the reports by Smith and Van Dyck of the original work undertaken by them and the other translators provides an opportunity to address a major lacuna in the history of the so-called Van Dyck translation. Here we note the major works by English and German Orientalist Scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as some of the most important New Testament biblical scholars whose works were available to them throughout the translation. Smith’s relationship with Robinson was one major reason why there was access to such materials. In addition, as Van Dyck notes, after he had been appointed by the Mission association to continue the project after Smith’s death, he traveled to Europe to meet with a number of the European New Testament scholars; including Fleischer, Rödiger, and Davidson, to ascertain whether it was feasible to obtain further reliable translations.80 The lists above will provide biblical textual scholars a myriad of opportunities for future research on Arabic Bible translations.

The textus receptus versus the eclectic text

In what has become accepted as the Received Tradition (RT) of the history of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, Henry Jessup remarks that after the death of Eli Smith in 1857 (after nine years of work on the translation), Cornelius Van Dyck was given the task of completing the project by the rest of the American missionaries chiefly because of his proficiency in Arabic. Van Dyck accepted the task, and began reviewing the translation of the New Testament that Smith had already made. He realized that Smith had not only utilized the New Testament text published by Hahn, but a wide assortment of variant readings. Hahn’s Novum Testamentum Graeca, originally published in 1840 and then evaluated by Robinson in 1842, had been considered a standard Received Text. Hahn’s work reflected the textus receptus, primarily from the publications of Elzevir

78 Isaac H. Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius V.A. Van Dyck,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 11, 1882–1885 (1882–1885), 277; Jessup, Fifty-three Years, 55. 79 Smith, 1854 Report, ABCFM: 116.8.1, #209; PHS RG 115, 123. 80 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 30. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 147 in Leiden in 1624 who based his work on the editions of Robert Stephens in Paris in 1546, Theodore Beza in Geneva in 1565, as well as Erasmus’s Bible published in Basel in 1516.81 However, according to Jessup, Van Dyck also noticed, “in the first thirteen chapters of Matthew there are some variations from that text according to the text of Tregelles and others.”82 Tregelles “and others” presumably included the work of Robinson, Smith’s good friend, as well as the new manuscript findings by Tischendorf and Lachmann, whose eclectic texts were castigated by the defenders of the textus receptus. Recognizing that these editorial decisions by Smith would be the cause of some controversy, Van Dyck scrapped Smith’s work and “started anew.” Because of his decision, the Bible translation would until now become associated with the American missionary who rescued the translation from almost certain ruin by starting over and using only the authoritative textus receptus. Nowhere in Smith’s own report or papers does he comment upon which Greek text of the New Testament he utilized in the translation process, other than the Arabic editions of the London Polyglot and the “helps” detailed above. It is only Van Dyck, in his own report of the translation, who records for us Smith’s use of Tischendorf, Tregelles and Alford’s New Testament texts. However, we have no reason to doubt Van Dyck here. The MSS evidence of the translation itself provides evidence for the various renderings of passages raised by the eclectic text. In addition, given Smith’s relationship with Edward Robinson, his contact with other biblical scholars, and his stolid perfectionism, it is not surprising that Smith would have used the latest Bible translations, even if they were considered tainted by the Bible societies. Robinson had published a comparison of the various New Testament texts as early as 1834, and continued to update his work.83 Robinson had more than likely shared with Smith his interest and research while the two were together at Andover seminary. In addition, Smith’s missionary colleagues noted that when new information was received, Smith felt the need to review his previous work, which was one reason for his slow progress. Finally, it is also clear that Smith

81 Augustus Hahn, Novum Testamentum Graeca (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1857), xxii. Hahn critically reviews the eclectic text of Lachmann, and his treatment of the New Testament manuscripts on xxii. The 1857 edition of Hahn, currently located in the library of the Near East School of Theology, was previously owned by Henry Jessup. However, Hahn’s original work was released in 1840. 82 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 74. 83 Edward Robinson, A harmony of the Gospels in Greek in the general order of Le Clerc and Newcome, with Newcome’s notes. Printed from the text with the various readings of Knapp (Andover: Gould and Newman, 1834), and Edward Robinson, A harmony of the four gospels in Greek, according to the text of Hahn (Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1845). 148 CHAPTER 4 had no theological problem with availing himself of the latest tools of biblical textual study and was not a proponent of sticking to the textus receptus. Van Dyck remarks that Smith was “in advance of most of the Mission in regard to textual criticism,” and he appreciated Smith’s abilities as a biblical scholar.84 Eli Smith took his role as an exegete and preacher seriously and with great devotion. Similarly, Smith and Edward Robinson were far from being “liberal” scholars who were intent on undermining the Bible as a witness of Truth and the purity of the Gospel as was the charge against many historical critical scholars. Rather, Smith, Robinson, and later Van Dyck, believed the latest work of nineteenth century German biblical and textual research to be further opportunities for translating the clear Word of God in their new context in Syria. This was nineteenth century American post-millennialism in its scholastic form. Those who strove to work through the manuscripts and texts, study morphology, and linguistics were only doing the Lord’s work to advance an accurate knowledge of Scripture. However, the Anglican and Presbyterian debates about textual purity in England and North America were real concerns for the Prudential Committee and the American Bible Society. When it was discovered that the translation included texts outside of the textus receptus, there was a problem. Upon Smith’s death in 1857, the missionaries realized that there were a number of variant readings of Tregelles’ text and that Smith had utilized these in the Gospel of Matthew. To this point the ABS, which had already agreed to begin publishing the new Arabic translation, insisted on using the accepted textus receptus. The American missionaries in Syria realized that their eight-year project was now in jeopardy. It is at this point that the Received Tradition of the so-called Van Dyck Bible is silent on what transpired, but only that “Dr. Van Dyck revised every verse in the New Testament, taking up the work as if new . . .”85 However, shortly after Smith’s death, at their annual spring meeting, the Mission association minutes note that after reviewing the translation on April 7, 1857:

The committee [of missionaries] were unanimously of opinion that the translation of the New Testament had been made with great care and fidelity, and that it could with comparatively little labor, be prepared for the press, and they accordingly recommend to the mission to prosecute and complete its publication as soon as practicable.86

84 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27. 85 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 74. My emphasis. 86 PHS RG115 2/113, Minutes April 7, 1857; repeated in Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 74. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 149

Did this report mean that in recognizing the problem, and having read through the text, they now believed that Smith’s translation was correct and “faithful” to the textus receptus as it was, and that it would not take much work to prepare the manuscript for publication? Or alternatively, did the missionaries intend to say that most of the translation had been “faithful” and that it would not take much work to correct those passages where Smith had employed the eclectic Greek texts of Tregelles and Alford? The latter seems to be the more accurate understanding of the events. Cornelius Van Dyck, in his own report of the translation in 1863, noted that he had reviewed every verse in the New Testament and “took up the work as if anew. . . . The basis left by Dr. Smith was found invaluable, and but for it the work would have been protracted very much beyond what it really was.”87 What did Van Dyck mean by “as if new”? What did he mean by “review”? Did Van Dyck read over and correct “every verse”? In addition, what did he mean by invaluable? Did he mean that Smith’s version was acceptable and a faithful translation as a whole, or that most of the work was invaluable? As we shall argue below, the MSS tradition shows that Van Dyck believed that Smith’s existing translation was usable. Through his own reports, Van Dyck was attempting to rehabilitate Smith in the eyes of the Mission and the ABCFM. An undated transcript of an interview with William T. Van Dyck, Cornelius’ youngest son, in the archives at the Presbyterian Historical Society, which are part of Jessup’s notes that went into preparation of the 1900 Documentary History, provides further questions about the RT. Jessup writes:

I asked him [William] if his father had anything direct to do with Tischendorf but he thought not, tho [sic] he was not sure. . . . he knew from his father that Dr. Eli Smith used a Greek Text which neither Dr. Smith nor Dr. C. Van Dyck considered to be the best but for some reasons, which Dr. Van Dyck does not know, Dr. Smith was overruled. When his father took up the work after Dr. Smith’s death, he refused to use the text which had been used, but apparently what he did use as a basis was the Textus Receptus.88

Here we have the clear version of the RT of the translation that has given rise to the accepted nomenclature of the “Van Dyck Bible.” Through Jessup’s

87 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27. Van Dyck’s emphasis. 88 PHS RG115, 2/113, undated (my emphasis). This section of the written records has two blue lines drawn through it, and was not used within the published version of the Documentary History. 150 CHAPTER 4 construction of the history, Cornelius Van Dyck, once reviewing the work of Smith, threw out the corrupted translation and started over, “revising every verse” by using only the textus receptus. Van Dyck, then, was worthy of its authorship and the translation received his name. In fact, only eighteen years after completing the translation, and twelve years before Van Dyck passed away, there was an additional tradition that Smith’s translation was not only rejected but that it had been burned!89 Such a tale would certainly satisfy the piety of the supporting Bible societies and others who wholeheartedly believed that only the textus receptus was the true Word of God, and the veracity of this latter tradition was intended to rescue the translation project from any question of error. A careful reading of both Van Dyck’s own account of the translation, the Mission minutes, and a review of the MSS themselves provides a much more nuanced understanding of the RT that Van Dyck started over “as if anew.” Franklin E. Hoskins, who later became the head of the Mission Press, gives his own brief appraisal of the RT, and provides a very small but vital omission of information that clearly indicates the Mission’s concern of the authority of the translation. In 1912, Hoskins remarks that as early as 1853 Smith presented translations of the Pentateuch and “parts of the New Testament” before his colleagues. When Van Dyck took over the task, however, he “gave it a thorough revision from beginning to end so that the Arabic might conform more closely to the Greek Textus Receptus, which volume [sic] had come into Dr. Smith’s hands many years after he had commenced his work on this translation.”90 Hoskins makes no mention of the Mission’s April 7, 1857 minutes that accepted Smith’s translation principles, as we shall see below. We assume that Hoskins had by this time accepted the RT that Van Dyck had “rescued” the translation, or had no part in the work of the eclectic text and perhaps even refused it, as suggested by Edward Van Dyck, in his interview with Isaac Hall in 1882. Cornelius Van Dyck, however, positively notes in his own report of 1863 that

[Dr. Smith] knew that the so called “Textus receptus” and Hahn’s text were not the best and most authentic reading, and he was anxious that the true reading should be given as far as it could be. He therefore made use of Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford in the New Testament text, and he used his own judgment, in which all the Mission had the utmost confidence, so that the matter was left entirely in his hands.91

89 Hall, 282. 90 Franklin E. Hoskins, “A Chapter in Bible History,” PHS RG115 2/113, August 1912. My emphasis. 91 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 151

This report contradicts the memory of Edward Van Dyck, as it belies a sense of support for Smith’s decisions. The American missionaries, who met at least once each spring as an association, had already reviewed the portions of the Old Testament that Smith had translated. By March 1854, Smith had completed the Pentateuch, as well as Matthew, Mark and up to the 14th chapter of Luke. It is very possible that some of the missionaries raised questions at this early point in the project about the Greek texts that were used in translating the Gospels; but if they did, there was no formal record of any concern at that point. In fact, a full week after present- ing these portions of the Gospels to his colleagues the minutes of the society noted:

RESOLVED that we cordially approve of the principles on which Dr. Smith has proceeded in his translation of the Scriptures, and also of the form and style of the present edition of the Pentateuch as exhibited in his report to this meeting.92

However, three years later, and three months after the death of Smith, the matter of the use of an eclectic text became a public issue at the April meeting of the missionary association in 1857. A committee of missionaries was appointed to “examine” the translation. The committee was made up of Simeon Calhoun, former agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, William Thomson, David Wilson, William Eddy, Henry Jessup, and Cornelius Van Dyck. It was at this point on April 7 that the minutes reflected that the mission committee was “unanimously of the opinion that [the translation] has been made with great care and fidelity.” However, the next day, April 8, 1857, the minutes recorded the following:

1. That the version be conformed to the Received Texts with marginal readings. 2. That it be published with marginal references and that Mr. Eddy be appointed to prepare them. 3. That the Editor be required to send a proof of each form to every member of the Mission, and to other Arabic scholars foreign and native, as far as practicable, and that he carefully notice the corrections and criticisms made upon such proofs when returned for his final judgment thereon.93

92 Mission Minutes, March 30, 1854, PHS RG115, 2/113; recorded as 13 April 1854 in ABCFM 16.8.1. v. 4 Syrian mission 1847–1859, v.1. 93 Mission Minutes, April 8, 1857; PHS RG15, 2/113. 152 CHAPTER 4

Between April 7 and 8 there was an obvious disagreement among the missionaries about the translation and a contingent wanted to make sure that as the project moved forward that strict adherence to the textus receptus was necessary. The tenor and content of that disagreement was not recorded. Van Dyck notes, “The Mission preferred, for reasons not necessary to be stated here, to stick to the “Textus receptus,” but to insert various readings in the margin.”94 The Mission archives do provide a hint about the debate that ensued, however. Simeon Calhoun wrote a letter to Anderson and remarked that “during the last year or two of his labors, [Smith] became intensely interested in the question of the “Variant Readings.” He made the translation from the text of Hahn, but in further revising and preparing for the press, he followed the opinions of Tregelles and others.”95 Calhoun was letting Anderson know of his concern for Smith’s use of sources. However, if there had been unanimous concern over the authority of Smith’s translation within the association as it had been presented, it seems logical the mission society would have voted to start the New Testament translation process over “anew.” Yet, there was no clear decision to reject the translation at this point, let alone any decision to burn it! In fact, there must have been some support within the association for the work that had been done by Smith, Bustānī, and Yāzijī, because of a final decision ultimately to include the variant readings as “marginal” notes. We assume that this was the desire of Van Dyck, as he would later indicate that he took great liberty in using these marginal readings.96 Van Dyck did later go out of his way to clear Smith of any wrongdoing in the matter. In his 1885 report, Van Dyck states three important points that are not recorded in Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years. First, Van Dyck notes that the “Mission had full confidence in Dr. Smith.”97 Throughout the translation process and up until the April 1857 meeting, there had been no public concern about his methods. Second, Van Dyck recalls Smith indicating before his death that he would “be responsible only for what has been printed” and not what had been only translated until the time of his death. Third, Van Dyck comments, in apparent agreement with Smith, that the “Textus Receptus” was “not the best and most authentic reading” of the New Testament text.98 These comments, with the previous statement that Smith’s work had been invaluable to him, were Van

94 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 15. My emphasis. 95 Calhoun to Anderson, 11 April 1857; ABCFM 16.8.1. v. 4 Syrian mission 1847–1859, v.1. 96 Hall, 279. 97 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 23. 98 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27. Contributions To Nineteenth Century Biblical Scholarship 153

Dyck’s attempt to rehabilitate Smith’s legacy from charges that the translation was tainted. Jessup, however, omits these phrases of Van Dyck in his own history in Fifty-Three Years, and simply records that “Dr. Van Dyck revised every verse in the New Testament, taking up the work as if new. The basis left by Dr. Smith was found invaluable, and but for it the work would have been protracted very much beyond what it really was.”99 In his 1863 report, Van Dyck makes a general remark that after Smith’s death he “commenced revising and editing the New Testament, as left by Dr. Smith.”100 In a later 1885 reflection on the translation, he wrote that he “reviewed every verse” of Smith’s translation. Jessup, on the other hand, simply records in Fifty-Three Years that Van Dyck “revised every verse.” It is apparent that Jessup had conflated Van Dyck’s 1863 and 1885 reports. The critical point here is that a general “review” of the text is not the same as the “revision” of every verse to comply with the authority of the textus receptus. Our argument is that Van Dyck was given instruction to review the text, which he did. He did undertake some revisions, but mostly left the text as it had been. This is borne out by the MSS evidence. Van Dyck’s latest report from 1885 came three years after his resignation from the American Syrian Mission association. It is possible that he wished to clarify Smith’s work and his use of Smith’s translation. Such a clarification, however, was ultimately removed from the RT, where Jessup claims that Van Dyck “revised every verse.” The further development of the tradition that the original manuscripts were burned further highlights a concern over Smith’s text of this New Testament. Questions over the authority of the sources of the translation continued to arise even after Van Dyck had completed the translation of the complete Bible on April 23, 1864. By this time, the Mission was ready to send the translation to the ABS for printing and publishing. The Association responded to a letter from the ABS regarding the credibility of the translation:

As touching the ‘fidelity, excellence, and unsectarian character of the translation’ it is important to notice that this has been a work of the Mission not of an individual or individuals. It is not of yesterday, but has occupied 16 years of almost consecutive labor in preparation and execution. The Mission has set apart to it those who by endowment and by study have seemed preeminently fitted for its prosecution. The names of the translators, of Dr. Eli Smith to whom it was given to lay the foundation of the work and of Dr. Van Dyck by whom it has been completed, are ample

99 Jessup, 74. 100 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 15. 154 CHAPTER 4

guarantees to all linguists, conversant with the facts of the cause, that both with respect to conformity to the original tongues and in rendering into Arabic, as faithful and as excellent a translation has been secured as could be expected in any language. It may indeed justly be regarded as special ordering of divine providence calling for devout gratitude that such men, endowed with such acquisitions should have been raised up and fitted for this purpose. Besides these translators from among themselves, the Mission have called into exercise on behalf of the work, the best native talent that could be procured, to make the translation elegant as well as faithful, that it should conform to the native style of expression and to the highest standards of literary taste, and they think they have been peculiarly favored in securing coadjutors of so high repute from both Christian and Mohammedan scholars. A still farther guarantee to the fidelity of the translation and one which applies also to its unsectarian character is that each sheet of the translation as first struck off from the Press has been subject to the careful scrutiny of all the members of the Mission, to interested native scholars of all sects, to other American Missionaries beside themselves, to English, German, Scotch, and Irish Missionaries of different religious denominations and in different parts of the Empire.101

At the end of the seventeen-year long project, the Mission association gave credit to the five translators: the two missionaries and three indigenous Syrians who had devoted their energies to the task, but named only its own missionaries. The Mission also responded to the questions of the “fidelity” of the translation. The response by the missionaries demonstrates that this correspondence was part of a wider debate among evangelical Protestants regarding the true text of the New Testament. The so-called Van Dyck translation was an important part of this larger nineteenth century textual history and debate over the text of the New Testament even at what Rana Issa calls the “nexus of historical and transnational bible currents.”102 The debate over the true text of the New Testament was one that influenced the translation project from the very beginning, even as Eli Smith was amassing his library to assist him in his work. Long after the translation was finished this debate would plague any further translations or revision of the so-called Van Dyck Bible.

101 PHS RG115, 2/113, Mission Minutes August 24, 1864. 102 Rana Issa, “Biblical Reflections in the Arabic Lexicon: The Impact of the 1857 translation of the bible in the Arabic language,” Babylon 2 (2012), 62. CHAPTER 5 The Text of the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation

On the occasion of the release of the 4th edition of the First Font Reference Bible of the so-called Van Dyck translation in 1912, Franklin E. Hoskins, the Presbyterian Missionary in charge of the Mission Press in Beirut, wrote that in completing the monumental translation Cornelius Van Dyck had made a “thorough revision from beginning to end” of Smith’s previous work. Hoskins blithely repeated what Henry Jessup had written in his Fifty-Three Years only two years earlier that Van Dyck had “revised every verse” of Smith’s translation.1 These two comments have become the bedrock of what we have called the Received Tradition (RT) of the so-called Van Dyck Bible; that Cornelius Van Dyck in effect retranslated the entire Bible leading ultimately to the translation that has received his name. As we have already noted, however, Van Dyck had written in his own 1863 report of the translation that he had “reviewed every verse” and taken up the work “as if anew.”2 We have noted the distinction between a “revision” and a “review”. However, what did he mean by “anew?” To what extent did Van Dyck use Smith and Bustānī’s previous translation? In addition, what was Smith and then Van Dyck’s process of translation? Did they differ? What were the methodological decisions that guided the choice of particular Arabic words or phrases? How substantial was the work of Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī in guiding Smith? Finally, after relieving Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī of their duties in the project, why did Van Dyck hire the Muslim sheikh Yūsuf al-Asīr, and how did this affect the translation? These have been the guiding questions of this research. It is to these questions to which we now turn. In this chapter, we will examine the process of the translation, the role of each of the five translators, their translation theory and practice, and the final form of the published Bible. This chapter will not only focus on the recorded RT of Henry Jessup, the records and letters of the Missionary association, and the Prudential Committee of the American Board, but more importantly, it will also focus on the manuscripts of the translation itself. It is argued here that the manuscripts (MSS) of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, as well as the early published editions of the Bible, all located in the rare book room of the Near

1 Jessup, 74. 2 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27.

East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, can assist us in uncovering many of these questions.3

The Received Tradition (RT) of the Translation

In 1910, the veteran American missionary of Syria, the Rev. Henry Harris Jessup, completed his magnum opus, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, only months before he passed away at the age of seventy-eight. Fifty-Three Years was not only his missionary autobiography, but was in many ways the story of the American Syrian Mission. Although he was weary of anyone equating the record of his life with that of the Mission, this is exactly what has happened. Fifty-Three Years became the standard reference for the American Mission history in Syria and Jessup its spokesperson. James F. Dennis, a colleague of Jessup’s, wrote this in the introduction of Fifty-Three Years:

The author has presented his readers with a chapter of church history, which resembles a modern version of the annals of the great Reformation, and at the same time has a significant bearing upon the contemporary status Christianity where it impinges upon Islam. The early fathers wrote of the opening struggles of Christianity with an overshadowing and hostile heathen environment. Modern historians have told us of the great conflicts with the corrupt and unsavoury mediaevalism of the Reformation era. Now in our day has come the turn of the later fathers of this missionary era, who are giving us a voluminous record of the world-embracing conflicts of present-day Christianity with the great dominant religions of the non-Christian world.4

Such a claim, however, should be carefully scrutinized. Western mission history has come under immense critique in the past generation through the advent of various close and careful readings. As already noted in the Introduction, this work seeks to provide a critical reading of the American mission sources that recognizes their limitations and, to some extent, their own imaginations of the Orient. For example, Dennis’ important panegyric to Jessup above is preceded with his own understanding of the American mission’s role:

3 See Appendix A for the comparison of the MSS, the ABCFM Archival Minutes, the 1900 Documentary History, and the 1910 Fifty-Three Years in Syria. 4 James S. Dennis, “Introduction,” Henry Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 4. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 157

Dr. Jessup has been a living witness of one of the most vivid and dramatic national transformations which the world’s annals record, as well as himself a contributor, indirectly and unconsciously perhaps, yet no less truly and forcefully, to changes as romantic, weird, and startling as the stage of history presents. We seem to be in the enchanted atmosphere of politics after the order of the Arabian Nights. In fact, no tale of the Thousand and One Nights can surpass in imaginative power, mystical import, and amaz- ing significance, this story of the transportation of an entire empire, as if upon some magic carpet of breathless flight, from the domain of irre- sponsible tyranny to the realm of constitutional government.5

One cannot but help notice the American Orientalist imagery that saturates this historiography. Completed only months before his own death, Fifty-Three Years is based on Jessup’s journal entries, copies of correspondence, the minutes of the American Syrian Mission, as well as his own memory. The autobiography is certainly a rich resource of mission history. It provides a continuous account of the American Syrian Mission from its origins under the ABCFM, to the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and to the establishment of the freestanding Syrian Protestant College. It is a window into the transformation of a society from a medieval Islamic Empire to the origins of modern Arab nationalism. However, Jessup’s firsthand account is steeped in the hagiography of American evangelical perspectives that not only critiques Eastern and Oriental religions, but culture as well. It is important to keep a critical eye on the pictures that are painted, and the images constructed. It is true that the pietistic Jessup believed that all people needed to confess their sin, prostrate themselves, and ask forgiveness before their Lord Jesus. Those in need were not only the wayward Muslims, but also the unpenitent Oriental “nominal Christians,” who refused to acknowledge the simplicity of the Gospel. While the religious faith of this strong hearted (and headed) evangelical missionary is clear, of equal importance to this work is Jessup’s American Orientalism that required the redemption of Syria itself! As Samir Khalaf has already argued, of all of the American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire Jessup is “perhaps unrivaled” in his thorough Orientalist views of the “degen- erative Orient.”6 Khalaf laments Jessup’s disparaging comments of the native Arab religious leaders as stupid donkeys and of Syrian culture as being

5 Dennis, 3–4. 6 Khalaf, “Protestant Images of Islam,” 222. 158 CHAPTER 5 backward and ignorant.7 The American Calvinist spirituality also includes a “civilizing mission.” In fact, Jessup’s missionary stories printed in The Women of the Arabs provided so many titillating tales of the backward and ignorant Orientals, which were received so favorably by his American audience, that a second volume was compiled and published as Syrian Home Life.8 While Islam, and its despotic cultural hold over the Orient, does take center stage in these works, Jessup includes even his own Syrian colleagues working with the American Syrian Mission in his cultural critique. Even the esteemed Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, “the great Arab poet,” is not spared from public humiliation through the recounting of his ignorant Oriental superstitions that could not grasp modernity.9 When Bird and Goodell set up the Mission schools in 1825, there was an assumption that education in the strict American puritan sense, that is of learning to read the Bible, would lead to enlightened moral evangelical Christians and an “evangelical modernity.”10 While Rufus Anderson may have vehemently argued against any form of “civilizing mission,” and while the American missionaries were not involved in any clear imperial projects of their home nation in Syria, the missionaries certainly assumed that conversion

7 Khalaf, 223. 8 Henry Harris Jessup, The women of the Arabs: With a chapter for children (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1873) and Syrian home life, Compiled by Rev. Isaac Riley from materials furnished by H.H. Jessup (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1874). While this research does not deal directly with the role of both female missionaries and indigenous Syrian voices and stories, the author would be remiss and negligent in raising the issue of critically reading historical sources without doing so. There is a growing body of literature on the role of female voices in missionary activity. See the earliest recognition of women’s roles in Helen Barrett Montgomery, Western women in eastern lands: An outline study of fifty years of woman’s work in foreign missions (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1910). See also Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener, Women and missions: Past and present: anthropological and historical perceptions (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993); Agnès Brot, Héroines de Dieu: L’épopée des religieuses missionnaires au XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2011); Patricia Ruth Hill, The world their household: The American woman’s foreign mission movement and cultural transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985); Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy Lutkehaus, Gendered missions: Women and men in missionary discourse and practice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Lois Klempa and Rosemary Doran, Certain women amazed us: the Women’s Missionary Society, their story, 1864–2002 (Toronto, Ont.: Women’s Missionary Society, 2002); Dana Lee Robert, American women in mission: A social history of their thought and practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996). 9 Jessup, Syrian Home Life, 151. 10 Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible”, 630. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 159 to the evangelical faith of Christianity was also, as Heather J. Sharkey notes, a “cultural conversion.”11 As has already been stated previously in chapter three, the creation of the missionary schools was part of a larger American Evangelical perspective that understood the latest scientific advances as proving the “designer of all designs.”12 As a medical doctor, and later instructor of in the medical school, Cornelius Van Dyck was directly involved in the scientific education of many Syrian men at the Syrian Protestant College. He was engaged in the social conversion process of educating Syrians amid the dramatic scientific and industrial advances of the nineteenth century. However, while Jessup may have snubbed Arab culture, Cornelius Van Dyck drank deeply from classical Arab texts, both Christian and Muslim. Of many of the American missionaries engaged in mission work in Syria, he stands out above the others for his deep love and commitment to Arab culture during the Nahḍa. We do not find the same cultural critique and invective from Van Dyck as that of Jessup. Van Dyck left no published stories of his life in the “Orient.” Jessup’s narratives, however, were intended for the large North American audiences that supported the missionaries’ work. Jessup preached, taught, and wrote not merely for his local Syrian audience but also for a North American one. His audience fully appreciated the American burden of bringing an evangelical Christian faith fully informed by the truths of liberty and progress to the Ottoman Empire. It is with this cultural-religious background that we must keep Jessup’s account of the creation and translation of the so-called Van Dyck Bible in mind. For his chapter on the Bible translation in Fifty-Three Years, Jessup utilized a pamphlet he edited in 1900, entitled The Brief Documentary History of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Arabic Language by Rev. Eli Smith, D.D., and Rev. C.V.A. Van Dyck, D.D. This document consists of a survey of the Mission minutes that follow the work of the translation, and the reports written by Smith and Van Dyck. It begins with an 1844 report by Smith on the initial interest of a new Arabic translation and about the existing Arabic Bibles in use, Smith’s report of his own report of 1854 on the translation, Van Dyck’s report of the process in 1863, and a second clarification of his previous report written in 1885.

11 Heather J. Sharkey, ed. Cultural Conversions: Unexpected consequences of Christian missionary encounters in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 1. 12 Al-Muqtaṭaf 1 (1876) as cited in Elshakry, 188. 160 CHAPTER 5

A curious inclusion in the Documentary History by Jessup, however, is a letter from the Secretary of the Mission, James S. Dennis, to Cornelius Van Dyck dated 21 February 1885. As a part of his collection of information, Dennis wrote to Van Dyck, who had recently retired from the Mission association and resigned from the Syrian Protestant College after the “Lewis Affair,” ask- ing him to provide an “historical statement in the shape of a prolegomenon to the version”13 in order to clarify the history of the translation. He requested Van Dyck to provide a review of the translation, including “previous Arabic versions [of the Bible],” the “helps which were depended upon in the preparation,” the decision regarding “marginal readings,” “to whom the proofs were sent,” and “special comments upon the MSS. [sic] of each book as preserved in the present set, such as who is the author of the original translation, and who made the changes and substitutions as they appear in the MSS.”14 Van Dyck then responded with a new report of the process of the translation, which was slightly different from his early report written in April 1863 before the Old Testament MSS had been readied for printing in 1864. Except for the last request to review the “changes and substitutions” in each MSS, Smith and Van Dyck had already provided such information to the Mission association in their 1854 and 1863 reports. Dennis does note in his letter that Smith had presented a report on the translation process of the Pentateuch. However, if Dennis is referring to Smith’s 1854 report, there is sig- nificantly more information about the translation and its methods than just a note from the Mission minutes that the Pentateuch was presented for review in March 1852. That Dennis asked Van Dyck to document this process suggests that Smith and Van Dyck’s earlier reports were not known to him in 1885, or he wished for some reason to validate those earlier reports. In addition, even if Dennis did not have access to Smith’s report, or for some reason wanted Van Dyck’s own words to corroborate the record, Van Dyck had already provided that in 1863. Only twenty years after the completion of the project, there was a significant gap in the knowledge of the so-called Van Dyck translation. This would explain Isaac Hall’s remark of the oral tradition of Smith’s original MSS being burned. It is clear then that while Van Dyck may have attempted to rehabilitate Smith in his 1885 clarification, Henry Jessup who compiled the Documentary History in 1900, and then reedited the material in his Fifty-Three Years in 1910, reframed the narrative. Van Dyck did not only “review” the work of Smith but “revised every verse,” saving the translation from the infidelity of straying from the textus receptus as required by the ABS.

13 Dennis to Van Dyck, 21 February 1885, Jessup, ed. Documentary History, 19. 14 Dennis to Van Dyck, 19–20. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 161

In addition, the RT of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, as recorded by Henry Jessup, provides an American Orientalist version of Syria and its people that focused on the American missionaries and minimized the creative activity and participation of the Syrian translators. In fact, Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī are mentioned only once by Henry Jessup in the beginning of his record of the translation project.15 While solidifying the character of Cornelius Van Dyck, Jessup also underestimated the role of Eli Smith and his textual methodologies, including his use of contested versions of the New Testament beyond the textus receptus. Given the debates over scriptural authority and the re-translation of the Kings James Version in the 1880s, reports that a missionary translation was involved in undermining the authority of the received text would not sit well with many supporters of the mission, including the Prudential Committee and the ABS.

Primary and Secondary Sources of the so-called Van Dyck

There are six primary and secondary sources for the translation process of the so-called Van Dyck Bible.

1. The MSS of the so-called Van Dyck translation project is comprised of sixty-nine manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments. These are located in tin boxes in the rare book room of the Near East School of Theology, Beirut (143 AC-36).16

Sara Binay, in her first review of the MSS, “Revision of the manuscripts of the so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible,” has provided the first published research on this translation process.17 However; she was not the first to appraise the documents. It was Van Dyck’s colleague at the Mission seminary in Beirut, James Dennis, who, as we noted above, collected the materials to document the

15 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 70. 16 The index attached to each of the tin boxes of the MSS signed by Dr. Kenneth Bailey and NEST President John Kanjian, lists fifty-eight manuscripts; with MSS #1 Genesis noted as being in 2 vols. As this research is based upon the digitized versions of the MSS, which has separated these two vols., we have elected to follow the latest digitized numbering of the MSS as denoted by Lindner, “A reference guide to the AC-36,” 68–85. 17 Sara Binay, Revision of the manuscripts of the “so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible”: Some remarks on the making of this Bible translation, in Translating the Bible into Arabic: Historical, text-critical and literary aspects,” eds. Sara Binay and Stefan Leder (Beirut: Herausgegeben vom Orient-Institut Beirut, 2012), 75–84. 162 CHAPTER 5 history of the translation in 1885.18 Van Dyck not only complied with Dennis’ request by completing a second report on the translation, but included a handwritten note for the MSS that were now collected in the Mission archives noting the following:

All the M.S. in this box are in the handwriting [of Moallim Butrus Bistany] Sheikh Nasif el-Yazigi. The right hand pages have Dr. Smith’s first correction [of Mr. Bistany’s translation] and the left hand page is a copy of the right hand page [of Sheikh Nasif] after review by Dr. Smith. The left hand page is what he would have sent to press after having made his final examination and correction of his, which he did not like to make. [The red writing on right-hand page indicates an alternative translation made by Mr. Bistany.]

We believe the bracketed, handwritten material was that of Dennis added later. It was Dennis who, as the director of the Evangelical Seminary in Beirut, filed the MSS in the tin boxes where they currently reside. (It is possibly this reason that Hall, upon his visit to Beirut, could not find any record of Smith’s MSS and believed them to have been burned, as it was at this point that the MSS had already been moved to the seminary library.) The collection then came into the hands of the Presbyterian missionary, Dr. Kenneth Bailey, former professor of New Testament at the NEST from 1967 to 1984. Dr. Bailey utilized this material during his teaching at NEST, but never published a study or monograph on these MSS.19 In 1975 the cache of documents were deposited in the rare book room of NEST. The MSS were then catalogued by James and Rachel Pollack in 1981 for inclusion in the manuscript catalog of NEST.20 Much later, Sara Binay reviewed the MSS, and the results of her research were presented at the 2008 Orient-Institut Beirut conference “Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Translation—The Arabic Bible.” In 2009, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML)/Saint John’s University (Minnesota, USA) digitized all of the

18 Lindner, 46. For a biography of Dennis see William H. Berger, “James Shepard Dennis: Syrian Missionary and Apologist,” American Presbyterians 64: 2 (Summer 1986): 97–111. 19 In a conversation with Dr. Bailey, he noted that during his tenure at NEST he was given permission to make copies of the New Testament MSS, one set of which he currently has possession, and another set, which he donated to the library at the Evangelical Seminary in Cairo (ETDC), for future research. 20 James W. Pollock and Rachel Pollock, “Catalogue of manuscripts of the Library of the Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon,” Theological Review 4, no. 1–2 (1981). The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 163

ILLUSTRATION 4 Handwritten note of Cornelius Van Dyck, “Envelope”, n.d., Box V, Item 1, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 164 CHAPTER 5

MSS (00036.1–00036.69). This researcher visited NEST in 2013 and utilized the digitized versions of the MSS for this study, as well as the original editions of the published Van Dyck Bibles. Finally, in 2014, in assisting with this research, Dr. Christine B. Lindner prepared an updated reference guide for the digital MSS.21 Binay has rightly asked the questions of whether the MSS in the archives of NEST are the original autographs of the translation. Her own research leads her to conclude that the MSS are not the original works of Buṭrus al-Bustānī, but the second draft done by Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and corrected by Eli Smith.22 Perhaps this is because Van Dyck’s own handwriting does not indicate Bustānī’s work at all on the inscribed note, and that his name was later added by Dennis. However, Smith’s own report of 1854, and Van Dyck’s report of 1865, notes that Bustānī made the original translation and that Yāzijī made the left hand translation. Perhaps Dennis corrected what was a hastily written note by Van Dyck during the later years of his life when the MSS were being collected and deposited in the Mission archives. In comparing the four handwriting styles of the MSS, the marginal nota- tions by the translators, and the historical records of the translation process, this current research leads us to conclude that, aside from a “trial edition” of Genesis, the MSS of the Pentateuch and the whole New Testament are the original texts of Bustānī, Smith and Yāzijī. The translations of the Minor and Major Prophets, with the exception of Ezekiel, Daniel, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah and Malachi reflect the original work of Bustānī alone. Van Dyck only later revised the translations of Bustānī’s work on the prophets. In addition, when we compare the style of MSS, the marginal notes, and several other historical records of the translation process, it seems that the Wisdom literature of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon was translated by Van Dyck and Yūsuf al-Asīr together.

21 For a complete listing of the MSS see Christine B. Lindner, “A Reference Guide to the AC-36: Arabic Bible Manuscript Collection and Affiliated Texts,” Theological Review 36 (2015), 44–96. This extremely important guide includes the cataloging of both the electronic and original MSS in their locations. This published reference guide became available to me as this work was in the final stages of publication. I am very grateful to Dr. Lindner for her work on this and cooperation in this research. 22 Binay, 78–80. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 165

2. In addition to the original and digitized copies of the MSS, there are several published first editions of the translation in the rare book room of NEST (CB44.7), all of which were consulted.23 These include: • The original copy of the first NT (2nd font) with references and marginal notes, or vowel points (1860); • The first “pocket edition” of the NT (2nd font) without references, marginal notes, or vowel points (1860); • “Pocket edition” of the NT (2nd font) without references and marginal notes, but with complete tashkīl as completed by Van Dyck and possibly Yūsuf al-Asīr (1860); • NT (2nd font) with references, marginal notes, and vowel points (1860); • NT (2nd font) without references, marginal notes, or vowel points (1860); • NT (2nd font) without references, marginal notes, or vowel points (1862); • OT with references, marginal notes, and vowel points (1865); • First “electrotype” OT without references, marginal notes and tashkīl added by Van Dyck between 1868–1871 (1871); • Fourth edition (first font) with new references (1912). 3. The official records and minutes of the American Syrian Mission association record the responses of the missionaries to the translation project, as it was ongoing. The Mission was originally an auxiliary of the ABCFM. In 1870, the mission was transferred to the auspices of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in America, and then later rightfully handed over to the National Synod of Syria and Lebanon. • American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, Houghton Library, Harvard University (ABC 16.8.1 [microfilm A467: Reels 538–549]; ABC 50; ABC 60). These records include both original hand written and transcribed reports and letters by Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck. • Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (RG115 Box 2, 123 Arabic Bible Translation 1844+). The PHS also has a very small personnel file on Cornelius Van Dyck (RG360) that has information about Van Dyck but no records of the Bible translation.

23 Lindner, 87–91. 166 CHAPTER 5

4. The first hand reports of Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck as compiled by Henry H. Jessup are located in Brief Documentary History of the Translation of the Scriptures Into the Arabic Language by Rev. Eli Smith, D.D., and Rev. C.V.A. Van Dyck., D.D. (1900).24 • “Report of the Rev. Eli Smith, D.D.” on the translation of the Scriptures (1854); • “Report of the Rev. Dr. C.V.A. Van Dyck” on the translation (1863); and • “Dr. Van Dyck’s History of the Arabic Translation of the Scriptures” (1885). These primary texts have been read critically and compared the original written reports with the transcription that was later published in Documentary History.

5. Two important secondary sources of information influenced the development of the RT and the reception of the translation. • Isaac H. Hall’s article “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius V.A. Van Dyck” (1883); and • Henry H. Jessup, Fifty-Three Years (1910) Hall’s article, originally presented as a lecture to the American Oriental Society, is of extreme value as it notes that as early as 1883 there were considerable dis- crepancies in the “internal history” of the translation that was known only in oral tradition and hearsay. One oral tradition included the story that Eli Smith’s original MSS had been burned after his death when it was found that he had not used only the textus receptus.25 Hall’s record is important in that he claims to have had a private correspondence with Cornelius Van Dyck in 1883, two years before the writing of Van Dyck’s report to James F. Dennis in 1885, as noted above. Hall’s interview supports the claim that Dennis himself was not aware of the full “internal history” or at least wanted Van Dyck to confirm this record, and thus asked him to file his final report. In addition, Hall conversed with Edward Van Dyck, Cornelius’ son, from whom he received an oral account of the final moments of the translation.

24 The archives of the ABCFM include both the handwritten and typescript reports of Smith and Van Dyck, which were then printed in the Documentary History. This researcher has compared both the original handwritten reports with the transcriptions and found them accurate. 25 Hall, “The Arabic Bible,” 282. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 167

6. Finally, one very glaring omission in the history of this translation is the voices of Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and Yūsuf al-Asīr. While we have information of their lives and impact on the Nahḍa, we do not hear from them here. Their voices are silent. The RT is truly, in the words of Ussama Makdisi, one of the great “missionary and nationalist historiographies of American-Middle Eastern relations, which have tended to focus on only one side of this encounter.”26 We hope that at least Bustānī’s voice may be eventually reconstructed through his own correspondence with the missionaries, Rufus Anderson and the Prudential Committee, as well as his ongoing deep conversations and relationship with Eli Smith, included in the Arabic papers of the archives of the American Board.27

Smith’s Views on Arabic

Eli Smith had been sent to Malta in 1826 with the expressed intent that he help with the Mission Press then in Malta. His language abilities had displayed to the Prudential Committee that he was a fit candidate for one of the most important parts of their mission; publishing religious literature in the various languages of the Ottoman Empire, specifically Arabic. It was not until 1834, however, when he settled in Beirut that he could focus on publishing. Even then, Rufus Anderson, the chair of the Prudential Committee, continued to exhort the Americans to focus on preaching and spiritual activities rather than publishing educational literature for the Mission schools. The Mission Press was constantly under pressure by Anderson to print religious literature, as opposed to textbooks for the missionary schools. Smith had expressed his interest in focusing his energies on a new Arabic translation of the Bible shortly after the printing press was sent to Beirut in 1834. However, he realized the current fonts were not of sufficient quality to produce a copy of Holy Scripture that would be well received.28 Over the next ten years, Smith traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire on various mission trips, all the while collecting various calligraphic fonts to produce a high quality font for the press. In 1836 in route to Smryna, Smith and his wife were shipwrecked, losing all the fonts he had been collecting to that point. Undeterred,

26 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 5–6. 27 ABCFM 16.8.1; and 60 (the Arabic papers of Eli Smith). This is an uncatalogued and dis- organized collection of Arabic correspondence of Eli Smith with local Syrians, including Buṭrus al-Bustānī. 28 Leavy, “Eli Smith and the Arabic Bible,” 12. 168 CHAPTER 5 however, Smith continued to work on new fonts with the Mission printer in Smyrna, Homan Hallock, eventually creating what has come to be known as the “American Arabic font.”29 The process for creating a new Arabic font for printing was a remarkable endeavor. Because each Arabic letter has several different forms (depending on its placement in a work: initial, medial or final) and because of the various vowel points and diacritical marks, it was necessary to create up to four hundred punched matrices for each set of fonts, of which there were at least three types.30 By 1844, the American missionaries were keen to begin a new translation and asked Smith to produce a report for the Prudential Committee to convince them of the value of the endeavor. Smith noted that the previous edition of the Arabic 1671 Propaganda Fide Bible, which they had been using for evangelical purposes, was “absolutely offensive by reason of its imperfections.”31 He also provided his opinion of the other available Arabic translations; the 1727 version published by the London Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), and Erpenius’ 1616 translation of the New Testament, none of which he claimed were faithful to original languages. At the annual meeting of the missionaries in Beirut in 1847, the missionaries took matters into their own hands and voted to appoint Smith as the head of a new translation project. Their decisions to move forward were recorded and forwarded to the Prudential Committee with an impassioned plea for financial support to complete the endeavor. The ABCFM was certainly willing to comply with this desired project. However, the Prudential Committee could not underwrite the complete Bible translation. Thus, the Mission association was required to work in close collaboration with the BFBS and then the ABS, who were more than willing to help with the costs of this project. However, this meant that the theological and linguistic principles adopted by these societies had to be followed. This resulted in a problem for the project when it was discovered that Eli Smith had embarked on a translation that was not deemed duly authentic, that he did not keep in line with what was recognized by the evangelical communities as the definitive Biblical texts of the textus receptus. With the full backing of the Mission association, Smith began collecting translation aids for his work. These resources have been listed previously

29 Coakley, 26–7. 30 Coakley, 32. Coakley’s detailed article on Homan Hallock denotes the incredible skill of this printer. He not only developed the Arabic fonts, but was also charged with developing the punches for Armenian, Syriac and Tamil, as well as his work with Greek and Hebrew. 31 Smith, ABCFM Annual Report, 1844, 254. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 169 in chapter four. However, it is worth pointing out once again the care that Smith took to avail himself of the latest textual resources of his day. With the assistance of Edward Robinson, Smith and the other American missionaries were able to collect an important library of Bibles, Arabic grammars and dictionaries. These works, which were added to by later missionaries of the American Syrian Mission, are still available in the library of the NEST in Beirut. Smith, who was known as a perfectionist, demonstrated his concern for getting the translation of scripture as accurately in Arabic as possible. As early as 1831 Smith had been encouraged to translate the Arabic grammar Miṣbāḥ al-ṭālib fi baḥth al-maṭālib of Jirmānūs Farḥāt, the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, by his former professor at Andover Seminary, Moses Stuart.32 However, Smith responded by noting the difficulty and care that such a work would entail:

You are aware that the Arabians have cultivated the grammar of their language more, and more philosophically, than perhaps any other nation has its vernacular tongue; and such is the peculiar construction of their admirable dialect, itself reaching back perhaps to the very origin of speech, that in doing this they have unconsciously developed with great simplicity and clearness, the first principles of general grammar. All their technical words, which the nature of their language enabled them to make for any occasion, are founded upon, and in fact explanatory of this philosophy.33

Smith goes on to note that even the famous Orientalist Silvestre De Sacy’s Arabic grammar was not sufficient to capture the genius of the Arabic language. This was truly an audacious claim given that De Sacy’s grammar had been a mainstay for early European and American Orientalists since its original publication in 1810. In fact, the second edition of the grammar had just been released in 1831. It should be noted here that while Smith did not complete this request, it was Buṭrus al-Bustānī who edited and published Farḥāt’s grammar in 1854.

32 See Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 3, 417–18. 33 Smith to Stuart, Feb. 18, 1831 as cited in Leavy, 23. 170 CHAPTER 5

Choosing the Classical Style

As a “Bible man” who had become quite proficient in Greek and Hebrew during his studies at Andover Seminary, Smith was insistent on being as faithful to the best biblical text as possible. This, as we noted in the previous chapter, was eventually a major problem for the ABS. Smith was concerned about getting the most reliable original text, and was thus driven to use the latest and best biblical scholarship and texts, even leaning on the expertise of his friend Edward Robinson. Smith was such a perfectionist in his translation techniques that his colleagues became frustrated at the “minuteness and thoroughness of his investigations, and of the anxiety he felt to make his translation speak the exact mind of the Spirit.”34 One of the first decisions any biblical translator needs to decide, of course, is the particular method of translation. This has come to be known as either “formal” or “dynamic equivalence;” that is, either a strict “word for word” translation or capturing the sense of a phrase or sentence.35 Smith aimed at a formal equivalence, trying to stay as faithful to the words of the “sacred original.” A complicating factor for Smith was the decision on what particular style of Arabic to utilize in translating the Hebrew and Greek. The problem centered on whether to use a classical Arabic that might be recognized as a “heavenly revealed” text by the learned elite, including Muslim scholars; or to use a local Syrian dialect that would be accessible by most of the population that could either read or have the text recited to them.36 Ultimately, it was decided not to use a formal Arabic, anticipating the nascent educational institutions in Syria and Egypt, as well as the synergy within the Ottoman Empire toward educational reforms that would undergird a renaissance of the language. He wrote:

clear and impressive intelligibility is labored after, avoiding, as far as may be, all words beyond the circle understood by the more intelligent class of the community. At the same time, it is a rule not to depart from the laws of ancient grammar, nor to admit words not sanctioned by classical usage without urgent necessity. Rather than do this, we here and there adopt a

34 Calhoun to ABCFM, 11 April, 1857, ABCFM 16.8.1, v. 4 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859, v.1. 35 These concepts were developed by Eugene Nida. While the methods have been debated, they are still largely applied. See Eugene A. Nida, Toward a science of translating: With special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translating (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964), esp. 165–76. 36 It is interesting to note that the struggle over the particular dialects to employ in newer translations of the Bible continue to plague the Bible Societies of Egypt and Lebanon. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 171

word, now gone out of use, especially where the connection give an inti- mation of its meaning, trusting to the future enlightenment of the nation to bring back the language again nearer to its classical richness and purity. In a word, we aim to keep within the range of that portion of the classical Arabic which is still intelligible, may be expected to become so.37

Smith’s words provide an important glimpse into his perception of the ongoing developments of literary production in Beirut in the 1840s. As we have already mentioned, it was the intention of the Mission association to produce a Bible that was of sufficient quality to be respected as a holy text not only by the Catholic and Orthodox communities, but more importantly, by the Muslims as well. Thus, Smith was compelled to utilize classical Arabic to juxtapose the Arabic Bible with the Arabic Qurʾan, as the Qurʾan has always been the standard for classical Arabic. Kenneth Cragg has rightly stated, “The crux of Arab Christianity might be linguistically expressed; it is bound over to a language that is bound over to Islam.”38 Thus, while a decision needed to be made regarding what particular dialect was to be used, there was always the unspo- ken reality that in order to be received by the Arab Muslim community at large as a representative of the Injīl [Gospel], that it had to be classical Arabic, which was based upon the Qurʾan. And yet, Christian Arabs certainly were not com- fortable with using Islamic terminology within their own sacred text. (We will return to this below.) Nevertheless, because Arabic was already in the midst of dramatic literary and cultural transformations, choosing particular words that would be understood from within the framework of what was a developing Modern Standard Arabic was fraught with difficulty. For example, in Genesis 9:20 Smith translated “Noah, a man of the soil . . .” as Nuḥ yakūn fallāḥ with a transcribed note indicating the possibility of the more poetic Nuḥ insān al-ard. The final rendition reflected the more common fallāḥ. There was a constant tension between just the right words or phrases. As we will see in the next chapter, while Smith was interested in a classical style of Arabic that could be understood throughout the Arab World, there would be considerable criticism for its “Syrian” terminology and style. Nevertheless, the aim of this translation was to undertake a literal “word for word,” or “formal equivalence” translation, in which the Hebrew and Greek original words were transposed into what was thought to be an equiva- lent accessible Arabic and then arranged, of course, according to the correct

37 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 9. 38 Kenneth Cragg, The Arab Christian (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 31. 172 CHAPTER 5 syntax of the Arabic language. Most recently, several studies on the syntax of this translation have raised important questions over the choice of such “classical” terms and words. Nashat Megalaa’s research on “The Van Dyck Arabic Bible Translation After One Hundred Fifty Years,” and Ghassān Khalaf’s Aḍwāʾ ʿalá tarjamat al-Fāndāyk (al-ʿahd al-jadīd) have gone to great lengths to point out how this formal translation with its choice of particular words has been limiting.39 Having been involved in the newly formed cultural societies of Beirut in the late 1840s, Smith was well aware of the ongoing literary work of his colleagues Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī as literati. This would have been especially true during the meetings of al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya. Several of Bustānī’s papers delivered at the society meetings would become instrumental parts of his Khuṭba fī ādāb al-ʿarab, published in 1859 and impact his later dictionary and encyclopedia.40 While the current study does not address specific text critical word studies of the so-called Van Dyck, it might be helpful to note the important work of Oddbjørn Leirvik on this issue of the changing role of language during the nineteenth century. Leirvik engaged in a study of the usage of the term ḍamīr in medieval and modern Arabic Bibles. He found that in translating the Greek word syneidēsis (conscientia in the Latin Vulgate) most pre-nineteenth century Arabic translations preferred the Arabic niyya or baṣīra. Ḍamīr first appears in Thomas Erpenius’ translated and printed edition of the New Testament in the sixteenth century. However, it is not until the nineteenth century that ḍamīr becomes the favored definition for syneidēsis. Leirvik claims that this transition is due specifically to Bustānī’s introduction of the term, which he defines as “an inner feeling which informs about the lawful and the illicit, forbidding the later.”41 Bustānī also provided new meanings to other terms that had their origins in Syriac, such as talmiḍ [disciple] and nomos [law].42 While further research is needed, Leirvik points to the fact that throughout the nineteenth century the Arabic language was changing dramatically and translators were very much attuned to this issue.

39 Ghassān Khalaf, Aḍwāʾ ʿalá tarjamat al-Bustānī Fāndāyk (al-ʿAhd al-jadīd): Mulāḥaẓāt taḥlīliyya tanqīḥiyya li-taṣwībihā wa-taḥdīthihā (Bayrūt: G. Khalaf, 2009). 40 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 148. 41 Oddbjørn Leirvik, “Conscience in Arabic and the Semantic of History of Damir,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 9: 2 (2009), 26. In the translation Bustānī uses ḍamīr in cases where Erpenius utilized niyya. See Rom 2:15; Tit 1:15. Other examples of the use of ḍamīr included 1 Cor 10:28; 2 Cor 1:12; 5:11; Rom 9:1. 42 See Issa, 64. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 173

Besides the linguistic changes, Ghassān Khalaf notes that Bustānī originally introduced the official term for “chapter heading” [al-iṣḥāḥ] in his groundbreaking dictionary Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ. He originally then introduced this designation into the Bible translation. Prior to this, the “chapter heading” had been designated in a variety of ways in medieval translations, often as either faṣl or iṣḥāḥ. It was not, however, a term used in hand produced copies of the Qurʾan.43 This introduction into the printing practice was not only a development in the meanings of words, but the development of print culture as well.44 While Smith had hoped that “the future enlightenment of the nation [would] bring back the language again nearer classical richness and purity,” the Nahḍa was moving Arabic in new directions.45 This Protestant Bible translation was right in the middle of a cultural shift. These examples are sufficient to note that further opportunities for research are available and much work is needed to engage in thorough textual studies of Bustānī’s use of Arabic in his later works, compared to his early translations of the so-called Van Dyck.46 Finding the most appropriate word for a translation also involved some sensitive discussion about Qurʾanic terminology. The missionaries had always hoped at some point that a new Arabic translation of the Bible would be a critical evangelical tool for the Muslim readership in the Arab Middle East, those they called the “millions of perishing sinners.” Bustānī and Yāzijī, however, objected to the translation being used for such an endeavor. There was an inherent tension in making translation decisions with Qurʾanic references in mind. The al-Kitāb al-sharīf, published in 2000, is an example of an Arabic translation that was aimed specifically at an Arab Muslim audience by using classical Qurʾanic phrases and terms. Eli Smith had been well aware of the issues involved with conveying Christian theological terms within an Islamic cultural context. He was already committed to a formal translation from the original languages rather than focusing his energies on finding suitable Islamic terms. Smith remarked that

43 Ghassān Khalaf, Aḍwāʾ ʿalá tarjamat al-Bustānī Fāndāyk, 25. 44 Hala Auji, “Between Script and Print: exploring publications of the American Syrian Mission and the nascent press in the Arab World, 1834–1860,” (PhD Dissertation: State University of New York, Binghamton, 2013); Geoffrey Roper, History of the Book in the Muslim World, in The Oxford Companion to the Book, eds. Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H.R. Woudhuysen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 38. 45 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 10. 46 To my knowledge there has been only one detailed study of Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh Rūmī, Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ li-Buṭrus al-Bustānī: tanbīhāt wa-istidrākāt wa-mulāḥaẓāt (al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-Thawba, 2011). 174 CHAPTER 5

We . . . are on our guard in reference to the many words which are current among Christians, in a meaning not sanctioned by Mohammedan usage, lest by using them we convey a wrong idea to a Mohammedan. At the same time, it is our constant aim not to depart, without sufficient cause, from the phraseology consecrated by long usage in the current translations . . .47

Van Dyck later recalled during his tenure that there was still considerable controversy over the usage of Islamic terminology. “All native Christian scholars decidedly objected to this.” Thus, they were careful not to interject any “foreign idioms.” (The term “foreign” here is used synonymously with “Islamic.”) 48 This reference poses particular questions. While Bustānī and Yāzijī often used Islamic idioms and passages from the Qurʾan in their own works and as part of their own commitments to developing a shared language and culture, such as the Bismallah, they also did not see the need to Islamicize the Bible translation in their original translations.49 Even after Van Dyck took over as the primary missionary translator, there were those who were scandalized by the perceived influence of a Muslim on the translation. Given these sensitivities, and the previous decade’s debates with the Maronite Church over removal of the Apocrypha, by the 1850s the translation was seen as a text for the Arabic-speaking Protestant community. Throughout the translation process, there were unique questions that provided challenges regarding the proper way to translate biblical terms and concepts into nineteenth century Arabic. An early translation decision that was YAHWEH. There were יהוה often disputed was the choice of how to translate some, including Henry Jessup, who felt that it was important to transliterate the Hebrew simply as YAHWEH, the holy name of God. However, in consulta- tion with a number of missionaries and scholars, including Edward Robinson, it was decided that it would be better to translate the name of God as opposed to transliterating it. A concern for Smith, and later for Van Dyck, was that in transliterating the word, the term would be confusing for most Arab readers, especially Muslims. They would not know who or what YAHWEH was. Thus, the term rabb was chosen, which was, of course, a common Qurʾanic

47 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 10. 48 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 28. 49 Hala Auji in her dissertation calls al-Bustānī and al-Yāzijī’s inclusion of Islamic anwan and tughrāʾ a “repurposed aesthetic.” This reworking of traditional Islamic references was not for evangelical purposes, but was part of their creation in the Nahḍa. See, for example, 143–4. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 175 reference to God.50 Van Dyck would later note that rabb “conveyed the meaning of the highest possible existing Being—the Supreme.”51 In the New Testament,  the Greek word for God [theos] was translated into the classical Arabic    ALLAH, which had been the standard as far back as the earliest Arabic Christian  writings and translations of the New Testament.52  

Smith’s Method of Translation

The RT as passed on by Jessup is consistent with the reports submitted by Smith and Van Dyck in relation to the translation process undertaken by Eli Smith, Buṭrus al-Bustānī, and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī. However, Jessup has left out some important information that minimizes the work of the Syrian translators.

It is plain . . . that Dr. Smith began to work on the translation in 1848, assisted by Sheikh Nasif el Yazigy, and Mr. Butrus el Bistany. First, Mr. Bistany made a translation into Arabic from the Hebrew or Greek with the aid of the Syriac. Then Sheikh Nasif, who knew no language but Arabic, rewrote what had been translated, carefully sifting out all foreign idioms. Then Dr. Smith revised Sheikh Nasif’s manuscript by himself, and made his own corrections and emendations. Then he and Sheikh Nasif went over the work in company, and Dr. Smith was careful not to let the meaning be sacrificed for a question of Arabic grammar or rhetoric.53

Smith records in his report that it was Bustānī who provided the first translation, “giving the work a native coloring which a foreigner could not so easily accomplish. . . . bringing into it the terms and phrases in common and good use to express the ideas of the original, and especially those current in Christian theology and literature.”54 This was no easy task. Bustānī was frustrated with his own translation, not being completely happy with certain choices of Arabic phraseology in various places. Nevertheless, Smith remarks that he went over Bustānī’s translation, utilizing other critical apparatus as necessary, to make

50 See, for example, Q 1:2. 51 Van Dyck to Jessup in Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 32. 52 For example, see the earliest Arabic Christian Theological work, Fī thāthlith Allāh al-wāḥid. Margaret Dunlop Smith Gibson, ed. An Arabic version of the Acts of the Apostles and the seven Catholic epistles (London, C.J. Clay and Sons, 1899). 53 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 70. My emphasis. 54 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 8. 176 CHAPTER 5 sure that he was as faithful to the Hebrew and Greek as possible. With some corrections, however, Smith notes very clearly that “no doubt there does remain, in the end, a decided coloring given by the first hand through which the work passes.”55 In other words, Bustānī’s first translation largely stood as the accepted translation. According to Jessup, however, it was Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī who took Bustānī’s translation and corrected it before passing it on to Smith. Smith then corrected it all himself once again, before reviewing it for a final time with Yāzijī. In his report, however, Smith is clear that he and Bustānī worked over the first translation in order to be as faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek texts as possible. Only then was the Arabic passed to Yāzijī, so he and Smith could work together to make sure the Arabic made sense and flowed. The difficulty here was that as a nineteenth century poet and man of letters, Yāzijī was most interested in providing a particular Arabic flair to the translation. It might be helpful to use Nida’s concept of “dynamic equivalence” here. Yāzijī provided suggestions that might have sacrificed the word for word or direct translations for an overall thematic approach to sentences. While Smith saw this step as necessary, it was a thoroughly frustrating process. In a private letter to Anderson, Smith remarked:

The revising, before and after Nasif’s labor, I have done myself. It has taken a good deal of time, and upon it very much of the intelligibility and effectiveness of our books depend. We have never yet found translators who could, or would, take time enough to bring out in Arabic, clearly, the full meaning of the English. If put into Nasif’s hands, as they leave it, a translation would come out, in very many passages, wide of the original meaning, and the force of the sentiment be lost. Even he needs constantly looking after, or he does his work carelessly; and the more so, the older he grows.56

The Mission records often note some sense of frustration over the work done by Yāzijī. In fact, he was dismissed from his work as an Arabic teacher at the Syrian Protestant College after only one year, because the administration was not satisfied with his skills.57 This is quite surprising given his stature as one of the leading figures in the literary renaissance of his day! Certainly there

55 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 9. 56 Smith to Anderson, appended to the Mission annual meeting minutes, 13 April 1854. ABCFM 16.8.1, v. 4 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859, v.1. 57 Tibawi, “Some Misconceptions,” 20. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 177 is a cavernous cultural disconnect here between the views of the American missionaries and the one whom George Antonius called one of the two great figures of the renaissance period.58 The perfectionist that he was, Smith was more concerned with direct “formal equivalence” of the translation, willing to sacrifice such Arabic flair. The poet that he was, Yāzijī aimed toward exquisite expression. It is this one reason that has more than likely created a stumbling block for some modern Arabic readers where the translation may not be clear in various passages, but also at the same time created a sense of mystery of interpretation worthy of a “heavenly revealed” text. The problem with the RT as chronicled by Jessup, and the personal reports of Smith, is that we simply do not have primary sources from Bustānī or Yāzijī that comment on this process. However, the MSS themselves support Smith’s version of events.

The Death of Smith and the Appointment of Van Dyck

While Smith’s time and energies were directed toward an exact and precise translation of the Bible, some of his colleagues, as well as Rufus Anderson, were becoming impatient with Smith and the Mission Press. The Press had long had difficulty in producing any significant number of publications, religious or otherwise. This was due to various reasons that we have already reviewed in chapter one. Nevertheless, by April of 1856, eight years after he had been appointed as the chief translator for the Bible translation project, he was relieved of his duties due to a slow and debilitating cancer. On 11 January 1857, Smith passed away and was buried in the Mission cemetery in Beirut. As a result, the translation of the Bible came to a screeching halt. At their annual meeting in the spring of 1857, the missionaries decided to appoint Cornelius Van Dyck to take charge of the translation. Rufus Anderson, however, was concerned enough about how much the translation project had not only taxed the activities of the Mission Press, but also the overall effectiveness of the Mission itself. At the death of Smith, Anderson provided a touching obituary of Smith, but declared, “[H]e pursued the study of Arabic and kindred languages to a greater extent than was necessary to become either a good speaker, or a good preacher.”59 When the missionary association appointed Van Dyck to succeed Smith, Anderson was not thrilled with the prospect of losing

58 Antonius, 45. Tibawi, refutes Antonius’s claim as a panegyric historiography. See Tibawi, “Some Misconceptions”, 20. 59 Anderson, History of the Missions, 324. References to the translation process ocurr in vol. 1, 369, 380, 383, and vol. 2, 324. 178 CHAPTER 5 another missionary in the field, a medical doctor at that, to this all-consuming task. In his own memoirs on the history of the Board’s mission to the Oriental Churches, Anderson provides four scant references to the translation of the scriptures into Arabic. This is quite extraordinary given the prominence of Bible translation in other parts of the Protestant missionary world, and given the importance of this particular translation within the Ottoman Empire. After consulting with Edward Robinson, Smith’s lifelong friend, about another suitable replacement for the translation project, Anderson proposed to the missionaries that an American Biblical scholar take over the project. The missionaries, astounded at such a counter-proposal, responded that only Cornelius Van Dyck was suitable to undertake this task, as his language skills were deftly suited to understand the “idioms and usages of the living and spoken language.”60 The missionaries provided a heartfelt response to Anderson.

[The translation will] encounter hostile attack of bitter and wary enemies and it will be subjected to the criticisms of the learned and fastidi- ous scholars. It is the representative of God’s word to millions of Mohammedans who cannot tolerate other than the best Arabic in their religious books; and it must be, at the same time, plain enough to meet the wants of the unlearned and simple minds. The combination of these two opposite qualities in a suitable proportion is a task which might well discourage any but the most accomplished masters of both the written and spoken dialects.61

Anderson relented and weakly confirmed Van Dyck as the missionary translator and editor of the Mission Press. To fulfill this responsibility, Van Dyck needed to uproot himself from the Abieh seminary and move to the Mission headquarters in Beirut. However, this was not the end of the debate over the purpose of the Mission Press. Anderson continued to remind the missionaries to reduce costs. The Mission assured the Board that they would begin inves- tigating how they might turn over the Press to a private entrepreneur who might take responsibility for the assets, more than likely Bustānī. Meanwhile, they began allowing private authors to publish with the Press to underwrite costs and keep the Mission solvent at a time when Board funds were shrinking due to the gathering storm clouds of the oncoming American Civil War. It was at this point that Bustānī and Yāzijī began to publish their own work outside the auspices of mission assignments and oversight, and to develop their own

60 Ford to Anderson, 12 May 1857; ABCFM 16.8.1, v. 4, Syrian Mission, 1847–1859. v. 1. 61 Ford to Anderson, 12 May 1857; ABCFM 16.8.1. v. 4, Syrian Mission, 1847–1859. v. 1. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 179 projects. This helps to explain one of the important and puzzling issues of the RT; that is, the sacking of Bustānī and Yāzijī from the Bible translation project.

Van Dyck’s Method of Translation

Cornelius Van Dyck remarked in his 1885 report that on his taking over the translation project, according to the terms of Smith’s previous contract with Bustānī, if either of them died during the project, their contract would be ter- minated. Van Dyck then goes on to recall the frustrations with Yāzijī’s lack of precise “word for word” translation.62 Because of these issues, both Syrians were let go by Van Dyck. The sacking of these Syrians prompts many questions. One wonders why Smith had inserted such a clause into this contract to begin with. Given that Smith and Bustānī had a strong relationship, why would Smith include such a clause? 63 Was Smith trying to protect his friend from being obligated to a Mission association at which he was not fully appreciated, by whom he had already been prohibited from being ordained earlier in his career? Or, did Smith not trust Bustānī on his own with the project? In addition, one wonders if Van Dyck had already had his reservations about Bustānī through their previous long relationship in the Mission. They had worked together at the Abeih seminary, and were acquainted through their time in al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya. It would be understandable if Van Dyck, like Smith, did not see Bustānī as a “man of the cloth,” or pious enough for pastoral work. However, there are no clear answers. Nevertheless, after Smith passed away in 1857 the Mission was under no contractual obligation to continue with Bustānī. Regardless, by 1857 Bustānī had already begun to direct his energies into his own writing and literary work that took him away from the commitments of the American Syrian Mission. Perhaps he wanted to be relieved of this responsibility and connection to move on to other opportunities. After the 1860 civil

62 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 29. 63 Fruma Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 148. The focus of Zachs’ research is on the creation of Syrian National identity among Arab Christians, rather than the origin of their ideas. While she does claim that Busṭānī was directly influenced by Eli Smith and involved with the American Syrian Mission, her sources focus on the interaction within the important societies and literary circles they developed. (See, for example, 137–48.) While her conclusion regarding the relationship between the American missionaries and the development of the Nahḍa is fair and balanced, she does not sufficiently address whether the establishment of mission schools and the printing press was significant enough to either create, or merely participate, in “middle stratum” movements already afoot. See also Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, 91. 180 CHAPTER 5 war, Bustānī would found the first non-sectarian school in Syria, known as the “National School.” (Thus, the Arab World would come to know Bustānī more for his nationalistic and linguistic contributions to Arab culture, rather than as one of the translators of the Bible.) As Smith’s cancer progressed and he became weaker during the late 1850s, the translation process slowed down. The MSS indicate that Bustānī had already translated a number of books of the Bible that Smith had not yet been able to review.64 Thus, while waiting for Smith to catch up to him in his translation, Bustānī was free to produce his own works, which he did, contracting with the Mission Press to publish several of his early books. Yāzijī represents another interesting quandary. Van Dyck writes in his April 1863 report that in “being acquainted with no language besides the Arabic, and often prone to sacrifice the meaning to a grammatical or rhetorical nicety, [Yāzijī’s] work was not to be trusted until it had another revision.”65 Kamal Salibi has argued that Van Dyck considered Nasif “an unsatisfactory person on other counts.”66 Perhaps, there was a Protestant bias here by which Van Dyck did not consider the Greek Catholic Yāzijī pious enough for this project. However, there does not seem to be any other indication of this anywhere else. On the contrary, Van Dyck himself would later have no qualms about working with the Greek Catholics and building up their own hospital. With the Mission tight on finances and the Prudential Committee worried about the financial drag and investment of personnel resources, the missionary association decided to provide opportunities for a number of local Syrian projects to generate some income. Hala Auji has noted that al-Mutanabbī’s Diwān was published at the American Mission Press, using the “American Arabic” fonts and previously developed ornamentation and decorations for the title page, and the bismillah.67 Both Bustānī and Yāzijī often used Islamic phrases, including the fātiḥa, in the opening of their books, and often quoted from passages of the Qurʾan throughout.68 Thus, it seems that with his friend Smith gone and the American Mission unwilling to accept his role as a pastor within the evangelical church, Bustānī, struck out on his own. Yāzijī as a Greek Catholic, was perhaps never fully committed to the evangelical faith. He never became a Protestant, much to the cha- grin of the missionaries. Especially after the 1860 civil war, Bustānī and Yāzijī

64 See Appendix A. 65 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 14. 66 Kamal Salibi, “The Christian Role in the Arab Renaissance,” Theological Review 15, no. 1 (April, 1994), 8. 67 Auji, 158–60. 68 Auji, 162. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 181 became more interested in developing works that contributed to an overall Syrian and Arabic “renaissance” by overcoming sectarian sympathies, than completing the Bible translation. They were committed to the national and cultural redemption of all Syrians, not only in creating evangelical Syrians. Ussama Makdisi has successfully argued that Bustānī’s Qiṣṣat asʿad al-shidyāq bākūrat sūriyya, the retelling of the death of the first Protestant convert Asʿad al-Shidyāq that was published by the Mission Pess after the 1860 civil war, was intended to provide an ethical narrative of the importance of individual conscience over despotism, as opposed to an apologetic for the evangelical faith.69 It is most likely that while the minutes of the Mission note this contractual obligation and the concern over Yāzijī’s inability as a precise translator, the Arab poet laureate, along with Bustānī were more interested in pursuing other projects anyway. Given that Van Dyck was now in charge of the Mission Press at this time, we can assume that he was sympathetic of their independent work. He would have known about their interests and endeavors and provided opportunity for them to use the press. If he had not been supportive of their ideas, they would not have been able to publish their work with Van Dyck in charge of the Mission Press. This important acquiescence by Van Dyck cut against Anderson’s insistence that publications support only spiritual matters. As we have already seen, this would not be the last time the Van Dyck would break with mission policy in his support for Syrian efforts. In 1883, he resigned from the Mission over the “Lewis Affair”, only to throw his energies behind the local Greek Orthodox hospital in Beirut. Clearly, Van Dyck had a consistent pattern of action that was guided by his love for Syria and the Syrian people amid their own Nahḍa. This leads us to one of the more interesting developments in the history of the translation project that is missing from the official annals of the American Board and only mentioned in passing by Henry Jessup in Fifty- Three Years. This is the inclusion of Sheikh Yūsuf al-Asīr, a graduate from the Sunni university of al-Azhar in Egypt, as part of the translation team. Jessup notes briefly that

Dr. Van Dyck was assisted by a Mohammedan scholar of high repute, Sheikh Yusef el Asír, a graduate of the Azhar University of Cairo, whose purely Arabic tastes and training fitted him to pronounce on all questions of grammar, rhetoric and vowelling, subject to the revision and final judgment of Dr. Van Dyck.70

69 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 200–201. 70 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 75. This comment is based upon Van Dyck’s reference to al-Asīr in both the 1863 and 1885 reports, 16 and 29, respectively. 182 CHAPTER 5

Jessup subtly points out that the participation of Asīr was justified because of his linguistic skills that could provide the local flavor for which some of the members of the mission had been looking. In addition, he assures his audience that Van Dyck was always guiding this process and had the “final judgment” on all matters. While the MSS do not seem to provide evidence of Asīr’s direct handwriting, it is very likely that he did assist Van Dyck in the translation of the poetic books of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. These books were translated solely by Van Dyck between 1861 and 1864. The MSS of these four books are written in Van Dyck’s style as noted below, but do include penciled corrections. Other books translated solely by Van Dyck in the same format do not have the same type of corrections, but rather are recopied translations to be made ready for publication.71 Sara Binay has argued that one can clearly see “al-Asīr’s contribution in the manuscripts of the translation of the Psalms . . . not only providing vocalization and the like but also adding remarks on grammar, syntax or lexicography.”72 Van Dyck notes in his report that readers will recognize that in “the poetical parts the style necessarily takes on the higher standard of the original.”73 Thus, it seems that Asīr sat with Van Dyck to go over these translations. Asīr provided for Van Dyck what the Mission had intended for Yāzijī. Asīr’s role should not be underestimated. Van Dyck also provides an important comment in his first report, that once the New Testament with tashkīl (vowel points) was published, Yāzijī was critical of the vowelling. Yūsuf Asīr responded to Yāzijī’s critiques in a letter where he pointed out what part of the translation was from his own hand and what part had been previously translated by Yāzijī himself. Therefore, Asīr remarked that if Yāzijī had any criticism of the final form of the translation, Yāzijī was himself to blame!74 Van Dyck notes that he placed this letter by Asīr with the aforementioned voweled copy of the New Testament in the mission library in the 1860s. While this researcher did locate the first New Testament published with handwritten tashkīl, we did not find this letter from Asīr. This voweled copy of the New Testament, however, does have a typed card inserted claiming that this copy was “with vowels added with pen by Dr. Van Dyck as the basis for the

71 See Appendix for examples.. 72 Binay, 82. 73 Smith and Van Dcyk, Documentary History, 28. 74 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 29. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 183

ILLUSTRATION 5 MSS Psalm 1:1–6. “Sifr Mazāmīr maʿa l-Ḥarakāt [Psalms]”, n.d., digitized manuscript, AC-36:32:1, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

voweled edition.” One wonders, however, whether or not Asīr and Van Dyck did the vowelling together. Locating the particular aforementioned letter by Yūsuf al-Asīr might provide further information regarding his role in the translation of the New Testament, but to this date it escapes us. As Asīr was widely known for his poetic ability, and given that he had contributed much to the hymnody of the Evangelical Church of Syria as already noted in the chapter one, his participation here should not be surprising. Asīr was one of the leading Syrian Sunni scholars of Beirut who was involved in the Islamic reform movement. He was a founding member of the Muslim Jamʿiyyat 184 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 6 1860 voweled NT, Matthew 1:1–14. “Mattá [Matthew] 1:1–14”, Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled, handwritten vowels added by Van Dyck (Beirut: American Mission Press, April 1860), Box V, Item 9, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 185 al-funūn, and the editor of the reformist Thamarāt al-funūn.75 Further thorough research into Asīr’s writings would point out his broader themes and Reformist concerns during this period of history, especially his views on the Holy Book of the Christians of which he had direct knowledge. Nevertheless, the presence of a well-known Muslim scholar during the Islamic Reform period of the nineteenth century marks an important moment in Christian-Muslim relationships that should be celebrated. Meanwhile, as the RT of Jessup does brush aside the inclusion of Yūsuf al-Asīr, it is clear on one important matter that almost finished off the translation project altogether, namely, the rescue of the acceptable New Testament text.

The Correction of the eclectic text

In the last chapter, we argued the RT had developed a narrative whereby Cornelius Van Dyck commenced the translation of the New Testament by “revising every verse” in order that it might conform to the standard Received Text as required by the ABS. This led to the accepted narrative of Van Dyck rescu- ing the translation, and at least according to one oral tradition that was widely accepted by 1885, that the original manuscripts of Smith had been burned. As has been previously noted, however, Van Dyck never wrote that he had “revised every verse” by rather that he “reviewed every verse.” Given that this RT comes directly from the pen of Henry Jessup, it is more than likely that he served as one of the primary instigators of caution regarding the use of any eclectic text. The argument rests on the distinction between a “revision” of every verse and a general “review” of the translation. In other words, the RT implies that Van Dyck painstakingly compared the first translation with the textus receptus and completely altered it to be in compliance. The MSS evidence, however, shows that Van Dyck did little altering of the text and only actually revised a few verses, as will be shown below. Rather, it was Henry Jessup whose choice of words helped to create the narrative of Van Dyck’s rescue of the text. Henry Jessup arrived in Beirut as a young missionary in the winter of 1856. He was fresh from his studies at Yale University and Union Seminary in New York. His first mission post was in Tripoli where he was tasked with learning Arabic. Shortly after his arrival, he traveled to Beirut to attend the missionaries’ annual meeting in 1856, where Eli Smith presented his last report on the translation before his death in January 1857. However, the first that we read about Jessup in the missionary records is at the next annual meeting of 1857.

75 Cheikho, Majānī al-ādāb, vol. 2, 75–77. 186 CHAPTER 5

Immediately after the vote to appoint Van Dyck as the director of the translation project, and in response to the debate over the various sources used by Smith, including that of Tregelles, there was a related discussion about the books held in the Mission library. A letter written by missionaries William Eddy and Jessup, and included in the meeting Minutes, noted that the Mission library had a number of books that were “non-essential” and did not focus on the sole purpose of preaching the Gospel and should be removed from the library.76 While the records do not indicate which books were removed from the Mission library, it is likely that these would have been the sources used by Smith, including Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford’s eclectic New Testament texts as made available by Edward Robinson.77 Jessup was quick to point out in Fifty-Three Years that Van Dyck utilized Hahn in “strict adherence to the Textus Receptus” as required by the ABS.78 While these arguments for Jessup’s interpretation of the events regarding Van Dyck’s “revising every verse” are based on a careful reading of the primary sources of this history, a close examination of the original MSS themselves reveal further information about the translation process of the so-called Van Dyck New Testament. It is our contention based upon a review of these MSS that Buṭrus al-Bustānī originally translated all of the New Testament and that Eli Smith, together with Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī recopied this original translation with some editing. Cornelius Van Dyck simply “reviewed” the New Testament, leaving most of the text intact, while taking care to review the textual variants. Van Dyck did not however “revise” the complete text of the New Testament.

The so-called Van Dyck Manuscripts

The MSS of the so-called Van Dyck translation of the Bible in the collection of the rare book room of NEST fall into five families. The list of MSS are located in Appendix A. They are listed according to the Arabic Bible (“Van Dyck Bible”) Manuscript Collection and Affiliated Texts: Reference Guide of the Near East School of Theology. The first family consists of texts that follow the general format as noted by Smith in his 1854 report. It includes the handwriting and work of Smith, Bustānī

76 Mission Minutes, 14 April 1857; ABCFM 16.8.1. v. 4 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859, v. 1. 77 The library of NEST includes Jessup’s signed copy of Augusts Hahn, Novum Testamentum Graece (1857). However, Smith would have used Hahn’s 1840 edition, or Robinson’s compilation from 1842. 78 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 74. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 187 and Yāzijī. We have labeled this family the “Documentary History” manuscripts (DH) in that they follow the pattern as outlined by Smith in the report now located in The Brief documentary history of the translation of the Scriptures into the Arabic language (1900). The DH manuscripts are constructed of sheets of coarse paper that have been sewn together in booklet form. The MSS read, of course, right to left. The right hand column has a translation of the biblical text with several variant readings of words inserted in red ink below the initial word of the text. There are numerous lightly penciled corrections written over the inked translation throughout the text. The left hand side of the MSS is a second translation of the same biblical material, but which takes into account the penciled corrections on the right hand side. In addition, this left hand column has further light-penciled corrections, as well as a second set of darker penciled corrections. The left hand side handwriting is different from that on the right hand side, and one can recognize a particular calligraphic flair, especially with the initial kafs and the final mīms on the left hand side. There is a darker ink in the left hand column, which marks cross-references to other biblical passages to which a reader might turn when looking for further clarification of themes or concepts. The two sets of penciled corrections on the left hand side are from two different hands, the darker ones being more difficult to decipher. In some cases, as noted in the image below, the right hand column is crossed out. Most of the MSS have autographs of Smith and Van Dyck, noting when they commenced and completed their translations. MSS AC-36:60, which is the translation of the Gospel of Matthew, has a transcribed note by Eli Smith: “Begun First Sept 1852. E.S.” However, at the end of this MSS we find an additional transcription by Van Dyck, “appointed to this work April 1857. Commenced in reality Oct 1857 the summer having been spent in preparation C.V.A. Van Dyck.” These autographs provide us clear guidelines for when Smith and Van Dyck began and concluded their work on each book of the Bible. Van Dyck provides further clarity to this DH style in his 1863 report. After the death of Eli Smith, Van Dyck was charged by the Mission colleagues of “reviewing” the previous work and continuing the translation. Upon review of this material he noted that a

clear copy of each book . . . with lines wide apart, and with different readings in red ink under such words or passages as admitted of more than one meaning, was put by Mr. Bistany into Dr. Smith’s hands.79

79 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 14. 188 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 7 MSS of Hosea 1:10–2:2. MSS AC-36:46, Hūshaʿ [Hosea 1:10–2:2], n.d. digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

Sara Binay, in her research on the so-called Van Dyck MSS, has argued that there is no indication of the direct influence of Bustānī in the current MSS and that the MSS in the rare book room of NEST are not the originals.80 We would argue to the contrary that the MSS themselves provide clear evidence that these are the originals. The handwriting of Bustānī, Smith, Yāzijī, and Van Dyck can be detected and the translation process is supported by the record of the historical documents. In addition, we find this same method having been used by Smith in other translation projects for the American Mission Press, as we will see below. For example, on four occasions, Van Dyck reviewed the previous translations of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah and put them into a final form for publication (AC-36:6, 8, 10, and 39). MSS AC-36:38, the original Isaiah MSS, displays clearly that these are the original works of Eli Smith and Buṭrus al-Bustānī. The autograph by Smith records that he began work on 14 June 1855. This was toward the end of his tenure on the project. Although the secondary reports, e.g. the Mission Minutes, Van Dyck’s first report, and Jessup’s Fifty- three Years, differ as to when Smith completed his work, they all confirm that

80 Binay, 78–79. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 189 he had worked through chapter 52 (52:3 to be precise) before he became too sick to continue his work. Following Isaiah 52, the left hand side of the MSS is blank, confirming that after Smith was relieved of his responsibilities and then died, that Yāzijī was dismissed as well. From Isaiah 52:3 onward, Van Dyck simply reviewed the translation of Bustānī. He later recopied Isaiah in MSS AC-36:39 in the winter of 1864. Thus, the translation of Isaiah, supported by the secondary reports, all point to the fact that these are the original MSS. In addition to the MSS evidence, a letter from Smith to Anderson in 1856, with a copy of another translation project of the Mission Press overseen by Smith called “Rites and Ceremonies,” both records and displays that this same DH translation process was followed as a regular pattern undertaken by Smith as the director of the Mission Press. Here we find Smith’s corrections of Bustānī’s original on the right hand side with Yāzijī’s handwriting on the left. This letter with a copy of the draft for “Rites and Ceremonies” proves that this was a common translation procedure which Smith utilized at the Mission Press.81 Hala Auji in her research on the American Mission Press confirms this, as she notes that the Press regularly incorporated local print production techniques to include “roles of the muṣaḥiḥ, “corrector,” and the nasākh, “copyist” in their normal translation work.82 Thus, it is logical that Eli Smith, as the head of the Mission Press, would follow the standard practice of their trade. The MSS bear out this standard. The second family of MSS in this collection is the group of translations arranged in the same style as the previous, with two pages sewn together in a booklet form with wide margins. However, in this case only the right hand side includes a translation. The left hand side is blank. These are those books of the Bible that were translated by Bustānī, but not reviewed by Smith. These include Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jeremiah and Lamentations (MSS AC-36:11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 40 and 41).83 The handwriting on the right hand side of this family of MSS is the same as the right hand column in the DH family of MSS, clearly that of Buṭrus al-Bustānī. We have labeled these as “Bustānī-Van Dyck” manuscripts (BVD) as these were the books translated by Bustānī and not reviewed by Smith, but later corrected by Van Dyck. In several cases, Van Dyck recopied the translation and put it in a final version to be put forward for printing (MSS AC-36:12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, and 27).

81 Smith to Anderson, 13 March 1856; ABCFM 16.8.1; v. 5, Syrian Mission, 1847–1859. v. 2. 82 Auji, 55. 83 See Van Dyck, Documentary History, 26. 190 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 8 MSS of Joshua 1:1–4. AC-36:11:1 Sifr Yashūʿ [Joshua 1:1–4], [1848–1861], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

The third family of MSS is that group translated by Van Dyck himself in his recognizable handwriting, with the possible assistance of Yūsuf al-Asīr on the poetic segments of the Writings. We have labeled these as “Van Dyck-Asīr (VDA). These works represent two versions of the Psalms, one version of each Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (MSS AC-36:32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37). These MSS are distinct in that they are not two pieces sewn together to form a booklet, but are only one page of text. There is a single page of translation with cross-referenced notes to other passages of the Bible in the left-hand margin. In each of the translations, there are penciled corrections in the same handwriting as the inked translation, with the exception of AC-36:33 [Job] and AC-36:35 [Proverbs]. It is our view that Van Dyck worked with Yūsuf al-Asīr on at least these two books of the Bible, if not the other Writings, as well. There is no indication of Asīr’s handwriting here, but Van Dyck’s own report points to his collaborative work with the Imam. Again, we are missing the important voice of one of the Syrian translators. The fourth family of MSS includes Zephaniah, two versions of Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (AC36–43, 45, 54, 59, 42, 44, 53, 55, 56, 57, and 58).84 We have labeled these the “Van Dyck” format (VD).

84 See Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 26. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 191

ILLUSTRATION 9 MSS of Job 1:1–4. AC-36:33:1, “Sifr Ayyūb [Job 1:1–4]”, n.d., digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

Only MSS AC36–58:10 has an autograph of Van Dyck, marking the end completion of the project as: “Finished Aug 22 1864 CVD.” This corresponds to Van Dyck’s 1865 report and Jessup’s Fifty-three Years. However, the Mission minutes note that the project was completed at its April 23 meeting in 1864. Since we only have one clear autograph date from this family we can only guess as to the order of these MSS. It is our view that after working with Yūsuf al-Asīr on the Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, Van Dyck returned to “review” Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. These three MSS had been translated by Bustānī, but only Isaiah had been partially reviewed by Smith in 1855. Van Dyck then proceeded himself to translate Ezekiel, Daniel, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Zecharaiah and Malachi just before the April meeting 192 CHAPTER 5 of the Mission association and presented the complete translation to his colleagues in 1864. The only justification we have for such an order is by looking back at Van Dyck’s previous progression of work through the Bible. He preferred to work according to the traditional canonical order of the books of the Protestant Bible. Following the 1864 meeting, Van Dyck went back to recopy and put Ezekiel, Daniel, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Zecharaiah and Malachi into final form for printing, with a title page and reference notes on the left-hand margin. He then signed MSS AC:36:58:10 as the project was finished. The fifth and final family of MSS is a minority grouping that consists of translations of Genesis (MSS AC-36:1, 2, and 3). These are actually the earliest documents of the translation project. MSS AC-36:3 is a two-column translation of Genesis of only 27:18–50:26. This is solely in the handwriting of Buṭrus al-Bustānī. It is unclear as to why the first twenty-six and half chapters are missing. Certainly, there is one missing MSS of 1:1–27:17. It would seem that Smith and Bustānī were still working out their system of translation early on and had not settled into the DH process. It should be noted that early on Bustānī was only under contract to provide specific translations for Smith, and was not hired by the Mission for this translation project at this point. Once the missionary association had ratified its support of Smith’s translation of Genesis and encouraged him to continue with “parallel readings” at their 1852 annual meeting, it seems the DH process was then settled on and they began their work.85 Smith and Bustānī then completed MSS AC-36:2 by 5 January 1853, as noted by Smith’s autograph. MSS AC-36:2, then, is a complete translation of the book of Genesis in booklet form. This represents the “trial edition” that was sent out by Eli Smith to various readers throughout the Middle East in 1853 for review.86 With the exception of the fifth family of MSS, which we have labeled “Bustani-Smith” (BS) we can provide a fairly accurate order of the translation process of the so-called Van Dyck bible as noted in Appendix A. Let us now look at how the MSS themselves provide evidence of the primary work of Buṭrus al-Bustānī, the editorial work of Eli Smith and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, with the final “review” by Cornelius Van Dyck. The fifth family of MSS (BS), which are the earliest of the documents, provide the most difficult record of the process. For example, Eli Smith’s first autograph in the collection of MSS is on MSS AC:36:60:179, the Gospel of Matthew, and is dated September 1852, from the DH family of MSS. However, we know that he did not begin the translation this late. In fact, the Minutes from the Mission association indicate that he was authorized to begin the translation in April 1848, and had completed

85 Annual Report, 5 April 1852; ABCFM 16.8.1 v. 1 Syria, 1838–1844, v. 1. 86 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 11. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 193 the Pentateuch up to Deuteronomy 5 by March 1852. He had also completely revised a copy of Genesis by April 1854.87 The only autograph we have of Smith within the Pentateuch is that of MSS AC:36:1, from Genesis (BS). Here Smith notes that he completed this on 5 January 1853. It is our view then that MSS AC-36:3 was the original translation done by Bustānī before he had moved to Beirut under contract with the Mission, and that there is a missing MSS of Genesis 1:1–27:17 done by Bustānī. It stands to reason that, once he moved to Beirut, Smith, together with Yāzijī, could now begin the standard process of translating with his muṣaḥḥiḥ and nassākh in the DH format. In any case, Smith and Bustānī had begun in 1848 and completed translating Deuteronomy 5 by March 1852. Smith then set the Pentateuch aside after the 1852 annual Mission association meeting and began working on the New Testament, beginning with Matthew (MSS AC-36:60). He and Bustānī finished Matthew and Luke before returning to complete the Pentateuch. If Smith had sent off various proofs of the Pentateuch to various readers as he indicates in his reports, copies of which are located in Smith’s private Arabic correspondence, he would then have wanted to make the necessary corrections on the Pentateuch and complete this work before returning to the New Testament.88 Between January 5 and 23 March 1853, Smith completed the translation for the complete Pentateuch (MSS AC-36:1, 5, 7, 9) and then took a few months off, more than likely for health reasons, as well as to engage in his assigned preaching duties with the Mission. Smith and Bustānī returned to the translation in June 1853 and worked straight through, completing the New Testament with Revelation (MSS AC-36:60–69) at the end of February 1855. Thus, the New Testament had been completed in only twenty months. By this time, Smith’s cancer was literally killing him. However, he continued to work on Hosea through Nahum (MSS AC-36:46–53), and then commenced editing Isaiah in June 1855 (MSS AC-36:38). By the annual meeting of Mission association in April 1856, he had completed up to chapter 53 of Isaiah. This was the last book that he, Bustānī, and Yāzijī worked on together. At the

87 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 5. 88 Eli Smith report to the Annual Meeting; 13 April 1854; ABCFM 18.16.1. v. 4 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859, v. 1. See the Arabic correspondence between Smith and a variety of individuals including, Shādy ʿIsā, Mūsā Attāh, Sheikh Yūsuf ʿAbd al-Mālik, S. Barakāt, E. Feirraz, J. Khayāt, Mikael Mashākah, Heikal ʿAbd Allāh al-Bhāmdūnī, Hama al-Khoury, F. Debaghy, Ibrāhīm Sheḥādy, Hanna Stefān, Kāsim al-Khādy, and J. Khayāt. These letters, located in ABCFM 50 are not organized, but loose. Smith also sent proofs to other missionaries, including Samuel Gobat in Jerusalem, William Robson and Julian Lansing in Damascus and David Porter in Istanbul. Eli Smith report to the Annual Meeting; 13 April 1854; ABCFM 18.16.1. v. 4 Syrian Mission, 1847–1859, v. 1. 194 CHAPTER 5

April meeting, Smith was relieved of his duties. He had, at that point, not worked on any translations throughout half of 1855 or the first part of 1856, due to his illness. Bustānī, however, by this time had already completed Jeremiah and Lamentations, as well as the historical books of Joshua through Esther (MSS AC-36:40, 41, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, and 28). It seems that Esther was the last book of the Bible that Bustānī translated. We can follow Van Dyck’s work after he took over from Smith through the same close reading of the MSS in comparison with the Minutes of the Mission. Van Dyck began reviewing the translation in October 1857, a full nine months after Smith had died.89 He completed reviewing the complete New Testament by the summer of 1860. The summer of 1860 was interrupted, most certainly by the traumatic impact of the Druze-Maronite civil war. . Van Dyck then returned to the review the Pentateuch, beginning with Leviticus in September 1860 and completed the Pentateuch by February 1861. He took up Bustānī’s translation of Joshua through Esther from March 1861 to May 1862. In this case, he prepared a second draft of these books for printing (MSS AC-36:12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, and 31). At this point, there is a major gap in the autographs of the MSS between May 1862 and April 1864. Perhaps he had traveled to Europe to consult with Rödiger and others about the project, as well as other mission activities. The remaining time was taken up in reviewing the previous translations and beginning new ones. Van Dyck completed reviewing Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations (MSS# AC-36:39, 40 and 41) by April 1864. He had also completed, by this time, reviewing all of the DH translations as well as the BVD translations. He then struck out on his own by doing fresh translations of the Writings with the assistance of Asīr in the VDA family. Finally, he returned to the remaining prophetic books, and concluded the Minor Prophets on his own accord, as noted in the VD family in August 1864.

89 Van Dyck himself makes a mistake in the dating, where in his 1863 report he records that he began work in October 1858. This is a discrepancy with his own handwriting on MSS#32 where he signs “October 1857.” This is corroborated by the fact that later on in the same report he notes that the NT was completed in 1860 (Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 16), and where in his 1885 report he notes that the “pocket and voweled editions” of the NT were “authorized” in 1858, and completed in 1860 (Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 29). The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 195

“Revised” or “Reviewed”

Several further particular examples will further illustrate the development of the translation and Van Dyck’s role in “reviewing” most of the translations, especially the New Testament. In MSS AC-36:68, we can see the progression of translation from Bustānī’s original work on the right and Smith’s corrections of 1 Timothy 6:21. In this case, it is clear that Smith was indecisive about how to translate the Greek hēn tines ’epaggellomenoi perī ten pisten ’estoxhsan. Smith provides several variant translations above the text. Ultimately, Van Dyck chose to translate this min jihat al-īmān instead of ʿan al-īmān. Also, in both the right and the left pages we find the inclusion of 6:22, and the ending: al-niʿma maʿak. Amīn. While verse num- berings did not occur in ancient Greek MSS of the Bible, of course, Bustānī and Smith chose to label this as verse 22, in distinction to the Authorized Version that includes “Grace to you. Amen.” as part of verse 21. When he reviewed this rendering, Van Dyck did not correct either of these variants. Verse 22 was included in the 1860 edition and is still in the 2008 edition. Interestingly however, in 1909 an editor recognized this mistake according to the Authorized Version and marked “redundant” on the MSS, circling “v. 22.” In addition, there

ILLUSTRATION 10 MSS of First Timothy 6. AC-36:68:21. “1 Tīmūthāʾūs [First Timothy 6:22]”, [1854–1860], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. 196 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 11 1860 NT, First Timothy 6. “1Tīmūthāʾūs [First Timothy] 6:22”, Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections], Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 197 are two darker editorial brackets around the final “Amen” with two full stops, intended by the commenter to be read instead of the separate verse designation. We presume this to have been written by Franklin E. Hoskins, who was the head of the Mission Press at the time when the 1912 Third Font edition was being prepared. MSS AC-36:69, which is in the DH format, includes several revisions at the end of the epistles 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. The original translations of Bustānī and Smith do not include the amīn in 1 John 5:21; 2 John 1:13; and 3 John 1:15, but are penciled in on the left hand side corrections by Van Dyck. While Smith was utilizing the variants from the biblical MSS Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, Van Dyck has “revised” these verses to be in agreement with the Byzantine Majority text, or the textus receptus, and removed the “Amens.” The most important variant reading in the translation, however, is that of the “Johannine Comma” of 1 John 5:7. In MSS AC-36:69, the left hand corrections to the translation include the variant “Father, Word and Holy Spirit, these three are one”: al-āb wa-l-kalima wa-rūḥ al-qudus hāʾulāʾ al-thalātha hum wāḥid. This phrase was not included on the right hand side of the translation. Here, Smith kept to Treggelles, and Alford, leaving out the “Johannine Comma.” Van Dyck, in reviewing the MSS saw this major variant and easily added the more acceptable reading from the textus receptus. This reading was then inserted into the 1860 printed edition and remains in the latest edition. The “Comma” has been the subject of considerable dispute in New Testament manuscript studies, and was certainly a major point of contention during the nineteenth century debates over the textus receptus. One can imagine, however, how the inclusion of this variant would be of interest in the Arab Muslim- majority context, where a scriptural reference to the “Word” and “Spirit” would be recognized as Qurʾanic terms, while at the same time underlining their role in the unity of God (Q 4:171).

O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion, nor say Of God aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary Was (no more than) an apostle of God, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a Spirit pro- ceeding From Him: so believe in God and His apostles. Say not “Trinity”: desist: It will be better for you: For God is One God: Glory be to Him (trans. Yusuf Ali).

This insertion of the “comma” demonstrates what Van Dyck meant when he wrote that he reviewed “every verse,” both to see that it was built on the textus receptus, as required by the rules of the American Bible Society, “and 198 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 12 MSS of First John 5. AC-36:69, “1 Yūḥannā [First John 5:7]”, [1855–1860], digitized manuscript, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 199 to give the final and decisive criticism which were to fix the translation . . .”90 Van Dyck ultimately kept the variant readings, as recorded by Smith, by including them in the margins along with the thematic cross-references in the first edition of the New Testament in 1860.

ILLUSTRATION 13 1860 NT, First John 5. “1 Yūḥannā [First John] 5:7”, Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

90 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 27. 200 CHAPTER 5

ILLUSTRATION 14 1860 NT, First Peter 5. “1 Buṭrus [First Peter] 5”, Kitāb al-ʿAhd al-Jadīd li-Rabbinā wa-Mukhalliṣinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ [New Testament]: First print copy, Second Font, Pocket Edition, unvoweled (Beirut: American Mission Press, 2 April 1860), Box V, Item 2, AC-36, Arabic Bible Manuscript, NEST. Special Collections, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon. The Text Of The 1865 Arabic Bible Translation 201

These examples validate without a doubt that Cornelius Van Dyck “reviewed” the previous translations of Smith, Bustānī, and Yāzijī, keeping most of it intact. He did not start over “as if anew” with a new translation, nor were the original MSS burned due to their infidelity. Rather he “revised” several passages, and where necessary, kept the variant readings preferred by Smith and put them into the marginal notes for publication. In the next chapter, we will examine the various editions and printings of this translation, as well as the responses by the various communities, Protestant, Maronite, Orthodox, and Muslim. CHAPTER 6 Reception of the Translation

One of the stated goals of the both the British CMS and the ABCFM missions in the Ottoman Empire was to provide the “Orientals” with the Christian Scriptures in the indigenous languages: Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Arabic. During the early years of both mission agencies, the printing press located in Malta churned out various translations of the Bible in these local languages. For nearly forty years, the Arabic Bible used by the Protestant missionaries in their work was an edited version of the 1671 Roman edition, which was published without the Apocrypha. Copies of the 1671 Roman edition of the New Testament had been published by the BFBS in 1820, 1821, 1822, 1831, 1848, and 1850. They used this quite reluctantly, however, for doctrinal as well as linguistic reasons. Eli Smith noted

the meaning is often not clear, and the argument of continuous passages is not unfrequently lost. In fact, the more abstruse and doctrinal parts of Paul’s Epistles lose in it almost all their force. Of the prophetical and poetical portions of the Old Testament much is either without force, in bad taste, or absolutely unintelligible. The whole version is not in a classical style. The structure of the sentences is awkward, the choice of words is not select, and the rules of grammar are often transgressed. We have been ashamed to put the sacred books of our religion, in such a dress, into the hands of a respectable Muhammedan or Druze.1

Yet, before 1860, this was their only realistic option for an Arabic New Testament. Three other translations were available at this time but their circulation was quite limited. The 1727 edition by Solomon Negri, as well as the 1811 edition undertaken by Joseph Carlyle, Professor of Arabic, and Henry Ford, Reader in Arabic at Oxford, both had a very limited number of printings, more than likely due their expense and large size. In 1816, a colleague of Henry Martyn, Nathaniel Sabat, published his Arabic translation in Calcutta. It was released in several editions in 1816, 1825, 1826, and 1829. Once again, the circulation was limited and it saw little usage in the Middle East.

1 “Report of Rev. Eli Smith, D.D., in March 16th, 1844, on the existing Arabic Versions of the Scriptures,” in Smith and Van Dyck, 1.

The only other alternative for the missionary societies became available in 1851 when Fāris al-Shidyāq completed the New Testament under the auspices of the SPCK. Several editions were tinkered with in 1857, 1858, and 1859. However, it has been argued that this version was of lesser quality than the so-called Van Dyck version and lost out to its massive printing runs completed by both the BFBS and the ABS.2 No clear conclusions can be stated about the quality and appeal of the al-Shidyāq translation until a full critical study is undertaken. Several recent studies by Issa and Khalaf have begun to compare these translations, but a thorough monograph is warranted.3 Henry Jessup, however, claimed that “No literary work of the century exceeds” the so-called Van Dyck translation in the nineteenth century Arabic literary revival.4 While the so-called Van Dyck translation of the Bible was a major achievement in Western Protestant missions, as well as an important catalyst for the development of Protestant Arab Christian identity, Jessup’s claims should be read with great care and scrutiny to sift out hyperbole from more accurate accounts. Smith had hoped that this translation was the first time the Arabs had received the Word of God in “purity.”5 Undoubtedly, the so- called Van Dyck was not the first translation of the Bible into Arabic. The reference to the “purity” of the text had an evangelical Protestant bias. But, just how “pure” was this translation? How was it received? This chapter will investigate the reception of the so-called Van Dyck translation. At a special meeting of the Mission in August 1864, the complete Bible translation was received. The Mission association forwarded a letter on to the American Bible Society to undermine any potential criticism of the translation. (We have reproduced the letter again here to highlight the mission association’s concerns.)

As touching ‘the fidelity, excellence, and unsectarian character of the translation’ it is important to notice that this has been a work of the Mission not of an individual or individuals. It is not of yesterday, but has occupied 16 years of almost consecutive labor in preparation and execution.

2 T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catelogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1963), 62–76. 3 Rana Issa, “Biblical Reflections in the Arabic Lexicon: The Impact of the 1857 translation of the bible in the Arabic language.” Babylon 2 (2012), 58–67; Ghassān Khalaf, ‘Tarjamat al-kitāb al-muqaddas,’ 36–43 in the Arabic section. 4 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, vol. 1, 77. 5 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 9. 204 CHAPTER 6

The Mission has set apart to it those who by endowment and by study have seemed preeminently fitted for its prosecution. The names of the translators, of Dr. Eli Smith to whom it was given to lay the foundation of the work and of Dr. Van Dyck by whom it has been completed, are ample guarantees to all linguists, conversant with the facts of the cause, that both with respect to conformity to the original tongues and in rendering into Arabic, as faithful and as excellent a translation has been secured as could be expected in any language. It may indeed justly be regarded as special ordering of divine providence calling for devout gratitude that such men, endowed with such acquisitions should have been raised up and fitted for this purpose. Besides these translators from among themselves, the Mission have called into exercise on behalf of the work, the best native talent that could be procured, to make the translation elegant as well as faithful, that it should conform to the native style of expression and to the highest standards of literary taste, and they think they have been peculiarly favored in securing coadjutors of so high repute from both Christian and Mohammedan scholars. A still farther guarantee to the fidelity of the translation and one which applies also to its unsectarian character is that each sheet of the translation as first struck off from the Press has been subject to the careful scrutiny of all the members of the Mission, to interested native scholars of all sects, to other American Missionaries beside themselves, to English, German, Scotch, and Irish Missionaries of different religious denominations and in different parts of the Empire.6

The American missionaries clearly believed that this translation was a “pure Arabic,” that it was “nonsectarian” and acceptable to all Arabs: Evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims alike. What is even more glaring in this statement, however, is the obvious poignant response to concerns from the American Bible Society about the “fidelity” to the textus receptus. Such a concern would continue to follow this translation, even up to the present.

Publication of the Translation

Once the translation of the whole Bible was completed, Van Dyck traveled to New York to oversee the creation of electrotype plates, a new technology

6 Mission to ABS, 23 August 1864; RG115 Box 2, 123 Arabic Bible Translation, Presbyterian Historical Society. Reception Of The Translation 205 that would serve for the ongoing printing of the Bible. It took several years for ten full sets of electrotypes to be completed; one set of plates for the complete Bible without vowel points, a voweled Old Testament, a voweled New Testament, and two more editions of the New Testament in different fonts. Both the ABS and the BFBS retained separate copies of these electrotypes so that they could print editions on their own.7 While the un-voweled editions were ready for popular consumption, the Mission wanted properly transcribed tashkīl specifically “intended for the Mohammedans to conform to their ideas of what a sacred book should be and to stand fairly for comparison beside their Koran.”8 The primary goal of the America missionaries in Syria, as well as the ABS and BFBS, was to place the scriptures into the hands of people in an expen- sive and accessible format and manner. Even before the various “Testaments” were put into the electrotype form, the American Syrian Mission Press published various copies and trial editions of the scriptures. And distributed “portionettes” (pamphlet formats) in an octavo format. The following original editions of the so-called Van Dyck were printed and published between 1858 and 1892.9 • 1858—Original copy of the first New Testament • 1860—NT (2nd font), with references and marginal notes • 1861—Luke and the Epistles • 1862—Pentateuch and Hebrews, with references • 1862—Complete edition of the New Testament, with tashkīl • 1864—Complete edition of the New Testament • 1864—Psalms and Matthew, with tashkīl • 1865—First complete Bible, Old and New Testaments, with chapter headings and marginal references • 1865—Complete Bible, Old and New Testaments, without references • 1867—Old and New Testaments, with tashkīl • 1867—New Testament and Psalms, with tashkīl • 1867—Luke, with tashkīl

7 A common problem that plagued the publication of the same Bible translation by different societies was that each society was free to set and charge their own costs, creating disparity and competition in prices. See Eric Fenn, “The Bible and the Missionary,” in Greenslade, 392. 8 Mission to ABS, 23 August 1864; RG115 Box 2, 123 Arabic Bible Translation, Presbyterian Historical Society. 9 T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1963), 72–6. 206 CHAPTER 6 • 1869—Old and New Testaments • 1870—Old and New Testaments • 1871—Old and New Testaments, with tashkīl • 1871—New Testament and Psalms, with tashkīl • 1871—Deuteronomy, with tashkīl • 1872—2nd edition of the Old and New Testaments • 1872—Proverbs, with tashkīl • 1872—Acts, with tashkīl • 1873—Genesis, with tashkīl • 1873—Old and New Testaments • 1885—Old and New Testaments, 2nd ed., with references, with tashkīl • 1886—Old and New Testaments, with tashkīl • 1888—Matthew, with tashkīl • 1888—Mark, with tashkīl • 1888—Luke, with tashkīl • 1888—John, with tashkīl • 1892—Genesis, with tashkīl • 1903–1906—Old and New Testaments, 3rd ed., with references • 1912—New Testament, 4th ed., with references According to Jessup, hundreds of thousands of copies of the Scriptures were printed and distributed.10 According to the ABS, from 1860 [from the release of the first edition of the Old Testament] until 1923, 2.2 million copies of the Bible were distributed by both the ABS and BFBS. From 1923 to 1935 another 2.2 million copies were distributed within the Arab World.11 Of course, the distribution of Bibles by a foreign agency does not necessary demonstrate that it had any direct impact on a community. In fact, A.L. Tibawi has argued that it had little impact on Syrian society.12 In terms of the use of scripture as a tool for conversion to Protestantism, Tibawi is correct. In the words of Ussama Makdisi, it was a “failed conversion of the Middle East.” Yet, how was this particular translation received both by the indigenous Arabs of the Middle East, both Christian and Muslims? Moreover, how was this translation utilized as a new tool for the evangelization and development of a developing Protestant Church in the Arab World?

10 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 220. 11 Paul Erdman, “The Arabic Version of the Bible,” The Moslem World, vol. 27, no. 3 (July 1937), 220. 12 Tibawi, 307–08. Reception Of The Translation 207

Responses to the so-called Van Dyck

We have already noted that when Smith and Van Dyck sent off copies of their trial translations to various Arab and Western scholars for comment, a variety of opinions were expressed and shared about the choice of translating words and concepts. Even before the translation project was finished, there was disagreement over various forms of the Arabic, including “foreign” idioms. While the five translators had their hands directly on the project, various Arabs and Westerners also offered their professional and personal suggestions about the best Arabic renditions of words and phrases. This diversity of views was important to the overall translation itself, and would become the basis of critiques of the “Syrian” nature of the Arabic. Yet, within the Mission and among its supporters, the success of the translation was beyond reproach. As previously noted, Henry Jessup reflected that the so-called Van Dyck

surpassed all that had gone before as much as the translation excelled all previous effort, made it popular among all classes, so that even the Moslem was forced to commend the Bible of the Christians. No literary work of the century exceeds it in importance and it is acknowledged to be one of the best translations of the Bible ever made.13

Writing to the evangelical supporters in the United States and Britain, the American missionaries shared stories of the success of the Bible translation to excited audiences who were only even more willing to continue to support the Mission financially. Even Rufus Anderson, who on at least two occasions almost closed the Syrian Mission, praised the standard and quality of the New Testament in his two volume History of the Missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Oriental Churches.

The educated Arab finds a book printed in characters modeled after the most approved specimens of Arab calligraphy. He soon perceives the style to be that of a man who is master of this wonderful language in all its grammatical and idiomatic niceties and rich resources. As a literary work it secures his respect, and thus invites a candid perusal. If he reads it, he finds the truths of Christianity clearly and correctly stated. Its ben- eficial influence will yet be felt, it is hoped, not only by the Christian sects

13 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 77. 208 CHAPTER 6

of Mount Lebanon and Syria, but by the many millions who speak that language in other parts of the world.14

The ABCFM did find its “native” supporters who could confirm these claims regarding the authenticity of the translation. Ghubreen Jebara, a Greek Orthodox priest in Beirut declared, “But for the American missionaries, the Word of God had well-nigh perished out of the language: but now, through the labours of Dr. Eli Smith and Dr. Van Dyck, they have given us a translation so pure, so exact, so clear, and so classical, as to be acceptable to all classes and all sects.”15 Sixty some years after its publication, one Lebanese Evangelical pastor declared the so-called Van Dyck was truly a sacred text, that it was as if “the pages had virtually fluttered down from heaven.”16 However, among the Western Protestant missionary societies and Biblical Studies circles, which often over- lapped during this “Great Missionary Age,” there was a growing sense of unease with the translation throughout the Nahḍa. Charles C. Torrey at Yale University stated that while the so-called Van Dyck was the most widely known and used, there were those already calling for a new and better translation.17

A New Translation?

Throughout the 1930s, the Middle East, now under British and French control, was experiencing a burst of missionary activity both in the Levant and Egypt. While it is not within the scope of this study to explore the interactions and interconnections of Western missionary work with Western imperialism, it should be noted that establishment of the U.N. Mandates in the Middle East, and especially Britain’s occupation of Egypt provided a stable political context in which missionary societies could work.18

14 Anderson, History of the Missions, 353. 15 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 78. 16 E.F.F. Bishop, “The Arabic Bible after a Century,” The Bible Translator, vol. 15, no. 4 (October 1964), 168. 17 Charles C. Torrey, “A New Edition of the Arabic Bible,” The American Journal of Theology, vol. 23 (1919), 105. 18 For further resources on Western Christian Mission in the Middle East during this period see: Mehmet Ali Doğan and Heather J. Sharkey, eds., American Missionaries and the Middle East: foundational encounters (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011); Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: missionary influence on American policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1971); Samir Khalaf, Cultural Resistance: global and local encounters in the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, Reception Of The Translation 209

In 1856, American Presbyterians expanded their work from Syria to Egypt. This mission would become one of the more successful Protestant missionary endeavors in the Middle East, eventually creating the Evangelical Synod of the Nile as a breakaway denomination from the Coptic Orthodox Church.19 With the arrival of the British in 1882, the CMS followed and began its own vigorous missionary activity in Alexandria, Tanta, and Cairo. One of the most famous English missionaries of the CMS was Temple Gairdner. His role in the discussion of a new Arabic Bible translation is an important one. During his work in Cairo, Gairdner began to print Bible tracts based on Egyptian colloquial Arabic. He believed that this was the most effective tool for helping people to read and understand the Bible. He published several portionettes on Luke, John, and a Passion Narrative, with parallel readings of his Egyptian Colloquial and the so-called Van Dyck. Gairdner’s ideas about using colloquial Arabic resurrected a debate about the status of the so-called Van Dyck as a universal Arabic for Christians, or perhaps among Arab Muslims.20 In 1936, the Presbyterian missionary E.F.F. Bishop published an article in The Moslem World in which he raised the issue of developing a new translation based on the previous so-called Van Dyck. Bishop’s concerns were three- fold: textual, terminological, and linguistic. First, he raised the age-old debate about the textus receptus versus the eclectic text. Bishop argued that the work of Eberhard Nestle had shown that there were many important changes to the New Testament text since the publication of the so-called Van Dyck. The ABS had moved forward with its own views on the original New Testament text, accepting many of the new textual readings. If the translation project had begun in the 1930s as opposed to the 1840s, the ABS would have supported the use of this eclectic text.

2002); Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western missions in the Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Heather J. Sharkey, American evangelicals in Egypt: missionary encounters in an age of empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Martin Tamcke and Michael Marten, eds., Christian Witness between Continuity and New Beginnings: modern historical missions in the Middle East (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2006). 19 The two standard mission narratives for the American Mission in Egypt are Rena Hogg, A Master Builder on the Nile: Being a Record of the Life and Aims of John Hogg (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1914); and Charles Watson, The American Mission in Egypt (Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904). 20 For information on Gairdner see Michael T. Shelley, ‘The Life and Thought of W.H.T. Gairdner, 1873–1928: A Critical Evaluation of a Scholar-Missionary to Islam’ (PhD Thesis: University of Birmingham, England, 1988), and “Temple Gairdner of Cairo Revisited.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10 (October 1999): 261–78. 210 CHAPTER 6

Bishop then goes on to note a second major reason to support a new translation. As a missionary involved in work with Muslims, Bishop raised another point that was one of the early methodological debates among the ABCFM translators, that is the use of Arabic terminology familiar to Muslims:

Shall Christians have a book that Moslems cannot understand, with words like namus substituted for sharȋat? Or shall we have the Gospel in a language which shall reach the Moslem, which will offend Christian susceptibilities?21

Finally, Bishop notes the so-called Van Dyck had already become difficult to understand outside the confines of Syria, particular in Iraq, Egypt, and the Maghreb. Bustānī and Yāzijī’s Arabic, after all, was mid-nineteenth century Syrian Arabic. He argued that the solution, however, was not in some “classical version” that could not be understood by the “illiterate masses” but rather in localized colloquial versions. Recognizing that the proliferation of biblical texts would bring charges by Muslims of the “corruption” of scripture by the Christians, Bishop remained unconcerned.

. . . it will be asked whether in undertaking a revision we are not giving away the Christian case for the inspiration of Holy Writ. Surely this is tantamount, it will be argued, of admitting the Moslem claim that the Injȋl is Muharraf. With more than one version in circulation what shall we say in defence of our position? Surely this is an objection that should not worry us at all. The truth is the truth; we want to put at the disposal of the Christian and the Moslem alike the best text of the New Testament, especially the Gospels, that can be found. Here is a definite proof that the Christian is poles away from the Moslem in his ideas of inspiration. If the Christian is divine to find other arguments for his own belief inspiration, that will be all to the good for himself and his Moslem friend.22

This debate was then taken up by Paul Erdman, one of the prominent members of former ABCFM Mission then under the responsibility of the Presbyterian Church. Erdman wrote a rejoinder to Bishop in The Moslem World. Erdman was the brother of Charles Erdman, professor of Princeton

21 E.F.F. Bishop, “Do We Want a New Version of the Arabic New Testament?” The Moslem World, vol. 26, no. 2 (April 1936), 158. 22 Bishop, 159. Reception Of The Translation 211

Seminary, who was engaged in the Fundamentalist-Modernist debates there. In addition, what is interesting for this research is that he married Amy Jessup, the daughter of Henry Jessup. In many ways, Erdman continued the legacy of Jessup’s RT but with several important nuances. Interestingly, Erdman notes that the translation might not be best called the “Van Dyck Version” precisely because it was undertaken by a “small committee of translators with a large committee of advisers.”23 Erdman’s primary arguments in this article, however, are in response to the need for a new translation as raised by Bishop and others because of the perceived “Syrian Arabic” and because of the need to utilize the eclectic text. For example, Paul Harrison, an American Reformed missionary in the Arabian Gulf, had written that the so-called Van Dyck represented a “Syrian Arabic” that was not understood by Arabs of the Gulf, or by those in Egypt.24 In response to these criticisms, Erdman took it upon himself to survey the views of numerous missionaries working in the Middle East on their opinions of the matter. He came to the conclusion that the issue was not that non- Syrian Arab Muslims could not understand the Syrian Arabic, but that their predisposition to the Qurʾanic Arabic required that they needed to be taught the historical terminology of the Bible of which they were not familiar. For example, the words “Sadducees,” and “Cana,” should be translated directly, and defined somewhere in or below the text. In many ways, this is what the Egyptian Bible Society did when it released its 2006 New Testament Study Bible with Notes, a reprinted edition of the so-called Van Dyck. More importantly, however, Erdman points out that these Arab Muslims should be taught the deeper meanings of the Bible. In other words, for Erdman the issue was not any particular Arabic dialect that was an impediment to understanding the Bible as the Word of God, but ignorance that needed enlightening. There was a theological concern not a linguistic one that required the mission’s attention. Erdman also responded to the particular criticisms that the nineteenth century Arabic of the Nahḍa proved to be an obstacle in understanding the so-called Van Dyck. Erdman retorts that if there was a difficult nineteenth century Syrian dialect, then how does that explain the prominence of Lebanese Christians, such as Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Fāris Nimur, and Yaqūb Sarrūf in the Arab World during this period. “It is surely passing strange,” he writes, “that Lebanese

23 Paul Erdman, “The Arabic Version of the Bible,” The Moslem World, vol. 37, no. 3 (July 1937), 219. 24 See W. Harold Storm and Paul W. Harrison, The Moslem World 37, no. 3 (July 1934), 262–270. 212 CHAPTER 6

Syrians could have been the leaders in this renaissance in the Egyptian literary world, if there is really such a thing as ‘Syrian’ literary Arabic” that was difficult to understand in Egypt and Arabia!25 In this regard, Erdman misconstrued the style and purpose of the Arabic of the so-called Van Dyck with that of the other literary works of the later Nahḍa. Bustānī’s Muḥiṭ al-muḥiṭ and Nimr and Ṣarrūf’s al-Muqtaṭaf were published during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The language had, even by that time, already sufficiently changed since Smith and Bustānī began their work in 1848. In fact, the inclusion of several terms found in the so-called Van Dyck translation in Muḥiṭ al-muḥiṭ indicates that its terminology had fallen out of common parlance within a generation. This is exactly the opposite of what Smith had anticipated in his 1856 report. Finally, Erdman did recognize the important role of the eclectic Nestle Greek Text in the work that E.F.F. Bishop had already done in developing marginal notes to the so-called Van Dyck. These marginal notes could continue to take into account the latest finds in biblical manuscript studies. However, Erdman responds that the so-called Van Dyck’s first edition of the New Testament in March 1860 did include marginal readings. In fact, Van Dyck’s introductory comments in the Introduction of the Bible explain the inclusion of some variant readings found in different MSS as well as the use of parenthetical inclusions of words found in “the oldest and best MSS.”26 Here Erdman simply argues that the first editions of the so-called Van Dyck recognized variant readings through marginal notes, which could easily be updated based upon the witness of the Nestle edition of the New Testament text. Thus, there was no need for a new translation. (The reader will remember that these variant readings were those previously established by Eli Smith. However, based upon Jessup’s RT, Smith’s original contribution was not publicly recognized.) Almost a decade later, the call for a new Arabic Bible was again being driven by the advances in New Testament textual scholarship, this time under the leadership of Eugene Nida, the general secretary of the American Bible Society. The ABS had moved away from its hardline stance regarding the textus receptus and embraced the science of textual criticism. In 1949, Nida began a series of exchanges with S.L. Greenslade, then Secretary of the American Syrian Mission in Beirut about a new translation. Greenslade informed Nida that the Near East Council of Churches, which at this point consisted solely of main- line Evangelical Churches in the Middle East, had approved moving forward with a new Arabic translation. Greenslade had agreed that the basis for any such text should be the latest Nestle-Aland eclectic text rather than the textus

25 Erdman, 225. 26 Erdman, 235. Reception Of The Translation 213 receptus.27 He was joined in his views by another American Presbyterian missionary in Egypt, Dr. John Thompson, who was teaching at the Evangelical Seminary in Cairo. Thompson was appointed to an ABS committee that was set up to consider recommended changes to the so-called Van Dyck to conform to the Nestle Greek text.28 However, while committed biblical scholars, missionaries, and Syrian and Egyptian Evangelical clergy continued to debate the need for a new translation, or at least a complete revision of the so-called Van Dyck, other Syrian Christians had their own views on such matters. Returning to the views of Henry Jessup, the success of the new Bible was demonstrated in that

It is the loving gift of the one hundred and forty millions of Protestant Christians to the two hundred millions of Mohammedans of whom sixty millions speak the Arabic language, while the rest use the Arabic Koran as their sacred book, and are scattered all the way from the Canary Islands through North Africa and Southern Asia to Peking in China.29

Jessup’s praise for the triumph of the new translation should, once again, be read with some critical suspicion. The so-called Van Dyck did become one of the more popular Bibles up until the late twentieth century when several newer translations appeared on the market, but it was not the only text to be read by Arab Christians, especially by Oriental Catholic and Orthodox Christians. The so-called Van Dyck remained the official Bible for the Synod of Syria and Lebanon, the National Church of Beirut, as well as the Presbyterian Synod of the Nile in Egypt. However, the prelates of the Catholic and Orthodox churches remained mostly opposed to the translation, primarily because the Apocrypha had been left out, but also because of its association with the “Bible men.” This trend did change dramatically, however, when at the turn of the twenty-first century Pope Shenouda III, the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, announced that Copts could use the so-called Van Dyck translation and publicly supported the work of the primarily evangelical Bible Society of Egypt.30 In an important moment of Catholic, Protestant and

27 Greenslade to Nida, 20 February 1950; RG115 Box 2, 123 Arabic Bible Translation, Presbyterian Historical Society. 28 See John Alexander Thompson, The Major Arabic Bibles: their origin and nature (New York: ABS Press, 1956). 29 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years, 78. 30 Bible Society of Egypt, Annual Report, 2006 (http://www.darelketab.org/EditorDocument/ annual%20report%202006.pdf), (Accessed 1 February 2014). The so-called Van Dyck Bible 214 CHAPTER 6

Orthodox unity, the three Christian families of churches in Egypt pledged their support for the publication of the 2006 al-ʿAhd al-jadīd.31 However, outside of Egypt, especially in the Levant, two other nineteenth century translations were undertaken and used. In 1857, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge hired Fāris al-Shidyāq, brother of the first Maronite convert to Protestantism, Asʾad al-Shidyāq to translate the Bible.32 However, Latin, Maronite, and Greek Catholic communities have preferred what has come to be known as the Jesuit Bible completed in 1878.

The Catholic Response

The American missionaries opened their missionary enterprise in Syria on the wrong foot in the 1820s, making tactical mistakes. In their earnest desire to enlighten the minds of the Oriental Christians, they vigorously engaged the head of the Maronite Church. Isaac Bird, William Goodell, and Jonas King accused the Maronite Patriarch Yūsuf Ḥubaysh of being responsible for the death of the first Evangelical convert, Asʿad Shidyāq. They saw in the Patriarch an example of Oriental despotism. In his Farewell Letter, Jonas King publicly decried and condemned the Patriarch.33 This publication would set the tone for Evangelical—Catholic relations in Syria for generations. In their wish to translate the Bible into Arabic, the Americans and British Evangelicals had already noted their disapproval of both the linguistic incon- sistencies and theological subtleties of the 1671 “Romish” translations. The Maronite Patriarchate and the Jesuit missionaries of Syria had been active in their own translation projects throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing primarily upon liturgical missals and theological treatises. However, it is evident that the educational and publishing work of the Evangelicals was seen by the Maronites and the Latin Catholic missionaries as a threat to their community.34 The appearance of the Bible in pamphlet form throughout Mount Lebanon was the cause of great concern. These editions were cheap and easily transportable by laypersons. More importantly,

was the translation read at the consecration of Patriarch Tadros II in November 2012. 31 Bible Society of Egypt, Annual Report, 2008 (http://www.darelketab.org/EditorDocument/ annual%20report%202008.pdf) (accessed 1 February 2014). 32 For the story of Asʿad Shidyāq see Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 103–137; and Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Qiṣṣat Asʿad al-Shidyāq (Beirut: Dār al-Hamrā, 1992). 33 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 99–102. 34 See J.M. Hornus, Le Protestantisme au Proche-Orient vol. 1, pt. 3 (1958–1960); and Les Jesuites en Syrie, 1831–1931 (Université Saint-Joseph: Beirut, Lebanon, 1900). Reception Of The Translation 215

Yūsuf al-Marīd, the Maronite Bishop of ʿArqā remarked that the Evangelical Bible was “full of defects and corruption, cutting off from it some holy books [the Apocrypha], denying them canonicity contrary to the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church and its witness preserved from mistake and error.”35 Rome responded to the Maronite concerns by supporting further translation projects. In 1875, the Dominicans who were working in Mosul published a translation in several volumes. However, it had a limited circulation due to its unmanageable size. In Beirut, though, the Jesuits, under the direction of the missionary Agustin Rodet and Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī, son of Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, had greater success. This translation sought to rectify some of the primary concerns of the Catholics regarding theological conformity with the Latin Vulgate and LXX, as well as that of the expected responses of the Muslim community. Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī intentionally provided a text with “great flare and style” in its Arabic calligraphy and its language.36 Likewise, the presentation of the text of the Jesuit Bible was intended to impress. Rather than using Smith’s “American Arabic” font, Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī brought with him a new font from Istanbul where he had served as an editor of new but short-lived journal. The “Istanbuli” font, along with the decorations and an elegant seal from Rome authorizing the text, provided an important response to the Evangelical project. Because of these issues, the “Jesuit” translation of Rodet and Yāzijī has become the preferred translation among Catholic and Orthodox churches in Syria and Lebanon. Both the Evangelical and Catholic Bibles were published and distributed in late nineteenth century Beirut, and were prompted by what Rana Issa calls “a new era of language politics.”37 She rightly notes that while various biblical texts had been copied and transmitted from within one Christian community to another as early as late antiquity up to the reformation eras, now the scriptures became part of a “rivalry of ownership” that has contributed to the ongoing sectarian divisions. This era of “language politics” also has contributed to the classical Islamic response over the “corruption” of the Christian scriptures.

Muslim Responses

The Qurʾan recognizes that the Jews and Christians are the recipients of revelation from God, and that these communities have been entrusted with sacred

35 Al-kitāb al-muqaddas, vol. 1 (Beirut: Maṭbaʿat al-ābāʾ al-mursalīn al-yasūʿiyyīn, 1876), 4; as cited in Thompson, 26. 36 Thompson, 29. 37 Issa, 66. 216 CHAPTER 6 texts (Q 2:136–137; 5:48). However, Muslim scholars have long charged that the Christian and Jewish Bibles have been in some manner corrupted (taḥrīf ). The Islamic tradition, as early as Ibn Isḥāq’s biography of the Prophet Muḥammad (circa 767), argued that these sacred texts predicted the coming of Muḥammad (esp. Deuteronomy 18:15–19, John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). However, medieval Muslim scholars charged Jews and Christians with changing or hiding portions of their texts (see Q 2:75; 3:78, for example), and developed standard arguments against the authority of these “books.”38 Historians of pre- Islamic Arabia and scholars of Arabic Christian Theology have long debated which of the biblical texts Muslims utilized in their reading of Christian scriptures; whether they were reading Arabic or Syriac translations of the original texts, liturgical texts, or some form of oral tradition from the various Arabic speaking Christian communities under Islamic rule.39 The early missionaries of the CMS and ABCFM believed that the Arab Muslims never truly did have an authoritative form and translation of the Bible. According to the missionaries, this was one of the reasons for their obstinacy in not accepting the Gospel. They established a printing press in Malta precisely with the hope that they could present the Oriental Christians and Muslims of the Ottoman Empire with a translation of the Bible that was not merely based on the Vulgate. While the original impetus for New Testament textual studies came from within the Church, form criticism and other critical studies of the New Testament was perfected by German scholastics and Orientalists who saw such studies as advancing historical knowledge of ancient texts. The American and British Christian scholarship that embraced such studies believed that in using the latest textual research, they could eventually get to the oldest and most faithful record of the New Testament by critically and carefully parsing through the families of manuscripts. Eli Smith was certainly influenced by this early school of thought because of his relationship with Edward Robinson. As we have frequently noted, the primary goal of the ABCFM and the CMS was to reform the indigenous Churches of the Ottoman Empire so that they would evangelize the Muslim majority community. Thus, one of the primary goals of mission was providing readable and worthy scriptures. Of course, there were two proposals related to the presentation of the Bible to Muslims. The first was the attempt to present a text that reflected a high quality of Arabic that would reflect the Qurʾanic style and be accepted as a written

38 For a helpful overview of this see Abdullah Saeed, “The Charge of Distortion of Jewish and Christian Scriptures,” Muslim World 92 (2004): 419–436. 39 See Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); and David Thomas, ed., The Bible in Arab Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Reception Of The Translation 217 revelation. The second proposal, as argued by E.F.F. Bishop, was to present the message of the Gospel in a vernacular form or dialect of Arabic, whatever that might be. This was the method used by Temple Gairdner in his Egyptian colloquial translations. By the early part of the twentieth century, there were various Bibles and portionettes, or pamphlets of books of the Bible, published by the American Board, the Jesuits, and the Egyptian colloquial versions of Temple Gairdner in Cairo, as well as the older BFBS translations in circulation. The proliferation of these different Arabic Bibles did underscore to educated Muslim readers that, unlike the Arabic text of the Qurʾan, there were various versions of “corrupted” Christian Bibles. For E.F.F. Bishop, the presence of multiple versions of the Bible was no cause for alarm, as “the truth is the truth.”40 Bishop believed that a Muslim who had the Gospel in a vernacular dialect would understand its content, and thus its form was of only secondary importance. To some extent, he was right, at least among the “middle stratum” of the urban class. The presence of Yūsuf al-Asīr in the translation project is an important reminder that throughout the nineteenth century, the Arabic literary reform was also accompanied by an Islamic Reform, in which Muslim scholars took great strides to interpret Islam in the “spirit of the age,” in the words of Rashīd Riḍa. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christian and Muslim scholars did engage one another directly about their sacred texts. The cultural societies that formed in Beirut, such as al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya and the Jamʿiyyat al-funūn, as well as other literary societies in Cairo, supported an open atmosphere of Christians and Muslims reading each other’s texts to explore the deeper meanings. Examples of these Christian-Muslim dialogical encounters are well known. The stories of the relationships between Muḥammad ʿAbduḥ and Wilfred Blunt in Egypt, or Rashīd Riḍā and Alfred Nielsen during the end of the nineteenth century have already been documented.41 Among the Christian and Muslim scholars in the Arab World during the first half of the twentieth century, there were opportunities for interfaith engagement around sacred texts. In Cairo, the Anglican scholar-missionary

40 Bishop, 159. 41 Most recently, Abduh and Blunt’s relationship was outlined in Mark Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2014). See also Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ʿAbduh; an essay on religious unbelief and political activism in modern Islam (London, Cass, 1966). In addition, Umar Ryad has published the correspondence between Riḍa and the Danish missionary Alfred Nielsen in Islamic Reformism and Christianity A Critical Reading of the Works of Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and His Associates (1898–1935), (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 218 CHAPTER 6

Kenneth Cragg engaged a number of important Egyptian religious and literary scholars, including Kamel M. Hussein and ʿAbbas Maḥmūd ʿAqqad.42 As a part of this Islamic Reform period ʿAbbas Maḥmūd ʿAqqad wrote his reflections on the life of Jesus, ʿAbqariyyat al-masīḥ, using the so-called Van Dyck translation of the Bible as well as the Islamic qiṣṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ.43 Yūsuf al-Asīr represents this important Islamic scholastic tradition of this Reform period. These Reformist engagements were not those envisioned by the early American missionaries who sought the conversion of Muslims. Cornelius Van Dyck was not acting within the traditional boundaries of the evangelical community and the tight knit cohort of the missionaries when he reached out to employ a Reformist Muslim scholar within the translation project. Because of this, the so-called Van Dyck Bible, as a product of this literary, cultural, and Islamic Reform period, did find its way to Muslims who were interested in exploring theological and moral themes in the salons with their Christian counterparts. Asīr’s popularity as a Muslim literati could not have but impacted at least sections of the “middle stratum” of Beiruti society. However, naturally not all Arab Muslims saw the cultural productions of Western Christians as something to be embraced. Rather, the missionaries were seen as part of a larger Western imperialist project seeking the ruin of one of the last great Muslim empires and the exploitation of its peoples. One of the best examples of Muslim exposition of the “collusion” of missionary activity with Western imperialism is the work of Mustafā Khālidī and ʿUmar Farrūkh.44 al-Tabshīr wa-l-istiʿmār fī l-bilād al-ʿarabiyya provided a detailed analysis of the role of missionary agencies in the late Ottoman Empire and newly formed Arab Nation states, and their role in the undermining of Islamic society. For Khālidī and Farrūkh, the missionaries used all of the opportunities within their disposal: medical missions, education, preaching, and “translation of the book.”45 While al-Tabshīr was not the only “anti-missionary” work written

42 See Christopher Lamb, The call to retrieval: Kenneth’ Cragg’s Christian vocation to Islam (London: Grey Seal, 1997); and Bård Mæland, Rewarding encounters: Islam and the comparative theologies of Kenneth Cragg and Wilfred Cantwell Smith (London: Melisende, 2003). 43 I am thankful to Peter Ford for this information. See Peter F. Ford, ʿAbbas Maḥmūd ʿAqqad, ʿAbqariyyat al-Masīḥ (Cairo: Kitāb al-Yawm, 1953). and ‘A modern Muslim assessment of Jesus: a translation and analysis of ʿAbbas Mahmud Al-ʿAqqad’s The Genius of Christ,’ (PhD Dissertation, Temple University: Philadelphia, PA, 1998). 44 Mustafā Khalidī and ʿUmar Farrūkh, al-Tabshīr wa-l-istiʿmār fī l-bilād al-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1953). 45 Khalidī and Farrūkh, 48. Reception Of The Translation 219 during this period, its importance for this particular study is three-fold.46 First, al-Tabshīr has its origins among the Arab Muslim literati of the early twentieth century. Khālidī was a faculty member of the school of medicine at the American University of Beirut, the former Syrian Protestant College. He was well aware of the role and prominence of the American missionaries, especially that of Cornelius Van Dyck. Farrūkh was a scholar of Arabic poetry at Cairo University and knew of the interactions and encounters of other Egyptians like Kamel Hussein and ʿAqqad with Anglican missionaries and Orientalists at the American University in Cairo, which was also established by the American Presbyterians. Thus, its authors were very much aware of the personalities and individuals related to evangelical missions. Second, one of the prominent sources utilized by Khālidī and Farrūkh was Henry Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years. Thus, the RT of the so-called Van Dyck Bible that provided an overarching narrative of Western evangelical success was also being read by Muslim academics. As Samir Khalaf has argued, Jessup has been seen by the Muslim community as the “Quintessential Protestant Orientalist.”

Whether he was deploring the ‘spirit of intolerance’ in Islam, its ‘gross immorality’, the ‘destruction of the family through polygamy and concu- binage’, ‘degradation of women’, etc. he ends up invariably avowing or vindicating his claims that (1) Muslims are engrossed in error and sin and destitute of any provision for human redemption, (2) that whatever virtues Islam might have are all derivatives of Christianity and Judaism and (3) Muslims can only be saved through the Gospel.47

Khālidī and Farrūkh explored Jessup’s viewpoint and utilized it, not for the evangelical constituency for which it was originally written, but for an Arab Muslim readership that was expanding throughout the 1950s and 1960s. One finds a wide variety of Western missionaries and organizations in Khālidī and Farrūkh, including Jessup and Temple Gairdner, as well as the French Jesuits, who were in collusion with imperialist governments. This work is quite com- pelling. In fact, al-Tabshīr became a popular best seller and can still be found in bookstores in Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus. It has also been translated from Arabic into Persian, Russian, and Turkish and found its way into a variety of

46 For an excellent overview of this anti-missionary literature see Heather J. Sharkey, “Arabic Antimissionary Treatises: Muslim Responses to Christian Evangelism in the Modern Middle East,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 28: 3 (2004), 112–18. 47 Khalaf, “Protestant Images of Islam,” 211–229. 220 CHAPTER 6

circles throughout the Muslim World.48 While it may not completely reflect the complexity of views within the missionary community, such as the views and beliefs of Van Dyck as has been presented here, its argument about the moti- vations of the Western missionary engagement in the Arab World combined with the socio-political events of this era of imperialism is a valid critique that needs further exploration. This particular Arab Muslim response toward the Bible translation through Jessup has been, to say the least, extremely pessimis- tic and has contributed to what Issa calls “language politics.”

A Changing Arabic

In his 1976 PhD dissertation, “American Protestant Education Missions,” George Antakly claimed that the so-called Van Dyck Bible translation “generated a new interest in literature and the arts, and the simple pure style of the translation served as a model to be emulated among inspiring Arab authors and journalists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.49 While Antakly’s claim is overstated, the 1865 Arabic Bible points to the changing role of the Arabic language during the mid to late nineteenth century, and the impact of Bustānī, Smith, and Van Dyck in the choice of words used in the translation. When this particular translation project began in 1848, the Nahḍa was well into what Muḥammad Badawi calls the “initial translation and adaptation phase,” where Arab authors translated foreign works into Arabic. However, by the time the third edition of the so-called Van Dyck Bible was being published in 1903, a new era of Arab Romanticism and Nationalism had been birthed. This era of the literary renaissance was defined by the growth of a variety of new media. A growing reading public was not limited only to the reading of religious texts, but had also political and literary journals, newspapers, and novels.50 As early as 1870, Lebanese and Egyptian authors were creating new media of literary works for popular consumption. These new genres were not written for the literati, the scholars in the salons of Beirut or Cairo, or even for the men of religion who were the traditional keepers of knowledge, but for general readership. The contributors to the Nahḍa were primarily interested

48 Sharkey, 100. 49 Waheeb George Antakly, “American Protestant Educational Missions: Their influence on Syria and Arab Nationalism 1820–1923” (PhD Thesis, American University of Beirut, 1976), 120. 50 Badawi, 16–19. Reception Of The Translation 221 in conveying their views and ideas to the awlād al-balad, the common folk. Authors like Bustānī and later Zaydān were writing to express modern social and political ideas into an Arabic form and style that could be understood and appreciated by all social classes. Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and Fāris Shidyāq engaged in heated debates over the use of Arabic within this changing literary context, in what Razzaq calls the “conservative” and “liberal” literary reformists, between those that wanted to refine classical Arabic and those that wanted to adapt it to modern times.51 The “liberal” reformers made a direct impact on society. While the literacy rates may not have increased radically during this period, traditional social mores were sufficient for these ideas to be shared in the public sphere. All it took was one literate person in a coffee house to read aloud and aurally transmit the ideas and stories, which were serialized in the journals and newspapers, to create a natural communal theater or public square.52 Thus, the aim of the Lebanese and Egyptian literary reformers was to take the scholastic and traditional role of the Arabic language, as it had been handed down through the centuries and to popularize it. The Nahḍa created a space for the development of modern standard Arabic, as well as the use of Arabic dialects within the written medium. This view of the language was vehemently opposed by later literati, especially Ṭaha Ḥusayn. Rather than the revitalization of a “pure” Arabic, which Smith had hoped for, the Nahḍa provided a wider platform for the public debate about the language that continues to this day. As noted in Chapter two, in addition to distributing the Arabic Bible as a method of evangelization, a corollary method of the American missionaries was establishing educational institutions to teach Arabs how to read the Bible. The role of education as an important spiritual tool was part of the early American Protestant religious experience. In one way, the American missionaries then were working under the same premise as their Arab counterparts in the Nahḍa, namely, in the use of language to convey ideas. However, by the time the so-called Van Dyck translation began rolling off the printing presses in 1865, there were not only a wide variety of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox educational institutions and publishing houses throughout Syria, but the reformation of nineteenth century Ottoman society was fully in process, creating secular and imperial institutions as well as individual authors. The economic

51 See ʿAbd al-Hādī Najā ibn Raḍwān Najā Abyārī, Hādhā kitāb al-najm al-thāqib fī l-muḥākama bayna l-Birjīs wa-l-Jawāʾib (n.p.: Cairo, 1863), Henri Pérès, “Les premières manifestations de la renaissance littéraire arabe en Orient au XIX siècle. Nasif al-Yazigi et Faris ash-Shidyaq,” Annales de l’Institut des études orientales, Alger I (1934–35), 240; and Ibrāhīm Yāzijī, Lughat al-jarāʾid (Cairo: Maḥmūd ʿAlī Subayḥ, 1900); Razzaq, 102–23. 52 I am thankful to Dr. Karl Krueger for this insight. 222 CHAPTER 6 and legal reforms of Muḥammad ʿAlī in Egypt and the Ottoman Tanẓīmāt in Syria had generated opportunities for young Arab literati to explore and express themselves. The Arab Bible was not the only text to be read and pondered, but there were a wide variety of republished classical Arabic texts, as well as new genres of Arabic literature. Viewed from this wide lens, A.L. Tibawi’s critique of the Americans is accurate. The Protestant missionaries only had a small sliver of the pie when it came to influencing the Syrian public and wider audiences. Given that the original intention of the missionaries was to provide an indigenous Arabic scripture for intimate consumption and spiritual edification by “millions of Mohammedans,” they sorely missed the mark. It can be argued that the evangelical institutions in Syria (and later Egypt), such as hospitals and schools, have had a far greater impact on society at large than their small numbers would indicate. However, this suggestion goes beyond the scope of this work, which has focused on the ABCFM’s policy of “self-supporting, self- governing, self-propagating” Syrian evangelical congregations. After the ABCFM’s decision to focus on educational and publishing endeavors for spiritual edification, they decided to produce an Arab Bible that was worthy of being received as “revelation.” In his 1854 report on the translation, Eli Smith noted that the principles of translation were “clear and impressive intelligibility” that may be accessible to Arabs of the middle nineteenth century. “In a word,” Smith wrote, “we aim to keep within the range of that portion of the classical Arabic which is still intelligible, or may be expected to become so. In this we are able to avoid, in a great degree, giving the work the savor of a local dialect, which would be impossible were we to descend to the vulgar language of conversation.”53 Smith’s decision to hire Bustānī and Yāzijī was an important step in this process. Both were indigenous and educated Arabs who could intuitively address stylistic issues that might be missed by a non- native speaker. Certainly, Smith and Van Dyck were attuned to the dramatic changes of language and culture that were taking place around them in Beirut. However, they were not able to foresee the important and fundamental shifts in language and the development of various media during this period. When Eli Smith, Buṭrus al-Bustānī, and later Cornelius Van Dyck began their translation, they were deeply committed to prepare a careful and clear Arabic translation from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures. They took great pains in attempting to provide a “clear Arabic” translation. However, even with the assistance of individuals like Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and the Muslim sheikh Yūsuf al-Asīr, who were thoroughly schooled in classical Arabic syntax and grammar,

53 Smith and Van Dyck, Documentary History, 10. My emphasis. Reception Of The Translation 223 by the time the translation was completed, the vernacular Arabic of the late nineteenth century had changed. As the translators worked throughout the seventeen-year project, they were working in the middle of a period in which the Arabic language was under- going dramatic transformation. The development and availability of different genres of written material throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a wider reading public, free from any form of ecclesiastical control. This is precisely what the missionaries wanted. Yet, once the translation was completed, its language became fixed. Yāzijī and Asīr would ensure that the translation kept toward the standard grammatical formulae of classical Arabic. As Georg Graf has noted, as important as Yāzijī was to the development of the Nahḍa and in helping to develop a Renaissance klassischer, his training and expertise kept him “stuck in an older literary style.”54 On the contrary, the literary Nahḍa had as its goal the modernization and evolution of Arabic.55 While the translators aspired to a particular high quality that was intelligible to most Arab readers, the language became more vernacular. As many of the Syrian literati immigrated to Egypt in the late nineteenth century, and with the development of the prominence of Egyptian cinema and radio, with all of its social and political ideas, Egyptian colloquial Arabic began to dominate throughout the Arab World in the early twentieth century. In addition, with the development of a Modern Standard Arabic in the early part of the twentieth century, which became customary in educated circles, government publications, and newspapers, Arabic deviated from classical forms, became more diverse in its style, accepted rules of syntax, and grew diversified through its vernacular usage in local journals, newspapers, and novel forms of poetry and prose. After his work on the Bible translation, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and later his son, Ibrāhīm, became involved in the debates over the development and revival of the Arabic language in the journals of Buṭrus al-Bistānī. Thus, while it is not reflected in the RT or even the missionary reports by Smith and Van Dyck, the so-called Van Dyck Bible was an important early project for Bustānī, Yāzijī, and Asīr to begin exploring the use of Arabic for translation purposes. The Bible quickly became associated with a traditional Syrian form of Arabic and was ancillary to the popular movements within the language. In addition to the changing dynamics of a popular Arabic language, the intention of providing an accessible Bible for the common lay people to read

54 Graf, 319. 55 See, for example, Jurjī Zaydān, al-Falsafa al-ʿarabiyya wa-l-Alfaẓ al-lughawiyya (Beirut, 1886). 224 CHAPTER 6 for themselves, in many ways rubbed against the Islamic, and perhaps even a general cultural Arab or Middle Eastern understanding of a sacred text as mysterious and somewhat inaccessible. Arabs still held on to a robust and deep tradition of oral recitation of poetry and stories. The quintessential form of recitation was, of course, the Qurʾan. However, Arab Christians had always memorized and recited their scriptures as well.56 Syrians, and later Egyptians, learned that they too could memorize the new translation for their own recitation, and memorize they did. Parodoxically, the translation became widely used by the turn of the twentieth century as a religious text precisely because of its popular use in recitation in preaching and prayer. Once memorized, individuals did not need a biblical text, but only needed to hear it. This would, of course, provide dilemmas for those who later wished to either revise the so-called Van Dyck or translate a new Arabic Bible, as noted above. For the illiterate community that now had direct access to their sacred text through memorization and recitation, to change the text was tantamount to changing the access to revelation. Thus, any attempt to change the language of revelation has been met with resistance not only by the Arab Christians themselves, but also from a dominant Islamic culture that has traditionally argued about the “corruption” of the Christian texts. Eli Smith noted very early on in 1844 that the 1671 “Romish” Bible was not to be desired because its quality of Arabic brought criticism from Muslims. He sought to produce a Bible that was worthy of the concept of waḥy (revelation) that was comparable to the Qurʾan. The translators were successful in producing a quality Arabic translation that could be received by its membership as a recited and “heavenly revealed” Holy Text, worthy of such a notion in a predominantly Muslim culture. However, because the language was quickly changing they did not succeed in producing a Bible that was readable and accessible to the average Arab readership in the American pietistic sense of intellectual understanding and apprehension. By this, we mean that within a generation the translation failed to be easily understood by the millions of Arabs spread throughout the Arabic speaking world, and continues to be so one hundred and fifty years later.57 The American Protestant missionaries held an underlying belief that the true Christian faith was dependent on a believer having read the true

56 The debate about the earliest forms of the Arabic Bible have prompted some scholars to argue that Arab Christians memorized a Syriac Bible and transposed it into their own vernacular. See, for example, Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 15. 57 Megalaa, 3. Reception Of The Translation 225

Scriptures. Through a cognitive experience, the reader would ultimately recognize the need for repentance and then change their lives, exhibiting what they considered a moral Christian life. Upon completion of the translation of the Bible into Armeno-Turkish in 1831, William Goodell, another of the ABCFM missionaries, expressed the hope of his new vernacular translation. It is worth quoting him at length here:

Nothing now remains but that it should be commended the blessing of God, to be used for His own glory, for the increase of holiness on earth, and for the salvation of many souls. May [the Bible] go forth accompanied by that Spirit without which the mere ‘letter killeth’! May it be ‘received with all joy,’ and prove a ‘savor of life until life’! May those who read it not attempt to teach it, but be willing it should teach them! May they yield their minds to all the information it contains, their hearts entirely to its government, their conduct to its direction, and their opinions to its decisions! May the priests and bishops read it, and learn what that faith is from which they are to contend earnestly! May the people read it, and learn to ‘prove all things, and hold fast that which is good’! May the proud read it, and learn to be humble; the worldly, and learn to ‘lay up treasure in heaven;’ the self-righteous, and learn to ‘count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ;’ the ignorant, and become ‘wise unto salvation’! May parents and children, rulers and subjects, masters and servants, read it, and learn the duties of their respective stations! May the afflicted read it, and learn where true comfort can be found; the miserable, and learn how to be happy, both here and here- after! May the anxious and inquiring read it, and find it to be a light unto their feet and a lamp unto their path.58

In the Arab Islamic and Oriental Christian traditions, the sacred text exhibited a sense of mystery precisely because of its otherness and in some cases because it could not clearly be understood. Mystery has always been a part of God’s revelation. Cognitive understanding was not the ultimate goal but rather reception of the oral transmission, either through recitation of the Qurʾan, chanting of the liturgy, or the oratory of public preaching. The Protestant missionary aim was to provide access to the Scriptures for cognitive, spiritual, and ethical edification of the “nominal” Christians, and later the Muslims. In this regard, the translation failed. Many Arab Christians eventually received it as a revealed text, but Muslims saw this as another example of “corruption,” and

58 Prime, 111. 226 CHAPTER 6 some Eastern and Oriental Christians saw the work as the product of foreign schismatics. While many strove to make Arabic more accessible during this period, Arabic sacred texts retained their mystery and distance from the vernacular in a predominantly Islamic cultural context. Thus, the so-called Van Dyck translation in its current form reflects the dynamic and dramatic changes that took place in the Arabic language during the Nahḍa. Paradoxically, it became an intimate part of the religious identity of Arab Protestant Christians because of its recitable qualities and linguistic otherness, and yet, inaccessible to most over time precisely because the linguistic changes of the Nahḍa left a fixed translation that became antiquated in style and terminology. CHAPTER 7 Overstated, Overlooked, and Undervalued Contributions

Henry Jessup praised the new Arabic translation of the Bible not only as a triumph of the American missionary endeavor in Syria, but of the progress of the Gospel to free millions of lost Arab souls. He rejoiced that the biblishiyyūn (“Bible men”) had finally succeeded in providing the true Word of God in the vernacular language of the Arab people, giving them direct access to salvation if they would only choose to shed their “ignorance.” No longer would the pet- rified Catholic and Orthodox Churches with their human traditions, nor the fanaticism of the Muslim sheikhs, stand in the way of individuals seeking the truth for themselves. We now return to our initial research questions posed in Chapter one. What can be said of the Received Tradition (RT) as set forth by Henry Jessup? What can we say about the role of the Americans and the Syrians in this Bible translation? Finally, what then can we say about the impact of the so-called Van Dyck Bible on nineteenth century Arab Ottoman society in the midst of its literary renaissance? In response to these three questions, we have discovered three overlapping responses. This study of one of the most influential and widespread Arabic Bible translations of the modern period suggests that in assessing its impact on the Nahḍa, the Americans overstated their influence based on both their own perceptions as outsiders of late Ottoman society and their particular religious piety. Similarly, in perpetuating their own Received Tradition of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, the American Mission community and its supporters dramatically overlooked the role and influence of the “native” Syrians, both Christian and Muslim, and their impact on Syrian society. Finally, because of competing historical narratives of cultural and literary production in the modern Middle East, any form of American involvement in the Nahḍa through the influence of this translation has been undervalued.

Overstated

Throughout the early nineteenth century, the United States struggled to come to grips with its economic and trade policies in the Mediterranean, and only finally established a formal treaty with the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s.

While other European states engaged in imperial designs within the realpolitik of the “Eastern Question”, the American missionaries could claim the high moral ground when it came to keeping aloof from political imperialism. And yet, the charge of cultural imperialism is certainly justified. As hard as Rufus Anderson insisted on a mission to regenerate lost souls and raise up indigenous self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating Christian communities, the American evangelical perspective saw little value in what they experienced as the traditional Ottoman social values of political organization based on religious identity, the fanaticism of Islam, and the ignorance of the “nominal” historic Christian Churches of the Orient. In fact, based on many of the reports and letters written back home by the missionaries, one wonders how the early Americans could suffer to remain in the “unreasonable world” of the Orient that was so different than their own!1 By preaching and teaching the Gospel as they had experienced and professed in New England, the Americans were propagating the truth of individual liberty of conscience that transgressed many of the cultural values of Syrians, be they Jews, Muslims, or Christians. The American missionaries of the original ABCFM did succeed in creating evangelical communities in Anatolia and Syria that would eventually become known as the Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East, the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, and the National Evangelical Union of Lebanon. (Another later success of the American missionaries was the establishment of the Evangelical Synod of the Nile as an historical accident of the American Syrian Mission.) However, in many ways the American missionaries were extremely myopic. Their ultimate concern for the salvation of souls, the regeneration of nominal Christians, and replac- ing the “crescent with the cross,” often blinded them to the complex social, religious, and political realities around them. The American missionaries always viewed resistance to their work as priestly obstinacy, Islamic fanaticism, or Oriental ignorance. In many ways, they understood their role as helping the Syrian to rise above all of these backward social handicaps. However, despite the missionaries “reasonable” worldview, a complex social systems of inter-confessional cooperation among the commercial bourgeoisie flourished in Syria and especially in Beirut. It was fortuitous for the Americans that during their journeys into the Empire, late Ottoman Arab society was dramatically

1 John Hubers, “A Reasonable Mission in an Unreasonable World: The encounter of the Rev. Plink Fisk, first American missionary to the Middle East, with the Ottoman religious other.” (PhD Dissertation: The Lutheran School of Theology: Chicago, Illinois, 2013). I am grateful to Dr. Hubers for his sharing his recent research with me. Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 229 changing from a medieval semi-feudal structure to a complex, modern international society in the midst of a literary and cultural renaissance, whose epicenter was originally Beirut, and later Cairo. The stable political climate during the reign of Ibrāhīm Pasha (1832–1840) created the opportunity for a thriving international trade, that built off the success of the silk industry of Mount Lebanon. Fruma Zachs has noted that the rise of Beirut as an economic power in the first part of the nineteenth century dramatically challenged, changed, and accelerated social and political identity among Syrians.2 The influx of the mercantile, political, and missionary communities into Beirut mixed to produce a society where, in the words of Bustānī, “progress has no equal in any place in Europe.”3 The urban economic and political developments also fed off immigration from the Mount Lebanon and interior Syrian rural areas. Economic opportunities prompted and encouraged the activity of the imperial powers who established consulates in Beirut. These consulates required dragomans and protégés to navigate the local culture. These intermediaries tended to be Syrian Christians. The Europeans, especially the Italians and French, already had a long relationship with Christian merchants and thus it was natural that the European governments would reach out to those communities that they knew. In the changing socio-political landscapes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Christians not only felt safer within the confines of the burgeoning cosmopolitan city than in the rural areas, but were able to engage in and contribute to the new and lively “middle stratum” of Syrian society.4 These dramatic social changes also helped to stir up a cultural explosion witnessed by the establishment of literary societies and publishing houses, and were supported by the confessional schools of the American missionaries, the Maronites at ʿAyn Waraqa, and the French Jesuit schools. Each of these communities eventually created a multilingual bourgeoisie.5 The rise of Syrian and later Lebanese nationalist ideals after the 1860 civil war created further opportunities for both the Christians and Muslim “middle stratum” in networks of cultural, economic, and religious interactions. Yet, for most of the early American missionaries during this period, including Henry

2 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 40–44. For the economic development of Beirut see Michael Johnson, Class and Client in Beirut: the Sunni Muslim community and the Lebanese State 1840–1985 (London: Ithaca Press, 1986), 13. 3 Buṭrus Bustānī, “Beirut,” Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, vol. 5, 575, as cited in Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 43. 4 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 51. 5 See Jurjī Zaydān, Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1957). 230 CHAPTER 7

Jessup, their attempt to regenerate the Arabs and deliver them from ignorance was focused on an individual public confession to Christ and loyalty to an evangelical community modeled after the pious Protestant society of New England. Here, A.L. Tibawi’s critique of the American Syrian Mission is valid; it simply created another confessional community among others. Their missions both created new tensions with the other historic communities, specifically with the Maronites and the Syrian Catholics, and yet provided space for the new Evangelicals to engage in society. For other missionaries, Cornelius Van Dyck in particular, life in Syria became more nuanced than Jessup’s evangelical ideal. Van Dyck pursued a “liberal” education, that included a broad based instruction in a variety of disciplines within the ABCFM sponsored seminary in Abieh and later the Syrian Protestant College. Even after the Mission was chastised by Rufus Anderson for their “civilizing” education, Van Dyck continued to explore and penetrate the social and cultural boundaries of Syrians. His resignation from the Syrian Protestant College in 1884 over continued disagreements with the discipline of students and the introduction of English as the medium of instruction demonstrates his distance from the missionary establishment. Known for his affabil- ity and engagement with local culture, for his hospitable style with students at the College, and his continued work with the Greek Orthodox hospital, Van Dyck was memorialized upon his death by members of a variety of religious communities, including Muslims. An evangelical Christian through and through, Cornelius Van Dyck had managed, however, to understand and live with the ambiguities and complexities of Arab society in Syria. In a letter to the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM, Van Dyck noted that while the other missionaries from the College had castigated Buṭrus al-Bustānī for his nonsectarian and “un-Christian” National School:

The teachers are not allowed to impart religious instruction, but still it is an interesting fact that in a little over three years after the dreadful scenes of massacres and blood[shed] in 1860, there should be gathered in Beirut a school of 115 boarders composed of almost all the various sects in the land and that children of Moslem sheikhs and papal priests, and Druze okkals should study side by side . . .6

Following the 1860 civil war, the Christians of Syria were able to break out of the conservative socio-political straitjackets of late Ottoman millet society that

6 Hanssen, 167. Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 231 had traditionally been beholden to landed sheikhs and religious ecclesiastics.7 The Syrian literati associated with the American Mission, and later the Syrian Protestant College, would eventually shed their missionary parents and move on, ideologically and geographically, shifting the center of the literary renaissance to Cairo in the 1870s to espouse Arab nationalist views rather than evangelical Arab Christian ones. While the labor of the Nahḍa may have begun in Aleppo or even in Cairo in the late eighteenth century, it was birthed from within this Beirut epicenter. It would be an overstatement however, to argue that the American Mission Press, and especially the publication of the so-called Van Dyck Bible, was an instigator in this process that prompted or propelled the Nahḍa. That the American Mission Press was a participant, and a successful one at that, to the cultural developments is clear. Eli Smith’s “American Arabic” font at the Mission Press did provide opportunities for publishing a wide variety of texts, religious and otherwise, throughout the years, especially later in Cairo. Even though, as A.L. Tibawi noted originally, the religious literature that was published by the Press had a limited audience as opposed to the more general educational literature, Hala Auiji has successfully argued that Bustānī and Yāzijī did utilize the Press for their own independent national and literary works.8 However, the American Mission Press was not the only “game in town.” Ibrāhīm Pasha’s removal from Syria by the combined Ottoman and foreign powers then created an opening for the development of a modern Beirut. As foreign consuls set up shop, and as commerce began to flow, the American missionaries were able to take advantage of an open free market of ideas. They also had to compete with the growing Catholic influence of a vibrant French cultural precolonial era that was committed to its adopted Maronite community. As noted by Zaydān, there was an assortment of other presses all contributing to the output of reading material for a new public that was developing habits and tastes for newspapers, journals and other forms of reading material. The publication of portionettes of the Bible throughout the 1870s and 1880s was aimed at a diverse growing new reading public. Thus, while the Americans had a tendency to overstate their own role in developing a new Arab modernity that they hoped would eventually lead to the development of a modern, free, and evangelical Middle East, it would be a mistake to overlook the American presence and their contributions to the Nahḍa as well. Nevertheless, the American missionaries were not the great impetus for the discovery of Arabic literature and culture as re-imagined by Antonius. Thus, we would agree with

7 Hourani, 96. 8 Tibawi, 308; Auji, 143–4. 232 CHAPTER 7

Fruma Zachs that the American missionaries “encouraged a process of local dynamics already underway, but did not initiate it.”9 The American Syrian Mission did provide space for the development of ideas through the schools and through their associations primarily around the ideals of the individual search for truth and quest for knowledge. However, their particular work would not have been effective had it not been for Muḥammad ʿAlī’s rise to power, his investment in a new educational system for his government bureaucracy, and his foray and rule in Syria from 1832–1840 which was the spark that ignited Syrian society. This was especially true for the urban space of Beirut, where the world literally converged on what had once been a small fishing village. Without this socio-political backdrop, the impact of the American Syrian Mission would have only skimmed the surface of a small number of Syrian Protestant converts, as opposed to its mingled engagement with other international organizations and Ottoman communities in the midst of dramatic social changes. This is what Auji called the “the coevalness of complex missionary and local perspectives.”10

Overlooked

The Syrians encountered in this research were certainly not passive agents to the changes and challenges of nineteenth century Syrian society. As Beirut became the center of economic, political and cultural activity, Syrian literati responded to the changes within Ottoman society by creating their own discourse in what Sabry Hafez calls “dynamic inter-textuality.”11 In fact, the seeds of the intellectual journeys of Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī were planted in the fields of the Arab literary culture of ʿAyn Waraqa and Bayt al-Dīn, respectively. These two Syrians utilized a variety of different “texts” to carve out their own space in the Nahḍa. These historical “texts” were

9 Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity, 150. 10 Hala Auji, “Between Script and Print: exploring publications of the American Syrian Mission and the nascent press in the Arab World, 1834–1860” (PhD Dissertation: State University of New York, Binghamton, 2013), 46. It should be stated that Auji is critical of postcolonial frameworks, claiming that they justify contemporary views of past events. Using Foucault as a starting point, in regard to knowledge and power, we do, however, find postcolonial theory to be quite helpful in terms of rectifying unheard voices. We consider Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism to be a valid and helpful reading of American interests in the Middle East, even if it cannot explain all interactions. 11 Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A study in the sociology of modern Arabic literature (London: Saqi Books, 1993), 27. Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 233 the Egyptian occupation of Syria, the presence of multiple national spheres of influence in Beirut, the diverse Evangelical and Catholic educational institutions, the growing opportunities of printed material, and ultimately the general freedom of expression through newly founded journals in both Beirut and later in Cairo. These “texts” were all overlapping spheres of influence that provided the initial space to act, the opportunity to work, and places to reflect on the role of the Arabic language for the renewal of society. A diverse team of individuals with different commitments and concerns worked on and completed the so-called Van Dyck translation project. Yet, within the meta-narrative of the RT from sources written by and to American or English speaking audiences, the voices and ideas of the Syrian contributors were silenced. As we have shown, the translation process was accomplished primarily by and through the work of what the RT calls the “native helpers.” Unfortunately, to this point we are missing significant firsthand sources from Bustānī, Yāzijī and Asīr about their role in the translation. Further research into the writings, journals, or private correspondence of these individuals would provide us with another important perspective, similar to that provided by Ussama Makdisi in his recovery and use of the Arabic sources in the martyrdom of ʿAsād Shidyāq. By examining the Arabic letters of Bustānī and Smith in the archives of the ABCFM we may be able to piece together more information. Nevertheless, the MSS sources themselves document the vital role that the Syrians had in this Bible translation. Bustānī himself provided the base translation for fifty-two of the sixty-six books of the Books, and rightly deserves more credit than has been given to him to date. Regardless of any direct proof of Asīr’s handwriting or influence in the MSS, his participation with Van Dyck through the process of translation as a Muslim is of great significance. It has been argued that Asīr had, if not a direct role in the translation of several books of the Bible, a dramatic impact on Cornelius Van Dyck’s work and thinking. While it would be easy for this claim to become the victim of sectarian offense, by either some Christians who could never imagine such a thing, or some Muslims who might use Asīr as an opportunity to promote Islamic fingerprints in the Christian scriptures, it should rather provide opportunity to reflect on further opportunities for Arab inter-communal cooperation. While Christian and Muslim identities in the Middle East have hardened chiefly due to the rise of conservative Islamic governments, the sad and terrible civil wars of Lebanon and Syria, and the continuing impact of violent jihadist organizations, it would be easy to assume that any other social interaction could never have existed. Rather, the Beirut and Cairo of the Nahḍa harkens to the successful inclusion of Christian and Muslim artists, thinkers, and scholars 234 CHAPTER 7 who had the space and opportunity to understand their own faiths in what Abdullrazzek Patel calls a “supra religious” contribution to Arab culture and language.12 That Yūsuf al-Asīr, as a reformist Muslim scholar, found opportunity through his direct relationships to contribute to the development of Arab Christian identity is to be celebrated. In fact, the whole translation project itself demonstrates how each individual was a product of this great age of Reform and betrays any sense of individual or communal triumphalism. At a time of massive transformation of society, politics, and culture, the project took advantage of people from different communities who might contribute to a spiritual and cultural production. The translation brought out the best of these individuals that in many ways ran counter to any hardline communal boundaries. For example, • Eli Smith utilized the latest of biblical studies and textual research that offended the sensibilities of his own pietistic religious tradition; • Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī refused to be bound by any one community (Maronite, Greek Catholic, or Evangelical) to explore and articulate an Arab identity across community lines; • Yūsuf al-Asīr stood as a proponent of interfaith work and relationships, providing important contributions during a period of Reform in the Muslim world; and finally • Cornelius Van Dyck transgressed all communal boundaries, forsaking the traditional beliefs of his missionary community regarding the taboos of science and religion, the deep-seated suspicion of the Oriental Churches in eventually leaving his Evangelical community to associate with the Greek Catholics, and most importantly by inviting and working with his Muslim friend, Asīr, on a translation of the Christian Scriptures.

In the end, not only does the RT “silence” the “native helpers,” but it also silences the translation’s “suprareligious” context (Evangelical, Catholic, Sunni Muslim, American, and Syrian interaction) which has been publicly overlooked. The so-called Van Dyck translation was truly a marker of boundary crossing.

Undervalued

A.L. Tibawi spilt much ink during his academic career disputing the American influence in the Nahḍa. He argued that it was the Egyptian occupation of Ibrāhīm Pasha that created the opportunity for the free flow of literary thought

12 Patel, The Arab Nahḍah, 69. Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 235

from Egypt to Syria, and then back again. Ibrāhīm Pasha’s ouster by the combination of Ottoman and European powers, only further prompted changes within late Ottoman society. We have explained sufficiently that the seeds of the Nahḍa might go back to the seventeenth century Maronite and Syrian Catholic activity centered in Aleppo. But its genesis results from the decrees of Muḥammad ʿAlī and the utilization of the printing press for both government and then literary purposes. The invasion of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha, provided the social impetus within an eclectic patchwork of confessions and communities for the Catholic and Evangelical schools to take root. While the Egyptian interregnum in Syria impacted traditional feudal society, the sudden intrusion of the European powers into the major cities and ports of Syria accelerated the problems of the “Eastern Question”, as each European nation worked for political and economic advantage. To achieve their advantages, each Western power provided protection for indigenous religious communities. In response to these international pressures, the Ottomans responded by engaging in a thorough reform of their medieval structures. The Arab historian Youssef M. Choueiri describes this all-encompassing transformation of Ottoman society from 1830 until the fall of the Empire. These changes included

. . . the reorganization of the administration, the creation of a new army, the implementation of a more efficient tax system, a network of modern schools and colleges, and the introduction of the printing press. The whole system, often ill-conceived and superficially implemented, oper- ated within an economic sector linked with the markets of the west, or controlled by western credit banks, financial houses, and companies. New groups of merchants, intermediaries, businessmen, government bureaucrats, army officers, school teachers, journalists, and lawyers were the salient products of such a long process.13

It is noteworthy, however, that in this catalog of both forces and actors in the reform of the Empire that the French Catholic, British or American missionary societies are nowhere mentioned by Chouieri. While it was the case that American gunboats did not follow American missionaries to Syria in the nineteenth century, British and French navies did. The “Eastern Question” dictated that even the Americans were participants

13 Youssef M. Choueiri, Arab History and the Nation-State: a study in modern Arab historiography, 1820–1980 (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 6. 236 CHAPTER 7 in a geopolitical game of competing empires and economies. The religious identities of the various Ottoman sects had always been part of the competi- tive political structure of the Empire. While the American missionaries did not intend to participate in political agendas of the “Eastern Question”, they were ultimately pulled into the political net. They were, of course, labeled by the Ottomans as part of the “English millet.” This was because they needed both political protection and public recognition under some patronage.14 It was not until a Protestant millet was legally established in 1850 that the American missionaries had succeeded in helping to establish their own little Christian missionary empire within Ottoman lands. Even when the “native” Evangelicals had successfully achieved self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing communities, the mission associations were usually reluctant to turn over complete control to their spiritual compatriots in order to preserve their own footprint. It would be an extreme exaggeration to state that the American missionary presence and work was the driving force behind the cultural, educational, and literary revival of the nineteenth century. And yet, it would be a mistake to exclude and undervalue their contribution altogether. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck’s thinking about an Arab cultural revival has not been given full weight. Proper evaluation of their contributions and impact on Syrian society as recorded in Bustānī’s records of al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-itkisāb al-ʿulūm wa-l- funūn is yet to be uncovered.15 Given the role of the United States in Middle Eastern affairs after World War II, and its unequivocal continued support of the modern state of Israel after 1948, it is understandable that modern Arab historians would have misgivings about what has now come to be known by many Arab literati as the “cultural invasion” of Pax Americana. Tibawi’s concern over validating American involvement in any Arab cultural renaissance compelled him correctly to debunk George Antonius’ narrative that the Americans were the impetus for Arab identity. Nevertheless, the American Syrian Mission was certainly a contributor to a newly formed and complex Beiruti identity and served as a catalyst for the Nahḍa in the Middle East from the 1830s to the 1880s.

14 Tibawi, 19. 15 Raffoul, “Butrus al-Bustani’s Contribution,” 146–7. See Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Aʿmal al-jamʿiyya al-sūriyya (AJS) (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrā, 1990). Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 237

The so-called Van Dyck

This investigation into this aspect of Western mission history in the Ottoman Empire has focused on one of the most important Arabic Bible translations in the modern age. Throughout this study, we have adopted Sara Binay’s nomenclature of the translation as the “so-called Van Dyck Bible.”16 We have found this title to be proper as an hermeneutic of suspicion for this academic inquiry. She is not the only scholar to have questioned the acceptable nomenclature, however. Ghassān Khālaf has also brought the title of the translation into focus in his recent work Aḍwāʾ ʿalá tarjamat al-Bustānī- Fāndayk (al-ʿahd al-jadīd), where he has preferred the label the “Bustani-Van Dyck” Bible. Oddbørn Leirvik has followed suit.17 Rana Issa has chosen the label “Smith-Van Dyck” Bible, while Kenneth Bailey has preferred the term “Bustani- Smith-Van Dyck.”18 There are many, like A.L. Tibawi, who have objected to having an Arabic translation named after a Westerner, let alone an American missionary. In any case, each of these authors point to what is increasing clear; that critique of the nomenclature is warranted. Thus, while the accepted title of this popular modern translation has become a common household reference in many Arab evangelical communities, and has given honor to an American missionary who has been well respected in the annals of Syrian history for one hundred and fifty years, perhaps it is time to suggest that the appellation might need changing. This research has demonstrated the clear reliance on Syrian Arabs from various Christian and Muslim communities. Further, it has shown that the translation process was the beneficiary of a cultural renaissance within late Ottoman Arab society that stretched from Bulaq to Beirut, from the rugs of al-Azhar to the libraries of Oxford, and even to educational institutions in New England. This Bible translation was truly a global project, and the result of a bygone era of Reformist thought among Christian missionary and Muslim scholars during the Nahḍa. Thus, we would argue for a more appropriate and inclusive nomenclature for this translation as the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation/ al-tarajama al-ʿarabiyya lil-kitāb al-muqaddas 1865 (ABT1865). Given what we have learned about Cornelius Van Dyck in this research, we believe he would agree to such a proposal.

16 See footnote 4 of the chapter one. 17 Leirvik, 30. 18 Kenneth Bailey, “Tārīkh al-tarjamāt al-ʿarabiyya li-l-kitāb al-maqaddas”, al-Huda, no. 856 (1982), 22; Issa, 58. 238 CHAPTER 7

Further Research . . .

The availability of the records of the ABCFM and Presbyterian Church Syrian Missions have provided, and will continue to provide, further opportunities for research on the American Mission in the Middle East. While much more will be uncovered and become known about the policies and views of the missionaries, we still know very little about those with whom the American missionaries interacted. This has begun to change. The work of Ussama Makdisi and others has begun to uncover the “subaltern” voices of indigenous peoples in the Ottoman Empire. The recent establishment of the Near East School of Theology’s “Preserving the Protestant Heritage of the Middle East” project, has begun to lift up the voices of Syrian Evangelical Christians.19 Given his stature within the Nahḍa, Buṭrus al-Bustānī has been the object of some research, but not nearly enough. Adel Beshara’s recent collection of research on Bustānī, called Butrus al-Bustani: Spirit of the Age, is encouraging.20 In addition, while Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī’s name appears prominently throughout the discussions of the literary renaissance, there is no detailed study of his writings and thinking. Finally, a most intriguing story still waiting to be told is that of Yūsuf al-Asīr, the Sunni reformist thinker from Tripoli. The digitization of the ABT1865 manuscripts at the Near East School of Theology now presents untold opportunities for further study without endan- gering the original rare treasures of this period of history. This digitized resource will provide prospects for a wide variety of projects in the areas of 1) Arabic Bible manuscripts, 2) the transformation of the Arabic language during the Nahḍa, as well as 3) the direct impact of Buṭrus al-Bustānī on nineteenth century Arabic through a comparison of the ABT1865 translation and his other writings, especially Muḥit al-muḥit. Finally, 4) there have been some initial attempts to begin comparing other nineteenth century Arabic translations. There are great possibilities ahead in examining the ABT1865, the 1857 Shidyāq translation, and the 1878 Jesuit Bible together.21

19 See http://protestantheritagenest.omeka.net/ [accessed 29 August 2014]. 20 Beshara, ed., Butrus al-Bustani: Spirit of the Age (Melbourne: IPhoenix Publishing, 2015). 21 See, for example, Rana Issa, “Biblical Reflections in the Arabic Lexicon: The Impact of the 1857 translation of the bible in the Arabic language,” Babylon 2 (2012): 58–67; and Shidyāq, al-Sāq ʿalā l-sāq (I, 11; II, 11; III, 9, 18) as cited in Walid Hamarneh, “Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq,” Essays in Arabic literary biography 1850–1950, vol. 3, Roger Allen, Terri DeYoung, et al., eds. (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 323. Overstated, Overlooked, And Undervalued Contributions 239

While the ABT1865 ultimately had a limited impact on the evangelization of the Arab Muslim world, it did cross communal boundaries. It has become a standard translation not only for the historic Evangelical Churches of the Arab World, but has also been recognized by the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt. It has been used by Arab Muslims in their own studies on Jesus. Its full linguistic impact on other genres of the Arabic literature is still waiting to be explored.

Appendix Comparison of the Progress of the 1865 Arabic Bible Translation according to the Sources (2015)

The MSS were organized by James Dennis (1885). This order was kept and cataloged in the archives of the American Mission, deposited in the rare book room of the Near East School of Theology (1975), and digitized by Hill Museum & Manuscript Library HMML/Saint John’s University (Minnesota, USA) (2009). The reference guide for both the original and digital forms were prepared by Christine B Lindner (2014). The current order of MSS is arranged by the start date of each MSS compared with the ABCFM Archival Minutes, Henry Jessup’s compilation of the 1900 Documentary History (DocHis), and his 1910 Fifty-Three Years in Syria. Handwritten comments of the authors are notes under the MSS column.

Grey boxes indicate historical significance Blue boxes indicate work done by Bustānī originally, and then Smith. (BS) Purple boxes indicate work by Smith, Bustānī and possibly Yāzijī, reviewed and edited by Van Dyck. (DH) Yellow boxes indicate work done by Bustānī, and reviewed and edited by Van Dyck. (BVD) Pink boxes indicate work done by Van Dyck, with possible assistance from Asīr. (VDA) Green boxes indicate work done solely by Van Dyck. (VD)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS1 ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

16 March 1844 16 March 1844 Report by E.S. (Smith, p. 1–4) on the existing Arabic versions of the Bible

1 MSS based upon the Near East School of Theology, Arabic Bible (‘Van Dyck Bible’) Manuscript Collection and Affiliated Texts: Reference Guide, prepared by Christine B. Lindner, 15 October 2014.

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

20 January 1847 20 January 1847 1847 (Jessup, Mission society (Jessup, p. iii) p. 68) votes to undertake translation 16 March 1848 11 Feb 1848 11 Feb 1848 Translation (VD, p. 22) (Jessup, p. 69) Commences w/ Bustānī for translation of Joshua to Revelation

Genesis AC-36:3 LXX up to DT 5 Gen 1–10: Gen 1–10: Bustānī’s 27.18–50.26 completed by 4 April 1849 4 April 1849 translation— 30 March 1852 (Jessup, p. ii) (Jessup, p. 69) Genesis format. Gen completed Gen completed Missing MSS of by 9 April 1850 by 9 April Gen 1:1–27:17 (VD, p. 23) (? year)

Genesis AC-36:1, (Jessup, p. 70) 1st ed. of “Completed (VD, p. 23) LXX up to DT 5 Up to 5 DT MarchGenesis. MSS 5 Jan 1853” completed by 1852 (Jessup, p. according 27 March 1852 70) to “DocHis (VD, p. 24) format”— Bustānī /Smith/ Yāzijī

Genesis AC-36:2 Trial edition of Genesis

Exodus AC-36:4 DocHis format Appendix 243

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Leviticus AC-36:5 “Begun VD to “resume” VD “commenced” DocHis format— Sept 1860 VD” translation on Lev on 3 April 1.1—27.34, 3 April 1860 1860 (VD, p. 16, VD format— 29) following this Final edition as AC-36:6 below

Numbers AC-36:7 DocHis format Final edition as AC-36:8 below

Deuteronomy AC-36:9 “Feb 22 First ed. of DT 2nd ed. Of LXX DocHis format 1.1–24.12 1861 C.V.D.” finished by 23 completed by Final edition as March 1853 30 April 1854 AC-36:10 below (Smith, p. 10)

Matthew AC-36:60 “Begun Completed by 23 March 1853 DocHis format First Sep 1852 23 March 1853 (Jessup, p. 70) E.S.” “Appointed to this work April 1857, commenced in reality Oct. 1857 the summer having been spent in preparation C.V.A. Van Dyck”

Mark AC-36:61 “Begun Completed by 23 March 1853 DocHis Format first of Dec. 1852 23 March 1853 (Jessup, p. 70) E.S.” 244 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Luke AC-36:62 “Begun 1–14 completed Through DocHis Format Jan 31 1853 E.S.” by 23 March 12th Chapter 1853 of Luke 23 March 1853 (Jessup, p. 70)

John AC-36:63 “Begun DocHis Format June 3, 1853; Finished Aug. 20, 1853”

Acts AC-36:64 “Begun DocHis Format Nov. 1, 1853 E.S.; Finished Feb. 2, 1854”

Romans AC-36:65 “Begun Principles of Feb. 6, 1854” Smith’s translation approved by mission society 30 March 1854

1 Corinthians AC-36:66 “Begun Through Chap. 5 Through DocHis format March 15, 1854 completed by Chap. 5 E.S.; Finished May 3 March 1854 completed by 3 E.S.” (VD p. 24) 3 March 1854 (Jessup, p. 71) 2 Corinthians “Begun May 10, 1854 E.S.”

Galatians AC-36:67 “Begun June 16, 1854 E.S.” Appendix 245

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Ephesians “Begun July 10, 1854 E.S.” Philippians “Begun July 26, 1854 E.S.” Colossians “Begun Aug 4, 1854 E.S.” 1 Thessalonians “Begun Aug. 17 1854, E.S.” 2 Thessalonians “Begun Aug. 23, 1854 E.S.”

1 Timothy AC-36:68 “Begun Important note Sep 14, 1854 E.S.” from “HK” on 1 Tim 6:22 from Dec. 1909 regarding the variant reading 2 Timothy “Begun Oct. 2, 1854 E.S.” Titus “Begun Oct. 27, Completed by 1854 E.S.” 28 Oct 1854 Philemon “Begun Nov. 1, 1854 E.S.” Hebrews “Begun Nov 2, Note textual 1854 E.S.” variant on 13.25 James “Begun Dec. 2, 1854 E.S.” 1 Peter “Begun Dec. 14, Note textual 1854 E.S.” variant on 5:13, 14 2 Peter “Begun Dec. 25, 1854 E.S.” 246 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

1 John AC-36:69 “Begun Note the Jan 2, 1855 E.S.” Johannine Coma: 1 John 5:7–8; and textual variant 5:22 2 John 3 John Textual variant 1:13 Jude Textual variant 1:15 Note v. 25 where the variant is moved to the margin Revelation “Begun Jan 15, Completed by NT completed NT completed Textual variant 1855 E.S.; Annual Meeting by 3 April 1855 by 3 April 1855 19:9 Finished Feb. 22, 7 April 1857 (VD p. 25, 26) (Jessup, p. 71) 1855 E.S.”

Hosea AC-36:46 Completed by Bustani/Smith Single page 7 April 1857 complete trans of 1:1–4; Hosea, Joel, then Doc His Amos, Obadiah, format with Jonah, Micah, corrections of Nahum and VD on left hand Isaiah 1–52 side, right hand between Feb. side “X”d out 1855 and 1 April 1856 (VD p. 15, 26) Appendix 247

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Joel AC-36:47 Completed by 3 DocHis April 1855 format with (Jessup, p. 71) corrections of VD on left hand side

Amos AC:36–48

Obadiah AC:36–49

Jonah AC-36:50 Completed by 3 April 1855 (Jessup, p. 71)

Micah AC:36–51

Nahum AC-36:53 Completed by 1 April 1856 (Jessup, p. 71)

Isaiah ACC-36:38 Chaps 1–52 Last report by Completed to DocHis format “Begun June 14, ready for press Smith—1 April Chapter 53 with red 1855 E.S.; 7 April 1857 1856 (VD p. 25) (Jessup, p. 71) corrections; left finished Feb 4 hand concludes 1864 VD” at 52:3, after this it is simply right hand translation which denotes Yaziji’s absence, and VD’s completion (see AC-36:39 below) 248 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Joshua AC-36:11 “Begun Completed by Completed by Completed DocHis March 13, 1861 Bustānī “but not Bustānī by by Bustānī by format— C.V.D.” revised by Smith” 7 April 1857 (VD 3 April 1857 one page by 7 April 1857 p. 26) (Jessup, p. 74) translation on right with red corrections by Bustānī, not revised by Smith, but “reviewed” by VD (See AC-36:12 below)

Judges AC-36:13 (See AC-36:14 “Commenced & AC-36:15 May 8, 1861 below) C.V.D.” Ruth “Finished June 20, 1861”

1st Samuel AC-36:16 (See AC-36:17 “Commenced below) June 24, 1861 C.V.D.; “Finished August 20, 1861 C.V.D.”

2nd Samuel AC-36:18 (See AC-36:19 “Commenced below) August 29, 1861 C.V.D.; Finished Oct. 16, 1861. C.V.D.” Appendix 249

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

1st Kings AC-36:20 (See AC-36:21 “Commenced Nov. below) 13, 1861 C.V.D.; Finished Dec. 12, 1861 C.V.D.”

2nd Kings AC-36:22 “Begun (See AC-36:23 Dec. 12, 1861 below) C.V.D.”

1st Chronicles AC-36:24 (See AC-36:25 “Commenced Jan. below) 13, 1862 C.V.D.; Finished Feb. 21, 1862 C.V.D.”

2nd Chronicles AC-36:26 (See AC-36:27 “Commenced Feb. below) 24, 1862 C.V.D.; Finished March 27, 1862 C.V.D.”

Ezra AC-36:28 “Begun (See AC-36:29, April 18, 1862 30, 31 below) C.V.D.; Finished May 7, 1862” Nehemiah “Finished May 7, 1862” Esther “Finished May 14, 1862 C.V.D.”

1 April 1856 1 April 1856 Smith’s Illness (VD, p. 25) (Jessup, p. 71) and last report 250 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

6 April 1856 2 April 1856 Smith relieved (VD, p. 25) of translation duties

11 Jan. 1857 Smith’s death, (VD, p. 25) 11 January 1857

4 April 1857 3 April 1857 3 April 1857 Mission Assoc. (VD, p. 25) (Jessup, p. 73) Committee appointed to review translation

8 April 1857 7 April 1857 Mission Assoc. (VD, p. 26) votes to conform NT to the TR, and VD takes over translation

9 March 1860 Completed Completed NT “review” 9 March 1860, 9 March 1860, completed presented 28 presented March 1860 28 March 1860 (VD, p. 28) (Jessup, p. 75)

Leviticus AC-36:6 Completed Final version of between AC-36:5 above Sept. 1860– Numbers AC-36:8 Feb. 22 1861 Final version of AC-36:7 above Appendix 251

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Deuteronomy AC-36:10 Final version of AC-36:9 above

Joshua AC-36:12 Final version of AC-36:11 above “reviewed” by VD

Judges AC-36:14 Final version of AC-36–13 above “reviewed” by VD

Ruth AC-36:15

1st Samuel AC-36:17 Final version of “Commenced AC-36:16 above August 29, 1861 “reviewed” by C.V.D.; Completed VD Oct, 16, 1861 C.V.D.”

2nd Samuel AC-36:19 Final version of AC-36:18 above “reviewed” by VD

1st Kings AC-36:21 Final version of AC-36:20 above “reviewed” by VD 252 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

2nd Kings AC-36:23 Final version of AC-36:22 above “reviewed” by VD

1st Chronicles AC-36:25 Final version of AC-36:24 above “reviewed” by VD

2nd Chronicles AC-36:27 Final version of AC-36:26 above “reviewed” by VD

Ezra AC-36:29 Final version of AC-36:28 above “reviewed” by VD

Nehemiah AC-36:30

Esther AC-36:31

Psalms 1–89:48 AC-36:32 No date Not yet Not yet translated VD format— translated by by Smith or penciled Smith or Bustānī as of 7 marginal notes Bustānī as of April 1857 (p. 26, on left, with 7 April 1857 VD) penciled corrections Appendix 253

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Job AC-36:33 No date VD format— penciled marginal notes on left, but no corrections AC-36:34 takes into account AC-36:32

Psalms 1–150 AC-36:34 No date

Proverbs AC-36:35 No date

Ecclesiastes AC-36:36 No date VD format— penciled marginal notes on left and penciled corrections

Song of AC-36:37 Solomon

Isaiah AC-36:39 VD format— final version of ACC-36:38 Finished after Feb 4 1864

Jeremiah AC-36:40 Translated by DocHis Bustānī, but not format—one reviewed by page transla- Smith as of tion on right 7 April 1857 with red (p. 26, VD) corrections by 254 Appendix

(cont.)

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Bustānī, not revised by Smith, but “reviewed” by VD

Lamentations AC-36:41 “Finished AP. 5, 1864 CVD”

Ezekiel AC-36:43 Not yet translated Not yet translated VD format— by Smith or by Smith or AC-36:43, 45, Bustānī as of Bustānī as of 54, 59 take into 7 April 1857 7 April 1857 account (p. 26, VD) corrections from previous MSS and includes reference notes and are the final versions

Daniel AC-36:45

Habbakuk AC-36:54

Malachi AC-36:59

Ezekiel AC-36:42—title page

Daniel AC-36:44—title page Appendix 255

Book of the Arabic Bible MSS ABCFM Archival 1900 DocHis 1910 Fifty- COMMENTS Bible MSS (handwritten Minutes Three Years notes by editors)

Habbakuk AC-36:53—title page

Zephaniah AC-36:55—title page

Haggai AC-36:56—title page

Zachariah AC-36:57—title page

Malachi AC-36:58—title page “Finished Aug. 22, 1864 CVD

23 April 1864 22 August 1864 22 August 1864 Bible complete Bibliography

MSS and Editions of the Arabic Bible al-ʿAhd al-jadīd. Beirut: American Mission Press, 1858, 1860 (2nd font), 1862, 1864, 1903 (3rd font), 1912 (4th font). al-ʿAhd al-jadīd. Heliopolis, Egypt: The Bible Society of Egypt, 2006. al-Kitāb al-muqaddas. Beirut: American Mission Press, 1865, 1865 (2nd ed.), 1867, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1885, 1886, 1903 (3rd ed.), 1906, 1915 (4th ed). Portionettes of al-Kitāb al-muqaddas. Beirut: American Mission Press. (Listed in historical order of Publication) Luke and the Epistles, 1861 Pentateuch and Hebrews, 1862 Psalms and Matthew, 1864 Luke, 1867 New Testament and Psalms, 1871 Deuteronomy, 1871 Proverbs, 1872 Acts, 1872 Genesis, 1873 Matthew, 1888 Mark, 1888 Luke, 1888 John, 1888 Genesis, 1892 al-Kitāb al-muqaddas. Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1989. al-Kitāb al-muqaddas. New York: American Bible Society, 1867, 1948, 1969.

Archival Material

American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missionaries (ABCFM) archives, Houghton Library Harvard University, Boston. ABC 2.1.1 ABC 16.8.1 ABC 50 (Eli Smith Papers in English) ABC 60 (Eli Smith Papers in Arabic) ABC 77.67 Bibliography 257

ABC 77.73 ABC 78.2.17 Eli Smith Family Papers, 1821–1930. Yale Divinity School Library. RG 124 The National archives of the PC (USA), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Historical Society. MF10 F761a RG 115 RG 360 Near East School of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. Digitized Manuscript of the Van Dyke Translation. Special Collections, AC-36. See Lindner, Christine B. “A Reference Guide to the AC-36: Arabic Bible Manuscript Collection and Affiliated Texts.” Theological Review 36 (2015), 44–96. Smith, Eli and C.V.A. Van Dyck. Brief documentary history of the translation of the Scriptures into the Arabic language. Ed. Henry H. Jessup. Beirut, Syria: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1900.

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‘Abbasid Empire 14, 30, 94 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, ʿAbdu, Muḥammad 39 n14, 82, 84, 90, 109, 217 122, 123, 124, 127, 129, 136, 146, 148, 151, 154, Abdül Ḥamīd 39, 83 157, 158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 177, 178, 185, ʿAbeih 34, 62, 74, 179 203, 204, 206, 207, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, ʿAbdülmečid 103, 106 221, 224, 227, 228, 230, 231, 234, 235, 237 ʿAlī, Muḥammad 31, 40, 68, 69, 78, 80, 82, 83, American Oriental Society 3, 146, 166 95, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 221, 231, 234 American Syrian Mission ix, 1, 3, 8, 16, 17, 23, Alexander, Archibald 51 34, 37, 41, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56, 62, 64, American Arabicfont 20, 86, 168, 180, 214, 230 70, 72, 74, 75, 80, 84, 85, 91, 96, 97, 98, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign 99, 103, 106, 109, 120, 122, 123, 120, 121, Missions (ABCFM) 1, 5, 6, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 123, 125, 127, 129, 153, 157, 158, 165, 169, 22, 23, 34, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 279, 204, 206, 212, 227, 229, 231, 235 55, 57, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, See American Board of Commissioners of 85, 86, 90, 110, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 123, Foreign Missions (ABCFM), American 124, 125, 136, 139, 140, 149, 157, 165, 168, Syrian Mission 201, 209, 210, 215, 216, 221, 224, 227, 229, American University in Beirut 85, 101, 120, 232, 237 238, 218 American evangelicalism Anderson, Rufus 6, 18, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 32, “city on a hill” 42, 43, 123 44, 47, 48, 52, 57, 61, 62, 63, 71, 73, 74, 75, disinterested benevolence 6, 124 85, 86, 88, 89, 110, 119, 120, 152, 158, 167, See Johnathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins 176, 177, 181, 189, 206, 227, 229 American Bible Society (ABS) 125, 126, 127, See American Board of Commissioners of 130, 134, 135, 148, 153, 160, 161, 168, 170, Foreign Missions (ABCFM) 185, 186, 202, 204, 205, 209, 212 Andover Theological Seminary 17, 19, 43, 47, 1865 Arabic Bible Translation (ABT 1865) 54, 57, 61, 137, 139, 147, 169, 170 236–8 Antonius, George 24, 59, 80, 91, 98, 99–103, Abū Karam, Buṭrus(Maronite Archbishop of 220, 277, 230, 235 Beirut) 54 The Arab Awakening 99 adab 29, 31, 32, 75, 83, 92, 94, 95, 105, 107, 172 Armenia 20, 21, 23, 73, 125 See Bustani Armeno-Turkish translation of the Bible al-Duwāyhī, Istifān (Maronite Patriarch) 58, 122–5, 224 103, 115, 116 al-‘Assāl, Ḥibat Allāh ibn 14 See Maronite College of Rome al-Asīr, Yūsuf 5, 17, 35, 38–41, 93, 112, 139, 155, Aleppo 66, 67, 68, 75, 108, 114, 116, 117, 118, 164, 167, 181, 182, 183, 185, 190, 191, 194, 169, 230, 234 216, 217, 222, 223, 232, 233, 237 Alford, Henry 133, 136, 147, 149, 150, 186, 197 ‘Ayn Waraqa 24, 25, 54, 58, 102, 103, 115, 116, American Mission Press 7, 17, 19, 20, 21, 26, 31, 117, 118, 139, 228, 231 32, 35, 45, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 86, 87, 88, See Maronites 96, 97, 103, 107, 109, 110, 139, 150, 155, 167, 177, 178, 180, 181, 188, 189, 197, 204, 230 Basel Mission Society 42, 124 American missionaries 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, Beirut 1, 4, 7, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 40, 42, 43, 28, 29, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 57, 58, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67–76, 78, 81, 83, 58, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 79, 80, 84, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 102, 103, 108, 109, 81, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 98, 100, 101, 111, 117, 118, 119, 125, 126, 161, 162, 167, 272 Index Of Subjects And Names

Beirut (cont.) Church Missionary Society (CMS) 18, 42, 45, 168, 169, 171, 172, 177, 178, 181, 183, 46, 47, 53, 54, 57, 72, 73, 124, 125, 201, 185, 193, 207, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 208, 215, 216 217, 219, 220, 222, 227, 228, 230, 231, Codex Sinaiticus 132, 133, 197 232, 235, 236 Bible men 27, 34, 50, 124, 213, 226 Dabbas, Athanasius (Greek Catholic Patriarch) Binay, Sara 4, 161, 162, 164, 182, 188, 236 114 Bird, Isaac 7, 29, 46, 47, 48, 50, 55, 57, 64, 71, Damascus 22, 40, 47, 60, 66, 68, 75, 218 86, 101, 111, 129, 158, 213 ḍamīr 29, 172 Bishop, E.F.F. 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 216 Darwinism 35, 39, 88, 118 Britain 57, 60, 61, 68, 69, 74, 123, 126, 133, 206, See Edwin Lewis 208 Isṭifan al-Duwayhī (Maronite Patriarch) 58, British Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) 15, 48, 103, 115, 116 57, 72, 73, 125, 126–9, 130, 134, 135, 168, Dayr al-Qamār 60, 64, 69, 118 201, 202, 204, 205, 216 De Sacy, Silvestre 169 Bustānī, Buṭrus 5, 9, 17, 21, 22, 23–30, 31, 32, Dennis, James 156, 160, 162, 164, 166 34, 38, 40, 56 n31, 58, 62, 72, 73, 74, 75, dhimmīs 78 84, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97, 105, 106, 107, 112, Documentary History 149, 159, 166, 187 116, 117, 118, 119, 139, 152, 155, 161, 164, 167, See Henry H. Jessup 169, 172, 173, 174, 178, 176, 177, 178, 179, 1671 Dominican Bible 11, 214 180, 181, 186, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, Druze 20, 26, 29, 31, 59, 60, 61, 66, 73, 74, 79, 197, 200, 209, 211, 219, 220, 222, 223, 228, 93, 113, 115, 194, 229 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237 See civil war Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyya al-sūriyya 21, 28, 32, 91, Dwight, H.G.O. 18, 20, 73 92, 179, 216 dynamic equivalence 170, 176 Dāʾirat al-maʿārif 23 ḥubb al-waṭan min al-īmān 23, 29, 105, 107 Eastern Question 15, 16 n26, 24, 57, 58, 61, al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya 28, 92, 77, 78, 79, 83, 111, 124, 227, 234, 235 93, 217 ecumenical humanism 24, 28 al-Jamʿiyya al-sūriyya li-l-iktisāb al-ʿulūm Edwards, Jonathan 5, 6, 43, 123 wa-l-funūn 172, 235 See American evangelicalism al-Janna 97 Egypt ix, x, 11, 12, 14, 18, 21, 31, 32, 38, 39, 40, al-Jinān 29, 97 47, 58, 60, 68, 69, 80, 81–84, 90, 96, 99, Khuṭba fī ādāb al-ʿarab 78, 92, 172 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 119, 120, 124, Lisān al-Ḥāl 97 128, 129, 130, 132, 136, 138, 170, 181, 207, Muḥit al-muḥit 23, 31, 173, 211, 237 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 216, 217, 218, Nafīr Sūriyya 23, 29, 92, 97, 107 220, 221, 222, 223, 232, 233, 234, 238 Qiṣṣat asʿad al-shidyāq bākūrat sūriyya Erdman, Paul 210, 211 29, 55 n31, 75, 181 Erpenius, Thomas 144, 168, 172 Evangelicals (Protestants) 27, 63, 119, 180, Calhoun, Simeon 15, 152 183, 203, 212, 214, 227, 229, 235, 238 Canning, Stratford 16 n29, 77 Evangelical Church of Beirut 24, 26, 74 See “Eastern Question” Catholics ix, 22, 31, 53, 59, 64, 66, 78, 91, 114, Fakhr al-Dīn 103, 113, 114 117, 125, 180, 203, 314, 229, 233 Farḥāt, Jirmānūs (Maronite Archbishop of See Maronites Aleppo) 116, 169 Chahīne, Jerôme 80, 98, 116–20 Misbā al-ṭlib fi bahth al-maṭlib 116, 169 civil war 20, 27, 30, 61, 64, 74, 75, 83, 84, 93, Fifty-Three Years 1, 7, 37, 55, 152, 153, 155, 156, 96, 105, 117, 180, 181, 194, 228, 229, 232 157, 159, 160, 181, 186, 191, 218 See Druze, Maronites See Henry H. Jessup Index Of Subjects And Names 273

Fisk, Levi 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 95 177, 181, 182, 185, 186 n77, 188, 199, Flügel, Gustave 72, 136 202, 205, 206, 210, 211, 212, 218, 219, France 57, 60, 61, 69, 74, 78, 80, 82, 104, 105, 108 226, 229, 239 See Fifty-Three Years, Received Tradition Gairdner, Temple 208, 216, 219 (RT). Gaon, Saadia 14, 15, 144 1878 Jesuit Bible 11, 213, 214, 237 Goodell, William 7, 47, 64, 70, 71, 86, 101, 111, Jesuits 15, 53, 63, 64, 67, 96, 102 n84, 103, 111, 124, 125, 129, 158, 213, 224 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 214, 216, 219 Gospel of Matthew 147, 148, 151, 184, 187, 192, Jowett, William 42, 45, 54 193 Greater Syria ix, 19, 20, 21, 111, 116, 137 Kachouh, Hikmat 4, 14, 121 Greece 18, 20, 54, 57 Kāram, Yūsuf 54, 116 Greek Catholics 22, 30, 31, 58, 59, 64, 91, 96, Karshuny 140, 144 103, 11, 114, 117, 118, 180, 181, 213, 229, 233 khabar 94, 95, 97 Greek Orthodox 26, 28, 29, 38, 50, 51, 56, 58, Khālidī, Mustafāand ‘Umar Farrukh 8, 59, 60, 64, 66, 68, 91, 96, 99 218, 219 Greenslade, S.L. 212 Khalaf, Ghassān 4, 172, 173, 202, 236 Khalaf, Samir 8, 60, 102, 112, 157, 218 Hahn, Augustus 146, 150, 152, 186 n77 King, Jonas 53, 54, 55, 213 Hallock, Homan 18, 19, 71, 72, 103, 120, 168 n30 See Waḍā‘ Harrison, Paul 210 King James Bible 11, 128, 130, 133, 135 Ḥāṣbayya 26, 28 Hattī Hamayun 106 Lachmann, Karl 132, 133, 147 n81 See Tanzimat Lancasterian method of education 86 Hebrew 18, 32, 34, 57, 128, 130, 134, 136, 137, 139, Latin Catholics ix, 11, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 140, 141, 142, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 222 64, 67, 102 n84, 113, 119, 125, 213, 214 Holy Lands 19, 42, 69, 76, 87, 123, 124, 137, 138 Lazarists 53, 64 Hopkins, Samuel 6, 43, 123, 124 Leil, Sir Charles 35 See American evangelicalism, dinterested See Darwanism benevolence Leipzig 19, 72, 141 Hoskins, Franklin E. 150, 155, 197 Lewis, Edwin 35, 36, 37, 89, 90, 160 Hourani, Albert 39 n107, 80, 98, 103–9 See Darwinism ḤubayshYūsuf (Maronite Patriarch) 55, 129, literati 9, 31, 32, 38, 41, 76, 97, 109, 118, 172, 218, 213 221, 222, 230, 231, 235 Hurter, George 20 London Jews’ Society (LJS) 47, 72, 73, 124 Ḥusayn, Ṭaha 83, 221 London Polyglot 14, 15, 120, 143, 144, 147

Injīl 171, 209 madrasa 23, 84, 104, 105 Istanbul 19, 37, 40, 61, 70, 72, 78, 84 n19, 105, Makdisi, Ussama 8, 24, 28, 29, 55, 65, 86, 102, 124, 214 167, 181, 206, 232, 237 Malta 7, 18, 19, 21, 31, 45, 46, 47, 48, 57, 71, al-Jabartī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 82 72, 73, 96, 109, 124, 125, 137, 143, 167, Jamʿiyyat al-funūn 41, 93, 96, 185, 217 201, 215 Jamʿiyyat al-maqāṣid al-khayriyya al-islāmiyya maqāmāt 30, 32 93 Maronites 20, 22, 48, 50, 55, 58, 59, 60, 64, Jerusalem 6, 14, 42, 43, 46, 47, 71, 124 73, 92, 102 n84, 114, 117, 136, 200, 214, Jessup, Henry H. 1–5, 7, 16, 17, 21, 25, 30, 228, 229 35, 36, 37, 54, 55, 56, 76, 89, 96, 97, See Catholics 98, 99, 102, 111 n53, 144, 146, 147, 149, Maronite College of Rome 24, 58, 102, 114, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156–61, 166, 174, 175, 176, 115, 116, 117, 118 274 Index Of Subjects And Names

Martyn, Henry 11, 15, 201 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 92, 98, Mashāqa, Mīkhāʾīl 22, 119 99, 100, 104, 106, 107, 108, 112, 113 n115, Masoretic text 128, 130 117, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 136, 157, 159, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Adabiyya 35, 96 167, 170, 178, 301, 215, 216, 218, 221, 226, al Maṭbaʿat al-Jamʿiyyat al-funūn 96 227, 229, 230, 231, 234, 235, 236, 237 al-Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿārif 72, 96 See Tanẓīmāt al-Maṭbaʿa al-Sūriyya 72, 96 Oxford 11, 125, 201, 236 al-Maṭbaʿa al-Umūmiyya 96 Middle East Council of Churches ix, 56 Parsons, Levi 43–7, 54, 56 millet 26, 50, 56, 66, 70, 91, 106, 107, 229, 235 Palestine ix, 6, 20, 48, 69, 79, 87, 138 Mission schools 19, 26, 31, 41, 48, 72, 73, 76, Pasha, Ibrāhīm 24, 31, 38, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 81, 91, 96, 110, 112, 113 n115, 119, 158, 167, 66, 69, 73, 83, 100, 106, 118, 119, 138, 228, 179 n63 230, 233, 234 Moravians 124 Persia 15, 18, 20, 57, 70 The Moslem World 209, 210 Peshito 130, 143 Mount Lebanon ix, 24, 30, 31, 38, 47, 58, 59, Polyglot 14, 15, 130, 143, 144, 147 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 83, 88, Postcolonial 17, 231 n10 93, 99, 103, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 207, 1671 Propaganda Fide Bible 15, 143, 168 214, 228 Prudential Committee 6, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, Muḥammad 13, 215 43, 44, 52, 57, 61, 63, 71, 73, 74, 88, 110, al-Muqtaṭaf 37, 72, 88, 89, 90, 211 111, 112, 121, 125, 148, 155, 161, 167, 168, mutaṣarrifiyya 61, 64 180, 229 muṣaḥiḥ 189 See American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) Nahḍa 4, 5, 8, 11, 23, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 39, 41, 58, 73, 76, 80–120, 159, 167, 173, 179 n63, qāʾimaqāmiyya 60 181, 207, 211, 220, 221, 225, 226, 230, 231, al-Qabbānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 41, 43, 93, 96 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237 al-Qāsimī, Jamāl al-Dīn 40 Napoleon, Bonarparte 39, 68, 82, 104, 108, 129 Qur’an 12, 13, 23, 58, 72, 171, 174, 180, 200, 210, nasākh 189 215, 216, 223, 224, 225 Nasrallah, Yūsuf 113–5 Navarino Bay 47, 57 rabb 174, 175 Near East School of Theology (NEST) x, xii, Riḍā, Rashīd 39, 216 xiii, 161 n16, 162, 164, 165, 169, 186, 188 Received Tradition (RT) 3, 4, 5, 17, 35, 139, 148, Negri, Solomon 143, 201 149, 150, 153, 155, 156–61, 166, 167, 175, 177, Nestorians 19, 53, 57 185, 210, 211, 218, 223, 226, 232, 233 New England 17, 34, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 53, See Henry H. Jessup 65, 86, 123, 137, 227, 229, 236 reforms 81, 82 n70, 30, 38, 39, 40, 58, 59, 60, Nida, Eugene 170 n35, 176, 212 72, 79, 80, 82, 84, 90, 91, 93, 105, 106, 107, Nimr, Fāris 72, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95, 97, 119, 211 108, 109, 115, 170, 183, 210, 217, 220, 221, See al-Muqtaṭaf 233, 234, 236, 237 See Ottoman Empire, Tanẓimāt Offley, David 45, 70 Robinson, Edward 17, 19, 20, 69, 72, 73, 79, Oriental Orthodox Churches 6, 15, 23, 43, 87, 134, 136, 137–9, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 52, 53, 113, 118, 138, 157, 158, 178, 206, 212, 148, 149, 169, 170, 174, 178, 186, 216 213, 215, 225, 227, 233 Biblical Researches in Palestine 19, 69, 79 Ottoman Empire ix, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the 18, 24, 27, 28, 30, 38, 40, 42, 45, 47, 52, Adjacent Regions 87 53, 56, 57, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, Rödiger, Emil 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 146 Index Of Subjects And Names 275

Sabat, Nathaniel 11, 15, 201 tashkīl 165, 182, 204 Ṣarrūf, Ya’qūb 72, 68, 89, 95, 97, 119, 211 Temple, Daniel 17 See al-Muqtaṭaf textus receptus 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, Sarkīs, Khalīl 35, 97 146–54, 160, 161, 166, 168, 185, 197, 200, Scrivener, Frederick 134 203, 209, 212 Septuagint (LXX) 128, 130, 132, 136 Thomson, William 91, 101, 151 al-Shidyāq, As‘ad 25, 29, 54, 55, 65, 75, 102 Tibawi, Abdul Latif 7, 26, 28, 47, 61, 75, 76, n83, 181, 213, 232 80, 86, 96, 97, 98, 109–13, 119, 138, 139, al-Shidyāq, Fāris 11, 15, 117, 202, 213, 220, 237 205, 221, 229, 230, 233, 235, 236 al-Shidyāq, Tannūs 75, 116, 118 von Tischendorf, Constantine 14, 132, 133, al-Shihābī, Bashīr 30, 58, 69, 113, 118 136, 144, 147, 149, 150, 186 Shweir 96, 114 Tregelles, Samuel Prideaux 133, 136, 142, 147, Smith, Eli 1, 5, 9, 17–23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 148, 149, 150, 152, 186 31, 32, 33, 40, 44, 45, 47, 57, 62, 66, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 87, 91, 92. 96, 97, 99, ʿulamāʾ 94 103, 117, 123, 125, 129, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139 140, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, Van Dyck, Cornelius ix, 1, 3, 4, 5, 17, 25, 26, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 161, 28, 29, 32, 34–8, 40, 56, 62, 72, 74, 75, 87, 164, 165, 166, 167–74, 175–77, 178, 179, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 107, 120, 121, 123, 180, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 194, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 195, 197, 200, 202, 203, 206, 207, 211, 214, 146–55, 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 174, 216, 221, 222, 223, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236 175, 177–86, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, Majmūʿ fawāʾid 75, 97, 117 194, 195, 197, 200, 203, 207, 211, 218, 219, Researches in Armenia 23 222, 223, 229, 232, 233, 235, 236 Smith, Sarah Lanman 19, 44, 66, 72 Van Dyck, Edward 2, 3 Smryna 45, 46, 68, 71, 72, 168 Vulgate 14, 113, 128, 130, 134, 172, 214, 215 Societé Orientale 92 Society for the Propogation of Christian Waḍā‘ 53 Knowledge (SPCK) 15, 126, 168, 202 Walton, Brian 130, 143 St. JoséphCollege and University 63, 84, 117 Wescott, Brooke Foss 133 Synod of the Nile 208, 213, 241 Whiting, George 57 Syrian Arabic 209, 210 Syrian Nationalism 9, 23, 93 Yale 5, 17, 185, 207 Syrian Protestant College 27, 31, 35, 36, 41, al-Yāzijī, Nāṣīf 5, 17, 23, 28, 29, 30–8, 40, 58, 56, 63, 76, 84, 85, 89, 90, 97, 101–12, 117, 73, 74, 75, 76, 91, 97, 107, 112, 118, 119, 139, 119, 120, 157, 159, 160, 176, 218, 229, 230 152, 155, 158, 161, 164, 167, 172, 173, 174–9, 180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, al-Tabshīr wa-l-istiʿmār fī l-bilād al-ʿarabiyya 200, 209, 214, 220, 222, 223, 230, 231, 232, 8, 218, 219 233, 237 taḥrīf 12, 215 al-Yāzijī, Ibrāhīm 11, 97, 117, 214, 223 al-Ṭahṭawī, RifāʿaRāfīʿ 80, 83, 95, 104–7 See Reforms Zahlé 60, 66, 69, 118 Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz 83, 104, 105 Zaydān, Jurjī 34, 35 n91, 37, 83, 107, 108, 220, Tanẓimāt 38, 41, 60, 79, 80, 104, 106, 108, 221 230 See Ottoman Empire, reforms See al-Muqtaṭaf Targum 130, 136, 140