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The Mandarin Union Version a Chinese Biblical Classic Translation

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The Mandarin Union Version a Chinese Biblical Classic Translation The Mandarin Union Version a Chinese Biblical Classic Translation Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 05:11:58, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186320000140 Introduction by Guest Editor George Kam Wah Mak The Mandarin Union Version, a Classic Chinese Biblical Translation GEORGE KAM WAH MAK Published in , the Mandarin Union Version (Guanhua Heheben 官話和合本)was produced by western Protestant missionaries with the assistance of Chinese Protestants during the last two decades of the Qing 清 dynasty (-) and the early years of the Republican era (-) in China. Since its publication, the Mandarin Union Version has become the most popular and influential translation of the Bible in the Chinese-speaking world. To many Chinese Protestants, it is the Chinese Bible or the ‘Authorised Version’ of the Chinese Bible, a status similar to that the King James Version used to enjoy among English-speaking Protestants. The Mandarin Union Version could also be compared to the King James Version in terms of influence on the target language and its literature, considering the Mandarin Union Version’s contribution to the development of Mandarin as the national language of China and its impact on the formation of modern Chinese literature.1 Prepared in commemoration of the centenary of the Mandarin Union Version, this special issue covers a range of topics related to its translation, publishing, and reception and use by Protestants and non-Protestants in the Chinese-speaking world, shedding light on its path to becoming a classic Chinese biblical translation, which succeeds in avoiding oblivion, and of which the “exist- ence, historical value and artistic merits continue to be recognized, and remembered”.2 In May , the second General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China was held in Shanghai (hereafter referred to as the Shanghai Conference ). The conference felt the need of a Chinese Bible that would be generally accepted by all Protestant denomi- nations in China in order to solve the problems arising from rival biblical translations 1George Kam Wah Mak, Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China (Leiden and Boston, ); Irene Eber, Sze-kar Wan, and Knut Walf (ed.), Bible in Modern China: The Literary and Intellectual Impact (Sankt Augustin, ); Marián Gálik, Influence, Translation, and Parallels: Selected Studies on the Bible in China (Sankt Augustin, ); John T. P. Lai, Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China (Leiden and Boston, ). 2Christopher Rundle, “Classic Translations”,inEncyclopedia of Literary Translation in English, (ed.) Olive Classe (London and Chicago, ), Volume ,p.. JRAS, Series , , (), pp. – © The Royal Asiatic Society doi:./S Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 05:11:58, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186320000140 George Kam Wah Mak produced by various missionary translators. It was resolved that the Union Version (Heheben 和合本) of the Chinese Bible should be produced in three different forms of the Chinese language, i.e. Easy Wenli (qian wenli 淺文理, which denoted a simplified form of literary Chinese), High Wenli (shen wenli 深文理, i.e. literary Chinese) and Mandarin (guanhua 官話).3 An executive committee was elected by the conference for each of the three Chin- ese Union Versions to select a committee of competent translators and superintend their trans- lation work. In total, American and British Protestant missionaries from different denominations are identified as translators of the Mandarin Union Version, even though not all of them were engaged in the translation committee at the same time, and their involvement was different in degree.4 The translation work of the Mandarin Union Version was carried out in the following man- ner: Each missionary translator collaborated with his Chinese co-worker to prepare his draft of an assigned part of the Bible. The completed draft was sent to his colleagues for criticisms and suggestions. Committee meetings were held to review the drafts and finalise the translated texts.5 This was to ensure a careful process of checks and balances, which would help enhance the likelihood of accuracy. The translators’ first fruits came out in , when a tentative edi- tion of the Acts of the Apostles was jointly published by the three foreign Bible societies giving patronage to the translation work, i.e. the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), the American Bible Society (ABS) and the National Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS, now the Scottish Bible Society). The complete New Testament translation was first published in in one volume, and the complete translation of the whole Bible came out in .6 The Mandarin Union Version represented a milestone in the history of Chinese Protestant Bible translation. The Shanghai Conference resolved that the Greek and Hebrew text- ual bases of all the three Union Versions were the Greek and Hebrew texts underlying the English Revised Version, which was published in as the officially authorised revision of the King James Version. Since the Hebrew text underlying the English Revised Version was the Masoretic Text, the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament of the day, its adop- tion was understandable.7 However, the decision to adopt the Greek text underlying the English Revised Version was revolutionary, because it meant that the New Testament of the Union Versions would be based on a Greek text representing the latest results of nineteenth-century New Testament textual criticism, instead of the Textus Receptus, 3Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China, Held at Shanghai, May -, (Shang- hai, ), pp. xl-xliii. However, the China Centenary Missionary Conference, which was held in , decided that only one Wenli Union Version of the Chinese Bible would eventually be produced and thus one Wenli Old Testament would suffice. In the first edition of the Wenli Union Version, which was published in , the New Testament is that of the High Wenli Union Version. See Records. China Centenary Missionary Conference Held at Shang- hai, April to May , (Shanghai, )p.; Minutes of Editorial Sub-Committee, th April , the Archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS Archives), BSA/C//-. The archival materials of the BFBS are used with permission of the Bible Society’s Library, Cambridge University Library. 4The names of these missionaries and the missionary societies they represented are listed in Mak, Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China,p.. 5Jost Oliver Zetzsche, The Bible in China: The History of the Union Version or The Culmination of Protestant Missionary Bible Translation in China (Sankt Augustin, ), pp. -, -, -. 6Mak, Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China,p.. 7“Revisers’ Preface”, The Parallel Bible: The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated Out of the Original Tongues: Being the Authorised Version Arranged in Parallel Columns with the Revised Version (Oxford, ), p. vii. The Masoretic Text was also adopted by the Old Testament translators of the King James Version as the basis of their work. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 05:11:58, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186320000140 Introduction which had been used by Bible translators as the Greek textual basis for their New Testament translations since the sixteenth century, but had a lower critical worth and reliability as the closest approximation of the original text of the New Testament.8 Although the translators of the Mandarin Union Version exercised the discretion granted to them by the Shanghai Conference to follow the reading of the Textus Receptus on a few occasions, such as the ending of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew (:), the Greek text underlying the English Revised Version proved to be the major Greek textual basis for the New Testa- ment of the Mandarin Union Version.9 This gave the Mandarin Union Version, as well as the other Union Versions, a place among the earliest Chinese Bible versions of which the New Testament translations largely follow the readings deviating from the Textus Receptus. At the same time, the translators of the Mandarin Union Version stood on the shoulders of giants, working on the basis of the work achieved by earlier generations of Mandarin Bible translators. According to the resolution of the Shanghai Conference on the translation of the Mandarin Union Version, its translators, in addition to consulting the Greek and Heb- rew biblical texts, “shall make constant and careful use” of the following Mandarin Bible versions: The Nanking Version (/, New Testament), the Peking Version (, New Testament), Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky’s(-) Mandarin Old Testa- ment () and Griffith John’s(-) Mandarin New Testament ().10 Irene Eber’s and Lihi Yariv-Laor’s textual studies suggest that the Old Testament of the Mandarin Union Version was much indebted to Schereschewsky’s Mandarin Old Testament, in view of their similarities in style and the use of terms.11 As for the New Testament, based on his textual analysis of Matthew :- and the first
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