117-634: Since the arrival of Christianity in China, the Bible has been translated into many varieties of the Chinese language , both in fragments and in its totality. The first translations may have been undertaken as early as the 7th century AD, but the first printed translations appeared only in the nineteenth century. Progress on a modern translation was encumbered by denominational rivalries, theological clashes, linguistic disputes, and practical challenges at least until
234-556: A British general in India, and whose statue is in Trafalgar Square , London. Their daughter Rachel was married to the forestry administrator Sir Dietrich Brandis . When he first met pioneering missionary William Carey 's four boys in 1800, Marshman was appalled by the neglect with which Carey treated them. Aged 4, 7, 12 and 15, they were unmannered, undisciplined, and even uneducated. Marshman, his wife Hannah, and their friend
351-641: A combined linguistic and historiographical approach, Hendel and Joosten date the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible (the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 and the Samson story of Judges 16 and 1 Samuel) to having been composed in the premonarchial early Iron Age ( c. 1200 BCE ). The Dead Sea Scrolls , discovered in the caves of Qumran in 1947, are copies that can be dated to between 250 BCE and 100 CE. They are
468-576: A general committee of revision, by which the translations of the local committees were to be compared, and the version finally determined by the votes of the delegates. The first meeting of the delegates was held in June 1847, consisting of British and American Protestant missionaries, and was aided by Chinese scholars such as Wang Tao . The translation of the New Testament was finished in July 1850 and
585-595: A medical missionary who was stationed at the English Presbyterian Church's Swatow Mission in China, was actively translating the scriptures into the Swatow dialect. Mackenzie, who worked alongside other missionaries such as George Smith and J.C. Gibson, specifically undertook the task of translating the Epistles of John and Jude from the New Testament. A new effort was inaugurated in 1890 to provide
702-463: A meeting of missionaries was held in Hong Kong to discuss the question of whether another revision of the Bible should be produced. A plan was adopted by which the services of every missionary capable of rendering aid were enlisted, and at five stations local committees were formed, to each of which a share of the work of revision was given. From these local committees, delegates were appointed to form
819-469: A place like Alexandria, Egypt. Moreover, in the early centuries of the church, some locales had better scribes than others. Modern scholars have come to recognize that the scribes in Alexandria – which was a major intellectual center in the ancient world – were particularly scrupulous, even in these early centuries, and that there, in Alexandria, a very pure form of the text of the early Christian writings
936-539: A political as well as religious impact. The Gutzlaff Bible, especially the Old Testament, showed a deity who punished nations that did evil and rewarded those that did good. This deity paid close attention to cultural practices as well, including music, food, and marriage customs. The doctrines in the Taiping Bible were accepted by poor and powerless members of mid-century China because they were presented as
1053-408: A profound influence both on Western culture and history and on cultures around the globe. The study of it through biblical criticism has indirectly impacted culture and history as well. The Bible is currently translated or is being translated into about half of the world's languages. Some view biblical texts to be morally problematic, historically inaccurate, or corrupted, although others find it
1170-540: A prospectus (written by Marshman) for a proposed new "College for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian, and other youth in Eastern literature and European science". Thus was born Serampore College , which still continues to this day. At times funds were tight, and after a brief and false rumour alleging misapplication of funds caused the flow of funds being raised by Ward in America to dry up, Carey wrote, Dr. Marshman
1287-715: A restoration of the authentic Chinese religion of classical antiquity, a religion which the emperors and the Confucian imperial system had destroyed. In 1865 a committee was appointed in the Chinese capital to translate the New Testament into Beijing Mandarin. The members of the committee were John Shaw Burdon , of the Church Missionary Society ; Joseph Edkins , of the London Missionary Society; Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky , of
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#17327797707641404-531: A salary of £450 per annum. Marshman studied for at least five years under Ghazarian during which time Ghazarian published several of the gospels. In 1809 he produced the first direct English translation of the Analects , replacing an existing 1724 indirect translation via French and Latin. The work describes itself as the first of two planned volumes, but the second volume does not appear to have ever made it to print. Marshman's November 1809 Dissertation on
1521-467: A special two-column form emphasizing their internal parallelism, which was found early in the study of Hebrew poetry. "Stichs" are the lines that make up a verse "the parts of which lie parallel as to form and content". Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth"). Hebrew cantillation
1638-505: A translation of the New Testament by Griffith John of Hankou . The Delegates version, while attractively literary, was considered too learned to be understood by ordinary Chinese. On the other hand, the Mandarin colloquial version was not in a style which Chinese think should be employed in writing on a sacred subject. John's translation aimed to strike a happy medium between the two. In the midst of these controversies, H. L. Mackenzie ,
1755-507: A translation which was both accurate and appealing. Three versions were planned—two classical Chinese versions and a vernacular Mandarin Chinese version. The project was completed in 1919, culminating in the Chinese Union Version . Lu Zhenzhong translated a version in the 1950s. The 1970s saw a number of new Chinese versions: Today's Chinese Version (TCV), Chinese New Version (CNV), Chinese Living Bible (CLB), which
1872-433: A useful historical source for certain people and events or a source of moral and ethical teachings. The Bible neither calls for nor condemns slavery outright, but there are verses that address dealing with it, and these verses have been used to support it, although the Bible has also been used to support abolitionism . Some have written that supersessionism begins in the book of Hebrews where others locate its beginnings in
1989-549: A variety of disparate cultures and backgrounds. British biblical scholar John K. Riches wrote: [T]he biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously. There are texts which reflect a nomadic existence, texts from people with an established monarchy and Temple cult, texts from exile, texts born out of fierce oppression by foreign rulers, courtly texts, texts from wandering charismatic preachers, texts from those who give themselves
2106-603: A variety of hypotheses regarding when and how the Torah was composed , but there is a general consensus that it took its final form during the reign of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), or perhaps in the early Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books: The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of
2223-509: Is Studium Biblicum . The Bible did not play a primary role in Church preaching in sixteenth-century Europe or in the first Jesuit missions to China ; translating scripture was not a major concern. The Jesuit missionaries in Beijing were granted permission in 1615 to conduct mass in the vernacular and to translate sacred texts, though not into the vernacular but into "erudite language proper to
2340-649: Is a collection of religious texts or scriptures which to a certain degree are held to be sacred in Christianity , Judaism , Samaritanism , Islam , the Baháʼí Faith , and other Abrahamic religions . The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew , Aramaic , and Koine Greek . The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of
2457-460: Is also known as the "Five Books of Moses " or the Pentateuch , meaning "five scroll-cases". Traditionally these books were considered to have been dictated to Moses by God himself. Since the 17th century, scholars have viewed the original sources as being the product of multiple anonymous authors while also allowing the possibility that Moses first assembled the separate sources. There are
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#17327797707642574-416: Is any deviation between two texts. Textual critic Daniel B. Wallace explains that "Each deviation counts as one variant, regardless of how many MSS [manuscripts] attest to it." Hebrew scholar Emanuel Tov says the term is not evaluative; it is a recognition that the paths of development of different texts have separated. Medieval handwritten manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were considered extremely precise:
2691-604: Is defined by what we love". Natural law is in the Wisdom literature, the Prophets, Romans 1, Acts 17, and the book of Amos (Amos 1:3–2:5), where nations other than Israel are held accountable for their ethical decisions even though they don't know the Hebrew god. Political theorist Michael Walzer finds politics in the Hebrew Bible in covenant, law, and prophecy, which constitute an early form of almost democratic political ethics. Key elements in biblical criminal justice begin with
2808-500: Is derived from Koinē Greek : τὰ βιβλία , romanized: ta biblia , meaning "the books" (singular βιβλίον , biblion ). The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of " scroll " and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos , "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician seaport Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus
2925-520: Is no surprise that different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition. That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part "in-house" documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in
3042-669: Is not until the Babylonian Talmud ( c. 550 BCE ) that a listing of the contents of these three divisions of scripture are found. The Tanakh was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew , with some small portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28) written in Biblical Aramaic , a language which had become the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world. The Torah (תּוֹרָה)
3159-459: Is short for biblia sacra "holy book". It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun ( biblia , gen. bibliae ) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. The Bible is not a single book; it is a collection of books whose complex development is not completely understood. The oldest books began as songs and stories orally transmitted from generation to generation. Scholars of
3276-554: Is taken from the masoretic text (called the Leningrad Codex ) which dates from 1008. The Hebrew Bible can therefore sometimes be referred to as the Masoretic Text. The Hebrew Bible is also known by the name Tanakh ( Hebrew : תנ"ך ). This reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings") by using the first letters of each word. It
3393-525: Is the manner of chanting ritual readings as they are written and notated in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. Psalms, Job and Proverbs form a group with a "special system" of accenting used only in these three books. The five relatively short books of Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , the Book of Lamentations , Ecclesiastes , and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot . These are
3510-528: Is thought to have occurred before 68 during Nero's reign. Early Christians transported these writings around the Empire, translating them into Old Syriac , Coptic , Ethiopic , and Latin , and other languages. Bart Ehrman explains how these multiple texts later became grouped by scholars into categories: during the early centuries of the church, Christian texts were copied in whatever location they were written or taken to. Since texts were copied locally, it
3627-838: The American Episcopal Church ; William Alexander Parsons Martin , of the American Presbyterian Mission, and Henry Blodget of the American Board of Foreign Missions. Their task took six years. Schereschewsky, the Episcopal bishop of Shanghai, had the benefit of training in Hebrew as a Jewish youth in Europe before his conversion and American seminary study. His explanations for the translations of controversial terms influenced later versions. The National Bible Society of Scotland sponsored
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3744-823: The Hebrew Bible : the Septuagint , the Masoretic Text , and the Samaritan Pentateuch (which contains only the first five books). They are related but do not share the same paths of development. The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and some related texts, into Koine Greek, and is believed to have been carried out by approximately seventy or seventy-two scribes and elders who were Hellenic Jews , begun in Alexandria in
3861-590: The Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the L ORD God" ( Yahweh ) and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers; in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Neo-Assyrian Empire , followed by
3978-618: The Mediterranean (fourth century to the founding of the Principate , 27 BCE ), the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the extension of Roman rule to parts of Scotland (84 CE). The books of the Bible were initially written and copied by hand on papyrus scrolls. No originals have survived. The age of the original composition of the texts is therefore difficult to determine and heavily debated. Using
4095-670: The Nevi'im ("prophets"), was canonized in the third century BCE. A third collection called the Ketuvim ("writings"), containing psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories, was canonized sometime between the second century BCE and the second century CE. These three collections were written mostly in Biblical Hebrew , with some parts in Aramaic , which together form the Hebrew Bible or "TaNaKh" (an abbreviation of "Torah", "Nevi'im", and "Ketuvim"). There are three major historical versions of
4212-926: The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge print the Chinese Bible; but, after four years deliberation, the project was abandoned. Then, two independent and almost simultaneous efforts were made. The Anglo-Hindoo College, of Fort William, in Calcutta , established in 1800, created a department devoted to the translation of the Scriptures into Asian languages, mainly the Indian vernaculars, but including Chinese. Professor Hovhannes Ghazarian (Lassar), an Armenian , born and educated in Macau , began by translating
4329-411: The creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the biblical patriarchs Abraham , Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel ) and Jacob's children, the " Children of Israel ", especially Joseph . It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in
4446-578: The 17th century; its oldest existing copies date to c. 1100 CE. Samaritans include only the Pentateuch (Torah) in their biblical canon. They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish Tanakh. A Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's Book of Joshua exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle. In
4563-463: The Bible "often juxtaposes contradictory ideas, without explanation or apology". The Hebrew Bible contains assumptions about the nature of knowledge, belief, truth, interpretation, understanding and cognitive processes. Ethicist Michael V. Fox writes that the primary axiom of the book of Proverbs is that "the exercise of the human mind is the necessary and sufficient condition of right and successful behavior in all reaches of life". The Bible teaches
4680-494: The Bible by Chinese titles: the Book of Moses, Zechariah, the Epistles of Saint Paul and Revelation. Despite Nestorian efforts to translate or paraphrase parts of the Bible into Chinese, there has been little evidence to suggest that complete translations of any book of the Bible was undertaken. Protestant missionaries pioneered the translation into local and regional languages, as well as the printing, and distribution of Bibles. In
4797-404: The Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon . Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration , but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of
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4914-591: The Bible into Chinese, credited to Lassar and Marshman, was published. In 1818 he launched the periodical 'Friend of India'. Marshman had an important role in the development of Indian newspapers. He was a keen proponent of the new developments in educational practice and was keen to encourage school teaching in local languages, even though the colonial authorities preferred that lessons be given in English. On 5 July 1818, William Carey , Joshua Marshman and William Ward (another member of their missionary team) issued
5031-510: The Bible, called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning five books ) in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im ). The third collection (the Ketuvim ) contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. " Tanakh " is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible composed of the first letters of those three parts of the Hebrew scriptures:
5148-778: The Bible. A number of biblical canons have since evolved. Christian biblical canons range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, and the 66-book canon of most Protestant denominations, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon, among others. Judaism has long accepted a single authoritative text, whereas Christianity has never had an official version, instead having many different manuscript traditions. All biblical texts were treated with reverence and care by those that copied them, yet there are transmission errors, called variants, in all biblical manuscripts. A variant
5265-741: The Bristol Baptist College. Marshman was appointed a missionary by the Baptist Union of Great Britain . On 29 May 1799 Marshman his wife and their two children set out from Portsmouth for India aboard the ship Criterion . Although there was a threat of a French naval attack the family landed safely at the Danish settlement of Serampore , a few miles north of Calcutta, on 13 October 1799. The couple had 12 children; of these only five were alive when their father died. Their youngest daughter Hannah married Henry Havelock , who became
5382-548: The Characters and Sounds of the Chinese Language was followed, in 1814, by his Clavis Sinica: Elements of Chinese Grammar , the former being the earliest known published work of Romanisation of Chinese for English speakers, pre-dating Davis (1824) and Morrison (1828). The quality of his work, both in principle and execution, was the subject of strident criticism from Davis. In 1817, the first translation of
5499-698: The Former Prophets ( Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים , the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets ( Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים , the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets ). The Nevi'im tell a story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah , focusing on conflicts between
5616-626: The Galilean cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, and in Babylonia (modern Iraq). Those living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee ( c. 750 –950), made scribal copies of the Hebrew Bible texts without a standard text, such as the Babylonian tradition had, to work from. The canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (called Tiberian Hebrew) that they developed, and many of
5733-420: The Gospel of St. Matthew, which he finished in 1807. Ghazarian then moved to Serampore , where the work was continued under the care of Joshua Marshman . The British and Foreign Bible Society published The New Testament in 1813, and the whole Bible in 1822. This was the first known entire printed version of the Scriptures in Chinese. While Marshman's work was progressing at Serampore, Robert Morrison pursued
5850-429: The Hebrew Bible was produced. During the rise of Christianity in the first century CE, new scriptures were written in Koine Greek. Christians eventually called these new scriptures the "New Testament" and began referring to the Septuagint as the "Old Testament". The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work. Most early Christian copyists were not trained scribes. Many copies of
5967-489: The Hebrew Bible was written with spaces between words to aid in reading. By the eighth century CE, the Masoretes added vowel signs. Levites or scribes maintained the texts, and some texts were always treated as more authoritative than others. Scribes preserved and changed the texts by changing the script and updating archaic forms while also making corrections. These Hebrew texts were copied with great care. Considered to be scriptures ( sacred , authoritative religious texts),
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#17327797707646084-446: The Manchu government. Hong then studied the Old and New Testament "long and carefully" under the tutelage of an American Baptist missionary in Hong Kong in 1847. When he returned home, he used Gutzlaff's Bible as the basis of his Authorized Taiping Version of the Bible which was the religious foundation of his movement. Some of his revisions and additions were minor, such as correcting wrongly printed characters and clarifying or improving
6201-462: The Old Testament from the original Hebrew and Aramaic languages in 1935, completing the first draft of the Old Testament in 1944. Unsatisfied with this draft, the next year he recruited Friars Solanus Lee, Antonius Lee, Bernardinus Lee, and Ludovicus Liu and established the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Beijing. However, due to the Chinese civil war in 1948, the friars were forced to move the Studium Biblicum to Hong Kong. After twenty years of effort,
6318-429: The Psalms were paraphrases. Three major Orthodox translations of the New Testament have been produced. The first translation was done by Archimandrite Gury (Karpov), head of the 14th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing (1858–1864). He commenced translation work from the Slavonic in 1859, completing a draft after four years. This was improved through the participation of several Chinese and ultimately published in
6435-401: The Scriptures; and my brethren of the Ultra-Ganges Mission are requested to note down whatever may occur to them as an error or imperfection in the translation. These are sent to the college and preserved, or immediately employed, as may appear best." He hoped that his son, John Robert Morrison , would at some future time revise Morrison and Milne's translation. The death of Morrison frustrated
6552-405: The Septuagint as the basis of the Old Testament . The early Church continued the Jewish tradition of writing and incorporating what it saw as inspired, authoritative religious books. The gospels , Pauline epistles , and other texts quickly coalesced into the New Testament . With estimated total sales of over five billion copies, the Bible is the best-selling publication of all time. It has had
6669-470: The Torah ("Teaching"), the Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("Writings"). The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of the Tanakh, in Hebrew and Aramaic, that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism . The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BC; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible. Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple Judaism , using
6786-427: The airs of sophisticated Hellenistic writers. It is a time-span which encompasses the compositions of Homer , Plato , Aristotle , Thucydides , Sophocles , Caesar , Cicero , and Catullus . It is a period which sees the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire (twelfth to seventh century) and of the Persian empire (sixth to fourth century), Alexander 's campaigns (336–326), the rise of Rome and its domination of
6903-423: The basis of his translation of the New Testament, completed in 1813. He was joined by William Milne , but a few days after his arrival in Macau he was compelled to leave and go to Malacca . Though separated, the two friends co-operated in translating the Old Testament; Milne translated the historical books and the Book of Job ; the other books were translated by Morrison. The task was finished in November, 1819, and
7020-456: The belief in God as the source of justice and the judge of all, including those administering justice on earth. Carmy and Schatz say the Bible "depicts the character of God, presents an account of creation, posits a metaphysics of divine providence and divine intervention, suggests a basis for morality, discusses many features of human nature, and frequently poses the notorious conundrum of how God can allow evil." The authoritative Hebrew Bible
7137-439: The books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most current printed editions. The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud ( Bava Batra 14b–15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles. Joshua Marshman Joshua Marshman (20 April 1768 – 6 December 1837)
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#17327797707647254-421: The books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the fifth century BCE. A second collection of narrative histories and prophesies, called
7371-414: The city of Ur , eventually to settle in the land of Canaan , and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses , who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation
7488-520: The committee of delegates and prepared a separate final version. In the late 1840s, Hong Xiuquan , a Hakka Chinese who had converted to Christianity, started the Taiping Rebellion which came close to replacing the Qing dynasty with a Christian theocracy. Hong had trained in the Chinese classics but failed the examinations to gain government office. Hong had read parts of the Bible in a tract by Gutzlaff's assistant Liang Fa , but these selections did not give any basis for iconoclasm or rebellion against
7605-423: The conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the neo-Babylonian Empire and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem . The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land , and end with the release from imprisonment of
7722-429: The culture of the fourth century Roman empire. The Bible has been used to support the death penalty , patriarchy , sexual intolerance , the violence of total war , and colonialism ; it has also been used to support charity , culture, healthcare and education . The term "Bible" can refer to the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible, which contains both the Old and New Testaments . The English word Bible
7839-420: The early Christian church translated its canon into Vulgar Latin (the common Latin spoken by ordinary people), a translation known as the Vulgate . Since then, Catholic Christians have held ecumenical councils to standardize their biblical canon. The Council of Trent (1545–63), held by the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation , authorized the Vulgate as its official Latin translation of
7956-413: The early part of his life at sea and was engaged in the Hind , a British frigate commanded by Captain Robert Bond , at the 1759 capture of Quebec . Shortly after this, he returned to England and in 1764 married Mary Couzener. She was a descendant of a French family who had sought refuge in England following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; after his marriage he lived in Westbury Leigh and took up
8073-404: The eighteenth century and were made by individual priests on their own initiative. Neither of the two known translations was complete and neither was published. The British Museum acquired a manuscript copy of the first translation, which Robert Morrison had copied and used as a reference for his own work. A translation of the New Testament was begun by Jean Basset , but was only completed down to
8190-410: The end of the Talmudic period ( c. 300 – c. 500 CE ), but the actual date is difficult to determine. In the sixth and seventh centuries, three Jewish communities contributed systems for writing the precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora (from which we derive the term "masoretic"). These early Masoretic scholars were based primarily in
8307-400: The first Old Testament was published in 1954. In 1968 the New and Old Testaments were published in a single volume. John C. H. Wu , a Catholic convert, who served as the Republic of China 's minister to the Vatican, also made a translation of the New Testament and the Psalms into Classical Chinese in 1946. The translations were not direct and often noted to be florid, and his translation of
8424-458: The first being their 1806 translation of the Ramayuna of Valmeeki . In early 1806, he, together with two of his sons and one of Carey's, moved to Serampore to begin training in Chinese under the instruction of Prof. Hovhannes Ghazarian (Johannes Lassar), a Macao-born Armenian, fluent in Chinese, who, together with two Chinese assistants, had been attracted to Fort William by Carey's promise of
8541-594: The first century BCE. Fragments of the Septuagint were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls; portions of its text are also found on existing papyrus from Egypt dating to the second and first centuries BCE and to the first century CE. The Masoretes began developing what would become the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible in Rabbinic Judaism near
8658-597: The first chapter of Hebrews at his death in December 1707. Several manuscripts circulated, one winding up in the British Museum , from where it influenced Robert Morrison's Protestant translation work. Basset's translation was made from the Vulgate and not the original languages. The first Catholic Chinese Bible to be published was started by a young Franciscan friar named Gabriele Allegra , who began translating
8775-487: The first works printed in those languages, as in Bible translations into Taiwanese . A similar need led to the invention of several systems for Braille . Missionaries invented writing systems for tribal and minority peoples. At the beginning of the 20th century, the missionary Samuel Pollard invented a phonetic system for Miao and other minority languages, which is in use over a century later. The Bible The Bible
8892-523: The full Bible in 2010. The Trinitarian Bible Society has published a Chinese translation of the New Testament in 2022 and translation work on the Old Testament is underway. The translation makes use of the same underlying source texts as Robert Morrison 's Chinese translation and the Peking Committee Bible, while maintaining as much continuity with the Chinese Union Version as possible. The only approved Chinese Catholic Bible version
9009-547: The gospels and Paul's letters were made by individual Christians over a relatively short period of time very soon after the originals were written. There is evidence in the Synoptic Gospels, in the writings of the early church fathers , from Marcion , and in the Didache that Christian documents were in circulation before the end of the first century. Paul's letters were circulated during his lifetime, and his death
9126-463: The hand of one for the space of fifty. Yet they were never able meet face to face and compare and revise their work. Morrison's version, like that of Marshman, was intended to be a faithful, literal translation, not an elegant or literary one. Morrison himself made preparation for a revision. In a letter to the Bible Society, he wrote: "I make it my daily study to correct the Chinese version of
9243-659: The last king of Judah . Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover: The Latter Prophets are Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets , counted as a single book. Ketuvim (in Biblical Hebrew : כְּתוּבִים , romanized: Kəṯūḇīm "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the inspiration of Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy . In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in
9360-467: The late third century BCE and completed by 132 BCE. Probably commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus , King of Egypt, it addressed the need of the primarily Greek-speaking Jews of the Graeco-Roman diaspora. Existing complete copies of the Septuagint date from the third to the fifth centuries CE, with fragments dating back to the second century BCE. Revision of its text began as far back as
9477-526: The latest books collected and designated as authoritative in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the second century CE. The books of Esther , Daniel , Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles share a distinctive style that no other Hebrew literary text, biblical or extra-biblical, shares. They were not written in the normal style of Hebrew of the post-exilic period. The authors of these books must have chosen to write in their own distinctive style for unknown reasons. The following list presents
9594-796: The leaders of the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion an apocalyptic vision of social justice on which to base their claims. Christianity was introduced to China by the Church of the East , also called the Nestorian Church, in the 7th century and they appear to have begun translating the Bible immediately. The Xi'an Stele , erected by the Nestorians in 781, refers to "the translation of the Scriptures" ( 經 , ' classics ') without specifying what they were. Another Christian Chinese document from Dunhuang , Zūnjīng ( 尊經 ), lists several books of
9711-616: The literati". Jesuit superiors in Beijing, however, determined that it would be more useful to translate other works than the Bible, though they made translations of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, a catechism based on the Bible, and a life of Christ. Chinese could therefore have a reasonable knowledge of Biblical matters even though there was no published translation of the book itself. The first translations were not until
9828-452: The most authoritative documents from which to copy other texts. Even so, David Carr asserts that Hebrew texts still contain some variants. The majority of all variants are accidental, such as spelling errors, but some changes were intentional. In the Hebrew text, "memory variants" are generally accidental differences evidenced by such things as the shift in word order found in 1 Chronicles 17:24 and 2 Samuel 10:9 and 13. Variants also include
9945-525: The nature of authority and the sharing of power, animals, trees and nature, money and economics, work, relationships, sorrow and despair and the nature of joy, among others. Philosopher and ethicist Jaco Gericke adds: "The meaning of good and evil, the nature of right and wrong, criteria for moral discernment, valid sources of morality, the origin and acquisition of moral beliefs, the ontological status of moral norms, moral authority, cultural pluralism, [as well as] axiological and aesthetic assumptions about
10062-443: The nature of valid arguments, the nature and power of language, and its relation to reality. According to Mittleman, the Bible provides patterns of moral reasoning that focus on conduct and character. In the biblical metaphysic, humans have free will, but it is a relative and restricted freedom. Beach says that Christian voluntarism points to the will as the core of the self, and that within human nature, "the core of who we are
10179-404: The nature of value and beauty. These are all implicit in the texts." However, discerning the themes of some biblical texts can be problematic. Much of the Bible is in narrative form and in general, biblical narrative refrains from any kind of direct instruction, and in some texts the author's intent is not easy to decipher. It is left to the reader to determine good and bad, right and wrong, and
10296-590: The next ten to twelve years. Although nominally the work of the above-named committee, Medhurst did the lion's share, and he did a final revision in 1836. He also took part in the translation of the Old Testament published by Gutzlaff in 1840. In addition to translating the Old Testament, Gutzlaff modified the version of the New Testament which he and Medhurst had prepared jointly; and he revised and printed some twelve editions of it. The American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions requested Josiah Goddard , one of their missionaries, revise Marshman's translation. He published
10413-551: The nineteenth century, missionaries translated the Bible and taught it in churches and colleges, providing a resource to spread knowledge of the Christian religion. By the twentieth century, Chinese scholars and preachers studied and quoted the Bible, contributing to distinctive forms of Chinese Christianity. The early Protestant translations were made by individuals, sometimes in consultation with others or using manuscript translations from earlier workers. The first Protestant effort
10530-527: The notes they made, therefore differed from the Babylonian. These differences were resolved into a standard text called the Masoretic text in the ninth century. The oldest complete copy still in existence is the Leningrad Codex dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity, which was rediscovered by European scholars in
10647-407: The oldest existing copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible of any length that are not fragments. The earliest manuscripts were probably written in paleo-Hebrew , a kind of cuneiform pictograph similar to other pictographs of the same period. The exile to Babylon most likely prompted the shift to square script (Aramaic) in the fifth to third centuries BCE. From the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
10764-427: The path to understanding and practice is rarely straightforward. God is sometimes portrayed as having a role in the plot, but more often there is little about God's reaction to events, and no mention at all of approval or disapproval of what the characters have done or failed to do. The writer makes no comment, and the reader is left to infer what they will. Jewish philosophers Shalom Carmy and David Schatz explain that
10881-425: The plan, for the son, having succeeded to his father's office as Government translator, did not have time to devote to the work. The next translation was made by Walter Henry Medhurst , Karl Gutzlaff , and Elijah Coleman Bridgman . John R. Morrison devoted what time he could spare from his official duties. These men completed the New Testament in 1835: it would be the chief version used by Protestant groups for
10998-417: The printer William Ward, took the boys in tow. Together they shaped the boys as Carey pampered his botanical specimens, performed his many missionary tasks and journeyed into Calcutta to teach at Fort William College. They offered the boys structure, instruction and companionship. To their credit – and little to Carey's – all four boys went on to useful careers. Marsman's son, John Clark Marshman (1794–1877),
11115-663: The publication of the Protestant Chinese Union Version in 1919, which became the basis of standard versions in use today. Although the motive for making translations was to spread the Gospel, there were further consequences. Access to the Bible in their own language made it easier for Chinese to develop forms of Christianity not dependent on missionaries and foreign churches. Translations designed to be read aloud were significant not only for Christian believers, but for Chinese who wanted models for writing in
11232-418: The revised version of the New Testament in 1853, fourteen years after his arrival in China. At his death it was found that he had made only a little progress with the Old Testament, and his work was continued by William Dean , of the same mission, residing at Bangkok . A further revision of Marshman's New Testament was made by an English Baptist missionary, T. H. Hudson, and published in 1867. In August 1843,
11349-654: The same project in Canton . Morrison, sponsored by the London Missionary Society , had arrived in 1807 as the first Protestant missionary to China. The translation of the Scriptures became his primary task because public preaching of the Gospel in the Chinese Empire was prohibited. Before leaving England he had made a copy of the manuscript Harmony of the Gospels referred to above, which he used as
11466-419: The seventh century, the first codex form of the Hebrew Bible was produced. The codex is the forerunner of the modern book. Popularized by early Christians, it was made by folding a single sheet of papyrus in half, forming "pages". Assembling multiples of these folded pages together created a "book" that was more easily accessible and more portable than scrolls. In 1488, the first complete printed press version of
11583-512: The style. Hong altered other passages to fit his own theological and moral teachings and enhance the moral authority of the scriptures for his Chinese audience. In the Taiping Bible, for instance, at Genesis 27:25 God's favored people did not drink wine. The daughters of Lot did not intoxicate him and have sexual relations with him in order to continue their family line, as in Genesis 38:16-26. The Taiping Bible, argues historian Thomas Reilly, had
11700-472: The substitution of lexical equivalents, semantic and grammar differences, and larger scale shifts in order, with some major revisions of the Masoretic texts that must have been intentional. Intentional changes in New Testament texts were made to improve grammar, eliminate discrepancies, harmonize parallel passages, combine and simplify multiple variant readings into one, and for theological reasons. Bruce K. Waltke observes that one variant for every ten words
11817-402: The summer of 1864. An updated version of the New Testament was prepared through the work of Archimandrite Flavian (Gorodecky), the head of the 16th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (1879–1883). Flavian introduced the use of the Chinese language in services and the work to update Gury's translation of the New Testament in 1884. The update included short explanatory notes, particularly connected with
11934-489: The trade of a weaver. Marshman's family were poor and could give him little education. In 1791, Joshua married Hannah Shepherd and in 1794 they moved from Westbury Leigh to Bristol . There they joined the Broadmead Baptist Church . Baptists at that time were dissenters who separated from the Church of England . Marshman taught in a local charity school supported by the church. He also studied at
12051-519: The translation of theological terminology. Additionally, it was reported that the update to Gury's translation was partly done with the help of the Protestant translation of the Bible done by Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky . The third major Orthodox translation of the New Testament was done as part of the 18th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, led by Innokenty (Figurovsky), Bishop of Pereyaslav, later Metropolitan of Beijing and China. Again updating
12168-418: The twenty-first century are only in the beginning stages of exploring "the interface between writing, performance, memorization, and the aural dimension" of the texts. Current indications are that writing and orality were not separate so much as ancient writing was learned in a context of communal oral performance. The Bible was written and compiled by many people , who many scholars say are mostly unknown, from
12285-511: The vernacular. Since regional languages or dialects could not be adequately written using Chinese characters , phonetic systems and type faces had to be invented; Christian texts were often the first works to be printed in those languages. The task of translation motivated missionaries to study Chinese closely, contributing to the development of Sinology . The Bible, especially the Old Testament , also offered Chinese revolutionaries such as
12402-428: The work of Gury, the translation was published in 1910 including more commentaries and using the language closer to vernacular Chinese . Since regional languages or dialects could not be adequately written using Chinese characters , missionaries and church leaders invented systems of phonetic transcription, syllabaries , or romanizations in order to write and print Christian texts and Bibles. These were in most cases
12519-668: Was a Baptist missionary in Bengal , India from 1799 until his death. He was a member of the Serampore trio with William Carey and William Ward . The trio founded Serampore University , many primary and secondary schools, and translated and published a large number of works, including translations of the Bible . Marshman was "an accomplished scholar, linguist and theologian and was a prolific author and polemicist". His mission involved social reforms and intellectual debates with educated Hindus such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy . Joshua Marshman
12636-563: Was also to become an important part of the missionary work at the college; he was also an official Bengali translator and published a Guide to the Civil Law which, before the work of Macaulay, was the civil code of India; he also wrote a "History of India" (1842). Like Carey with whom he had come to work, Marshman was a talented and gifted scholar. Marshman and Carey together translated the Bible into many Indian Languages as well as translating much classical Indian literature into English,
12753-605: Was born on 20 April 1768 in Britain at Westbury Leigh , Wiltshire , England . His father, John Marshman was a weaver. Of his family little is known, except that they traced their descent from an officer in the Army of Cromwell , one of a band who, at the Restoration, relinquished, for conscience-sake, all views of worldly aggrandisement, and retired into the country to support himself by his own industry. His father John passed
12870-597: Was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books". The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that John Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew , delivered between 386 and 388 CE) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ( tà biblía tà hágia , "the holy books"). Medieval Latin biblia
12987-776: Was later replaced by the Chinese Contemporary Bible (CCB), but of these only the TCV received official approval in the PRC and was printed inside China. The main version in use among Protestants in China remains the Chinese Union Version (CUV). The China Christian Council approved a revision of the CUV in 2003, and the revised CUV New Testament was published by the state owned Amity Press in Nanjing in 2006, and
13104-714: Was made around 1800 by William Willis Moseley , of Daventry, in Northamptonshire, England. He found, in the British Museum , a manuscript translation in Chinese of a Harmony of the four Gospels, the Acts , and all of Paul's Epistles . He then published A Memoir on the Importance and Practicability of Translating and Printing the Holy Scriptures in the Chinese Language; and of circulating them in that vast Empire . The Archbishop of Canterbury recommended that
13221-686: Was noted in the recent critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, leaving 90% of the Hebrew text without variation. The fourth edition of the United Bible Society's Greek New Testament notes variants affecting about 500 out of 6900 words, or about 7% of the text. The narratives, laws, wisdom sayings, parables, and unique genres of the Bible provide opportunity for discussion on most topics of concern to human beings: The role of women, sex, children, marriage, neighbours, friends,
13338-594: Was preserved, decade after decade, by dedicated and relatively skilled Christian scribes. These differing histories produced what modern scholars refer to as recognizable "text types". The four most commonly recognized are Alexandrian , Western , Caesarean , and Byzantine . The list of books included in the Catholic Bible was established as canon by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. Between 385 and 405 CE,
13455-495: Was published with the approval of the delegates, and became known as Delegates' Version . As the translation of the Old Testament commenced, there was division in the committee, resulting in two versions. One was completed in 1853 by the English missionaries Medhurst, Stronach, and Milne, and has been called the Delegates' Version . The American missionaries Elijah Coleman Bridgman and Michael Simpson Culbertson withdrew from
13572-412: Was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses. The commandments in the Torah provide the basis for Jewish religious law . Tradition states that there are 613 commandments ( taryag mitzvot ). Nevi'im ( Hebrew : נְבִיאִים , romanized : Nəḇī'īm , "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups,
13689-448: Was then revised by Morrison. It was printed from wood blocks and published, in 21 volumes, in 1823. The British and Foreign Bible Society contributed more than 10,000 pounds for the translation, production, and circulation of this and successive editions. Marshman remarked that he and Robert Morrison profited greatly by each other's labors; the translation would be brought to as great perfection in twenty years as they might have been in
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