History of the Bible in China by Marshall Broomhall

Marshall Broomhall provides a history of the translation of the forty versions of the Bible that were available in China by 1934. My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy of this public domain title for digitisation.

Marshall Broomhall [1866-1937], The Bible in China. London: The China Inland Mission, 1934. Hbk. pp.190. [Click here to visit the download page]

Contents

• Foreword
• Our Obligations
• By Way of Introduction

Part 1: The Bible in Preparation

• Nestorian Pioneers
• Under the Great Khans
• In the Footsteps of Xavier
• A New Force in Old China
• Morrison and Marshman
• The Delegates; Version
• Gutzlaff and the Taiping Rebels
• The People’s Bible
• Unon Versions
• Chinise Dialects
• For the Tribes
• The Scriptures in Manchu
• Among the Mongols

Part 2: The Bible in Action

• The Colporteur’s Task
• The Colporteur’s Reward
• Wise unto Salvation
• The Power of the Word

Part 3: The Bible a Uniting Force

• A Great Fellowship

Appendices

• The Nestorian Tablet
• List of Versions and Translations

Foreword

It is one hundred years since Robert Morrison died in China, and one hundred and twenty years since his Chinese translation of the New Testament was published. It is not unfitting that the centenary of Morrison’s death should see the remarkable story of the Bible in China published. It seems somewhat strange that this has not been done before. And now, by one of those unexpected coincidences which do occur, two records are being issued at the same time. On the very day on which we write this foreword-the whole book being finished-we have received from China a copy of the Rev. A. J. Garnier’s brochure of some eighty pages, entitled Chinese Versions of the Bible. Happily the two efforts do not clash.

Mr. Garnier’s concise pamphlet has been prepared, as his preface states, to be the basis of a Chinese Appendix to his translation of Professor G. Milligan’s The New Testament and its Transmission…

p.vii.