Four Bible Translators of the 18th & 19th centuries

Article by Kirk Franklin, Wycliffe International

Introduction
‘The Bible is the most remarkable piece of literature this world has ever seen’ (Connolly 1996:7. Being the Word of God, it is foundational to the life and development of the people of God. It is vital for the growth of the church. Yet ensuring that the Bible is available to all people in the language they understand has meant individuals have had to make the commitment to become translators. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the historical and missiological significance of four post-Reformation Bible translators: Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, Hans Egede, Henry Martyn and Adoniram Judson.

The Historical Setting
John Wycliffe was the driving force behind the translation of the first complete Bible into English, using the Latin Vulgate as source text. The work was completed after his death in 1384. Although this translation was into common English and Wycliffe 'fervently believed that the Bible needed no special interpretation even for laymen to understand' (Connolly 1996:77), it was not readily accessible because the printing press had not yet been invented.

Therefore William Tyndale’s English translation of 1525, using the original languages of Greek and Hebrew, and printed on Guttenburg’s press, gave him the title of ‘the father of the English Bible’ (1996:140). The focus of Bible translation took on greater significance after the Reformation of the church when emphasis was placed on making the Bible available to the lay people of the church.

Bartholomew Ziegenbalg (1682-1718)
In 1705, King Frederick IV of Denmark decided that his colony in Tranquebar, south east India, deserved his interest in their spiritual well being (Neill 1986:194). However, he had difficulty finding any missionaries to go from Denmark so he approached the Halle mission in Germany for help (Anderson 1998:761). Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and his colleague Henry Plustchau were the first to respond (Winter & Hawthorn 1981:197).

Ziegenbalg was led by the Holy Spirit and intuitively knew what to do in each cross-cultural situation he faced in India. ‘[W]ith hardly any precedent to guide him… [he] made the right decision, and showed the way that has been followed ever since by the best and most successful among the Protestant missions’ (Neill 1986:194). This seemed even more incredible when one considers he was only twenty-three when he started his ministry.

The local Tamil language proved to be no barrier for Ziegenbalg. His language assistants helped him not only gain a quick grasp of their language but also assisted him in preparing a dictionary, a grammar and other manuscripts. Ziegenbalg ‘thus became a pioneer in the Western study of South Indian culture’ (Anderson 1998:761). His other works included Tamil hymnbooks, catechisms and Christian literature, all printed at the mission’s press at Tranquebar. Furthermore, he completed the Tamil New Testament in only eight years after he arrived. Ziegenbalg was up to the book of Ruth in the Old Testament when he died in 1719. Others took over the completion of the Bible in Tamil (1998:761).

Ziegenbalg believed the vernacular Scriptures needed to be available at the earliest possible stage of mission. This was initially difficult for Ziegenbalg to achieve, as he could not find a place to live or someone to teach him Tamil. However, Ziegenbalg’s strategy was broader than just providing Christian literature. He believed this had to go hand-in-hand with Christian education. The new Christians and their children had to be able to read the Bible for themselves. He also believed the diligent study of the philosophy and culture of the people group was foundational to evangelism and church growth (Winter & Hawthorn 1981:197).

The aim of the Ziegenbalg’s mission was ‘definite and personal conversion’ (Neill 1986:196) and as soon as possible, the indigenous church with its own unique ministry needed to be born. He emphasised the use of the ‘Tamil lyrics in worship’ (Winter & Hawthorn 1981:197). His holistic ministry also included medical work. Ziegenbalg was ahead of his time but eventually his methodology was studied and applied by other generations of missionaries.

Hans (1686-1758) and Paul Egede
Hans Egede ‘was known as the ‘Apostle of Greenland’ (Anderson 1998:196) because of his fifteen years of missionary work (Shannon 2001:n.p.). Though living in Denmark, Egede was born in Norway and therefore was keenly interested in the welfare of a Norse community established in Greenland in the tenth century with a population of 3,000. Being influenced by pietism, Egede felt called to be a missionary to this settlement so he and his wife Gertrude set out for Greenland via Norway. The trip was perilous and they were delayed in Norway for two years. However, undeterred, they eventually arrived in 1721, only to find the colony had totally disappeared and sadly, Egede found no ‘trace of Christian beliefs that he had hoped would have been passed down through the centuries’ (Tucker 1983:76).

Egede though was ‘hard-headed and stubborn’ (1983:75) and did not give up. He received the backing of the Bergen Company and the Danish King to found the town of Gothaab (‘Good Hope’). He became the town’s leader and missionary. However, the colony was financially unviable and the Danish government withdrew their backing of it. Therefore Egede decided to concentrate on preaching the Gospel to the resident Eskimos. Learning the Eskimo language was very difficult for him. It was his young sons Paul and Niels who quickly learnt the language and who ‘proved to be a tremendous asset in his ministry’ (1983:77).

Egede ‘found [the Eskimo language] seemingly deficient in terms that could be used for the expression of the Christian truth’ (Neill 1986:201). He also found the Eskimos to be steeped in animism with the witchdoctors firmly holding reign over the people. He could not understand their worldview and ‘thus was unable to establish common ground between their pagan religion and Christianity’ (1983:77). Therefore, progress was painfully slow. So Egede shifted his focus onto ministering to children as, ‘they had not been steeped in pagan superstitions like their parents’ (1983:77). He attempted translation work of some of the New Testament in 1725 including a catechism. During a smallpox epidemic of 1733, Egede and Gertrude literally ‘wore themselves out in caring for the sick’ (Neill 1986:201) and Gertrude never recovered, dying a year later from poor health. In 1736, Egede returned to Copenhagen, remarried and trained people for missionary service (Tucker 1983:79).

Paul Egede returned to Greenland in 1734 after being schooled in Denmark. He had mastered the Eskimo language as a child and people came from ‘far and near to hear him preach in their own language’ (Neill 1986:201). Many of the Eskimo were baptised and ‘something like a religious revival came into being around Disko Bay’ (Neill 1986:201). After being back in Greenland for ten years, Paul published the Gospels in Eskimo followed in 1760 by a grammar of the language. By 1766, building on the translation work of his father, he had completed the entire New Testament (1986:201). Failing eyesight meant that Paul had to return to Denmark where he died in 1784. Due to his identification with Eskimo culture, largely helped by growing up in their community, his ministry was considered by the other missionaries serving in Greenland to be far more successful than that of his father.

Henry Martyn (1781-1812)
William Carey’s mission work in India marked the beginning of the modern missionary movement. One of Carey’s colleagues was Henry Martyn, an Anglican who arrived in Calcutta in 1806 and settled at Serampore. Martyn was only in India for six years. But during this time he was fully occupied with the task of Bible translation. This was relatively easy for Martyn as he was a scholar of ‘philological training’ (Neill 1986:227) – the historical and comparative aspects in the study of languages (Moore 1997:1007).

Martyn attended Cambridge where he was recognised for his mathematical problem solving skills. Martyn’s analytical mind meant he was well equipped to be a Bible translator and was recognised as an expert in his field. However, Martyn did not just have the identity of an academic but one who engaged in theology-in-philology – the ‘essence of meticulous, sustained Bible translation’ (1996:n.p.). Martyn felt the ‘full strain, and even the venom, of the resistance to meaning implicit in the otherness of words’ (1996:n.p.). Like any scholar and Bible translator, Martyn grappled with finding Indian idioms for key New Testament terms such as ‘redemption’, ‘hope’, ‘grace’ and ‘truth’ (1996:n.p.).

The peers of Martyn often were annoyed by his respect for Indians as he refused to see them as inferior (Anderson 1998:438). He also relied heavily on his Indian translation assistant, Nathaniel Sabat. In just five years, they completed the New Testament in Urdu (Hindi/Hindoostani). This translation appeared shortly before the written Urdu interpretation of the Qur’an and therefore it was significant in impacting the Islamic scholars’ perspective of the Christian faith.

Martyn initially believed his efforts should be directed to followers of Hinduism. He wrote, ‘God will employ me to strike at the heart of Hinduism’ (Anderson 1994:266). However, after he arrived in Dinapore, Sabat, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, influenced Martyn’s study on Islam. He sought out the local mulah and ‘engaged in discussion and debate’ (Anderson 1994:266).

Martyn was not content to just see Urdu speakers with the Scriptures in their own language. He supervised Sabat, his ‘anarchic, phlegmatic scholar aid… [who] was better at Arabic than Persian’ (Kings 1996:n.p.) as he worked on the Arabic and Persian translations. However, Martyn became increasingly despondent about trying to complete these translations outside the areas where the languages were spoken. He needed to return to England because his health was failing with tuberculosis so he travelled through Persia, Damascus and Arabia (Kings 1996:n.p.) checking his translations along the way.

While in Persia, Martyn consulted with scholars and concluded that due to the inadequacies of the Persian translation, he would have to completely retranslate it. Eventually local scholars did approve of it but felt the Arabic translation was defective. Therefore Martyn lived in Shiraz for a year debating and improving the translation with Muslim scholars. Whether he was despised or appreciated by them is difficult to tell. However, some Muslim leaders called him ‘'erdi Khodai' (a man of God)’ (Anderson 1994:267).

Sir Gore Ouseley, the British Ambassador in Tabriz, personally took the Persian New Testament manuscript to St. Petersburg for printing in 1815. Martyn died of poor health in 1812 at Tokat in Turkey, therefore never making it back to England.

Adoniram Judson (1788-1850)
The distinction of ‘America’s first foreign missionaries’ (Tucker 1983:121) goes to Adoniram and Nancy Judson who in 1812 arrived in India. They had set out as Congregational missionaries but on the voyage as they studied scripture they changed their theological understanding of baptism to that of the Baptists. Upon discovering the Judson’s new position, the Baptists in the US quickly formed an overseas mission board for them to serve under.

The Judson’s stay in India was cut short by the East India Company’s prevention of missionary activity. Therefore, they ended up in Burma as the only destination of the available ship they fled on. Thus two years after setting out from the US, the Judson’s ministry could finally begin.

Once settled in Burma, they threw themselves into the study of Burmese, a very difficult language. Nancy quickly became conversant in her new tongue but Adoniram ‘struggled laboriously with the written language, a continual sequence of letters with no punctuation or capitals, and no divisions between words, sentences or paragraphs’ (1983:125).

As soon as he was able, Adoniram began translating the Scriptures into Burmese. But this was a difficult task. The people had ‘no concept of an eternal God who personally cared about mankind’ (1983:125). However, Adoniram persevered and ‘he became in time an acknowledged master’ (Neill 1996:249). He eventually had the assistance of George Hough, a printer by trade, who was sent by God at the right time and began printing the Scripture portions as soon as they were translated.

As Burma was going through civil and military difficulties, the Judsons often had to stay out of sight. They wisely used this time to continue working on the Bible translation. Nancy was a Bible translator in her own right. She completed the books of Daniel and Jonah into Burmese and the first Siamese (Thai) Scriptures – Matthew’s Gospel (Anderson 1998:346).

Ill health and a year and a half of inhumane imprisonment for Adoniram during the Burma-England war further added to the virtually impossible mission the Judsons had set out on. Nancy and baby Maria died of fever while Adoniram was serving in another part of Burma in post-war negotiations. Their death left him destitute for a time. However, he had ‘a solid foundation to his faith that was able to endure even the most trying times of doubt’ (Tucker 1983:129). Post war Burma saw an increased interest in the Gospel and Adoniram welcomed the response. However, he also realised that ‘an even greater job [had] to be done – completing the Burmese Bible’ (1983:129). To this end, he dedicated a full two years, translating between twenty-five and thirty verses a day (1983:129) until the whole Bible was finished in 1834.

The more immediate spiritual fruit of Judson’s ministry was not with the Burmese but rather with the Karens, a tribal group. This was because Judson ‘took under his wing a rough character, by name Ko Tha Byu, a Karen by race’ (Winter and Hawthorn 1981:284). Through Judson’s persistent witness, Byu became a significant Christian who returned to his Karen community and shared the Gospel. Eventually a people movement began and the Karen church is today ‘exercising a decisive influence upon the history of all South-East Asia’ (1981:284).

Missiological Summary
Although they lived 200-350 years ago, missiological issues can be observed from the lives and ministry of these four Bible translators, their families and those who assisted them.

All four endured much personal sacrifice. They were plagued with ill health. Judson and Egede experienced the loss of a spouse or child while Martyn died at a young age while carrying out his task.

Understanding the culture, worldview and religion of the people they served was important for all four. Learning the language was foundational to their work. They all found this study to be hard, exacting work and Egede made little headway while for Ziegenbalg, it seemed to come to him intuitively. Martyn excelled at debating theological issues with Muslim scholars.

The difficult task of making their translations understandable for their audiences was an emphasis for all four. Each had to grapple with the fact that ‘[a]ll translation is interpretation… at every point, the translator is required to interpret, evaluate, judge and choose. Every text is thickly layered with unique and sometimes incommensurable features of form… content,… and context… not to mention the very sounds of the words (Taylor 1998:76). They each found themselves engaged in ‘a force field of tension’ (Yancey 1998:n.p.). On the one side is the issue of maintaining proper meaning. On the other side is the reality that all translation and language contains ‘an element of uncertainty’ (1998:n.p.).

Bible translation was not the only focus of these four men and their families. Evangelism, Christian education, medical work and theological education were part of their ministry with Bible translation being complementary to each. Their methodologies are highly respected by missiologists, mission strategists and Bible translators to this day.

Conclusion
John Wycliffe and William Tyndale’s vision of a translation of the Bible easily understood by the common people, sparked a following of countless others who dedicated their lives, often at great human cost, to this same purpose.

The outcomes of the service of Ziegenbalg, Egede, Martyn and Judson indicates that the availability of vernacular Scriptures has been the foundation for effective cross-cultural mission and fundamental for the health of an indigenous church. ‘The complicated task of translating the Bible… has sometimes been an outgrowth of mission activity [and] sometimes the entering wedge’ (Smalley 1991:21). The ministry of these four men and their families has been both. They leave an important example to all who follow in their footsteps.

Bibliography

Anderson, Gerald H. 1994. Mission legacies: biographical studies of leaders of the modern missionary movement. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Anderson, Gerald H., editor. 1998. Biographical dictionary of missions. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Connolly, W. Kenneth. 1996. The indestructible book. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company.

Kings, Graham. 1996. ‘Foundations for Mission and the Study of World Christianity: The Legacy of Henry Martyn’, in the Westminister College Library, Cambridge. <www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/CLife.htm>

Moore, Bruce, editor. 1997. The Australian concise Oxford dictionary. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Neill, Stephen. 1986. A history of Christian missions. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Shannon, Sara. 2001. ‘Hans Egede, 'The Apostle of Greenland'’ in James Ford Bell Library. <www.bell.lib.umn.edu/Egede/Egede.html>

Smalley, William Allen. 1991. Translation as mission: Bible translation in the modern missionary movement. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.

Taylor, Daniel. 1997. ‘Confessions of a Bible Translator’, in Christianity Today Magazine October 27, 1997 Volume 41, No. 12, 76.

Tucker, Ruth A. 1983. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: a biographical history of Christian mission. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Corporation.

Winter, Ralph D., Hawthorne, Steven C., editors. 1981. Perspectives on the world Christian movement. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library.

Yancey, Philip. 1998. ‘And the Word Was… Debatable’, in Christianity Today Magazine May 1998, Volume 42, No. 6, 88.

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