The Bible as Chinese Literature :Medhurst ,Wang Tao ,and the Delegates''V ersion
作为中国文学之《圣经》: 麦都思、王韬与“《圣经》委办本”

Probably the largest translation enterprise undertaken in China in the nineteenth century was that of Bible translation .Between the 1820s and the 1860s five full translations of the Bible into Chinese were completed and published by the Protestant missions .The Delegates'version which is the subject of this article,involved scores of missionaries and their Chinese assistants .Fierce controversies broke out among the missionaries about methods of translation,particularly about absolute fidelity to the Hebrew and Greek texts versus the need to make the translation acceptable to Chinese readers .A secondarycontroversyconcerned the level of classical Chinese that should be used (translations into vernacular Chinese were not made until later) : should a standard classical Chinese be used,one that educated readers would accept,or a simplified form that the less literate would understand.The champion of acceptabilityand the use of a standard classical Chinese was the missionary Walter Henry Medhurst,who hoped to produce a translation of the Bible that would qualify as Chinese literature . In the Delegates'version,which took from 1843 to1854 to complete,Medhurst at last had the opportunity to put his principles into practice . The essential requirement was to find Chinese collaborators who could put the workof the missionariesandtheirassistantsintoacceptableChineseprose .Hisfirst choice wasWang Changgui,a teacher of the Chinese classics,who died before the New Testament could be finished . Medhurst then engaged Wang Changgui's young son,Wang Tao,as his replacement,and Wang Tao helped to complete the Bible as well as to write tracts and revise a hymnbook . This experience as translator tells us much about the early development of his thinking .