The Bible in African and Asian
Christianity
From 27-29 June I attended a conference
on this very important topic at the Creative Campus of Liverpool Hope
University.
Professor Daniel Jeyaraj who organised and led the event is
Director of the Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian
Christianity at Hope. Professor Andrew Walls, a Methodist, is highly respected
internationally as an expert on mission history and theology. Attendees came
from nineteen countries.
The Jerusalem Bible translation appeared
fifty years ago so we began with an excellent evening lecture by Dom Henry
Wansborough who surveyed the history of English Bible translations and
explained how the Jerusalem Bible came about. He outlined its strengths and
weaknesses and suggested areas for improvement and updating. For example, JB Old
Testament uses Yahweh for the divine
name but is likely to be replaced by LORD as in most other modern versions.
Asia and Africa occupied us for the
next day and a half. Professor Walls gave two fascinating sessions on Bible
translation and interpretation in early nineteenth century China with the
pioneer work of Robert Morrison and the extreme way the Bible was used by some
of the Taiping revolutionaries. Other speakers described how the famous Chinese
evangelists, Wang Mingdao and John Sung handled the Bible in their mid
twentieth century ministries. Professor Jeyaraj who comes originally from South
India told the story of the Tamil Bible.
Bible translation in Africa was covered
from many angles for the rest of the conference. The original use of the Bible
in African Independent churches was vividly described by several speakers. Other
scholars dealt with Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana. We also heard about the
history and present situation of Biblical studies in Egypt. A Ghanaian
Methodist minister now serving in South Wales gave expert evaluations of
translations of Amos in Ghanaian languages. Altogether, we listened to a rich
variety of contributions.
My presentation was on Edwin Smith
(1876-1957), a prolific author
who had been a Bible translator in Africa and in the 1930s directed
Bible translation at the British and Foreign Bible Society. Smith held that
translations should be faithful to the original languages, understandable to
the reader and beautiful in style, a difficult and challenging art. He
emphasised the recipients need to understand and experimented with versions in
Simplified and Basic English for new readers. His approach helped to open the
way for the reader friendly translations that we enjoy today. The talk was well
received and I hope it will appear in due course on the Methodist Heritage
website.
There were excellent meals and welcome
breaks for tea and coffee so we had plenty of time for networking and
interaction with specialists from many places. After it closed I had a couple
of hours before my train and visited the Metropolitan Cathedral, a remarkable
building, modern, circular and with excellent use of light, especially from the
central lantern window.
