The Griffith New Testament (CMNGJN)

Overview

Griffith John (楊格非) reached Shanghai in 1855 to serve the London Missionary Society and settled at Hankou (Hankow), where he ministered for more than fifty years. Concerned that the existing classical Chinese translations were inaccessible to readers in the Yangtze valley, he proposed Bible editions in easy-to-read Chinese at the 1877 General Missionary Conference in Shanghai. Although he had not intended to carry the work forward himself, he completed a translation of the four Gospels, published in 1884, and went on to produce an Easy Wenli New Testament in 1885 and a Mandarin New Testament in 1889; Psalms and Proverbs followed in Mandarin by 1890. Working from the Greek as a blueprint, he consulted earlier Chinese versions including the Beijing (Peking) Committee Mandarin translation, the Commissioned Translations, and the translations of Pizhiwen and Kelongcun. Some critics regarded the result as a free translation, or suspected that John had merely rendered the Beijing Mandarin translation into simpler Chinese. He cooperated with missionaries from Britain, the United States, and Germany to revise the text.

Language and People

Mandarin Chinese (ISO 639-3: cmn) is spoken by approximately 918,000,000 people in China. [Glottolog: mand1415]

Publishing and Organizations

Published by United Bible Societies.

References