A Further Study of the Manchu and Chinese Bible Translations by the Jesuit Louis Antoine de Poirot in Qing China

Abstract

Although Bible translation was not considered a priority in the Catholic missions in China through the late Ming to the mid-Qing periods, the missionaries made continuous efforts in publishing a series of abridged or adapted translations of the Bible, a few of them even attempted to translate the whole Bible regardless of the restrictions enforced by the Catholic Church and the Qing government. In the recent decades, scholars paid much attention to the biblical translation done by the French Jesuit missionary Louis Antoine de Poirot (1735-1813), with focused studies of the translation methods and the distinct baihua 白话 (Vernacular Chinese) language in Poirot’s Chinese translation, commonly known as Guxin shengjing 古新圣经, and further extending to bibliographic research on the Manchu version and linguistic analysis of the Manchu-Chinese version. As Poirot’s Manchu and Chinese versions of biblical texts underwent a complex process of dissemination, one still can recognize obvious mistakes and omissions in recent research on the extant Manchu and Chinese manuscript copies of Poirot’s translations. This article examines the history of Poirot’s translations with a bibliographic approach and detailed textual analysis. On the one hand, by tracing all extant Manchu and Chinese copies of Poirot’s translation, including a rare Chinese manuscript that I newly discovered, the article unfolds a full picture of the dissemination of Poirot’s translations of the Bible. On the other hand, based on comparative analysis of the vocabulary and expressions from the Manchu and the Chinese versions, the article reveals their close connections that have been largely neglected in previous research. The overlaps of these two versions are solid evidence to prove Poirot’s use of the already completed Manchu version as a direct reference for his translation of at least part of the Chinese version—especially the books from the Old Testament, rather than the commonly accepted view of the Biblia Vulgata (1592) being the only comparable source text of the Chinese version. With a full-scale study of Poirot’s biblical translations, including the formation, dissemination, and relations between different versions, the article can facilitate more advanced archival research and textual criticism. It also brings forth new perspectives and methods for a Manchu-Chinese comparison, thereby leading to a better understanding and appreciation of the pioneering work done by Catholic missionaries at a time of religious suppression during the mid-Qing period.