Translation of the Bible, Other Religious Literature, and Indigenous Religious Texts: China

Written texts have always played a key role in advancing the Christian doctrine. Since the inception of Christianity, a set of texts has been canonized and defined as “sacred,” forming, subsequently, the Bible. Several other texts have been identified as fundamental to the explanation and transmission of the Christian doctrine. The translation of the Bible and all of the religious literature connected with it has always played an important role in the life of the Catholic Church. Such translations have fostered important debate, even among missionaries. This chapter discusses the most representative volumes of Bible translations in Chinese and of other Catholic texts that have been translated from other languages or directly edited in Chinese. The use of written texts was highly developed in the missionary activities of the Jesuits in China during the seventeenth century. The Jesuits authored many translations and new religious texts, but they never undertook a complete translation of the Bible, attributing more importance to other types of texts. A complete translation was completed only in 1961. The first section of this chapter provides an outline of the attempted and partial translations of the Bible made by Catholics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on the first complete version published in a single volume in 1968 as Sigao Shengjing. This section also describes and analyzes the translations published after 1968. In the second section of the chapter, other religious literature is presented, including both translations of European texts and texts directly written in Chinese by missionaries or Chinese converts.