New Testament published in Manchu language / Православие.Ru

July 11, 2011

The New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ, published serially in 1822, and the complete New Testament published in 1835, was translated into the Manchu language by Stepan Vaciliyevich Lipovtsov. A two volume copy of the New Testament in Manchu is held at the State Library of New South Wales, Australia under call numbers G 7 V22 v.1 and G 7 V23 v.2. This copy was published on or before 1869 (as it bears the NSW Public Library 1869 stamp throughout the NT), reports the website, Orthodox China.

Digital photo reproduction of the above copy has been graciously undertaken and is copyrighted by Dr Kenny Wang, PhD, BA, Lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Western Sydney. Volumes one and two in PDF and in jpeg format are freely distributable, provided the images are not altered in anyway and that the complete NT, not just sections/parts of it are intact, and the photoreproduction copyright is acknowledged.

Another copy of the NT in Manchu is housed in Dalian Library. According to the journal article "Studies of the New Testament in Manchu Stored in Dalian Library" by XUE Lian, that copy was reprinted at a later year from the 1920s, but it seems that other than the reprint date, everything else is the same, including the breakdown into 8 parts, as the copy from the NSW State Library mentioned above. Xibe, a mutually intelligible dialect of the Manchu language, is still used in Xinjiang province of China by the Sibe minority group. It has been reported that an elderly lady from Xinjiang who couldn't read Chinese but was taught from her youth to read and write the Manchu language has already benefited with a photocopy of this Bible translation.

Volunteers are needed to transcribed or OCR the images into electronic text which allows it to be searchable. If you are interested in helping with this initiative, please email mitrophan @ orthodox.cn.