Published in 1919, the Mandarin Union Version (Guanhua Heheben 官話和合本) was produced by western Protestant missionaries with the assistance of Chinese Protestants during the last two decades of the Qing 清 dynasty (1644-1911) and the early years of the Republican era (1912-1949) in China. Since its publication, the Mandarin Union Version has become the most popular and influential translation of the Bible in the Chinese-speaking world. To many Chinese Protestants, it is the Chinese Bible or the ‘Authorised Version’ of the Chinese Bible, a status similar to that the King James Version used to enjoy among English-speaking Protestants. The Mandarin Union Version could also be compared to the King James Version in terms of influence on the target language and its literature, considering the Mandarin Union Version's contribution to the development of Mandarin as the national language of China and its impact on the formation of modern Chinese literature.Footnote ¹

Prepared in commemoration of the centenary of the Mandarin Union Version, this special issue covers a range of topics related to its translation, publishing, and reception and use by Protestants and non-Protestants in the Chinese-speaking world, shedding light on its path to becoming a classic Chinese biblical translation, which succeeds in avoiding oblivion, and of which the “existence, historical value and artistic merits continue to be recognized, and remembered”.Footnote ²

In May 1890, the second General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China was held in Shanghai (hereafter referred to as the Shanghai Conference 1890). The conference felt the need of a Chinese Bible that would be generally accepted by all Protestant denominations in China in order to solve the problems arising from rival biblical translations produced by various missionary translators. It was resolved that the Union Version (Heheben 和合本) of the Chinese Bible should be produced in three different forms of the Chinese language, i.e. Easy Wenli (qian wenli 淺文理, which denoted a simplified form of literary Chinese), High Wenli (shen wenli 深文理, i.e. literary Chinese) and Mandarin (guanhua 官話).Footnote ³ An executive committee was elected by the conference for each of the three Chinese Union Versions to select a committee of competent translators and superintend their translation work. In total, 16 American and British Protestant missionaries from different denominations are identified as translators of the Mandarin Union Version, even though not all of them were engaged in the translation committee at the same time, and their involvement was different in degree.Footnote ⁴

The translation work of the Mandarin Union Version was carried out in the following manner: Each missionary translator collaborated with his Chinese co-worker to prepare his draft of an assigned part of the Bible. The completed draft was sent to his colleagues for criticisms and suggestions. Committee meetings were held to review the drafts and finalise the translated texts.Footnote ⁵ This was to ensure a careful process of checks and balances, which would help enhance the likelihood of accuracy. The translators’ first fruits came out in 1899, when a tentative edition of the Acts of the Apostles was jointly published by the three foreign Bible societies giving patronage to the translation work, i.e. the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), the American Bible Society (ABS) and the National Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS, now the Scottish Bible Society). The complete New Testament translation was first published in 1907 in one volume, and the complete translation of the whole Bible came out in 1919.Footnote ⁶

The Mandarin Union Version represented a milestone in the history of Chinese Protestant Bible translation. The Shanghai Conference 1890 resolved that the Greek and Hebrew textual bases of all the three Union Versions were the Greek and Hebrew texts underlying the English Revised Version, which was published in 1885 as the officially authorised revision of the King James Version. Since the Hebrew text underlying the English Revised Version was the Masoretic Text, the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament of the day, its adoption was understandable.Footnote ⁷ However, the decision to adopt the Greek text underlying the English Revised Version was revolutionary, because it meant that the New Testament of the Union Versions would be based on a Greek text representing the latest results of nineteenth-century New Testament textual criticism, instead of the Textus Receptus, which had been used by Bible translators as the Greek textual basis for their New Testament translations since the sixteenth century, but had a lower critical worth and reliability as the closest approximation of the original text of the New Testament.Footnote ⁸ Although the translators of the Mandarin Union Version exercised the discretion granted to them by the Shanghai Conference 1890 to follow the reading of the Textus Receptus on a few occasions, such as the ending of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew (6:13), the Greek text underlying the English Revised Version proved to be the major Greek textual basis for the New Testament of the Mandarin Union Version.Footnote ⁹ This gave the Mandarin Union Version, as well as the other Union Versions, a place among the earliest Chinese Bible versions of which the New Testament translations largely follow the readings deviating from the Textus Receptus.

At the same time, the translators of the Mandarin Union Version stood on the shoulders of giants, working on the basis of the work achieved by earlier generations of Mandarin Bible translators. According to the resolution of the Shanghai Conference 1890 on the translation of the Mandarin Union Version, its translators, in addition to consulting the Greek and Hebrew biblical texts, “shall make constant and careful use” of the following Mandarin Bible versions: The Nanking Version (1856/1857, New Testament), the Peking Version (1872, New Testament), Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky's (1831-1906) Mandarin Old Testament (1874) and Griffith John's (1831-1912) Mandarin New Testament (1889).Footnote ¹⁰ Irene Eber's and Lihi Yariv-Laor's textual studies suggest that the Old Testament of the Mandarin Union Version was much indebted to Schereschewsky's Mandarin Old Testament, in view of their similarities in style and the use of terms.Footnote ¹¹ As for the New Testament, based on his textual analysis of Matthew 5:1-12 and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, Thor Strandenaes concluded that “in both the adoption of general vocabulary and individual solutions”, the Mandarin Union Version “shows dependency” on the renowned New Testament translation in literary Chinese known as the Delegates’ Version (1852), which was indeed the source text of the Nanking Version.Footnote ¹² On the other hand, Jost Zetzsche argued in his seminal work The Bible in China that the New Testament translators of the Mandarin Union Version primarily consulted the Peking Version, which was the Mandarin New Testament most widely used in China before the Mandarin Union Version, “as far as Chinese versions are concerned”.Footnote ¹³ While Zetzsche's argument has been generally accepted by subsequent scholars, it was predominantly based on evidence from the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the Mandarin Union Version. This helps explain why Zetzsche's The Bible in China attracted criticism from Marián Gálik, who said he would have preferred to read in it “more textual examples, linguistic and stylistic analyses of the different versions”.Footnote ¹⁴

Clement Tsz Ming Tong's article complements Zetzsche's work with an analysis of the textual features of the Mandarin Union Version focusing on examples from biblical books other than the Gospel of John, such as the Gospel of Mark, the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Book of Revelation. Tong's textual analysis shows that there is a high level of similarities between the Mandarin Union Version and the Peking Version in terms of style, syntax and diction, which corroborates Zetzsche's argument. Tong's article also highlights that it is important to consider the use and reliance of pre-existing Mandarin Bible versions by the translators of the Mandarin Union Version, as this will help clarify translational and hermeneutic theories and hypotheses associated with the Mandarin Union Version. Tong pointed out, for example, that Robert Menzies once hypothesised that the Greek word προφητɛύω (prophēteuō, to prophesy) is rendered as shuo yuyan 說豫言 (to utter about things of the future, e.g. Acts 2:17) or xianzhi jiangdao 先知講道 (prophetic preaching, e.g. 1 Corinthians 14:1) in the Mandarin Union Version under the influence of the perspective on prophecy in the Reformed tradition on its key translators.Footnote ¹⁵ Yet, Menzies's hypothesis could not stand, as the Chinese translations of the Greek word actually come from the Peking Version.

André Lefevere, a pioneer of the field of translation studies, once reminded us that “translations are not made in a vacuum. Translators function in a given culture at a given time. The way they understand themselves and their culture is one of the factors that may influence the way in which they translate”.Footnote ¹⁶ In the case of the Mandarin Union Version, we may argue that Chinese culture was not its missionary translators’ own culture. However, since Chinese culture was the culture in which their biblical translation would circulate, it can be regarded as the “given culture” in which they functioned, and their understanding of it no doubt had an impact on their translation decisions.

Tsung-I Hwang's article offers us examples of how the translation of the Mandarin Union Version was made under the influence of Confucianism (or Ruism, the term used by Hwang), which was understood by the translators as the source of moral values and social code in Chinese society in their day. According to Hwang, Matthew 5:3, Matthew 11:12 and Romans 5:4 are biblical verses related to Christian soteriology and the concept of moral transformation by God's grace. Yet, the Confucian conception of self-cultivation and of reciprocity made it difficult for the Chinese people to accept that salvation and sanctification are gifts from God which have nothing to do with one's morality, worthiness or rewards for his or her personal effort. Considering this, we should not be surprised that, as revealed in Hwang's article, the translators of the Mandarin Union Version rendered those three biblical verses in a way suggesting that one's willpower and effort are conditions for salvation or qualify one to be a Christian. It could be said that the translators did so in order to achieve compatibility with the aforementioned Confucian concepts at the expense of accuracy.

The Mandarin Union Version is, in Zetzsche's words, “as much a product of the Western missionaries as of Chinese translators”.Footnote ¹⁷ The Chinese co-workers of the missionary translators of the Mandarin Union Version played an important part in its translation process. They cooperated with the missionary translators to prepare the draft translations and corrections, ensuring that the language and style of the translated text were acceptable to its Chinese readers.Footnote ¹⁸ Zetzsche, who did an admirable job of identifying the names of and background information about several Chinese Protestants participating in the Mandarin Union Version translation project, argued that the Mandarin Union Version was “the first translation where the translation committee involved equal participation of foreigners and Chinese”.Footnote ¹⁹ Although the Chinese co-workers were rarely mentioned in the reports for the first few years of the translation project, as the translation work progressed, their significance was increasingly valued by the missionary translators. Eventually, after Chauncey Goodrich (1836-1925) of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions became the chairman of the Old Testament translation committee in 1908, they were given an equal vote with the missionary translators in decisions relating to the final text of the translation.Footnote ²⁰

Nonetheless, we should avoid overestimating the status of the Chinese co-workers in the Mandarin Union Version translation project. As pointed out by Strandenaes, Bible and missionary societies did not consider them as of equal importance with the missionary translators, which is indicated by the limited personal information about the Chinese co-workers provided in the published reports on the translation work of the Mandarin Union Version.Footnote ²¹ Stuart Vogel's article further reminds us of this point. Comparing the role of Chinese Protestants in producing the Mandarin Union Version and the Southern Min (Minnan hua 閩南話) Bible version, Vogel observed that in both cases the missionary translators took control of the translation process by retaining the authority to define the theological meaning of the translated text. However, whereas the missionary translators of the Mandarin Union Version considered their Chinese co-workers as ‘assistants’, Thomas Barclay (1849-1935) of the English Presbyterian Mission, who was head of a team translating the New Testament into Southern Min from 1913 to 1916, referred to his Chinese co-workers as ‘co-translators’.

According to Vogel, the different status of the Chinese Protestants engaged in these two translation projects, which overlapped for some time, could be explained by two factors. The first factor is the extent of their role. Barclay's Chinese co-workers were theologically trained and educated speakers of Southern Min, while the Chinese co-workers of the missionary translators of the Mandarin Union Version were selected on the basis of their knowledge of Mandarin. Barclay's Chinese co-workers could play a greater role than their counterparts in the Mandarin Union Version translation project in analysing the source text, transferring the source text's content into the target language, and improving the style, idiom and literary expression of the translated text. The second factor is the relationship between the missionary translator and his Chinese co-worker. Barclay's Chinese co-workers were not hired by him but formally appointed by the synod of the Chinese Presbyterian church in Fujian 福建. By contrast, the missionary translators of the Mandarin Union Version and their Chinese co-workers were in an employer-employee relationship. Different lines of authority led to the missionary translators’ different perceptions of the role of their Chinese co-workers in the two translation projects.

The Mandarin Union Version took nearly three decades to complete. The process was so long that only one of the translators, i.e. Goodrich, was part of the process from the very beginning and still alive when the complete translation was published.Footnote ²² It is noteworthy that at the outset, the Mandarin Union Version was not considered to be of as lasting or historical impact as the other Union Versions. This was mainly because Mandarin was not yet regarded as the language of literature in late nineteenth-century China, even though the necessity of a Mandarin Bible was not questioned at that time, as the sales of Mandarin Bible editions already accounted for the major part of Protestant Bible distribution in China no later than the 1870s.Footnote ²³

However, it is the Mandarin Union Version, instead of the other Union Versions, that has eventually become “the most successful of all Chinese Bible translations past or present”.Footnote ²⁴ The timing of the Mandarin Union Version's publication coincided with the May Fourth New Culture Movement, which advocated the replacement of literary Chinese with baihua 白話, a Mandarin-based form of written Chinese, as the standard written medium and the creation of a new Chinese literature written in baihua. This provided a favourable condition for the circulation and reception of the Mandarin Union Version, which was considered by Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885-1967), an important figure in the movement, as “an exceptionally good piece of baihua writing” of the day that could facilitate the reformation of Chinese language and literature.Footnote ²⁵ Thus, it is not surprising that the Mandarin Union Version became the most popular Chinese translation of the Bible in Republican China shortly after its publication. In 1921, for example, more than eighty-five per cent of the Chinese Bibles, New Testaments and biblical portions issued by the BFBS in China were in the Mandarin Union Version. The percentage rose to over ninety in 1934.Footnote ²⁶ It was estimated that ninety-nine per cent of Chinese Protestants used the Mandarin Union Version at the outset of the 1950s.Footnote ²⁷

The work of the BFBS, the ABS and the NBSS as the publishers and distributors of the Mandarin Union Version also contributed to its success in Republican China. As decided by the Shanghai Conference 1890, the Mandarin Union Version was their common property owing to their patronage of its translation work; each of them had the right to publish such editions of the Mandarin Union Version as it may choose.Footnote ²⁸ Throughout the years, these three Bible societies published various editions of the whole Bible, the New Testament, the Old Testament, and portions thereof in the Mandarin Union Version to target different audiences; millions of copies of these Bible editions were placed in the hands of the Chinese through the Bible societies’ distribution networks.Footnote ²⁹

Among the editions of the Mandarin Union Version published by the Bible societies were the NBSS's annotated editions of its portions. In the 1890s, the NBSS became the first Bible society to publish Chinese editions of the Gospels and Acts with annotations giving “some explanation of words, terms and place-names which were completely unfamiliar to the non-Christian reader”. These Bible editions were published first with the texts of Griffith John's Easy Wenli (1885) and Mandarin translations of the New Testament, and later with that of the New Testament of the Mandarin Union Version as soon as it was ready in 1907. Thanks to their usefulness as evangelistic tools, the NBSS's annotated Chinese Gospels and Acts were well-received by Protestant missionaries in China, helping the NBSS, despite being a later entrant into Bible work in late Qing and Republican China, to be a Bible society comparable with the BFBS and the ABS in terms of significance for the China mission field. The success of the NBSS's annotated Chinese Gospels and Acts even led the BFBS to follow in the NBSS's footsteps and start publishing similar editions in the 1910s with the texts of the High Wenli, Easy Wenli and Mandarin Union Versions as well as the Cantonese Bible.Footnote ³⁰

As indicated by George Kam Wah Mak's article in this special issue, the annotated editions of the Mandarin Union Version published by the Bible societies were not limited to those of the Gospels and Acts. In 1932, the NBSS published an annotated edition of Proverbs in the Mandarin Union Version, which was the first annotated edition of a biblical book in the Old Testament published in Chinese by a Bible society. Mak argued that annotations which provide the reader with historical and cultural information and explanations of the meanings of the figures of speech in Proverbs, together with the familiarity of the Chinese people with short and pithy sayings, contributed to the favourable reception of the NBSS annotated Proverbs in the Mandarin Union Version, which in turn further promoted the circulation of the biblical text of the Mandarin Union Version.

Discussing how a biblical translation could be a classic translation, Sijbolt Noorda rightly argued that “classics are results of a future reception process, a reputation to be acquired”.Footnote ³¹ The Mandarin Union Version was no exception. Several articles in this special issue explore how the Mandarin Union Version has been received and used within Chinese Protestant communities, helping us to understand the process leading to its becoming a classic biblical translation. In his article, Wai Luen Kwok pointed out that Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 倪柝聲, 1903-1972) and Wang Mingdao 王明道 (1900-1991), who were important conservative, independent Chinese Protestant leaders in the twentieth century, had a low opinion of Protestant missionaries in China. Nee criticised them for bringing denominationalism, which was unbiblical in his view, to China, while Wang objected to their domination of the Protestant church in China and selection of incompetent and unfaithful Chinese to be co-workers. On the other hand, they recognised the Mandarin Union Version as an outstanding and up-to-date Bible version, despite its nature as a missionary biblical translation. This, together with their emphasis on the Bible's supreme authority for Christian life and Bible reading as a spiritual practice, made the Mandarin Union Version serve as the core source of their spiritual and moral teachings. Kwok's article throws light on why the Mandarin Union Version was accepted and used by both Chinese Protestant churches connected with foreign missions and their indigenous and independent counterparts, thus becoming truly the standard Protestant version of the Chinese Bible.

Chinese Protestants in Republican China used the Mandarin Union Version not only for the enrichment of their spiritual life. As illustrated in Zhixi Wang's article, the Mandarin Union Version was used politically too. In order to respond to the socialist-influenced anti-Christian discourses, some Chinese Protestant intellectuals attempted to create a ‘left-leaning’ image of Jesus, i.e. Jesus came from a proletarian family, spoke up for the proletarians as the oppressed, and opposed the bourgeoisie as the oppressors; some like Wu Yaozong 吳耀宗 (1893-1979) even argued that Jesus supported class struggle. At the same time, some Protestant intellectuals criticised socialism's overemphasis on the material life, as well as opposing the use of class struggle and revolution as the means to achieve the ideal society. In these Protestant intellectuals’ writings, various passages of the Gospels in the Mandarin Union Version are used in a slightly adapted form (e.g. Matthew 8:20 and Luke 6:20-21, 24-25 and 12:51) or quoted directly (e.g. Matthew 6:25 and 7:12) to support the authors’ arguments. Wang's findings echo with Joseph Lee and Lars Laamann's observation that Chinese Protestants, rather than being subordinate and passive recipients of a belief bestowed by foreign missionaries, made the Gospel relevant to their fellow countrymen and adjusted their faith to the existing political, social and cultural climates.Footnote ³²

The Maoist period (1949-1976) of the People's Republic of China was a difficult time for Chinese Protestants and Protestant churches. They were among the victims of persecution and suppression resulting from the party-state's political campaigns in the 1950s and harsh policies trying to eradicate religion during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).Footnote ³³ The printing and circulation of the Mandarin Union Version were halted not only during but also a few years before and after the Cultural Revolution. Many of its copies owned by churches and individuals were even confiscated and burnt during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, the Mandarin Union Version still played a part in sustaining Chinese Protestants’ religious life in such a difficult situation, since its texts were read in secret, learnt by heart and transmitted orally, thanks to the individual copies of it which some Chinese Protestants managed to hide away.Footnote ³⁴

Drawing on declassified materials at the municipal archives in Shanghai 上海 and Wenzhou 溫州, as well as other sources including ethnographic interviews, sermons, and personal diaries, Christie Chui-Shan Chow's article illustrates how the Mandarin Union Version helped a local congregation of Chinese Seventh-day Adventists in Wenzhou to confront personal and congregational crises during the 1950s and the 1980s. As described in Chow's article, they sought biblical insights into particular situations in which they found themselves through qiuwen 求問 (spiritual inquiring), a mode of bibliomancy combining the Chinese practice of divination and the insistence on the Bible's textual authority underlying the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. The congregation's leader practised qiuwen with a copy of the Mandarin Union Version, writing down the biblical verses or passages derived from qiuwen for study, reflection and meditation to discern God's will over a particular issue. The congregation's leader also practised qiuwen on behalf of the congregants, so as to provide them with biblical verses or passages responding to their worries and questions, while the congregants would circulate those biblical verses or passages among other Adventists. Although qiuwen-informed answers did not always work, they gave hope and comfort to the congregation in trying times. Chow's article not only offers us an example of how traditional Chinese popular religious rituals were incorporated into Christian practice, but also illuminates how the Christian messages contained in the Mandarin Union Version were transmitted to grassroots Chinese Protestants to sustain their religious commitment in the face of persecution and suppression from the communist party-state.

Outside Mainland China, the Mandarin Union Version's popularity among Chinese Protestants has persisted in the face of the subsequent publication of other complete Chinese translations of the Protestant Bible, including Lü Chen Chung's (Lü Zhenzhong 呂振中, 1898-1988) translation (1970), Xiandai Zhongwen yiben 現代中文譯本 (Today's Chinese Version, 1979; its revised version, 1995) and Shengjing xin yiben 聖經新譯本 (Chinese New Version, 1992). Moreover, despite reflecting up-to-date biblical scholarship, using more contemporary language and gradually gaining popularity, Heheben xiudingban 和合本修訂版 (Revised Chinese Union Version),Footnote ³⁵ which was published by Hong Kong Bible Society in 2010 as an official revision of the Mandarin Union Version, has not yet supplanted the older version.

Thanks to its long-lasting popularity and primacy in Chinese Protestant communities, the Mandarin Union Version, according to Ya-Chun Liu's article, has become a ‘canonised’ Protestant Bible version in the Chinese-speaking world. One of the effects resulting from such a status is the standardisation of terminology in Chinese Protestantism. Through comparing the traditional and simplified Chinese translations of William Paul Young's bestseller The Shack (2007), Liu found that in the traditional Chinese translation, which was produced by a Taiwan-based Protestant, Christian allusions and biblical references are rendered with the terms used in the Mandarin Union Version. It is also attested that sometimes even though an expression in the English original does not contain Christian jargon, it is still rendered with specific diction moulded by the Mandarin Union Version. As the standard source of Chinese Protestant Christian terminology, the Mandarin Union Version, in Liu's opinion, has contributed to the formation of the linguistic repertoire of Chinese-speaking Christian translators and the existence of linguistic norms for translating Christian-themed texts into Chinese.

The impact of the Mandarin Union Version was not confined to Chinese Protestants. Raissa De Gruttola's article shows that it was an influence on the Sigao Bible (Sigao Shengjing 思高聖經, Studium Biblicum Version), which was published in 1968 and remains the standard Chinese translation of the Catholic Bible today. Drawing on primary sources from the Archivio Vice-Postulazione-Convento San Biagio dei Frati Minori in Acireale, De Gruttola suggested that Gabriele Maria Allegra (1907-1976), an Italian missionary of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor (OFM) who arrived in China in 1931 and masterminded the translation project of the Sigao Bible, held an open and positive attitude towards the presence and work of Protestant missionaries in China. This helps explain why he would read the Mandarin Union Version, as well as the Delegates’ Version and the Wenli Union Version,Footnote ³⁶ before starting to translate the Old Testament into Chinese. De Gruttola did not examine the extent to which Allegra consulted the Mandarin Union Version when working on the Old Testament translation of the Sigao Bible. Nevertheless, she pointed out that while Allegra and his Chinese co-translators kept the traditional transliterations of some proper names well-known to Chinese Catholics, they adopted certain transliterations in the Mandarin Union Version like Yelusaleng 耶路撒冷 for Ἱεροσόλυμα (Hierosoluma, Jerusalem, e.g. John 1:19, 2:13) and Youtai 猶太 for Ἰουδαία (Ioudaia, Judea, e.g. John 4:3, 4:47), since they were being used by not only Chinese Protestants but also non-Christian Chinese, which indicated the popularity of the Mandarin Union Version at that time. De Gruttola's article implies that whereas Protestant and Catholic missionaries in Republican China carried out Bible translation work separately, it does not necessarily mean that they did not realize each other's work.Footnote ³⁷ Her findings invite further inquiries into the influence of the Mandarin Union Version on Chinese Catholic Bible translation.

The King James Version, which was a model for biblical translations produced by nineteenth century English-speaking Protestant missionaries in China, is well-known for its contributions to the English language and literature.Footnote ³⁸ However, this was an unintended result, since rather than matters of literature or linguistic development, the major concern of the translators of the King James Version was scholarly accuracy and clarity, i.e. finding proper English words and phrases to render the Greek and Hebrew biblical texts and ensuring that the translation would clearly communicate to ordinary people.Footnote ³⁹ The achievement of prosaic and poetic elegance by the translators and the establishment of norms in written and spoken English by their translation could be described by a phrase borrowed from Alister McGrath: “a most happy accident of history”.Footnote ⁴⁰

Something similar could be said of the Mandarin Union Version. Its translators also did not primarily aim for literary excellence or influence on the subsequent development of Mandarin usage, but a biblical translation of which the language is “simple enough to be readily understood by all classes when read from the pulpit” and the rendering is “as near to the original Greek and Hebrew as the idiom of the language [i.e. Mandarin] will permit”.Footnote ⁴¹ Despite this, the Mandarin Union Version, as illustrated in George Kam Wah Mak's latest monograph, contributed to the standardization of Mandarin as the national language of China. For example, in Republican China, the Mandarin Union Version was used in promoting baihua as the standard written medium not only in the Protestant church's literacy education but also in formal language education outside the church, thanks to the inclusion of its excerpts in Chinese language textbooks like Guowen bai ba ke 國文百八課 (A Hundred and Eight Chinese Language Lessons, 1935-1938) edited by Xia Mianzun 夏丏尊 (1886-1946) and Ye Shaojun 葉紹鈞 (Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶, 1894-1988), both of whom were well-known Chinese writers and language educators, and Zhongguo yufa lilun 中國語法理論 (Theory of Chinese Grammar, 1944-1945) written by the eminent Chinese linguist Wang Li 王力 (1900-1986). Moreover, the Mandarin Union Version helped enrich modern Chinese lexicon and fostered the development of modern Chinese grammar. Being a nationally circulating Bible, it facilitated the diffusion of neologisms that are now common words in the Chinese language, such as fandui 反對 (to oppose), and the spread of foreign language-influenced grammatical features that have been accepted as part of the grammatical norms of Modern Chinese, of which two notable examples are the transposition of the yinwei 因為 causal subordinate clause and the use of the bei 被 passive construction in non-afflictive meanings or situations.Footnote ⁴²

The Mandarin Union Version also acquired a reputation as a biblical translation with literary merits in Republican China, having an unintended yet profound impact on the formation of modern Chinese literature, which used baihua as the linguistic medium.Footnote ⁴³ In his famous speech “Shengshu yu Zhongguo wenxue 聖書與中國文學” (The Bible and Chinese Literature), which was delivered at Yenching University in 1920, Zhou Zuoren commented that the “careful, faithful approach to translation” of the Mandarin Union Version “preserved much of the literary delight of the original text, thus enhancing the literary value of the translation”.Footnote ⁴⁴ As pointed out by John T. P. Lai in his article in this special issue, Zhou believed that the Mandarin Union Version could be a good model for modern Chinese literature in regard to literary spirit and form. Through the Mandarin Union Version, Chinese writers could understand the humanistic values in modern literature, of which an important source was the lofty spirit and teachings of Jesus illustrated in the Gospels. Besides, the Mandarin Union Version could contribute to the development of new literary genres by providing examples of idyllic or pastoral poems, which had been rare in Chinese literature but could be found in the Old Testament.Footnote ⁴⁵ Considering Zhou's positive comments on the Mandarin Union Version, it is not surprising that he included its translation of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Ruth in the teaching materials for his course on ‘Literature in the National Language’ (guoyu wenxue 國語文學, i.e. literature in modern baihua) at Yenching University after 1928 or 1929.Footnote ⁴⁶

The Mandarin Union Version was appropriated by not a few Chinese writers of the Republican era in their literary enterprises. According to Irene Eber, when doing so, they integrated “biblical images, metaphors, and symbols, as well as references to Christian institutions, practices, and practitioners” into their literary works. This is especially evident in the works of the Crescent Moon Society's (Xinyueshe 新月社) members and their leading poet Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 (1897-1931) or Chen Mengjia 陳夢家 (1911–1966).Footnote ⁴⁷ Nonetheless, appropriation of the Mandarin Union Version is also attested in the works of other writers such as Lu Xun 魯迅 (Zhou Shuren 周樹人, 1881-1936), whose prose poem Fuchou qi er 復仇其二 (Revenge II, 1927) is based on the depiction of Jesus's crucifixion in the Gospel of Mark of the Mandarin Union Version. Other examples include the play Richu 日出 (Sunrise, 1936) by Cao Yu 曹禺 (Wan Jiabao 萬家寶, 1910-1996). In the prologue to Richu, Cao Yu expressed his discontent with the state of society through extensive quotation of the Mandarin Union Version. The quotations include excerpts from the Book of Jeremiah, the Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Romans, the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and the Book of Revelation. Also noteworthy is the short story Cansun de fuchou 參孫的復仇 (The Revenge of Samson, 1942) by Mao Dun 茅盾 (Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰, 1896-1981), which is based on the story of Samson and Delilah in the Book of Judges.Footnote ⁴⁸

With selected poems by Bing Xin 冰心 (Xie Wanying 謝婉瑩, 1900-1999), Zhou Zuoren and Mu Dan 穆旦 (Zha Liangzheng 查良錚, 1918-1977) as examples, Lai's article discusses the Mandarin Union Version's literary impact on modern Chinese poetry, which has not received as much scholarly attention as that on modern Chinese fiction, prose and drama. In his article, Lai argued that the Mandarin Union Version was a wellspring of devotional, ideological and archetypical inspirations for modern Chinese poets in the early twentieth century. The earliest group of five shengshi 聖詩 (sacred poems) written by Bing Xin (1921), who was a Christian, could be understood as her poetic response to the beauty of biblical images after reading the Mandarin Union Version. Expressing her whole-hearted trust and admiration of God's love and wisdom, these shengshi are examples of her ‘sacred poetry’, which in Lai's opinion emerged as “a brand-new and unique form of modern Chinese poetry”. For Zhou, who was not a Christian, the Mandarin Union Version was the source of the biblical images of wilderness in Exodus, Moses as a symbol of law and Jesus as a symbol of grace in his poem Qilu 歧路 (Crossroads, 1921), helping him to crystallise his ideological dilemma and personify his humanistic ideals in the pursuit of cultural rejuvenation and national salvation. The account of the fall of mankind in Genesis of the Mandarin Union Version provided Mu Dan, another non-Christian poet, with the mythological archetype for his poem She de youhuo 蛇的誘惑 (The Temptation of the Serpent, 1940), which expresses his critique of modernity. Lai's article shows the diverse reactions of modern Chinese poets to the Mandarin Union Version, which, in his words, “emerged as a literary tour-de-force to propel the evolution of modern Chinese poetry”.

The Mandarin Union Version, no matter how great it is, may someday be supplanted by another Chinese Bible version as the most widely used biblical translation in the Chinese-speaking world. Nevertheless, as indicated by the articles in this special issue, alongside other recently published research, the existence, historical value and artistic merits of the Mandarin Union Version have been and will continue to be recognised and remembered.