BP. JOSEPH SCHERESCHEWSKY (OCT. 14TH)

A Contemporary Icon of Bishop Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky

Edited by Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

INTRODUCTION

Joseph Schereschewsky was a remarkable Christian missionary bishop who created the biblical scholarship and scriptural dialect still used by Chinese Christians today, and laid the groundwork for the massive amounts of conversions that would reorient Chinese culture over the last century. To a greater or lesser extent, the success of all Christianity in the Chinese-speaking world was dependent upon his groundbreaking scholarship and the publication of his complete translation of the canon of the Old and New Testaments, including the Deuterocanonical Books.

LIFE

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky was born of Jewish parents in Tanroggen, Russian Lithuania, the sixth of May 1831. He was educated partly in his native town and partly at the Rabbinical College at Thetomeer, Russia. He spent two years in the University of Breslau, Germany, and came to this country in 1854 going directly to the western Presbyterian Seminary in Pennsylvania, but soon after entering the General Theological Seminary in New York. In 1859 Bishop Boone came to this country to raise money and get men for his Chinese work. He visited the different Theological Seminaries in New York and Virginia. He took back with him eight young men, and among them Mr. Schereschewsky. He was ordained a deacon by Bishop Boone at St. George's Church, New York, on July 7, 1859, and sailed with him for China on the steamer Golden Gate the 13th of the same month.

His first work was in the hill country about thirty miles from Shanghai, but when a spirit of unrest arose among the people, he was recalled to the mission. Dean Hoffman says, --My first acquaintance with Bishop Schereschewsky was in Shanghai soon after his arrival. I remember one evening, on calling upon him, I found he had not left the building for a week but had been engaged night and day reading a very celebrated work in Chinese, The Three Kingdoms. In this way, by unremitting study, he laid the foundation for that eminent Chinese scholarship for which he is so distinguished.

He was ordained a priest in the mission at Shanghai October 28th, 1860. In 1861, according to the latest foreign treaties with China, foreigners might visit but not live there, unless attached to some Legation. Mr. Schereschewsky was appointed interpreter for our Minister, Mr. Burlingame. From 1862 to 1875 he lived at Pekin doing missionary work in the city and neighboring towns and villges, but devoting much time to the careful study of the Chinese language. It was in 1864 that he began his work of translating, a work of such wonderful magnitude and far-reaching service. In 1867 he went to the Province of Honan where for centuries there had been a settlement of Jews. Some of them had come to Pekin asking that a teacher of Hebrew be sent to them. Owing to the jealousies of prominent literary, men, who stirred up the natives to drive him out, he was obliged to return to Pekin. Besides other work, with the help of three others he translated the New Testament, and alone the Old Testament out of the original Hebrew, (of which, being of Jewish birth, he had uncommon knowledge,) into Mandarin. We may well thank God that one of our missionaries has been so highly honored as to have been the sole translator of the Old Testament into a tongue understood by a hundred and fifty million people. In 1874 the Missionary Jurisdiction of Bishop Williams was divided; he was made Bishop of Yedo, and a new Bishop was placed over the other Jurisdiction, that of Shanghai. In 1875 after fifteen years' service Mr. Scherechewsky returned to the United States for a well earned rest. During this year the Bishopric of Shanghai was offered to him but he declined it. When it was offered again in 1877 he accepted it, and was consecrated in Grace Church, New York, in October 1878, returning to China that same year.

Bp. Schereschewsky in His Study, Between Chinese and Japanese Secretaries, Dictating Translation to be Written in the Wenli Classical Chinese Script

To him is due the idea of higher education among the Chinese. He fully appreciated their mental qualities, and always felt that could they have instruction along the same lines as those of our colleges they would benefit by it. While in this country he received a promise of financial support and his long cherished dream of St. John's College, Shanghai, became a reality. Immediately on his return he bought the Jessfield estate, and the college buildings were ready for occupancy in the fall of 1879. Along with this work he translated the Prayer Book and Psalms into the book language of China. In 1881, as the result of a sunstroke, Bishop Schereschewsky became partially paralized. In 1883, being still a great invalid he resigned the bishopric and returned to this country. He wished it to be distinctly understood he had not resigned as a missionary, and hoped to return as a translator. Through years of invalidism he worked steadily, translating the Bible into easy Wenli, classical Chinese, though he could not write and his manuscript was made by using one finger on a typewriter. In 1895 he returned to China to oversee the printing of his work in Chinese characters. The New Testament was printed in 1898 and the Pentateuch in 1899. Dr. Martin, President of Pekin University, bears testimony to the accuracy and literary excellence of Bishop Schereschewsky's work. 

Before his return to China he made a pathetic appeal to the Church people of our country:

"For some time past it has been my desire to lay before our Church some particulars of the work upon which I have been engaged for the past seven years. When I resigned from the Episcopate I did not resign my position as missionary. I felt that there remained a great work for me to do. Beside having in mind the revision of my Mandarin Old Testament, I felt that I ought to undertake and by the help of God could accomplish a new translation of the whole Bible, including the Apocrypha, from the original Hebrew and Greek into Wenli, the book or literary language of China. There have been made, from time to time since the beginning of this century, five different versions of the Bible in literary Chinese. Of these three have never been in general use, and two of them, although used extensively by missionaries, have not for one reason or another been found satisfactory. None of these versions have been made directly from the originals, but are mainly translations of the English Bible. Moreover none of these versions use the term for God which has been employed for more than two hundred years by the Roman Catholic and Greek churches, i. e., Tien Chu, which expresses to the Chinese the idea of the Christian's God. These versions all use either the term Shin for God or Shangti, both of which obscure the central truth of Christianity or expose it to pagan or pantheistic conceptions. There is also a translation of the whole Bible in the Mandarin Colloquial made directly from the originals some twenty years ago. The Mandarin Colloquial is the vernacular of at least two-thirds of the Chinese population, say two hundred millions. According to Western ideas it may be regarded as a literary language. The Chinese themselves do not so regard it. For literary purposes they make use of the Wenli or book language which is supposed to be identical with the language of ancient China. It will be seen that the Mandarin version of the Scriptures is in a sense limited. It is not nor can it be extensively used in those parts of China, where the Mandarin is not the vernacular. The Mandarin version has never been much used in our Shanghai Mission. Its influence is confined to the less educated portion of the population, amid is not acceptable to the lettered class. This version of the Scriptures in Mandarin is very important. It is the Bible of the common people but a good version of the literary language is equally so. This literary language is one and the same all over the Chinese Empire. It is used in Cochin China, Annam and Tung Ring, also in Corea and to a large extent in Japan. It is the most widely used language in the world. It its the language of literature among one-fourth at least of the human race. Such a version of the Bible should be made directly from the Hebrew and Greek. Whilst faithful to the original it should be in good idiomatic Chinese, the style plain, easy and dignified, equally free from vulgarisms and fine writing. It should include the Apocrypha, as we all know that the Apocrypha forms a part of our authorized Bible and lessons are taken from it.

"I have been at work over seven years. The first year I spent in revising my Mandarin version of the Old Testament, and the remaining years have been spent in making the revision in the literary or book language of China. I undertook this work not as one making a literary venture, but as a missionary of the Church doing missionary work. I feel that God has called me to do it and had especially prepared and fitted me for it. Nearly two years ago I proposed to Bishop Scott of North China (Missionary Bishop connected with the S. P. G.) that he should join me in the work of publishing this Wenli Bible and asked him to undertake the translation of the Apocrypha, which he consented to do. On his way to England last Spring he visited me here, and we conferred together about the version. A year ago I laid the whole matter before our Board of Missions and made application to be sent out to China to complete the work. The Board appointed a committee to take the matter into consideration. The expense of bringing out suitable editions of these two versions, the Wenli and Mandarin, will necessarily be heavy. Besides this there will be my expenses out. The Church of England, as represented by the S.P.C.K., will contribute largely towards the printing. I now appeal to our Church people to do their share, and I ask them to contribute five thousand dollars towards printing and other expenses connected with this work. I have spent more than seven years of incessant toil upon this work, and, disabled as I am, I do not shrink from going out to China. I count all the difficulties I have or shall encounter, as nothing if I am only permitted to see this work accomplished. Will not the Church contribute speedily and liberally to this end? The Church is about to celebrate the rising of her Lord from the darkness of the tomb. Will she not give an Easter offering towards setting the Light of His Word amid the darkness of heathen China?"

                                                                                                          - S. I. J. SCHERESCHEWSKY

After spending nine years at work in this country, he returned to the far East in 1895, and began re-writing his translation from the Romanized manuscript into the Chinese character. From 1896 he made his home in Tokyo. There he worked six years with a Chinese and a Japanese secretary perfecting his translation, which was finally printed in 1903 by the American Bible Society. Through his great achievement, Bishop Schereschewsky made the Scriptures available for nearly one-fourth of the world's people. Then, with devotion undimmed, he set himself to prepare a reference Bible in Chinese. This work formed a foundation for many scholarly editions of the Bible that have since been finished. 

Title Page from the New Testament, as Translated by Bp. Schereschewsky 

One who knew Bishop Schereschewsky in Tokyo says of him: "I have often wondered at the patience of the man as he sat with his Hebrew Bible before him, reading it into Chinese for the Chinese scribe who acted as amanuensis. That in itself was a very pathetic sight, but far more pathetic it must have been to watch the crippled scholar working all by himself in America, and slowly spelling out his translation with the aid of a typewriter and one finger, which was only a little less useless than the others. Milton composed ‘Paradise Lost' in blindness, and that has always been looked upon as a great feat of human genius struggling against adversity. I am not sure that Bishop Schereschewsky's feat does not deserve to rank with that of Milton, for anybody who has watched the old bishop being lifted in or out of his carriage to go to church will, I think, acknowledge that the physical difficulties to be overcome have been far greater in this case than in the case of the poet." [The Churchman, October 20, 1906.]

DEATH

On October 14, 1906, this patient worker and heroic sufferer won his release. He died at the home he had chosen in Tokyo ten years ago. He was acclaimed a saint by all who knew him, in his personal holiness, love, patience, obedience to God and simple virtue. Because of his great reputation of faithfulness amongst all Christians, he is celebrated on October 14th, and held up as an example of Apostolic missionary fervor, Christian scholarship, and a sincere and unwavering love of the Scriptures. 

COLLECT

ALMIGHTY GOD, Who in Thy providence didst call Joseph Schereschewsky to serve the Chinese Church and gave him the gifts and the perseverance to translate the Holy Scriptures: Inspire us, by his example and prayers, to commit our talents to Thy service, confident that Thou dost uphold those whom Thou dost call; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

(Edited from "The Bishops of the American Church Mission in China Hartford, Connecticut: Church Missions Publishing Co., 1906")