約翰福音之傳 / Yuēhàn fúyīn zhī chuán [Gospel of St. John in Japanese]

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[Singapore : American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Press, 1837]. Large octavo (260 x 175 mm), xylographically printed in Japanese on rice paper, [60] double leaves folded in the Oriental style; bound with the original yellow upper wrapper (with title and translator s name in Chinese characters) into early plain paper wrappers, the upper one of which has been expertly relaid, substantially preserving the early manuscript title in English that reads The Gospel of John in Japanese by Gu[tzlaff] , as well as an ownership inscription with date at bottom edge Nevin, January 1840 ; scattered light foxing, the first ten or so leaves separated along the fold, otherwise contents clean and complete; housed in a cloth chemise within a sumptuous velvet-lined, gilt-decorated red morocco clamshell box. The oldest extant Japanese Bible translation, made in Macao by Karl Gützlaff and his three Japanese assistants, and printed in Singapore. The German Lutheran missionary Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-51) worked in Batavia, Siam, Hong Kong, and China. A brilliant linguist, he was also engaged to assist the British on a number of diplomatic missions and as a commercial interpreter. He devoted considerable time and effort to revising Walter Medhurst s translation of the New Testament in Chinese, and published no fewer than twelve versions of it in the late 1830s and 1840s. Gützlaff s Japanese translations of John’s Gospel, and of the two shorter Johannine epistles, were only

• Binding: Hardcover

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