The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876-1915

— 5 —Messages

221 As the God-men relationship stands primary, the five relationships come secondary and thus in due order. This is like the foundation of a house, on which all the pillars and rafters should be built, and then the house becomes safe and strong. The five relationships are like precious pearls, which have no flaw. The primary relationship is like a golden string on which the pearls are threaded not to be lost. —William A. P. Martin, 1854 The advent of the modern Protestant mission era coincided with an explosion in Bible translation and vernacular Christian literature. In the nineteenth century, the Bible was translated into an additional 446 languages, compared to 74 in the previous eighteen centuries. In Asia, the translated vernacular Scriptures appeared in India, Pakistan, China, Burma, Japan, and finally Korea. The first Korean New Testament , translated by John Ross, was published in Shenyang, Manchuria, in 1887, the tentative Committee Version of the Korean New Testament in Seoul in 1900, and the first authorized Committee Version of the Korean Bible in 1911.1 1 Joshua Marshman’s Chinese Bible was published in India in 1822, Robert Morrison’s Chinese Bible in 1823, the Chinese Delegates’ Version in 1854, the Japanese New Testament in 1879, and the Japanese Bible in 1888. See William A. Smalley, Translation as Mission (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991), 33–40. — 5 — Messages Chinese Literature and Korean Translations 222 — The Making of Korean Christianity Behind the advent of vernacular Protestant literature and Christian printing culture as a modern phenomenon in Korea, however, were strong Chinese–Korean connections in the Christian book publication and translation. The networking between missionaries in China and Chinese books with missionaries in Korea and translated Korean books was formed in the 1880 and 1890s, and many Chinese books were used in Korea with or without translation. Korean Christians used the Chinese New Testament and Bible, hymnals, books, and tracts. Though the authorized Korean New Testament was published in 1906 and the whole Bible in 1911, educated people used the Chinese New Testament and Bible. When the missionaries edited the Korean hymnals, they translated many songs from the Chinese hymnals as well as from the American ones. They also used Chinese commentaries, books, and tracts. From 1882 to 1910, more than sixty Chinese evangelistic tracts and books were used in Korea without translation, and more than sixty Chinese tracts were translated into the vernacular Korean language. This chapter reviews the influence of Chinese Christian literature in the shaping of early Korean Protestantism. The first topic concerns the aforementioned social and ecclesiastical background of the readership of Chinese Christian literature. The second section discusses the influence of the Chinese Scriptures on the Korean versions, whose impact in the construction of Korean Protestantism cannot be ignored. The third section deals with the influence of Chinese tracts and books on the theological orientation of Korean Protestantism toward non-Christian religions. Through the exclusive use of Chinese Christian apologetics on East Asian religions, mostly produced by European and North American missionaries in China, Korean Protestantism was under the influence of the theological and missiological package of nineteenth-century European– Chinese Protestantism as well as North American–Chinese Protestantism . The last part describes both hymns translated from Chinese and hymns composed by Koreans. The heavy use of Chinese literature by the Korean churches and the Koreans’ sifting integration of various elements of the doctrines and practices for its own use was in line with the traditional pattern of other Korean religions—Confucianism and Buddhism —which had practiced a similar pattern of borrowing from China and then inventing an ecumenical or unified form for Korea. Messages — 223 Christian Printing Cultures and Missionary Networks in East Asia Three historical factors facilitated the importing of Chinese Christian literature to Korea. First, Chinese was a universal language in the Sinocentric East Asian culture in the nineteenth century. Moreover, at least up to 1904, Korean intellectuals understood modern Western civilization through Chinese books, as only a few Korean intellectuals could read Japanese or English. As the official written language in Chosŏn Korea was classical Chinese, and a mixed Chinese–Korean script was adopted from 1895, educated Korean Christians preferred Chinese or mixedscript books. Even after the publication of vernacular Korean Christian books, the literary class and church leaders used Chinese or Chinese– Korean editions. Classical Chinese remained the most important written language until the 1910s. For example...