CCCT Blog

This blog examines the 1822 and 1835 Manchu editions of the Gospel of Matthew, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Both were translated by Stepan Lipovzoff, with George Borrow later overseeing the revised edition. The paper traces the replacement of the second-person pronouns si and sini with ama (“father”) when addressing God in the 1835 edition. This revision highlights tensions between Manchu etiquette and theological precision. The editions also complicate narratives of Manchu’s late eighteenth-century decline. They demonstrate the language’s continuing symbolic and political importance to European missionaries seeking access to Qing elites and, through them, the wider empire.

Full blog: The Forgotten Bible in Manchu: Two Editions, Two Voices, One Salvation