Translated Christianities

Beginning in the sixteenth century, ecclesiastics and others created religious texts written in the native languages of the Nahua and Yucatec Maya. These texts played an important role in the evangelization of central Mexico and Yucatan. Translated Christianities is the first book to provide readers with English translations of a variety of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. It pulls Nahuatl and Maya sermons, catechisms, and confessional manuals out of relative obscurity and presents them to the reader in a way that illustrates similarities, differences, and trends in religious text production throughout the colonial period. The texts included in this work are diverse. Their authors range from Spanish ecclesiastics to native assistants, from Catholics to Methodists, and from sixteenth-century Nahuas to nineteenth-century Maya. Although translated from its native language into English, each text illustrates the impact of European and native cultures on its content. Medieval tales popular in Europe are transformed to accommodate a New World native audience, biblical figures assume native identities, and texts admonishing Christian behavior are tailored to meet the demands of a colonial native population. Moreover, the book provides the first translation and analysis of a Methodist catechism written in Yucatec Maya to convert the Maya of Belize and Yucatan. Ultimately, readers are offered an uncommon opportunity to read for themselves the translated Christianities that Nahuatl and Maya texts contained.

In Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus, Matthew Kraus analyzes the Classical, Christian, and rabbinic influences on Jerome’s translation of biblical narrative, poetry, and law.

Exploring the history of missionary translation of Christian texts in East Asia, Missionary Translators offers a comparative perspective between the features of East Asian languages and the historical context of the translation. Focusing on the Bible and Christian theological works, it looks at the intersection of linguistics, translation studies and history. This book discusses the real-life challenges faced by missionary translators in producing Christian texts in East Asian languages. Students, historians, scholars and those interested in the study of East Asian cultures or translation will find this book to be an insightful and invaluable resource.

The growth of the Church in the last two centuries has been paralleled by an explosion in the number of languages into which all or part of the Bible has been translated. This book is perhaps the first serious effort to examine a number of issues related to that phenomenon, among them how theology can affect the kind of translation prepared, and how the type of translation itself can affect the theology of a church. It also addresses the topics of why a church generally develops faster and with a deeper faith if it has the Bible; how decisions of text, canon, exegesis, type of language and type of translation are related to the matter of authority; what forces are at play in a culture to which a translator must be sensitive; and how Bible translation affects a society and culture. The authors of these papers are distinguished scholars in the fields of missiology, history, cultural anthropology, theology or church history. Some address theological issues of Bible translation, and others the cultural and political questions. But ultimately they conclude that if the church of tomorrow is to grow, and not be fragmented, then access to the Bible will be crucial.