Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon.

Nott, Josiah C. (Josiah Clark), 1804-1873.

Date:: 1860

Credit: Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

665/800 (page 609)

GOO or cause to be read by any of his familie servants in his house, orchards, or garden, and to his own familie, anie text of the Bible or New Testament, and also every merchant-man, being a householder, and any other persons other than women, prentises, &c., might read to themselves privately the Bible. But no woman [except noble-women and gentle-women, who might read to themselves alone, and not to others, any texts of the Bible], nor arti- ficers, prentises, journeymen, serving-men of the degrees of yomen or under, husband-men, or laborers, were to read the Bible or New Testament in Englishe to himself, or any other, privately or openly, upon paine of one month’s imprisonment.” Three hundred years have effaced even the remembrance of such legislative prohibitions. The “ general reader” of our day never dreams that “my Bible” was once forbidden to his plebeian use. He claps his hands at Missionary Meetings when it is triumphantly announced that myriads of translations of the Scriptures are yearly diffused among the Muslims, the Pagans, and other “ heathen,” printed in more languages than are spoken, in more alphabets than there are readers. Has it never struck him to inquire, when the clamor of gratulation has subsided, whether these myrionymed versions are correct ? If they are, what is commonly the case, mere servile paraphrases of king James’s English translation, as we have proven the latter’s woeful corruptions (ubi supra), must not the mistranslations of that text be perpetuated and increased by transfer into another tongue ? and if so, is not that one of the providential reasons why the spiritual effect of these versions among the “ heathen ” falls below that material one produced by drops of rain on the Atlantic ? Or, if the Missionary translators of the Scriptures into Feejee, Kamtcha- dale, or Patagonian, possess (what is so rare, as to be a pleasant proverb) sufficient Ilebrai- cal erudition to translate into the above, or any other tongue, direct from the Text, do not these excellent men “ipso facto” confirm all we have asserted in regard to our “authorized” version, by leaving its interpretations aside ? There are (although few Anglo-saxons know it) human dialects, orally extant, wherein there is no name for “God,” no appellative for “ Heaven,” because such ideas never entered the brain of those low “Types of Mankind” for which a Missionary version has been manu- factured. The highly-cultivated Chinese remained impenetrable to the disputes, sustained by the learned Jesuits and the evangelical Dominicans with the quintessence of “odium theologicum,” on the following heads : — “ 1st., if, by the words Thian, and Chang-ti, the Chinese understand but the material sky, or if they xxnderstand the Lord of Heaven? — 2d., if the ceremonies made by the Chinese in honor of their ancestors or of their national philosopher Khoung-tseu, are religious ob- servances or civil and political practices?” (127) Unable to settle the first problem by reference to Chinese lexicons, those Catholic Mission- aries submitted it to the decision of the Emperor Khang-hi; and the solution of the second dilemma was referred to the Pope! Regarding this “ Foreign Missionary” discussion from the same point of view, as here in the United States we should look upon a dispute between Chinese Bonzes as to what we mean by “ Providence,” or in what light ice celebrate the “ Anniversary of Washington”; and feeling the same sort of astonishment that would fill ourselves were we told, that by one Chinaman the first doubt had been submitted to His Excellency the President, and that the settlement of the latter had been left by the other Chinaman to Ilis Holiness the Dalai- Lama of Thibet: —the wise and jocular Emperor wrote in autograph beneath the Pope’s Constitution ; — “ This species of decree concerns none but vile Europeans: how can it decide anything upon the grand doctrine of the Chinese, of whom these people in Europe do not understand even the language ? ” And then enforced his jest by banishing both Jesuits and Dominicans, about 1721, to Macao. Protestant successors in the Celestial Empire are still perplexed with the same linguistic obstacle ; for about 1844, it was proposed to invent a new name for Deity, (that is, neither 77 (127) Pacthier: Chine; pp. 446—448.

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