THE INDIAN BIBLE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 69, 3 January 1936, Page 8

THE INDIAN BIBLE

WORK OF JOHN ELIOT. UKIiCn.EAX TASK. John Eliot, “he Apostle to the Indians,” never used to interest me at all. In fact, the lugubrious expression on his face rather repelled me. Being of a naturally optimistic temperament, I never could understand why my Puritan ancestors insisted on making their interpretation of religion so forbidding, writes William Dana Orcutt in the “Christian Science Monitor.” I formed my first opinion of John Eliot when I studied the “Bay Psalm Book,” which lie compiled with Richard Mather. How was it possible for such a volume, first in its original form and later in its revision, to bo accepted as tlie standard psalm hook of its generation? Richard Mather had been a student at Oxford and John Eliot was a. graduate of Cambridge, England. A part of their university education must have been a training at Latin verse-making, yet no translation from Hebrew, or any other language, of such beautiful text as the Psalms provide, has ever been rendered with such crudeness of style, metre, or rhythm. “If tho verses arc not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect,” tho translators explain in their preface, “let them consider that Gods Altar needs not polishings; we have respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language, and David’s poetry into English mectrc that soe wee may sing in Sion the Lord’s songs of praise according to his own will, untill lie take us from hence, and wipe away all our tears, and hid us enter into our master’s joye to sing eternall Hallalujalis.” Their Attitude. The fact that these men, representative of their period found “conscience” and “elegance,” “fidelity” and “poetry” contradictory expressions, was what made me so unresponsive to the Puritan creed. 1 could see my grave, solemn-faced ancestors standing in their pews on Sunday mornings, making these ten forbidding tunes of the “Bay Psalm Book,” of which only five were familiarly known, the vehicle of their Sabbath praise to the Almighty.

When it came to John Eliot’s “Indian Bible,” I used to regard it simply as a typographical curiosity, interesting enough as an example of early colonial printing, hut valuable chiefly because of tlie limited number of copies now in existence. Being a maker of books, I was perhaps even more interested than the average observer, because the volume represented one of the earliest products of the first printing press set up in British North America. Yet this Indian Bible stands as a monument recording one of the most extraordinary tasks any man ever undertook and accomplished. John Eliot was only twenty-seven years of age when he arrived in America in 1031 to become “teacher” of the church in Roxbury (now a part of Boston). The colonists in those days naturally looked upon the Indians as a menace, hut John Eliot, during his ten years of labour among them, came to the conclusion that the hostile attitude taken by the Red Men was due to the impossibility of reaching their souls through the medium of the Holy Gospel. He took it upon himself as a divine injunction to remedy this situation. I To Learn The Tongue. First of all it was necessary for Eliot himself to learn the Indian language. This had to he entirely by word of mouth, as the Indian tongue had not as yet been reduced to written form. Two years later lie felt competent to try the experiment of pleaching a sermon to th Indians in their own language, in Chief A) alum’s camp at Nonantum (which is now Newtown, Mass.). To his intense satisfaction Eliot not only found that his audience understood him hut that they were eagerly interested in what he said to them about God and tlie tutiue life. “Why does God make good men sick?” they asked. “How docs the spirit of God get in us, and where is it?” The whole idea of prayer to the Great Father appealed to them intensely, and when they were assured that God would understand a pia\ei littered in the Indian language, their happiness was childlike and supreme. This reassured Eliot in his determination to translate the Old and New Testaments into the Indian tongue. Single- Handed.

Can one imagine a more prodigious undertaking for a man of forty P Hav - ing learned the Indian language himself, Eliot now reduced it to writing. Then ho undertook to teach the Indians bo wto read their own spoken language in its new, written form. History records that the preparation of the first Greek’translation ol the Old Testament required the labour ol seventy - two rabbis, selected from twelve tribes or Israel; the establishment of the Vulgate text by Jerome certainly required no less a number engaged in Home and Africa upon the Latin version; over fifty students and theologians, selected for the task from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, produced the King James version., This young enthusiast, John Eliot took upon himselt the task of translating single-handed into the Indian language, unwritten and unknown, the entire Old and New Testaments. Even after the Herculean task of translating the entire Bible was completed, John Eliot was still faced'by almost insurmountable barriers .in the matter of getting his manuscript printed. In the first place, there was hut a single printing press in the entire colony. Second the funds necessary to pay for the printing had to bo secured by Eliot himself in England. "With

these funds assured he laboriously saw his manuscript assume the dignity of printed form and completed his entire undertaking within the space of twenty years. I wonder if a pride which was unbecoming in a Puritan did not fill John Eliot’s heart when he presented a complete copy of the Indian Bible, hound in dark blue morocco, to his Majesty King Charles 11. of England. /I also wonder if it can he said justly that tlie results, so far As the Indians themselves were concerned, justified the Apostle’s labours. If I read early colonial history correctly, the Indians found their own interpretation of their God less forbidding than the one to whom John Eliot introduced them. The Indian Bible, then, passes from the classification of a great religious work into an outstanding human document—a monument to the immatchalne enthusiasm and unyielding determination displayed by our sturdy forebears. As such it represents a part of the structure on which America rests to-day.