Ancient Latin or Modern French? An Inquiry into the Source Text of Ma Xiangbo’s Translation of the Four Gospels

Abstract

The translation of the four Gospels into classical Chinese by Ma Xiangbo (1840–1939), published in 1949, has received little attention in the worlds of religion and scholarship. Based on a passing comment in Ma’s introduction, it is usually assumed that he based his translation on an edition of the Latin Vulgate published by Jean-Baptiste Glaire (1798–1879); however, Glaire’s work was not an edition of the Vulgate, but rather a translation of the Latin text into French. The goal of this paper is to determine the source text used by Ma Xiangbo based on textual and paratextual evidence and thus clarify this apparent contradiction.