{"id":3866,"date":"2021-10-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chongsworship.com\/?p=3866"},"modified":"2021-10-13T09:39:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T20:39:18","slug":"thank-you-schereschewsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chongsworship.com\/2021\/10\/14\/thank-you-schereschewsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank you Schereschewsky! \u3010\u611f\u8b1d\u65bd\u7d04\u745f\uff01\u3011"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you’re a Christian and you love China, today (October 14) is officially Joseph Schereschewsky day. (Joseph who?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the spirit of Hebrews 12, here’s 9 fun facts about this hall of fame brother in Christ:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Born in Lithuania on 6 May 1831 into a Jewish family.<\/li>
  2. While studying to be a rabbi, he was given a copy of the New Testament in Hebrew, which gradually convinced him that in Jesus, the promises of the Old Testament and the hopes of his people had been fulfilled.<\/li>
  3. He was baptised in a Baptist church, but trained for seminary at a Presbyterian college, then joined the Episcopal (US branch of Anglican) church as a missionary to China.<\/li>
  4. God gave Schereschewsky a gift of languages: he could speak 13 languages, read 20, and no other Western missionary was able to equal him in the mastery of spoken, idiomatic Mandarin. While William Tyndale lived in a different era and context, Schereschewsky’s impact on Bible translation is arguably just as important.<\/li>
  5. Dating tip: When Schereschewsky and a fellow missionary heard that a smart, capable single woman was travelling to China to serve as a missionary, both resolved to marry her. While his friend waited at the docks for Susan Mary Waring’s ship to arrive, Schereschewsky walked hundreds of km’s up the Yangtze (\u9577\u6c5f) and hitched a ride on another boat to reach her first. When their ship arrived in port, Joseph and Susan were already engaged – much to his friend’s amazement (and disappointment). \u201cGifted with a fine intellect, good judgment, and a most amiable disposition,\u201d Susan became Schereschewsky\u2019s indispensable companion, co-worker and helpmate over 38 years of faithful marriage.<\/li>
  6. He served as the Anglican Bishop of Shanghai from 1877 until 1883, when sunstroke forced him to give up his duties and reduced his ability to serve.<\/li>
  7. By 1895 he became “paralysed in every limb, and with his powers of speech partly gone”. Yet, sitting for nearly twenty-five years in the same chair, he used two fingers to slowly and painfully type out a Mandarin translation of the entire Old Testament, and an Easy Wen-li translation of the whole Bible (with the help of Susan and several Chinese assistants).<\/li>
  8. According to later translators and scholars, the final result of the CUV (\u548c\u5408\u672c), still the most-used Chinese Bible, was largely based off Schereschewsky’s own translation work.<\/li>
  9. Schereschewsky moved to Tokyo in the last 10 years of his life where he died and was buried. Marshall Broomhall, a fellow missionary, called him “probably the greatest Bible translator China ever had”.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    You can read a fuller biography of Joseph and Susan here<\/a>, or hear more about his story in this excellent podcast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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