Completion of the Arabic Bible

If Eli Smith proved his linguistic talents among the first generation of American missionaries, Van Dyck carried on this legacy in the second generation, continu-ously perfecting his command of the Arabic language. Between 1840 and 1857 he studied Arabic with Nasif al-Yaziji, Butrus al-Bustani, and Yusuf al-Asir; his wife Julia assisted him with conversational, everyday usage.³⁴⁶ Van Dyck was proficient in ten languages, including Syrian, Hebrew, Greek, French, Italian, and German.³⁴⁷ His students later recalled that he always had a notebook by his side, in which he and Nasif al-Yaziji recorded excerpts of Arabic poetry and qasā’id. He recited regu-larly from the notebook on various occasions.³⁴⁸

It is not at all surprising that, after Smith’s death, the mission chose Van Dyck to complete the translation of the Bible. Van Dyck was Smith’s favorite student, the only author whose works could go to press without first being proofread by Smith.³⁴⁹ Already in 1851, Anderson had suggested that Van Dyck, because of his familiarity with Arabic poetry, might help with the translation of poetic Bible texts like the Psalms and Job.³⁵⁰ However, because Van Dyck had other responsibilities as a missionary and mission doctor, he became involved with the translation project only after Smith’s death. Instead of Nasif al-Yaziji (whose work Smith had grown dissatisfied with) and Butrus al-Bustani (who was now busy with other work), Van Dyck hired the Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Asir to be his assistant. The Syrian, who was raised in Sidon, had studied law and Islamic theology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Active in the intellectual circles of Egypt and Syria, al-Asir had previously worked for the Ottoman government and taught Arabic, including at the National School founded by Bustani in 1862.³⁵¹ He was one of the first Muslim intellec-tuals to become active in the Christian-dominated cultural movement in Syria.³⁵² Van Dyck, who was impressed by al-Asir and his linguistic talents,³⁵³ intentionally sought a Muslim collaborator: “I preferred a Muslim to a Christian, as coming to

346 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 106; Tibawi, “The Genesis and Early History of the Syrian Protestant College,” 265; Kades, Die arabischen Bibelübersetzungen im 19. Jahrhun-dert, 55.

347 Sarruf and Nimr, “al-Marhum al-Muʿallim Butrus al-Bustani,” 2; Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 73.

348 From a speech by Y. Sarruf, given at the dedication of busts of Van Dyck and Wortabet in 1913, in: al-Kulliyya 4, no. 6 (1913), cited in: Khuri, al-Rawad al-Muʾassasun li l-Jamiʿa al-Amiri-kiyya bi-Beyrut, 177. See Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 107: “He soon mastered the best productions of Arabic poetry and literature, and by his wonderful memory could quote from the poetry, proverbs, history and science of the Arabs in a way which completely fasci-nated the Syrian people.”

349 Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 285. On his deathbed, Smith expressed his exceptional gratitude to Van Dyck for his care and regular visits: “Obituary Notice of Rev. Eli Smith D. D.”: ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 5 (227).

350 Anderson to the Syria Mission (Boston, July 17, 1851): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 8 (4).

351 Zaydan, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq fi l-Qarn at-Tasiʿ Ashar, 149.

352 Binay, “Revision of the manuscripts of the ‘so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible,’” 82; Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 145.

353 Ibid.

the work with no preconceived ideas of what a passage ought to mean, and as be-ing more extensively read in Arabic.”³⁵⁴ Al-Asir was tasked with proofreading Van Dyck’s translations and reformulating foreign expressions.³⁵⁵ In addition to al-Asir, Van Dyck presumably employed other, unnamed proofreaders who helped to com-plete the Bible translation.³⁵⁶ In 1861, Van Dyck wrote to Anderson that, because of the strenuous work, he would hire more assistants if he could.³⁵⁷

As already mentioned, Smith’s draft of the New Testament was almost unus-able because it was not based on the textus receptus.³⁵⁸ Nevertheless, Van Dyck wanted to acknowledge the work of his predecessor. He obtained permission from the American Bible Society (the funder of the translation project) to mention the existence of additional Greek, Syriac, or Arabic manuscripts that departed from the accepted Greek text in the translation’s footnotes. “I availed myself largely of this permission,” he later recalled.³⁵⁹ In this way, the current research and textual criticism that Smith did not want to neglect was incorporated into the translation.

Van Dyck also adopted Smith’s practice of sending translation drafts to a variety of readers. A circle of about thirty people – including missionaries in the Arab world, native scholars, as well as Arabists in Germany – regularly received proofs for correction.³⁶⁰ In a letter to the American Bible Society, Van Dyck commented:

“These all come back with notes and suggestions, every one of which must be well weighed. Thus a critic, by one dash of his pen, may cause me a day’s labour, and not till all is set right, can the sheet be printed.”³⁶¹ According to new research by the Arabist Sara binay, Van Dyck’s translation of the gospels corresponds with Smith’s version more than ninety-five percent of the time, more than previously assumed: “There is proof that Cornelius Van Dyck really reread their translation but only in a few cases did he have to implement corrections, some based on his comparison with the recognised Greek text and some in matters of Arabic style.”³⁶²

354 Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 280.

355 Saʾdi, “Al-Hakîm Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck,” 28. Van Dyck’s letters to the ABCFM and his official reports on the Bible translation do not provide more specific information about Yusuf al-Asir or their collaboration. Even Jurji Zaydan – historian, author, and Van Dyck’s former student – does not mention the Bible translation in his short biography of Yusuf al-Asir.

See Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq fi l-Qarn at-Tasiʿ Ashar, 148–50.

356 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 106.

357 Van Dyck to Anderson (Beirut, July 24, 1861): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 7.2. (495).

358 See chapter II, section 1.4.

359 Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 279.

360 No information is available on Smith’s circle of proofreaders. The German-speaking Arabists included Prof. Fleischer (Leipzig), Prof. Rödiger (Halle, Berlin), Prof. Flügel (Dresden), as well as Dr. Behrnauer, who worked at the imperial library in Vienna. See “Dr. Van Dyck’s History of the Arabic Translation of the Scriptures, March 7th, 1885,” in: Smith and Van Dyck, Brief Documentary History of the Translations of the Scriptures, 28.

361 Cited in: Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 75.

362 Binay, “Revision of the manuscripts of the ‘so-called Smith-Van Dyck Bible,’” 81. By contrast, in 1885 Hall wrote: “From various sources I have learned that the New Testament translation of Dr. Eli Smith was actually not used by Dr. Van Dyck.” See “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 282.

With respect to Arabic style, Smith had set a clear precedent. All of the mis-sionaries agreed that a simple, pure Arabic, “free from foreign idioms,” was the best solution. Adopting the style of the Koran (“i. e., Islamic, adopting idioms and expressions peculiar to Mohammedans”) had been considered, but Van Dyck re-ported that all Christian scholars had opposed this.³⁶³ Those responsible for the Bible translation felt strongly that the poetic and very complex Arabic language of the Koran – accessible only to the highly educated, with words that had long fallen out of use – should be replaced with a simpler Arabic that was comprehensible to all. A more elevated register was chosen only for the poetic parts of the Bible, so that these would correspond to the style of the original Greek or Hebrew texts.³⁶⁴

The New Testament went to print in the spring of 1860. Several different persons suggested that Van Dyck should also publish a vocalized edition of the New Testament. One reason for this was to model the vocalized Koran, in order to reach Muslims more easily. Another was so that the vocalized text could be used in schools, to promote correct pronunciation.³⁶⁵

Continuing to work on the Old Testament proved to be an arduous task for Van Dyck. He traveled to Austria and Prussia in 1869, so that he could speak with Ori-entalists in Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden, and Halle about difficulties with the text.³⁶⁶ On August 23, 1864, Van Dyck finally finished translating the last sentence of Ma-lachi. His son Edward later recalled that on this evening he had been waiting for his father, who stepped out onto the balcony of the house and said: “Edward, it is finished. Thank God! What a load is off me! I never thought I was going to live to finish this work.”³⁶⁷

The first complete edition of the Arabic Bible was published in March 1865. By the arrangement of the pages, it is even possible to recognize where Smith’s trans-lation ended and Van Dyck’s began.³⁶⁸ In the summer of 1865, Van Dyck traveled to New York to commission the production of metal plates for printing the Bible faster.³⁶⁹ Through electrotyping, the plates could be reproduced and used over and over – allowing the Bible to be widely distributed. The British and Foreign Bible Society received a copy of the plates. By 1910, around thirty-two editions and more

363 “Van Dyck’s History, 1885,” in: Smith and Van Dyck, Brief Documentary History of the Trans-lations of the Scriptures, 28.

364 Ibid.

365 Van Dyck to Rev. Doct. Brigham (Beirut, December 31, 1857): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 5 (345). See also Saʾdi, “Al-Hakîm Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck,” 29: “In works of great importance, such as the Qurʾān (or Korán), or of especially high quality, such as the acknowledged peaces of Arabic literature, all the vowel-points, short as well as long, must be fully indicated.”

366 Saʾdi, “Al-Hakîm Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck,” 28–29. Van Dyck’s membership in the DMG encouraged communication with the German Orientalists. This scholarly exchange came to a standstill after the transfer of the mission to the Presbyterian Board. See Kawerau, Amerika und die Orientalischen Kirchen, 422.

367 Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 286.

368 Ibid., 280–81.

369 The process that Van Dyck called “electrotype printing” was based upon the technique of etch-ing. Using manual and electric tools, characters were carved into a metal plate of copper or zinc and then immersed in an acidic solution. See Grabowski and Fick, Drucktechniken, 103–6.

than 900,000 individual copies of the Smith-Van Dyck Bible had been printed.³⁷⁰ The printed Arabic Bible of the Americans was one of the most read versions of Holy Scripture of its era.³⁷¹ As explained in chapter II, section 1.4, this Bible was not a classic translation from the text’s original languages; it incorporated the phra-seologies of existing Arabic manuscripts so that the reader might encounter them anew.

Two other Arabic Bible translations were undertaken in the nineteenth century, but these were not nearly as popular as the Americans’. Around the same time as Eli Smith, Faris al-Shidyaq and the Englishman Samuel Lee began to translate the English King James Bible into Arabic, as commissioned (primarily) by the Church Propagation Society. Although this version was printed in London in 1851 and 1857, it was not widely used.³⁷² In 1881, the Jesuits brought out a translation that was largely completed by Ibrahim al-Yaziji, son of the scholar Nasif al-Yaziji. Van Dyck recognized few differences between al-Yaziji’s text and his own translation:

“It is a fair translation generally, and only differs in very slight particulars from mine (so far as I have traced it), … and that only for the sake of differing from the Protestant Version.”³⁷³ However, Van Dyck was incorrect. The Jesuit Arabic Bible was not a revision of the Smith-Van Dyck Bible, but an independent translation. Al-though it shared many similarities with the Protestant Bible,³⁷⁴ it departed from this translation in numerous places with its smooth, more sophisticated Arabic. More expressive but also not as closely bound to the original texts, this version was par-ticularly favored in intellectual and scholarly circles.³⁷⁵

Even the Orthodox churches in Syria and the Coptic Christians in Egypt used the American Bible translation.³⁷⁶ The Maronite church, by contrast, has continued to use the Jesuit version up through the present day. Today, the Smith-Van Dyck Bible still serves as the Protestant “textus receptus” in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel.³⁷⁷ Although Van Dyck persisted in crediting Smith’s authorship at every opportunity,³⁷⁸ Smith’s pioneering accomplishments were increasingly overlooked.

The missionaries’ collaboration with the Syrian scholars al-Yaziji, al-Bustani, and al-Asir – which contributed significantly to perfecting the translation – received

370 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 77.

371 Glaß, Malta, Beirut, Leipzig and Beirut Again, 26. After his return from the United States in 1867, Van Dyck said: “No literary work of the century exceeds it in importance and it is ac-knowledged to be one of the best translations of the Bible ever made.” See Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 77.

372 Hall, “The Arabic Bible of Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck,” 279.

373 Van Dyck, in: ibid., 280.

374 Binay, introduction to Translating the Bible into Arabic, 13–14.

375 Glaß, Malta, Beirut, Leipzig and Beirut Again, 27; Thompson, The Major Arabic Bibles, 29–

376 In an 1865 public speech, the Greek Orthodox priest and scholar Jubrin Jubara declared: “They 31.

have given us a translation so pure, so exact, so clear, and so classical, as to be acceptable to all classes and sects.” See Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 78.

377 Grafton, Piety, Politics and Power, 88.

378 Sarruf and Nimr, “al-Marhum al-Muʿallim Butrus al-Bustani,” 4; Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 109.

even less acknowledgment.³⁷⁹ The Arabic Bible translation of the American mis-sionaries eventually became known as simply the “Van Dyck Bible.”