Walter Henry Medhurst (29 April 1796 – 24 January 1857), was an EnglishCongregationalist missionary to China, born in London and educated at St Paul's School. He was one of the early translators of the Bible into Chinese-language editions.[1]
Medhurst's father was an innkeeper in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. As a young man, Medhurst studied at Hackney College under George Collison and he worked as a printer and typesetter at the Gloucester Herald and the London Missionary Society (LMS). He became interested in Christian missions and the LMS chose him to become a missionary printer in China. He sailed in 1816 to join their station at Malacca, which was intended to be a great printing centre.[2] En route, he called at Madras where, in a little less than three months, he met Mrs Elizabeth Braune, née Martin (1794–1874), marrying her the day before he sailed to Malacca.[1]
Medhurst served as a missionary in Penang in 1820, and then in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), capital of the Dutch East Indies in 1822.[2] His son Walter Henry was born that year and born in 1828 was his daughter Eliza Mary who went on to marry Hong Kong's chief magistrate Charles Batten Hillier in 1846.[3]: 183 [4] Their youngest daughter was Augusta, born in 1840.[5]
Today's All Saints Jakarta church and the Parapattan Orphanage were started by Medhurst.[6]
In addition to compiling his Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries, Medhurst was a prolific translator, lexicographer, and editor.
Although Medhurst never traveled to Japan, in 1830 he published An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary Compiled from Native Works in 344 pages. Based upon his studies of Hokkien, in 1831 Medhurst completed his A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, but printing of all 862 pages of which reached finality only in 1837 after being affected by the end of the British East India Company's trade monopoly in 1834 and for lack of funds.[7]
The translation of the Hebrew language part was done mostly by Gutzlaff from the Netherlands Missionary Society, with the exception of the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua, which were done by the group collectively. The initial Gutzlaff translation, completed in 1847 is well known due to its adoption by the revolutionary peasant leader Hong Xiuquan of the Taiping Rebellion as some of the reputed early doctrines of the organization.[8]
Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856, in failing health. He died two days after reaching London, on 24 January 1857[2] and was buried at the Congregationalists' non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery where his white stone obelisk monument can still be seen today.[1]
He left a son, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst (1822–1885), who was British consul at Hankou and afterwards at Shanghai.[2]
Medhurst, W. H. (1847). A dissertation on the theology of the Chinese, with a view to the elucidation of the most appropriate term for expressing the deity, in the Chinese language. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1848). An inquiry into the proper mode of rendering the word God in translating the sacred scriptures into the Chinese language. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1848). Reply to the essay of Dr. Boone on the proper rendering of the words Elohim and Theos into the Chinese language. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1848). Reply to the few plain questions of a brother missionary. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1849). On the true meaning of the word Shin, as exhibited in the quotations adduced under that word in the Chinese Imperial thesaurus called the Pei-wan-yun-foo. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1850). An inquiry into the proper mode of translating Ruach and Pneuma in the Chinese version of the Scriptures. Shanghai: Mission Press.
Medhurst, W. H. (1852). Reply to Dr. Boone's vindication of comments on the translation of Ephes. I. Shanghai: Mission Press.
^Medhurst, Walter H (1 June 1837). A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language. Advertisement by Samuel Wells Williams
^Reilly, Thomas H. (2004). The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. pp. 74–79. ISBN0295984309.
^Hanan, Patrick (1 January 2003). "The Bible as Chinese Literature: Medhurst, Wang Tao, and the Delegates' Version". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 63 (1): 197–239. doi:10.2307/25066695. JSTOR25066695.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Medhurst, Walter Henry". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 20.
