The word “gospel” literally means good
word.
From the 1st century onward, professed Christians
have tried preaching their message in the
language of the people whom they encounter.
Because many languages in the past existed
merely as spoken languages, without any written
literature, it was difficult to discuss the
doctrines of the scriptures with these illiterate
tribes.
For the past 2,000 years, missionaries have
given people around the globe the gift of
literacy by devising alphabets, syllabaries,
and primers in order to spread their religious
message.
10.
Ufilas and Gothic
Historians know that Ufilas was a preacher
to the Goths in the 4th century, but we have
little personal information about him.
Researchers believe that he was a descendent
of Cappadocians captured by Goths and resettled
in their territory.
The limits of the land of the Goths are still
unknown as they were largely a nomadic people.
However, since Ufilas provided the tribe an
alphabet, we can trace current Germanic languages
back to their Gothic ancestor-tongue.
Prior to receiving this alphabet, the Goths,
like many Northern European peoples, used
runic writing.
Unfortunately, runic writing is ill suited
for the propagation of complex ideas.
The Goths thus likely had difficulty grasping
many of the doctrines taught by missionaries.
After the church consecrated Ufilas as bishop
of the Goths, he wanted to reach both their
hearts and minds.
Using his knowledge of Greek and Latin, he
devised for them an alphabet for their language.
Later, he translated most of the Bible into
Gothic, although currently we only have the
gospel accounts and a few other books of the
Bible.
This Bible was Gothic’s first work of literature.
Interestingly, he served as an Arian (non-Trinitarian)
bishop during this age of fierce theological
debate about Christ’s nature, and this differing
influence contributed to the Gothic (Germanic)
peoples defining themselves apart from the
Latin and Greek cultures.
9.
Stephen of Perm and Old Permic
During the 14th century, when the Russian
Orthodox Church sent Stephen to preach to
the Komi people, he should’ve had it easy.
Although Stephen was ethnically Russian, he
had been born among the Komi, who lived in
the northeast of European Russia.
However, bad relations existed between the
Komi and the Russian governments.
Culturally distinct from ethnic Russians,
the Komi had to send tribute to the capitals
Novgorod and Moscow.
They thus didn’t take kindly to Russian
people or their customs.
Stephen believed that in order for the Komi
people to accept Orthodox Christianity without
resentment, they needed to retain aspects
of their culture.
He decided to use the names of the local deities
in order to introduce them to characters such
as Almighty God, Jesus Christ, and Satan.
Furthermore, instead of forcing the people
to use the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russians,
he gave them an alphabet adapted from their
mother tongue’s use of Tamga signs, but
still modeled on Greek and Cyrillic characters.
Later, Stephen founded schools to teach the
language and the new alphabet.
As a result, Old Permic lasted another three
hundred years until Russian replaced it as
the primary language of the Komi people.
8.
Uyaquq and Yugtun
Most people familiar with inventors of writing
systems have heard of Sequoyah, an illiterate
Cherokee who invented an alphabet for his
tribe.
Uyaquq, a late 19th century Alaskan Eskimo,
wanted to accomplish the same thing as Sequoyah,
as he wanted to spread the gospel more easily
among his tribe.
Born into a family of shamans, Uyaquq converted
to Christianity after his father had converted.
Although his father joined the Orthodox Church,
he became a member of the Alaskan Monravian
Church, and expressing his dedication to his
new faith, he later became a missionary.
Impressed that English-speaking Monravians
could quote scriptures using exactly the same
words each time, he found out that the reason
why was that they were reading texts.
He however failed to learn to read or write
English properly.
After having a fantastic dream, he originally
created a pictograph system, which is where
images represented words.
Uyaquq was still not satisfied, and after
coming in contact with missionary John Hinz,
who encouraged him his linguistic work, he
developed his system into an actual syllabary.
Later, another tribesman further developed
the alphabet by creating different symbols,
but he still used Uyaquq’s work as the base
from which he worked.
7.
James Evans and Objiwe and Cree
Prior to Uyaquq, there was another man impressed
with the achievements of the self-taught Sequoyah.
This man—James Evans— came from an entirely
different cultural background; he was an educated
English-born Methodist, assigned to the Manitoba
province of Canada, and he had the responsibility
of teaching Native students, but not all of
his students could read and write English.
He however knew multiple native languages,
and he was particularly fluent in Objiwe.
He started to develop a complete writing script
for the tribe, but he stopped when the students
became confused as both English and his proposed
Objiwe alphabet had the same script.
He thus decided to give them a more basic
shorthand-based syllabary.
Learning from his previous mistakes in developing
an alphabet, twenty years later, Evans tried
his hand in giving the Cree people a writing
system.
Because he was still having difficulty adapting
a native language to the Latin alphabet, Evans
decided to use the Objiwe syllbary that he
had invented earlier to help with his work
in Cree.
It was a success, and his first published
work in Cree was a hymn, “Jesus My All to
Heaven is Gone.”
His system was soon popular enough that nearly
all the Cree community became literate.
6.
Diedrich Hermann Westermann and Ewe
Very few Westerners have likely heard of language
Ewe.
Even fewer probably know how to pronounce
the word (Just a hint, it’s different from
the word for a female sheep).
It’s a language in Sub-Saharan Africa, and
in Ghana, where the official language is English,
and in Togo, where the official language is
French.
It is considered to be the national language
or the language of the common people.
Westermann was man a devoted to the African
people and to the study of African linguistics.
Sent in 1901 to the German colony Togo as
a missionary, he developed a knack for learning
multiple African languages, and he enjoyed
discovering how they related linguistically.
For instance, he was the first person to group
Bantu languages together and to see how they
fit in the greater context of West African
linguistics.
His primary work though was with Ewe, and
he was able to compile multiple grammars and
a Ewe dictionary.
Today, this dictionary (revised later in 1954)
is still important in the field of African
linguistics.
5.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Yoruba
Samuel Crowther also served in Africa, and
he led an even more eventful life than Westermann
did.
Muslim slave traders first captured him when
he was a thirteen-year old Yoruba boy, and
during a significant period, slave traders
bought and sold him five more times.
While being held on a slave ship one day,
the British initiated an attack against the
slave traders and liberated him.
Afterwards, he converted to Anglicanism under
the influence of a missionary assigned to
Africa—John Raban.
Later in England, the Anglican Church ordained
him as the first African bishop.
Since he was an African native, they assigned
him back to the continent, where he began
his endeavors in ministering to his fellow
Yoruba.
Earlier, Raban had written a few books about
the Yoruba language, but there was still no
Yoruba primer or dictionary available.
Crowther now knew what he must do.
Although there had been a previous translation
of the Bible into Yoruba, many native speakers
felt it was lacking.
Because Yoruba was comprised of many dialects,
it was often hard for the speakers of the
many dialects to understand each other.
Crowther thus decided to standardize those
dialects into a single Yoruba language.
Having accomplished that, he then served as
the chief contributor to a new translation
of the Bible.
His efforts in uniting the Yoruba language
led to the uniting of fragmented tribes into
a single Yoruba people.
4.
Alexandre de Rhodes and Quoc Ngu
Vietnamese wasn’t always written with a
Latinized alphabet.
Prior to the 17th century, the Vietnamese
used Chu-nom, which is a Chinese-based script.
The language still had many Chinese loanwords
long after Vietnam developed its own national
literature and made efforts to distinguish
themselves from the more populous nation to
the north.
If a person knows the history of Chinese-Vietnamese
relations, he or she understands that the
situation has rarely been convivial.
Vietnam was thus ready for a change in their
written language.
In the early 17th century, Jesuit missionaries
began arriving in Vietnam.
Before Alexandre de Rhodes arrived, there
had been early efforts in compiling a Portuguese-Vietnamese
dictionary.
Rhodes however set the stage for the Vietnamese
eventually adopting a new alphabet.
Rhodes was not even Portuguese, but French,
and he used those previous Portuguese translation
efforts to assist him in creating a Vietnamese
dictionary.
He called the new Latin-based script Quoc
Ngu.
Later efforts by missionaries in supporting
the Quoc Ngu script helped convert many of
the population to Catholicism, and by the
20th century, Chu-nom had all but fallen into
disuse.
3.
Sam Pollard and Miao
China was a large field for missionaries during
the 19th century.
Not only is the landscape vast, but the country,
particularly away from the population centers
of the east, is composed of numerous tribes
and languages.
One of these minority groups is the Miao or
A-Hmao, who live in the Guizhou and Yunnan
provinces to the south.
Before Pollard arrived in 1904, the A-Hmao
used Chinese characters for their language—a
language that they rarely wrote down.
When Pollard learned that the Han Chinese
viewed the Miao people as barbarians, and
saw their mistreatment firsthand, he sympathized
with the ethnic group.
He realized that Chinese Bibles and hymnbooks
would not help the A-Hmao.
He thus developed a Latinized set of symbols
that would effectively represent the southeastern
origin of the language.
It proved popular with the people; when the
communists later wanted to replace Miao with
a language system based on Mandarin, the tribe
resisted.
Interestingly, the Miao writing system, despite
its need for revisions over the years, is
so embedded in their culture that some A-Hmao
believe that their tribe invented the writing
script, which then had become lost for years,
but they then had “rediscovered” it with
the help of Pollard.
2.
James O. Fraser and Old Lisu/Fraser
James O. Fraser was another Englishman in
the Yunnan province, but he served in it a
few years later.
He directed his preaching toward the Lisu
people—another minority situated along the
Burma-Thai border.
During the initial years of missionary work,
a fellow preacher, but of Karen descent, invented
the basic form of the Old Lisu alphabet.
Although appreciating the work of his colleague,
Fraser believed that there could be improvements
in the system.
Fraser organized the system so that the writing
went from left to right in horizontal lines.
Like some other Southeastern Asian languages,
Lisu is tonal-based, so Fraser used punctuation
indicate differing tones.
The alphabet itself consists of uppercase
Latin characters.
In order to differentiate sounds, some of
these characters are rotated 90 or 180 degrees.
Despite his depression and his uncertainty
about his ministry near the end of his life,
his efforts were largely successful as there
are currently about 300,000 professed Lisu
Christians in China, with unaccounted others
in Thailand and Myanmar.
Even the Chinese government eventually recognized
the writing system’s importance as they
confirmed that it was the Lisu people’s
official script in 1992.
1.
Mesrop Mashtots and Armenian and Georgian
The history of Armenia is fascinating.
In 301 A.D., the small country became the
first nation to declare itself Christian.
Situated between the Eastern Roman Empire
and Persia, it was constantly facing invasion
by massive armies at the end of the 4th century.
It was during this chaotic climate that a
bishop decided that Armenia needed a written
alphabet.
With all the external strife occurring, why
did Mesrop feel the need for an alphabet at
the time?
Because the masses could not understand Greek
or Syriac, the languages of the Armenian Church
at the time, many of the people were falling
away from the faith.
They needed a writing system in which the
average person could read the scriptures.
Mesrop also believed that Armenia’s culture
was about to be swallowed by foreign influences.
Many of the nobles were pro-Persian, while
the Syriac-speaking clergy wanted to push
the traditions of the Antioch Church on the
Armenians.
Having received support for his initiative
from the head of Armenian Church and given
a mysterious set of letters composed in a
defunct Armenian script from Bishop Daniel,
Mesrop set out on his task.
Successful in creating a new alphabet, he
went on a missionary tour of the Armenian
countryside, and brought back many into the
church.
Furthermore, although there is less information
about the creation of the Georgian and Gargarean
(dead North Caucasian) alphabets, historians
credit him for inventing these alphabets due
to the similarities between them and Armenian.
