The Union Version of the Bible & the New Literature in China

A Chinese version of the complete Bible, known as the Union Version, was published in Shanghai in 1919. It was the most successful translation into baihua, the Mandarin vernacular, and rapidly became and remains the most widely used Protestant Chinese Bible. Its appearance coincided with the literary revolution, through which baihua displaced classical literary Chinese as the literary language of choice. The focus of this article is on whether, and if so how, the Mandarin Union Version of the Bible influenced the language in which the new literature was expressed. The factors which led to the increased use and development of written Mandarin in each milieu - the social and the religious - are explored in an attempt to identify ways in which the two may have converged, fed and shaped each other.