Omaha daily bee., 1908-10-12

Great Spirit and they had come to learn
about II. They were directed to Capt. Will
liam Clark. the explorer and Indian com
missioner. lie had no Bible to give them.
The story when published resulted in the
sending Of Methodist and Catholic mis-
sionaries to the Nez Perez Indians and in
the printing In 1871 OF a Nez Perez Bible.
A Cherokee worked out a Cherokee al
phabet in 1921. and by 1881 the society had
published most Of the Bible in that Ian
guage. The greatest OF all the Indian trans
laticns was the complete Bible in Dakota,
the tongue Of the Sioux, published In 1879.
PUSHES for the Translator.
Often the translator has had to create
words as well as alphebets. How shall the
dweller in some low lying atoll know the
word mountain How write Lamb Of
God" for Eskimos, who know no lambs7
Little seal" the translator had to put It
at last.
bad to eat was as near as the trans
lator into Mosquito could get to sin. Nice
smell had to serve as native Australian for
frankincense. In Uganda .the translator
had to walt five years before he could
catch q word that meant plague. Then one
day he heard a man bewailing the influx
OF rats. such a "dibebu" they were. Out
came the note book and down went the
long sought word.
How translate the gospel into a language
that has no words for city, marriage.
wheat, barley. in which pig, rat and dog
exhaust the geological terms, In which the
word for five is my hand" for six my
hand and one" and 80 on
Then the revision. An American trans
lated the gospel OF Matthew into Micmac
for the Nova scotisn Indians. After all
- - - - -aaAa atz- ,,n
from the south came the printed word, and
he read the puzzllng sentence, "a pair Of
snowshoes shall rise up against a pair OF
snowshoes." One letter wrong had changed
nation" into pair Of snowshoes."
But II for some races the translator had
to create a written language. for others he
worked in fear of a criticism more learned
than his own. The story of the Arabic
Bible. the greatest of modern TRANSACTIONS
and the greatest Of all Bibles in a non
Christian tongue. reminds one of Aldus and
his Venice print shop.
The first task was the creation of a type
which should pass muster with the fas-
tidious and artistic MoharInedan scholars,
who to this day prefer manuscript books TO
printed volumes Including vowel points
1900 different types are necessary to print
an Arabic alphabet.
The creation OF the steel punches with
which to strike the matrices to cast the
type in a form to disarm all criticism, and
their eventual casting at Lepsic, whittier
they were transported overland from Sytia,
took five years. The whole work pro-
ceeded at the same rate. Eevery proof was
corrected by the one hundred leading
authorities in the world, Syrian. Arabian,
American and European.
Task of Reading Proof
No Occidental can conceive the complex
ity of a page Of Arabic proof. OF the sight
destroying labor of reading It. Men grew
gray and lost their eyesight putting the
work into type From the moment Of its
inception to that OF its final electrotypins
in ten different forms, seventy-six years
passed and the American Bible society had
spent 500, 900 on It.
The result is the standard Arabic Bib,
which circulates all along the North Afri
can coast, across the Sahara to Timbuktu
and south to Niger and Mombasa. 1t IL
called for at the Cape OF Good Hope, In
Persia. Central Asia, India. China, Mala,
vsia, the Philippines. Yucatan and Brazil
Imported from Beirut it is the Bible uset
by syrians in New York and Chicago.
Hero of the Society.
INV - NNV AASAOAS NoAN1 Va NiC tx
annals is that OF Bishop Schereschewsky
Who, stricken with paralysis. pounded on
Chinese translation with two fingers OF
10 typewriter. For twenty years preced
< his death he was practically ~confine,
, an armchair. During this time H.
anslated the whole Bible from the origi
.Ial Greek and Hebrew into the Easy Wenl
dialect of China.
4 He was unable to speak plainly enough
n to be understood by a Chinese scribe. H,
could not hold a pen, having only on
n finger on each hand under control. So h
8 made the translation with these two finger
q on the typewriter. and 1t was then copie,
. by hand into Easy Wenli dialect by
: Chinese woman, Mrs. Wei. His origina
: typewriter manuscript is now preserve,
A in the, Lenox library as a monument of on
: OF the most s~tupendous literary undertake
lngs ever made.
In ninety-one years of existence the Sc
ctety contributed so. 4eO.SS copies of tn
n Bible. Last year 1t distributed 1000, 90
These Bibles are paid for in queer circu
lating mediums sometimes.
q Within it's history the society has accepte
dried cocoanuts, salt fish, knives, spoons
n rugs, beads. cowrie shells, grass mat!
Ir bracelets, porpoise teeth. rice, sugar can
Is and South Sea Island money for Bibles. 1
e little native boats the colporteurs cree
a down among the islands. BY dog sledg
lie and komatik in Alaska, by buffalo cart 1
Borneo, camel in the Cobb desert, mul
train and llama pack In the Andes, by Ell,
plant and straw matched cart in SiaI
and native junk on Chineses rivers the
10 push their wares. One white man and h
to wife floated 3.OOO miles down the Lena rive
on an open raft with half a ton Of Biblei
selling gospels to the Yakuts in their ow
language.
Colporteurs distributed Bibles In twenty
D. seven different languages in the Unite
&c States last year. They found negroes
ne the south who had never heard OF such
book. They were kicked down stairs 1
to tenement houses by free thinking imm
IL grants. The sooiety's eOiportsur among II
he Poles and Russians OF the Chicago stoC
n yards Is Paul CHASER, who was a memb,
n OF the first Russian Duma in 1896. and b
reason of that fact was banlshed to sibert
II. where he did not go.
Fk Foley's Honey and Tar cures cough
ne quickly. strengthens the lungs and expe