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LIBRARIES IN MEMORIAL BIBLE HOUSE, CANBERRA - page 3

Among the more notable of our materials in the languages of Asia is the second volume of a Bengali Old Testament published in 1809 (one of our seven first editions published in Serampore by William Carey and his colleagues); we also have a first edition (1884) of the Gospel of Mark in Korean, translated by John Ross of the Presbyterian Mission at Mukden. One of our “curiosities” is a particularly beautiful Delegates’ Version of the New Testament in Chinese; this translation was completed by Protestant missionaries from the five Treaty Ports in 1852, but the translators could not agree on the correct translation for the words “God” and “Spirit”, so these words were left blank initially and were filled in later. The library’s volume is largely a duplicate of the copy of the Delegates’ Version which was presented to the Empress Dowager of China by over 10,000 Chinese Christian women on 12 November 1894 for her 60th birthday.

While little has been added to these “exotic” parts of the collection since 1967, the sections devoted to the languages of the Pacific (particularly those of Papua New Guinea) and of Australia and the Torres Strait have continued to expand.  The Australian volumes include missionary translations of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as those into Narrinyeri (1864), Mer (1885) and Dieri (1897), as well as more recent publications.  Some of the latter are limited-circulation “trial” editions or literacy material on scriptural themes.

Many items in the library, while not necessarily of great market value, nevertheless have some noteworthy stories behind them.  For example, the 1967 catalogue notes (p.5): “Several volumes in the Library bear the inscription ‘Presented by Drs Paterson and Henderson’ in the year 1822.  These two men were both early Secretaries in Europe of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Dr Paterson being in Russia at the time of Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow in 1812.  He was instrumental in forming the Russian Bible Society in the following year, a Society which was extremely active in publishing Scriptures until it was forced to close in 1826.”  The Arrowsmith Library also houses items which are significant because of their association with Australian history, such as New Testaments that went with soldiers to the Boer War and the two World Wars, and Bibles which belonged to significant figures in our history such as John Oxley and Governor Hunter.  Pre-eminent in this respect is the copy of the Bible presented to Australia’s first Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, in 1901; the Bible Society made this Bible available for the swearing-in of the new Governor-General in July 2001, as a gesture towards the celebration of the centenary of Federation.

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