折射圣经:晚清和民国的“基督教文学”

Refracting the Bible:“Christian Literature” in Late-Qing and Republican China

直到最近20年,20世纪初期的一系列'基督教文学'才被中国学者毫不怀疑地重新肯定。然而,晚清和民国基督教文学的关系仍未得到充分研究,尽管晚清和五四世俗文学的关系已经被重新思考过。晚清留下了丰富的宣教和奉教文本,它们通常由传教士创作,用以建立教会,似乎与后来小说家的文学创作形式和过程有所不同。但是本文表明,我们可能需要更多地思考其中的连续性。首先是因为晚清出现的表现'圣经'的形式的多样性并未于1919年消失,而且那些(准)圣经文本的生产者不仅是圣经的读者,事实上亦是圣经内容的写作者。本文通过仔细检视麦尚德的《圣经史记》(1846)和卦德明的《圣经图记》(1855),表明我们需要怎样重新思考晚清和民国基督教文学的关系。接着,本文考察了20世纪早期的中国基督教文学。研究者们已经撰写了作者传记;按照时间顺序研究了不同时段对圣经的回应;并按照主题分类,研究了种种经文母题的运用。但是我们如何找到一种恰当的'文学的'方法,去探讨民国时期出现的种种对圣经的书面回应呢?这个问题似仍有讨论的余地。本文以1920和1930年代的三个著名的小说文本为载体,透过文学技巧探测神学与文学形式之间的相互影响,从而考察文学形式本身如何成为文学和神学的工具,以及它如何提供了一种讨论两者的途径。

It is only in the last two decades that the existence and range of a'Christian literature'in the early twentieth century has been re-established beyond doubt by Chinese scholars.However,the relationship between late Qing and Republican Christian literatures is still under-studied,despite a rethink in the relationship between secular late Qing and May Fourth literatures.The abundance of pedagogical and devotional texts written to build up the church in the late Qing,often by western missionaries,seemed to offer a different type of form and process than the literary endeavours of later fiction writers.This article suggests,however,that we may need to think more in terms of continuity,because the multiplicity of forms in which'the bible'appeared in the late Qing did not suddenly disappear in 1919,and because the late Qing producers of parabiblical texts were not just readers of the bible,but were in effect writers of it too.The paper takes a closer look at William Henry Medhurst’s'Shengjing shiji'(1846)and John Winn Quarterman’s'Shengjing tuji'(1855)to suggest how we might rethink the relationship between late Qing and Republican Christian literatures.The second part of this paper considers the field of Chinese Christian literature in the early twentieth century.Scholars have produced biographical studies of authors;chronological studies of'periods'of responses to scripture;and thematic studies of biblical tropes,but there is further scope for questioning how we find an appropriate literary means of discussing written reactions to scripture in the Republic.The interplay between theology and literary form is probed through literary technique,using three well-known fictional texts from the 1920s and 1930s,to see how form itself becomes a literary and theological tool and provides a means for discussing both.