MEDHURST (Walter Henry).
Reply to the essay of Dr. Boone on the proper rendering of the words Elohim and Theos into the Chinese language.
Medhurst’s important contribution to the ‘Naming Controversy’ which revolved around the choice of Chinese characters for the term ‘God’. ‘Shen’, ‘tian-zhu’, ‘tian-di’ and ‘shang-di’ were amongst the heavily contested candidates. Medhurst goes through Boone’s essay paragraph by paragraph and meticulously points out the flaws in his argument. The line of thought is impressive on both a systematic and a linguistic level.
The appendix is entitled: “Correspondence on the Version of the Chinese New Testament now carrying forward at Shanghai”. This gives a vivid impression of the intensity of the debate in Shanghai with contributions by Boone, Bridgman, Medhurst, Stonach and Milne.
