A Comparative Study Of The Literariness In Three Chinese Versions Of John

The Bible is the source of western civilization and culture. It is a great work about a national culture, history and literature as well. The traditional theological view on the Bible was that the Bible contained God's words; the authors of the Bible were inspired to write Holy Scriptures and they were performing the role of conveyors. Since the eighteenth century, the research into the Bible has been changed to its historical one. Probe into its publishing period, origin and historical significance has been carried out from the historical and linguistic point of view. In the past few decades, study on the Bible has come to a multi-paradigm period, such as Narrative Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism and Structuralism. More attention has been paid to the form, structure, style, literary rhetoric and the role of readers in the Bible. This method to the Bible research, by means of Literary Criticism, is called literature-paradigm, namely illustration to the Bible from the literary points of view.It has been 1,300 years since the first Chinese Bible version came into existence. This sort of work was and is still being carried on. The roles of the Chinese translators on the Bible go through three stages: assistants to missionaries, cooperators and independent translators. With more and more Chinese non-religious translators involved in Chinese Bible translation, especially when Chinese scholars Yan Fu, Zhu Weizhi and Ren Dongsheng were engaged in Bible translation and criticism, the trend to move from religion to literature took on a visible side.Against such a move, the thesis, with the guidance of Literature Translation Theory on Classics, Translation Theory on the Chinese Bible and Comparison of the Chinese and Western Culture, conducted comparison with The Book of Poetry and Bible in their literariness. More emphasis is put on explaining and expounding the literariness in three Chinese versions of John. Compared with the other two versions, the literariness of John in Wang's version is fully presented and developed. The development is embodied in the following aspects: 1) From a literary narrative perspective, more improvements have been made in Wang's in its unity and concreteness; 2) Language in Wang's translation depicts more vividly a spectacle with abundant literary taste; 3) Changed translation of the address to Rabbi of which the Chinese goes from"夫子"to"先生"and"拉比"signals deeper implications; 4) In terms of the rhetorical skill, much deeper analysis has been made on the metaphor "Jesus is the real grapevine." by considerable literature notes. In addition, the metaphorical relations between the grapevine and gardener, the branch and fruit have been clarified.The theoretical value of this thesis lies as follows: first, the author confirms that the Bible, laying a basis on the development of the western civilization, is a great literary work; second, the author attempts to compare and contrast the literariness of Chinese Bible versions in different periods to explore the development of the literariness from many aspects; finally, the author aims as well at providing theoretical support for a new Chinese Bible version.