October, 1935
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
366
One Thousand Tribes WITHOUT THE BIBLE v
B y W. CAMERON TOWNSEND . Sulphur Springs, Arkansas
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O nly three-fifths of the inhabitants of the globe have had any portion o f the B i b l e translated into their own languages. O f the 5,000 lan
U nreached T ribes in A sia Although W i l l i a m Carey, the cobbler-mis sionary, was himself in strumental in the giving of God’s Word to thirty- five tribes in India, and though other mission aries have followed him in long years o f toil to put the Scriptures into the vernacular, we aré told that there are still many tribes in that land to whom the New Tes tament has never b e e n given. If to these are added unreached tribes o f other parts o f Asia, we have, perhaps, two hundred tribes more for whom translation work must yet be done. We for our obligation is un-
guages and dialects that are spoken by mankind, 954 possess at least a partial translation o f the Holy Scriptures; 3,000 are u n im p o rtan t and hardly demand attention, the people being suffi ciently accessible through other tongues, or else are nearing extinction; 1 , 000 , however, still beckon for Bible translators. Herein lies the most urgent task of the c h u r c h today! While we English-speak ing peoples multiply unto ourselves tran sla tion s, versions, and editions of tribes perish without one crumb of the Bread of Life. South o f the R io Grande, in Latin America, there are 17,000,000 dialect-speaking Indians with five hundred dif ferent languages. In the highlands of the Andes live the descendants o f the ancient Incas, as well as remnants of other former civilizations; throughout the jungles o f Ama zonia rove several hundred wild tribes; in Central America and on through Yucatan are tribes related to the once mighty Mayan race; and over the rugged plateaus o f Mex ico there are more than forty other linguistic stocks, in cluding the sturdy Aztecs. Few o f these five hundred tribes have ever felt a single ray o f gospel light. Not one has been given the entire Bible. The Mosquito tribe, the Guarani, the Quechuas, and the Cakchiquels have the New Testament in their own tongues, and the Mams are soon to receive it—but what about the rest ? T hree H undred T ribes in A frica Missionary work has been carried on in Africa for a hundred years. Much has been accomplished. Thirty-five tribes have received the entire Bible, seventy-eight tribes the New Testament, and 191 more some portion o f the Scriptures. However, conservative figures state that there are three hundred African tribes to whom nothing of the printed Word has been given. [Mr. Townsend, who, with his wife, has been a missionary to the Cakchiquel Indians o f Central America, is affiliated with the Pioneer Mission Agency. In August Mr. and Mrs. Townsend left for Mexico with a view to entering upon further pioneer work until time to return to the United States for next summer's session of Camp Wycliffe, the missionary training camp which is de scribed in this article .—E ditor .] S eventeen M illion I ndians
Courtesy, American Bible Society
What may the Cakchiquel New Testament mean to this Indian family and others like them in Guatemala, Central America? What would be their chance for the future if the missionary had not learned their language and reduced it to writing? The author and his wife were led of God to attempt this task and to make the New Testament available to thousands of Indians who speak the complex Cakchiquel language. One thousand tribes have no portion of the Word of God. the English Bible, a thousand use the word deniable. ‘must” advisedly,
Can we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high, Can we to men benighted, the Lamp of Life deny? “ I nterrupters ” How can a man ever, come to. know the depths of the riches o f love in Christ Jesus, or the beauty and comfort o f ' the Bible except through a language he can understand ? A ^¡. makeshift often resorted to is the use o f interpreters, * sometimes called “ interrupters.” A t times they are abso lutely essential, but their continued use too often indicates either laziness or lack of vision on the part of the mission ary. At best they are unsatisfactory. It is impossible, to meet with much success in the work of evangelization -or to see lasting revival among young converts apart from the Word .of God in the vernacular. John Eliot, at the very beginning of missionary work among the aborigines of America, saw this truth, and at the age of forty-two he pro- < ceeded to learn the Mohegan language and to translate the Bible into it. f S trange L anguages The translator’s task is not easy. Perhaps the majority of the one thousand languages calling for attention are un written. The peoples who speak them are inhospitable or live in unhealthy and inaccessible regions. The man who goes in among them should be inured to hardship and train ed linguistically. He should specialize in the translation problem just as a medical missionary concentrates his ef- . forts along medical lines. The problem is very different from that of learning a European tongue. The structure of most unwritten languages is entirely different. The psy chology is different. There are no books—neither grammar nor dictionary. Indeed, there are no teachers. Only by personal contact with the children at play or with adults at work can the missionary overhear and gradually learn the
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