Profiles In Baptist History

The first two Baptist missionaries to Japan were Jonathan Goble and Nathan Brown, both of whom worked on translating the Bible.

Goble published his colloquial version of Matthew in 1871 from wooden blocks. Due to the fear of Japanese printers of the government's rules against Christianity, Goble was not able to get the blocks cut until he went to a man in Tokyo who did not seem to know what the Bible was! Goble's work was an amazing feat in those days. Unfortunately, his translation was not widely accepted. However, when the first complete Bible was published, Goble sold many thousands of books or portions of it as a colporteur.

Interestingly enough, Goble was the inventor of the jinrikisha, or rickshaw, which a Japanese craftsman made on Goble's design for the missionary's invalid wife.

Nathan Brown of the American Baptist Mission came to Japan at age 65 from his service as a missionary in India and Burma. Brown worked with other Bible translators at first, but then left their group to work on his own when they would not accept his insistence on the necessity of translating from the original Greek text. (The other group translated mostly from the KJV.) Brown actually translated the entire New Testament, publishing it in 1878, making it the first ever complete New Testament in Japanese. Brown was also the founder of Yokohama Baptist Church, the first Baptist church in Japan. What a two-fer!

John of Japan

 

Delly, you may already know about this, but if not you might want to look into it. While I was researching for my book on the East Texas Musical Convention, I ran across letters written by Alfred Howell, R. B. C. Howell's oldest son. I found them on microfilm at Texas A&M-Commerce, but I think the originals are at the Tennessee State Archives. Most of the correspondence was written after he came to Texas in 1852 and most, I think, written to his brother Morton. They paint an interesting picture of early Texas and of Alfred.

Someone mentioned J. Frank Norris. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/NN/fno7.html
http://www.gospelguardian.org/gg/bh0499.htm

 

I don't think this link has been given yet:

Baptist Bios