Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629-1630) and the Agama Kumpeni

Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629-1630) and the Agama Kumpeni

Abstract

The topic of this article is the Malay gospel of Mark of 1629-1630 recently discovered in the library of Lincoln Cathedral in England, a gospel translated by Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, employee of the East-Indies Company (VOC). Ruyl’s gospels of Matthew and Mark are the earliest attested Bible translations in Malay. The article discusses the question why the VOC financed the printing of translations of the Bible and other religious literature in the East, what kind of Malay Ruyl used in Mark and what kind of translation Ruyl made. Ruyl was a very pragmatic translator using Malay religious terminology from Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic and Catholic traditions, including the term Allah for God. Finally, the article discusses the academic and societal importance of the first Malay gospels of Ruyl which after many centuries became newly relevant to Indonesian and Malaysian faith communities in the context of religious, legal and political conflicts about the ownership of the word Allah.

Keywords

Bible translation, Malay translation history, Allah, VOC, Ruyl, Church Malay

1. Introduction

The gospels of Matthew and Mark translated by the Dutchman Ruyl in the first half of the 17th century are the earliest attested translations of Bible books in Malay, and in South East and South Asian languages in general (Soesilo 2007).There were earlier efforts to translate the Bible into South East and South Asian languages. For example, the Jesuit missionary Franciscus Xaverius translated religious texts that included Bible verses into Malay in the 16th century (Drewes 1948: 15). Ogden (2001: 79) notes that Pope Benedict in 1335 mentions a Mongolian Bible. But no copies of these translations remain.

The bibliography of Dutch hymns Fontes hymnodiae neerlandicae impressi 1539-1700 mentions a Malay translation of the gospel of St. Mark by Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, published in 1629 and kept in the Lincoln Cathedral Library in Lincoln, United Kingdom (Höweler and Matter 1985).[1] The existence of three copies of Ruyl’s Matthew of 1629 was known since the late 1980s but the Lincoln Matthew and Mark had escaped scholarly attention.[2] The Lincoln Matthew is the same as the Matthew copies in Stuttgart, Utrecht and London (De Vries 2005). But the Lincoln Mark is the only known copy of the first edition of the gospel of Mark.

The article is organized as follows. First, the historical context of the Lincoln Mark is described. Then we zoom in on the Lincoln Mark, as a book (section 3) and as a translation (section 4). Finally, we discuss the academic and societal relevance of these first Malay gospels which after many centuries attracted renewed attention in the context of the debate and conflicts surrounding the use of the word Allah and other religious terms of Arabic origin in the Bibles of Malaysian and Indonesian Christians (section 5).

2. The first Malay gospels and the Agama Kumpeni

The Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, 1602-1795), called Kumpeni by Malay contemporaries, financed all Malay and Portuguese Bible translations and other religious writings until its bankruptcy in 1795 (De Vries 2009, 2015). The Church Council (Kerkenraad) of the Reformed Church of Batavia was consulted for approval of these versions. For example, the minutes of the meeting of August 24, 1648, report that Rev. Heurnius had requested the VOC Board to finance the printing of “first book of Moses translated into Malay by Mr. van Hasel” (Mooij 1929: 91).[3] And the minutes of the meeting of Wednesday November 16th of 1667 contain the decision of the Council of the Batavia Church to accept the New Testament translation of the Rev. Daniel Brouwerius, the first Malay New Testament, for publication (by the VOC).[4] They added the condition that he would revise certain gospel books “to make the style of the whole New Testament one and the same”.[5] The minutes of that meeting also describe the primary goal of the Malay translation as “to serve the churches in the Indies”.[6] The final sentence of the minutes instructs the Rev. Brouwerius to go to the VOC to finance the printing.[7]

It is important to understand from the outset that the VOC had a firm grip on the Calvinist churches in the areas that they controlled (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 2). The VOC financed all church activities in the East Indies, all the pastors and translators were VOC employees, the VOC had the right to approve or reject appointments in church offices, controlled the allocation of pastors, had a representative in the church council meetings with the title commissaris-politiek and monitored church correspondence (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 4). The name of the Company and its Board, and not the name of the (Batavia) Church or Church Council, were prominently displayed either on the title page or the first page of these Bibles and Bible books. The prefaces started with a very prominent reference to the Bevinthebberen or Board of the VOC, who were eloquently praised in the dedication.

The Resolutien (minutes containing their decisions and a summary of the grounds for these decisions) of the VOC Board published by Mooij (1927: 1-80) explicitly refer to the almost absolute control of the VOC. The minutes of the Board meeting of 10 January 1654 acknowledge that the instructions sent to the governor-general and his council in Batavia on 10 September 1650 relating to the churches “gave the political government very wide and absolute power over the church council and the church personnel” adding that this absolute power was not put into practice.[8] Since letters from Batavia requesting instruction or letters from the Dutch Republic giving instructions were sent with the VOC ships on their long and very perilous journeys, in practice the VOC Board indeed faced difficulties in exercising their power. The same minutes report that the VOC Board had instructed the Company Lawyer to write a draft Church Order with respect to the appointment of pastors to be sent to the governor-general in Batavia for advice and comments.

The VOC was the first company in the world that gave out shares to finance its operations. Investing in VOC ships and their precious spice cargo was a great risk, with potentially huge awards. This raises the question why a company of early modern capitalists would finance the translation, printing, shipment and distribution of Bible translations (De Vries 2005). The answer lies in the way Dutch 17th century Calvinism understood the relationship between the Republic and the Dutch Reformed Church. Article 36 of the Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Dutch Confession of Faith) claimed that the State was obliged “to protect the holy worship of the Church and to suppress and destroy all idolatry and false religion”.[9] This implied that the Republic financed the Dutch Reformed churches in the Low Countries, including the salaries of the pastors, and had a lot of influence in church matters. The faith of the Calvinist Church was the public faith. All other forms of religion (including Catholicism and Anabaptism, both labelled as false religion and idolatry) could not be present in the public domain. Privately, people of other convictions could keep their religion, including worship services in private homes or other non-public meeting places.

The Dutch Republic gave charters (octrooi) to the VOC that entitled the VOC to a trade and shipping monopoly in the East, excluding other Dutch traders (Schutte 2002). The first octrooi was signed on March 20, 1602. The octrooi also delegated key public duties and rights to the VOC because the VOC operated in areas far beyond the control of the Republic: the right to build fortifications, to administer justice in the name of the Republic, the right to employ soldiers and engage in warfare and the right to appoint governors (Schutte 2002: 50).

One of the public duties mentioned in the octrooi of 1623 was the protection and maintaining the public faith (De Vries 2005: 16-17). It implied that the VOC had the duty to facilitate and finance the Dutch Reformed congregations and schools in the rather small part of the archipelago under their territorial control. The VOC was interested in trade and gain, not in expanding its territorial control per se. Koolen (1993: 23) points out that the reference to the protection of the public faith in the charter of 1623 (and subsequent charters) is placed in the considerans section, the introductory section and not in the instruction section in which the legally binding right and duties of the VOC were stipulated. By doing so, the Staten-Generaal (States General, the highest authority of the Republic) made clear that it considered the duty to protect the public Reformed Faith as an obvious, completely self-evident moral and religious duty for the VOC in all areas under their jurisdiction, and this included all VOC fortified trade posts in the Far East, for example Ceylon and Formosa where the VOC financed the translation of Bible(portions) and catechisms (Adelaar 2011).

In the archipelago the VOC-sponsored Bible translations were limited to Malay and Portuguese because those two were the main contact and trade languages in the archipelago, also used in the ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous congregations of the Dutch Reformed Churches in the East. The VOC never financed Bible translations in indigenous languages of the archipelago, some of them with many millions of speakers (for example, Javanese), languages that the intended audiences in the 17th century archipelago would have understood far better than Malay and Portuguese. Indeed, indigenous languages only became targets of Bible translation of the mission societies that were founded towards the end of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century in Europe and America. In fact, Javanese was the first language targeted for Bible translation by the Netherlands Bible Society in the early 19th century (Swellengrebel 1974).

Some pastors in areas where Malay was not widely known translated religious materials into indigenous languages. For example, the bibliography of Niemeijer and Van den End (2015: 153) lists translations in the indigenous languages of Saparuaby Heurnius and Sangir by Van der Leeuw. The latter translated Mark and wrote a short catechism in Sangirese. His work was not printed because the Church Council of Batavia stuck to the language policy of using the common languages Malay and Portuguese (Niemeijer and Van den End 2015: 154).

The VOC related churches in Ambon, Ternate, Batavia and other places were multi ethnic and multi lingual. The people supposed to go to church were Europeans employed by the VOC, formerly Catholic locals, some Chinese and Japanese, Mardijkers (descendants of migrants from India) and slaves with various backgrounds (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 5). The Europeans employed by the VOC came from various nations, speaking different languages, especially German, but also Portuguese, French and English. Malay and Portuguese had a key role as lingua franca in these highly diverse VOC and VOC dependent communities. The VOC employees with church related tasks had as their first task the pastoral care for the multi ethnic VOC employees of European and Asian descent, and the Malay and Portuguese Bible translations commissioned by the VOC primarily functioned as a tool for that task, using the two contact languages Malay and Portuguese known to various degrees as a second language by the majority of the attendants of Reformed church services, whether European or Asian. The second function was to expand the Calvinist religion as the public faith in areas under direct VOC jurisdiction, including formerly Catholic areas. Both functions of the Malay and Portuguese VOC translations followed from the duties of the VOC mentioned in the charters with the Republic.

Portuguese continued to be an important lingua franca, in and outside the church, long after the Portuguese left, till around 1800 (Swellengrebel 1974: 9). Swellengrebel (1974: 9) observes that slaves employed in Dutch households used Portuguese when communicating with family members and that many Dutch children knew the lingua franca variety of Batavian Portuguese better than Dutch. The Portuguese pastor d'Almeida, a pastor of the Reformed Church in Batavia, translated the New Testament into Portuguese. The Portuguese New Testament of d'Almeida was printed in Amsterdam at the cost of the VOC in 1681. The complete Bible in Portuguese appeared much later, in 1748. This VOC Bible is the first Bible in Portuguese and has been globally used in Portuguese speaking parts of the world, especially Brazil, with a revision of 1959 still bearing the name of 'd Almeida (Swellengrebel 1974: 10; De Vries 2005: 17).

The VOC context of the first Malay Bible translations also explains why the translations were designed and printed as solid and expensive Bibles, in rather small quantities, not cheap editions for small purses as would be distributed much later by missionaries and evangelists in the 19th century. The Board of Seventeen that governed the VOC decided on August 21, 1629 to let Palensteyn in Enkhuizen print 480 copies of the first Malay gospel of Matthew.

Ruyl writes in the preface to his first gospels, addressing the Board of Governors of the VOC, that he wants to translate the whole New Testament into Malay for “the expansion of our Public Christian Religion[…] to the salvation of many, simple souls who in due time will be brought safely to the lap of the Church under the protection of Your Excellences”.[10] Ruyl phrases his missiological intentions with the standard terms of Dutch Calvinism of the Republic to describe the Calvinistic Church as the privileged, public religion under the wings of the government, represented in Batavia by the governor-general of the VOC.

The VOC did not spend much money on the protection of the public Reformed faith in the East. The funds spent on church and school work, including Bible translation, were a minor part of the total VOC operation. For example, according to Schutte (2002: 50) the VOC employed 14, 800 persons in the Dutch East-Indies in 1688. Only 108 were employed in church and church-related ministries including 23 schoolmasters, less than 1%. However, only European employees are counted in these statistics, not the many indigenous guru ‘teacher’ involved in the schools. Trade surely was the primary goal of the VOC, based on establishing and maintaining trade monopolies with military means.

The Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church contained the teaching that the Catholic Eucharist was “vervloeckte afgodery’’(“cursed idolatry”). Therefore, it was important for the pastorsto bring Catholic Christians into the fold of the Dutch Reformed Church in areas under VOC control where the Portuguese (Moluccas, North Celebes) or Spaniards (Sangir-Talaud islands) had been in the 16th century (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3; de Vries 2015). The VOC government no doubt hoped that Protestantisation would make the local population more inclined to accept their rule.The Catholic villages of these areas came under the direct authority of the VOC and they numbered around 16,000 souls after the surrender of the Portuguese, with an additional 30,000 after the withdrawal of the Spaniards (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3).

Since the Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church) was the only form of religion tolerated in the public domain in the areas under VOC control, all of a sudden there was a Dutch Reformed Church with many congregations and with thousands of formerly Catholic believers that needed catechisms, liturgical texts and Bibles in Malay, essential tools for the protestantization and pacification of these regions (De Vries 2015). There was a system of fines to punish people who did not go to church (Niemeijer 2002a:129-130). It is understandable that a common Malay name of this Public Christian Religion was Agama Kumpeni (the Company Religion) (Niemeijer 2002:147-176).The villages that had converted to Islam in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Sultanates of Tidore, Ternate and Batjan remained under the Sultans and could practice their religion unhindered (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3).

The VOC schools were an extension of the church, and the curriculum focused almost entirely on religious instruction. The schools also functioned as a tool of pacification (Koolen 1993). The Malay and Portuguese Bible translations and catechisms played an important role in the VOC sponsored schools. The instructional and liturgical functions are reflected in the supplementary texts that went with the Malay gospels of Ruyl: the liturgical section contained a few hymns and psalms, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Prayer before the Sermon, the Prayer after the Sermon, the Songs of Zechariah, Mary, the Angel and Simeon from the birth narrative in Luke and the Apostolic Creed, all key elements of Dutch Reformed church services. Pupils in the Malay VOC schools had to memorize the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostolic Creed (Koolen 1993).

The gospels of Matthew and Mark by Ruyl in 1629-1630 were followed by the gospels of Luke and John in 1646 and Fifty Psalms in 1648 by Jan van Hasel and Justus Heurnius. The Four Gospels and Acts were published in 1651. The complete Psalter by Van Hasel and Heurnius appeared in 1652. The year 1668 saw the publication of the New Testament by Brouwerius who had published a Genesis translation in 1662. Finally in 1733 the complete Bible by Leijdecker was published. The VOC financed all these books. There was however also an edition of the Four Gospels and Acts by van Hasel and Heurnius printed in Oxford for Henry Clements, with a preface by Thomas Marshall.[11]

The Malay Bible translations were part of a wider VOC program to provide the churches and schools with educational and religious materials, and to provide translators and interpreters with grammatical and lexical information on the Malay language. The list of Malay printed writings of the VOC period in Niemeyer and Van den End (2015: 127-169) contains translations of catechisms, ABC booklets, grammatical treatises, lexica and sermons. Some VOC merchants or pastors became Malay specialists, for example Ruyl, Leijdecker and Werndly. They laid the linguistic foundation (vocabularies, grammars, study of Malay literature) and translated religious literature for church and school.

The changing place of missionary translation towards the end of the VOC era

Enlightenment ideas would give religion, mission and Bible translation a radically different place in society in the course of the 18th century (Van Rooden 1996; Van Eijnatten 2003). The place of the Christian religion shifted from its public, confessional, state-controlled position to a conviction in the heart and conscience of individual citizens. These individual citizens had the right to organize themselves independent of the state and the state church. This independent organization took the form of societies, legal bodies in the new middle ground of civil society. Missionary and Bible societies were formed with the aim to win the souls of heathens, wherever they were. Since 1800 Bible Societies (rather than authorities of the state or the state-church) became the dominant player in the translation, printing and distribution of (non-confessional) Bibles, especially in Protestant countries and their colonies (De Vries 2016).

The organizational independence of Bible Societies does not mean that the state had no influence on their policies in the colonies. The Boards of the Netherlands Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society had influential members that were high ranking (former) civil servants in the colonies. The Right Honorable Lord Teignmouth, first President of the British and Foreign Bible Society and its president for 30 years, was a former governor general of the British East India Company. The Dutchman Baud was until 1819 General Secretary of the Dutch government in Batavia (Jakarta), and an influential member of the Board of the Netherlands Bible Society branch in The Hague (De Vries 2016).

Baud wrote a policy paper entitled Consideratien over de vertaling en verspreiding van de Heilige Schriften (Considerations about the translation and distribution of the Holy Scriptures). Baud emphasizes that the Netherlands Bible Society must send the message to the colonial government that they will stay away from any proselytizing and also will keep proselytizing missions at a safe distance because, he says, the colonial government will only tolerate Bible society activities in the East in as far as "the stability of beautiful and rich Java, the important source of our East-Indian finances, is not being threatened".[12]

Bible translation policies for the colonies were grounded in the colonial Enlightenment discourse of the Bible as a force of civilization. Gijsbert

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Extracted text from bUndaT7EQTuFlcLqQBX9_BKI-1133_R2.pdf:

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629-1630) and the Agama Kumpeni --Manuscript Draft--

Manuscript Number: BKI-1133R2 Full Title: Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629-1630) and the Agama Kumpeni Short Title: The first Malay Gospel of Mark Article Type: Full Length Article Corresponding Author: Lourens de Vries, Ph.D. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS Corresponding Author's Institution: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam First Author: Lourens de Vries, Ph.D. Order of Authors: Lourens de Vries, Ph.D. Abstract: Abstract The topic of this article is the Malay gospel of Mark of 1629-1630 recently discovered in the library of Lincoln Cathedral in England, a gospel translated by Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, employee of the East-Indies Company (VOC). Ruyl's gospels of Matthew and Mark are the earliest attested Bible translations in Malay. The article discusses the question why the VOC financed Bible translations in the East, what kind of Malay Ruyl used in Mark and what kind of translation Ruyl made. Ruyl was a very pragmatic translator using Malay religious terminology from Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic and Catholic traditions, including the term Allah for God. Finally, the article discusses the academic and societal importance of the first Malay gospels of Ruyl which after many centuries became newly relevant to Indonesian and Malaysian faith communities in the context of religious, legal and political conflicts about the ownership of the word Allah. Keywords: Bible translation, Malay translation history, Allah, VOC, Ruyl, Church Malay Funding Information: Powered by Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager from Aries Systems CorporationResponse to second revision

I have accepted all proposed changes of the second round of revision and worked them into the revised version. Response to Reviews (anonymized)Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629-1630) and the Agama Kumpeni Title Page1

Iang Evangelivm Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum: the first Malay Gospel of Mark (1629- 1630) and the Agama Kumpeni

Abstract
The topic of this article is the Malay gospel of Mark of 1629-1630 recently discovered in the library of Lincoln Cathedral in England, a gospel translated by Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, employee of the East-Indies Company (VOC). Ruyls gospels of Matthew and Mark are the earliest attested Bible translations in Malay. The article discusses the question why the VOC financed the printing of translations of the Bible and other religious literature in the East, what kind of Malay Ruyl used in Mark and what kind of translation Ruyl made. Ruyl was a very pragmatic translator using Malay religious terminology from Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic and Catholic traditions, including the term Allah for God. Finally, the article discusses the academic and societal importance of the first Malay gospels of Ruyl which after many centuries became newly relevant to Indonesian and Malaysian faith communities in the context of religious, legal and political conflicts about the ownership of the word Allah.

Keywords Bible translation, Malay translation history, Allah, VOC, Ruyl, Church Malay

1. Introduction The gospels of Matthew and Mark translated by the Dutchman Ruyl in the first half of the 17th century are the earliest attested translations of Bible books in Malay, and in South East and South Asian languages in general (Soesilo 2007).There were earlier efforts to translate the Bible into South East and South Asian languages. For example, the Jesuit missionary Franciscus Xaverius translated religious texts that included Bible verses into Malay in the 16th Revised MS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 2

century (Drewes 1948: 15). Ogden (2001: 79) notes that Pope Benedict in 1335 mentions a Mongolian Bible. But no copies of these translations remain. The bibliography of Dutch hymns Fontes hymnodiae neerlandicae impressi 1539-1700 mentions a Malay translation of the gospel of St. Mark by Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, published in 1629 and kept in the Lincoln Cathedral Library in Lincoln, United Kingdom (Hweler and Matter 1985).1 The existence of three copies of Ruyls Matthew of 1629 was known since the late 1980s but the Lincoln Matthew and Mark had escaped scholarly attention.2 The Lincoln Matthew is the same as the Matthew copies in Stuttgart, Utrecht and London (De Vries 2005). But the Lincoln Mark is the only known copy of the first edition of the gospel of Mark. The article is organized as follows. First, the historical context of the Lincoln Mark is described. Then we zoom in on the Lincoln Mark, as a book (section 3) and as a translation (section 4). Finally, we discuss the academic and societal relevance of these first Malay gospels which after many centuries attracted renewed attention in the context of the debate and conflicts surrounding the use of the word Allah and other religious terms of Arabic origin in the Bibles of Malaysian and Indonesian Christians (section 5).

2. The first Malay gospels and the Agama Kumpeni

1I thank Mathieu Knops, of the Royal Dutch National Library at The Hague, for alerting me to the reference in Hweler and Matter 1985 that led me to the Lincoln Mark. I also thank Mrs. J. Taylor of the Lincoln Cathedral Library for the many ways in which she helped me with my research in the magnificent ambience of the Lincoln Cathedral Library. Christian Gossweiler was of great help in comparing the Lincoln and Stuttgart Mark copies, and in dating the Lincoln Mark.

2 Until 1989 when Dr. Daud Soesilo (Indonesian Bible Society) found a copy of Ruyls Matthew in the Landesbibliothek of Stuttgart (Soesilo 2013: 174) scholars such as Swellengrebel (1974) thought that there were no remaining copies of the first Malay gospel of Matthew of 1629 (Gossweiler 2014a: 21). In 1911 the Historical catalogue of the printed editions of the Holy Scripture in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, edited by H.T. Darlow and Horace F. Moule Vol. 2-2, mentioned Ruyls Bible translation into High Malay (published in 1629) by no. 6486 (Gossweiler 2014a: 20).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 3

The Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, 1602-1795), called Kumpeni by Malay contemporaries, financed all Malay and Portuguese Bible translations and other religious writings until its bankruptcy in 1795 (De Vries 2009, 2015). The Church Council (Kerkenraad) of the Reformed Church of Batavia was consulted for approval of these versions. For example, the minutes of the meeting of August 24, 1648, report that Rev. Heurnius had requested the VOC Board to finance the printing of first book of Moses translated into Malay by Mr. van Hasel (Mooij 1929: 91).3 And the minutes of the meeting of Wednesday November 16th of 1667 contain the decision of the Council of the Batavia Church to accept the New Testament translation of the Rev. Daniel Brouwerius, the first Malay New Testament, for publication (by the VOC).4 They added the condition that he would revise certain gospel books to make the style of the whole New Testament one and the same.5 The minutes of that meeting also describe the primary goal of the Malay translation as to serve the churches in the Indies.6 The final sentence of the minutes instructs the Rev. Brouwerius to go to the VOC to finance the printing.7 It is important to understand from the outset that the VOC had a firm grip on the Calvinist churches in the areas that they controlled (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 2). The VOC financed all church activities in the East Indies, all the pastors and translators were VOC employees, the VOC had the right to approve or reject appointments in church offices, controlled the allocation of pastors, had a representative in the church council meetings with the title commissaris-politiek and monitored church correspondence (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 4). The name of the Company and its Board, and not the name of the

3 het eerste boek Mosis in t Maleisch overgeset door Sr van Hasel. All English translations of material from Dutch sources in the article are mine unless otherwise indicated. 4 The minutes of the Batavia Church Council (as far as they had been preserved in the Church archives in Batavia (Jakarta)) were published along with other source materials by J. Mooij in three volumes in 1927, 1929 and 1931. The minutes of 16 November 1667 can be found in Mooij (1927: 76). I could not find references to an approval by the Batavia Church Council of Ruyls gospels probably because the minutes of the relevant meetings have not been preserved. 5 om daer door het gansche nieu Testament van een en deselve stijl te doen wesen.
6 ten dienste van de kercken in Indien. 7 tot koste vande Compie sal laeten drucken.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 4

(Batavia) Church or Church Council, were prominently displayed either on the title page or the first page of these Bibles and Bible books. The prefaces started with a very prominent reference to the Bevinthebberen or Board of the VOC, who were eloquently praised in the dedication.
The Resolutien (minutes containing their decisions and a summary of the grounds for these decisions) of the VOC Board published by Mooij (1927: 1-80) explicitly refer to the almost absolute control of the VOC. The minutes of the Board meeting of 10 January 1654 acknowledge that the instructions sent to the governor-general and his council in Batavia on 10 September 1650 relating to the churches gave the political government very wide and absolute power over the church council and the church personnel adding that this absolute power was not put into practice.8 Since letters from Batavia requesting instruction or letters from the Dutch Republic giving instructions were sent with the VOC ships on their long and very perilous journeys, in practice the VOC Board indeed faced difficulties in exercising their power. The same minutes report that the VOC Board had instructed the Company Lawyer to write a draft Church Order with respect to the appointment of pastors to be sent to the governor-general in Batavia for advice and comments. The VOC was the first company in the world that gave out shares to finance its operations. Investing in VOC ships and their precious spice cargo was a great risk, with potentially huge awards. This raises the question why a company of early modern capitalists would finance the translation, printing, shipment and distribution of Bible translations (De Vries 2005). The answer lies in the way Dutch 17th century Calvinism understood the relationship between the Republic and the Dutch Reformed Church. Article 36 of the Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Dutch Confession of Faith) claimed that the State was obliged to protect the holy worship of

8 Dat wel waer is dat de meergemelte missive aen de politijcque Overheijt seer ample en absolute macht geeft over de kerckelijcke regieringe, en de Ecclesiatiijcquen maer dat die in dier voegen niet is noch wert gepractiseert (Mooij 1927: 39). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 5

the Church and to suppress and destroy all idolatry and false religion.9 This implied that the Republic financed the Dutch Reformed churches in the Low Countries, including the salaries of the pastors, and had a lot of influence in church matters. The faith of the Calvinist Church was the public faith. All other forms of religion (including Catholicism and Anabaptism, both labelled as false religion and idolatry) could not be present in the public domain. Privately, people of other convictions could keep their religion, including worship services in private homes or other non-public meeting places. The Dutch Republic gave charters (octrooi) to the VOC that entitled the VOC to a trade and shipping monopoly in the East, excluding other Dutch traders (Schutte 2002). The first octrooi was signed on March 20, 1602. The octrooi also delegated key public duties and rights to the VOC because the VOC operated in areas far beyond the control of the Republic: the right to build fortifications, to administer justice in the name of the Republic, the right to employ soldiers and engage in warfare and the right to appoint governors (Schutte 2002: 50). One of the public duties mentioned in the octrooi of 1623 was the protection and maintaining the public faith (De Vries 2005: 16-17). It implied that the VOC had the duty to facilitate and finance the Dutch Reformed congregations and schools in the rather small part of the archipelago under their territorial control. The VOC was interested in trade and gain, not in expanding its territorial control per se. Koolen (1993: 23) points out that the reference to the protection of the public faith in the charter of 1623 (and subsequent charters) is placed in the considerans section, the introductory section and not in the instruction section in which the legally binding right and duties of the VOC were stipulated. By doing so, the Staten- Generaal (States General, the highest authority of the Republic) made clear that it considered the duty to protect the public Reformed Faith as an obvious, completely self-evident moral and religious duty for the VOC in all areas under their jurisdiction, and this included all VOC

9 de heilige dienst van de kerk te beschermen en om te weren en uit te roeien alle afgoderij en valschen godsdienst. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 6

fortified trade posts in the Far East, for example Ceylon and Formosa where the VOC financed the translation of Bible(portions) and catechisms (Adelaar 2011). In the archipelago the VOC-sponsored Bible translations were limited to Malay and Portuguese because those two were the main contact and trade languages in the archipelago, also used in the ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous congregations of the Dutch Reformed Churches in the East. The VOC never financed Bible translations in indigenous languages of the archipelago, some of them with many millions of speakers (for example, Javanese), languages that the intended audiences in the 17th century archipelago would have understood far better than Malay and Portuguese. Indeed, indigenous languages only became targets of Bible translation of the mission societies that were founded towards the end of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century in Europe and America. In fact, Javanese was the first language targeted for Bible translation by the Netherlands Bible Society in the early 19th century (Swellengrebel 1974). Some pastors in areas where Malay was not widely known translated religious materials into indigenous languages. For example, the bibliography of Niemeijer and Van den End (2015: 153) lists translations in the indigenous languages of Saparuaby Heurnius and Sangir by Van der Leeuw. The latter translated Mark and wrote a short catechism in Sangirese. His work was not printed because the Church Council of Batavia stuck to the language policy of using the common languages Malay and Portuguese (Niemeijer and Van den End 2015: 154). The VOC related churches in Ambon, Ternate, Batavia and other places were multi ethnic and multi lingual. The people supposed to go to church were Europeans employed by the VOC, formerly Catholic locals, some Chinese and Japanese, Mardijkers (descendants of migrants from India) and slaves with various backgrounds (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 5). The Europeans employed by the VOC came from various nations, speaking different languages, especially German, but also Portuguese, French and English. Malay and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 7

Portuguese had a key role as lingua franca in these highly diverse VOC and VOC dependent communities. The VOC employees with church related tasks had as their first task the pastoral care for the multi ethnic VOC employees of European and Asian descent, and the Malay and Portuguese Bible translations commissioned by the VOC primarily functioned as a tool for that task, using the two contact languages Malay and Portuguese known to various degrees as a second language by the majority of the attendants of Reformed church services, whether European or Asian. The second function was to expand the Calvinist religion as the public faith in areas under direct VOC jurisdiction, including formerly Catholic areas. Both functions of the Malay and Portuguese VOC translations followed from the duties of the VOC mentioned in the charters with the Republic. Portuguese continued to be an important lingua franca, in and outside the church, long after the Portuguese left, till around 1800 (Swellengrebel 1974: 9). Swellengrebel (1974: 9) observes that slaves employed in Dutch households used Portuguese when communicating with family members and that many Dutch children knew the lingua franca variety of Batavian Portuguese better than Dutch. The Portuguese pastor d'Almeida, a pastor of the Reformed Church in Batavia, translated the New Testament into Portuguese. The Portuguese New Testament of d'Almeida was printed in Amsterdam at the cost of the VOC in 1681. The complete Bible in Portuguese appeared much later, in 1748. This VOC Bible is the first Bible in Portuguese and has been globally used in Portuguese speaking parts of the world, especially Brazil, with a revision of 1959 still bearing the name of 'd Almeida (Swellengrebel 1974: 10; De Vries 2005: 17). The VOC context of the first Malay Bible translations also explains why the translations were designed and printed as solid and expensive Bibles, in rather small quantities, not cheap editions for small purses as would be distributed much later by missionaries and evangelists in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 8

the 19th century. The Board of Seventeen that governed the VOC decided on August 21, 1629 to let Palensteyn in Enkhuizen print 480 copies of the first Malay gospel of Matthew. Ruyl writes in the preface to his first gospels, addressing the Board of Governors of the VOC, that he wants to translate the whole New Testament into Malay for the expansion of our Public Christian Religion[...] to the salvation of many, simple souls who in due time will be brought safely to the lap of the Church under the protection of Your Excellences.10 Ruyl phrases his missiological intentions with the standard terms of Dutch Calvinism of the Republic to describe the Calvinistic Church as the privileged, public religion under the wings of the government, represented in Batavia by the governor-general of the VOC. The VOC did not spend much money on the protection of the public Reformed faith in the East. The funds spent on church and school work, including Bible translation, were a minor part of the total VOC operation. For example, according to Schutte (2002: 50) the VOC employed 14, 800 persons in the Dutch East-Indies in 1688. Only 108 were employed in church and church-related ministries including 23 schoolmasters, less than 1%. However, only European employees are counted in these statistics, not the many indigenous guru teacher involved in the schools. Trade surely was the primary goal of the VOC, based on establishing and maintaining trade monopolies with military means. The Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church contained the teaching that the Catholic Eucharist was vervloeckte afgodery(cursed idolatry). Therefore, it was important for the pastorsto bring Catholic Christians into the fold of the Dutch Reformed Church in areas under VOC control where the Portuguese (Moluccas, North Celebes) or Spaniards (Sangir-Talaud islands) had been in the 16th century (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3; de Vries 2015). The VOC government no doubt hoped that Protestantisation would make the local population more inclined to accept their rule.The Catholic villages of

10 tot voortplantinghe van onze Alghemeyne Christelijcke Religie [...]ter zalichheyt van vele arme, eenvoudighe zielen, die mettertijt gerustelijcken in de schoot der Kercke, onder U.E.A. bescherminghe gebracht sullen werden 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 9

these areas came under the direct authority of the VOC and they numbered around 16,000 souls after the surrender of the Portuguese, with an additional 30,000 after the withdrawal of the Spaniards (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3). Since the Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church) was the only form of religion tolerated in the public domain in the areas under VOC control, all of a sudden there was a Dutch Reformed Church with many congregations and with thousands of formerly Catholic believers that needed catechisms, liturgical texts and Bibles in Malay, essential tools for the protestantization and pacification of these regions (De Vries 2015). There was a system of fines to punish people who did not go to church (Niemeijer 2002a:129-130). It is understandable that a common Malay name of this Public Christian Religion was Agama Kumpeni (the Company Religion) (Niemeijer 2002:147-176).The villages that had converted to Islam in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Sultanates of Tidore, Ternate and Batjan remained under the Sultans and could practice their religion unhindered (Niemeijer, Van den End and Schutte 2015: 3). The VOC schools were an extension of the church, and the curriculum focused almost entirely on religious instruction. The schools also functioned as a tool of pacification (Koolen 1993). The Malay and Portuguese Bible translations and catechisms played an important role in the VOC sponsored schools. The instructional and liturgical functions are reflected in the supplementary texts that went with the Malay gospels of Ruyl: the liturgical section contained a few hymns and psalms, the Lords Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Prayer before the Sermon, the Prayer after the Sermon, the Songs of Zechariah, Mary, the Angel and Simeon from the birth narrative in Luke and the Apostolic Creed, all key elements of Dutch Reformed church services. Pupils in the Malay VOC schools had to memorize the Lords Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostolic Creed (Koolen 1993). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 10

The gospels of Matthew and Mark by Ruyl in 1629-1630 were followed by the gospels of Luke and John in 1646 and Fifty Psalms in 1648 by Jan van Hasel and Justus Heurnius. The Four Gospels and Acts were published in 1651. The complete Psalter by Van Hasel and Heurnius appeared in 1652. The year 1668 saw the publication of the New Testament by Brouwerius who had published a Genesis translation in 1662. Finally in 1733 the complete Bible by Leijdecker was published. The VOC financed all these books. There was however also an edition of the Four Gospels and Acts by van Hasel and Heurnius printed in Oxford for Henry Clements, with a preface by Thomas Marshall.11 The Malay Bible translations were part of a wider VOC program to provide the churches and schools with educational and religious materials, and to provide translators and interpreters with grammatical and lexical information on the Malay language. The list of Malay printed writings of the VOC period in Niemeyer and Van den End (2015: 127-169) contains translations of catechisms, ABC booklets, grammatical treatises, lexica and sermons. Some VOC merchants or pastors became Malay specialists, for example Ruyl, Leijdecker and Werndly. They laid the linguistic foundation (vocabularies, grammars, study of Malay literature) and translated religious literature for church and school.

The changing place of missionary translation towards the end of the VOC era Enlightenment ideas would give religion, mission and Bible translation a radically different place in society in the course of the 18th century (Van Rooden 1996; Van Eijnatten 2003). The place of the Christian religion shifted from its public, confessional, state-controlled position to a conviction in the heart and conscience of individual citizens. These individual citizens had the right to organize themselves independent of the state and the state church. This independent organization took the form of societies, legal bodies in the new middle ground of

11 I extracted the information on Malay translations from Niemeyer and Van den End 2015: 127-169 and from Mamahit (ed.) 2014: 89 who uses the data provided by Christian Gossweiler. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 11

civil society. Missionary and Bible societies were formed with the aim to win the souls of heathens, wherever they were. Since 1800 Bible Societies (rather than authorities of the state or the state-church) became the dominant player in the translation, printing and distribution of (non-confessional) Bibles, especially in Protestant countries and their colonies (De Vries 2016). The organizational independence of Bible Societies does not mean that the state had no influence on their policies in the colonies. The Boards of the Netherlands Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society had influential members that were high ranking (former) civil servants in the colonies. The Right Honorable Lord Teignmouth, first President of the British and Foreign Bible Society and its president for 30 years, was a former governor general of the British East India Company. The Dutchman Baud was until 1819 General Secretary of the Dutch government in Batavia (Jakarta), and an influential member of the Board of the Netherlands Bible Society branch in The Hague (De Vries 2016). Baud wrote a policy paper entitled Consideratien over de vertaling en verspreiding van de Heilige Schriften (Considerations about the translation and distribution of the Holy Scriptures). Baud emphasizes that the Netherlands Bible Society must send the message to the colonial government that they will stay away from any proselytizing and also will keep proselytizing missions at a safe distance because, he says, the colonial government will only tolerate Bible society activities in the East in as far as "the stability of beautiful and rich Java, the important source of our East-Indian finances, is not being threatened".12 Bible translation policies for the colonies were grounded in the colonial Enlightenment discourse of the Bible as a force of civilization. Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, the most influential and powerful Dutch politician of his day and president of the Netherlands Bible Society branch of the Hague, addresses the Board of the Netherlands Bible Society in 1816 to

12 "De rust van het schone en rijke Java, de voorname hulpbron van onze Indische financien, niet wordt in de waagschaal gesteld". Baud is quoted in J.L. Swellengrebel, In Leijdeckers Voetspoor, deel 1, Haarlem, Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap, 1974, p. 27. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 12

formulate policy goals of these translations in the languages of the East. They should not aim at proselytizing, not even have a hidden aim to do so. The Bibles to be translated and distributed in the East should aim at Civilization: " 'Europe'- Napoleon said (...) became civilized because of Christianity'. Everyone knows to what extent the Heathens are backward in terms of civilization. Also for the operation of the State therefore it can be seen as important to distribute a means of civilization" (De Vries 2016).13 On the contrary, the early VOC translators such as Ruyl and Van Hasel were not missionaries in the sense of people sent abroad by missionary societies to win the souls of heathens, as an activity independent of the state and independent of the state-backed confessional churches (Van Rooden 1996). Rather, they were VOC employees carrying out the duty of the octrooi to protect the public Calvinist religion. Ruyl was a junior merchant of the VOC when he translated the gospels of Matthew and Mark (Werndly 1736). This does not imply that they or later VOC pastors who did translation work had no missionary zeal or that they never went to places outside VOC control to proselytize. Leydecker was the first pastor to receive an official commission and dedicated time for his translation work. Before his time, the translators did their work on their own initiative in their spare time, showing missionary zeal, and then presented their work to the VOC to be printed and distributed. But the overall institutional context of the religious translation work in this period is shaped by the notion of the Protestant faith as the public religion under the wings of the VOC.

3. The Lincoln Mark as a book

13'Europa' - zeide Napoleon(...)- 'is door het Christendom beschaafd geworden'. Hoe verre de Heidenen nog achterlijk zijn in beschaafdheid, weet iedereen. Ook voor de huishouding van de Staat mag het dus belangrijk gerekend worden een middel van beschaving te verspreiden." Van Hogendorp as quoted in J.L. Swellengrebel, In Leijdeckers Voetspoor, deel 1, Haarlem, Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap, 1974, p. 27. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 13

The Lincoln Cathedral Library has a copy of Ruyls Malay Matthew of 1629, shelf mark Qq. 4.7, and a copy of Ruyls translation of Mark, shelf mark Qq. 4.8, originally bound together in one volume, with one title page. The title page has this text:

Het NIEUWE TESTAMENT. Dat is: het Nieuwe verbont ones heeren Jesu Chriti in Nederduyts Ende Malays/na der Griekcher waerheijt overgeet.14 Iang TESTAMENTUM BAHARV. Arti-n'ja: Iang d'jand'ji bahar dari Than-k Ie
Chriti: beralim kapada baa Hlanda daan baa Malaj eperti jang Adillan baa Greg

Gedruckt tEnckhuyen/ by Jan Jacobsz Palensteyn/opt Suyd-eynde inde druckery/1629. Ber-pra-tiap ka Nagri Enkhen, pada Ihan Iacb, Menan ka djng alatan dalam kedey bar-pra. 1629.15

The Lincoln Mark is in quarto format, with two columns on each page (folium). The book has 120 folia, with katernen A-P, subdivided in four (A, Aij, Aiij, Aiiij etc.). Folium 1 has a title above the left column Het H. Evangelivm Beschreuen door Marcum and the Malay title Iang Evangelivm Vlkadus, Menjurat kapada Marcum above the right column of folium 1 (see figure 1). At the end, on folium 120, below the Dutch column, it says Eynde des Evangeliums Marci and below the Malay column Sdahan Evangelium Marcum.The left column has the Dutch Deux-Aes translation of Mark, in Gothic script and the right column has the Malay translation, in Roman script (see figure 1), just as the translation of Matthew (Soesilo 2001a: 46-47). The Deux-Aes Bible of 1562 was the most used Dutch translation of Protestants before 1637 when the Dutch Authorized Version, the Staten Vertaling, was published. The paratext of the Lincoln Mark follows that of the Deux-Aes version of the left column, with

14 The New Testament. That is the new covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ translated into Dutch and Malay after the Greek truth. 15 Printed in the town of Enkhuizen, by Jan Jacobsz, residing at the South End in the Printshop. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 14

pericope titles above each chapter. The chapter number is mentioned in the left top part of the page and the page number on the top right part. Under each column we find a signature mark and a catchword (see figure 1). The Lincoln copy of Mark is one of the first books printed in Malay.

Figure 1

The Mark copy in Lincoln is different from the Mark copy of the 1638 edition kept in Stuttgart. The Lincoln Mark is unique: it is the only extant copy of Ruyls first Malay Mark in its first edition. Text, spelling, lay-out and typographical details of the Lincoln Mark (1629/1630) and the Stuttgart Mark (1638) are different. For example, the decorated initial capital letter I of Mark 1:1 (see figure 1) is different in the two Mark editions of Lincoln and Stuttgart (Gossweiler, p.c.). The Lincoln Mark uses the tilde sign over vowels to indicate nasals where the Stuttgart Mark uses the letters m, ng and n. For example, in the Lincoln Mark 1: 40 we find saurg a person, da and and hba hamba versus Stuttgart Mark saurang, daan and hamba. But the Lincoln Mark also sometimes writes daan. The spelling of Ruyl and other VOC translators is very inconsistent from a modern perspective. However, the spelling of Dutch in the 17th century was also inconsistent and not yet fully standardized in the young Republic. Ruyl and other VOC translators followed spelling practices of Dutch and Portuguese in writing Malay (Swellengrebel 1974). The spelling idiosyncrasies, typography and lay-out connect the Lincoln Mark very clearly to the Matthew of 1629 and indicate that Ruyls Lincoln Mark was printed either in 1629 or shortly after 1629 when Palensteyn printed Matthew (Gossweiler 2014a). In the preface to what he thought would become his New Testament, Ruyl refers to his Malay grammar and word list Spieghel van de Maleyshe Tale published in 1612 to explain the vowel system of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 15

Malay, especially what Ruyl calls the diphtonghe o.u. that he spells with an u that has a small circular sign on top: (see figure 1). This is peculiarity of the early Ruyl. We find it only in his first Matthew and Mark, not in Stuttgart Mark edition of 1638 nor in any other Malay publication by Ruyl or anyone else, before or after 1629 (Gossweiler, p.c). Another significant spelling idiosyncrasy shared by the copies of Matthew (1629) and the Lincoln Mark, but not found in the Mark of 1638 is the Dutch trema or vowel separation sign used on the letter a when it follows an i, for example tida, litla (Gossweiler, p.c.). Ruyl writes in his preface that he had finished Matthew in 1612 and since he planned to translate the whole New Testament, he will have proceeded with the second book of the New Testament after 1612. Both manuscripts must have been ready for printing in 1629. The VOC was in fact a conglomerate of six local trading companies in the major ports of the Republic. These local companies united under the umbrella of the VOC under considerable political pressure of the Staten-Generaal of the Republic (Schutte 2002: 50). The local companies were called kamers (chambers) and Enkhuizen was one of these VOC chambers (Schutte 2002: 50). Palensteyn, the printer mentioned on the title page, had a theatre in Enkhuizen in which plays were performed. The audience in his theatre could follow the play by buying the script of the play printed in his print shop (A.A. den Hollander, p.c.). But Palensteyn did not have the expertise and skills needed to print books in non-European languages that was available in Amsterdam. This is because there are numerous printing errors in the first edition that forced Ruyl to include a long list of Letter faulten (printing errors). The list of errors begins with the title page that contains the printing mistake bersalim which should be bersalin. Later editions of his gospels corrected those errors (Gossweiler, p.c). The letter M is handwritten in the top left corner of the Lincoln title page that preceded the gospel translations. It is the signature of the owner, Michael (M) Honywood (1597-1681) who 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 16

became Dean of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660. He was an avid book collector and signed his books with M (Taylor, p.c.). It is very likely that he bought the Malay books of Matthew and Mark in the Dutch Republic, because Honywood went to Utrecht in 1642 and stayed there for a couple of years, during the Protectorate (Venables 1885). The Malay gospels that Honywood bought ended up in the Cathedral Library after his appointment as Dean of the Lincoln Cathedral in 1660. He collected Bibles in various languages but was also interested in many other subjects, as is clear from the magnificent collection in the Lincoln Cathedral Library. The Malay gospels that he purchased must have had earlier Dutch owners and must have been used in the East because on an empty page that follows the Malay translation of the Lords Prayer on folium 38 we find these hand written notes in the Lincoln Matthew:

tekst den 9 Julij 1639 psalm 130 djikalou tuanco mau bilang dosa siappa bole tingal badiri adapan tuan16

den 23 Julij 1639 tekst Jone i-???i-2 itou bacattahan deos jadij capada Jona (Yang Annac Amithai) babounji begitou badirila dan bedjalan dalam Yang bandar besar ninive Lagi adjarkan di dalam

16 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? (English Standard Version). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 17

Carna dia orang pounja dosa Souda naic capada Aco17

30 dito tekst matt 4 vers 17 Touwarkan hatij camou, carna Jang alam surga souda ampir18

Most likely a Dutch VOC pastor or schoolmaster wrote down the verses from Scripture that he wanted to preach or teach about in 1639 on July 3 (Psalm 150), July 23 (Matthew 1: 2) and July 30 (Matthew 4: 17). The Malay Scripture verses from Matthew 4: 17, handwritten on folium 38 of the Lincoln Matthew in the liturgical folia after the gospel translation, do not come from Ruyls Matthew because Ruyl translated this verse as Berbaiki badan mu karna hokkum-sorga-ni ampir datang.19

4. The Lincoln Mark as a translation

Malay but which Malay? In 1612, fifteen years after the first Dutch ships reached Java, Albert Corneliszoon Ruyl, finished the manuscript of his Malay translation of the gospel of Matthew. The year before he had published his Malay translation of a short catechism that summarized the doctrines of the Dutch Reformed Church (Kort Begrip van Marnix van St. Aldegonde ) (van Boetzelaar 1941: 30). Ruyl had learned Malay in Patani where Malay was an indigenous language and had been exposed to literary and court Malay that he also tried to use in his translation (Werndly

17 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.(English Standard Version). 18 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.(English Standard Version). 19 Literally Make good your body (=yourself) because the heavenly jurisdiction (=Kingdom of Heavens) almost comes. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 18

1736, Swellengrebel 1974). The Malay that Ruyl uses in his translation is in fact a form of (emergent) Kerck Maleis, the Church Malay variety that arose in the context of multi ethnic and multi lingual Protestant VOC communities in religious genres such as catechisms, Bible translations, sermons, a kind of Malay also shaped by the first languages of its users and by features of the Dutch religious texts that were translated. The interference from Dutch in Ruyls Malay is hardly lexical. There are almost no words of Dutch origin in his Malay gospels, and this is generally true for the VOC translators (see Collins 2002 for Brouwerius). Since he translates the Dutch text rather literally, there is considerable interference from Dutch grammatical patterns. For example, Ruyl often uses the marker of relative clauses yang to render the Dutch definite articles de and het in his Dutch base text, for example in the noun phrase Iang Evangelium Ul-kadus menjurat kapada Marcum the Holy gospel written by Mark in the title of Mark and in Mark 1: 15 jang wakt jadi pts, daan jang Radjat Allahi ampir datang the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has almost come. Most VOC translators, including Ruyl, backed by the VOC leadership, wanted to use higher varieties of Malay as found in Malay literary traditions, varieties less bound to regional spoken Malays but very difficult to understand for the vast majority of the intended users. Ruyl, in his preface, refers to this debate and to the support he received from the VOC Board in Amsterdam to use what Ruyl called Hoofs Malays Court Malay of the variety he found in the literary tradition of Malay: a high form of Malay used in courts and in written texts of the high type (religious treatises, court chronicles, poetry). Ruyl mentions in his preface to the Lincoln gospels that some critics found his Malay al te Hoofs Malays (Malay as used in courts) and he criticizes the Matthew translation of Van Hasel hem ontbreeckende het lezen en schrijven van de Malayse boecken (him lacking the reading and writing of Malay books). Van Hasels Malay Matthew was never printed because 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 19

the VOC Board sided with Ruyl. Van Hasel was a junior VOC merchant just like Ruyl. He had arrived in the East Indies in 1613. Although his Malay Matthew did not see print, his translations of Luke and Acts, lightly revised by the Rev. Heurnius, were printed together with Ruyls gospels in 1651 (Swellengrebel 1974). The Malay translations of Ruyl must have been very difficult to understand in most, if not all parts of the archipelago. Many people in and around the VOC stations only spoke restricted, low Malay varieties used in trade and interethnic contact situations, if they spoke Malay at all. Such Melayu Pasar varieties functioned in a limited number of contexts, with a limited vocabulary and strongly reduced verbal morphology. When in the course of the 17th century children in the Christian villages of Ambon grew up with local varieties of Malay and this local Ambonese Malay became the first language of more and more people, Ambonese Malay developed into a relatively stable language with its own grammar and lexis, a language still spoken today (Collins 2002). Seeing that these Ambonese Christians did not understand the Malay of Ruyl, van Hasel and Brouwer, pastor Valentijn began to translate the Bible into a Malay variety much closer to Ambonese Malay in grammar and lexis. His work was not accepted for printing by the Batavia Church Council but fragments of his translation have survived as quoted Scripture in a book titled Ichtisaar, printed in 1725, a catechism written by Dutch pastors and translated into Malay by Valentijn.20 Pastor Valentijn wrote a passionate response to his critics in the form of a pamphlet printed in 1698, defending his choice of Ambonese Malay on the grounds of understandability.21 Unfortunately, even the few people who could read or understand the High Malay of the literary traditions, both religious and secular, would find the Church Malay used in VOC

20 These fragments of Valentijns Scripture translation can be found in Niemeijer and Van den End 2015: 165- 169. 21 The brochure titled Deure der Waerhijd (Door of Truth) was published in Niemeijer and Van den End (2015: 149-187). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 20

translations hard to follow because Ruyl and other VOC translators