I AM THE ALIF AND THE YA: The Negotiation of Islamic Language in the Malay Bibles of 1831 and 1853

Abstract

This thesis addresses how the translators of the Malay New Testaments of 1831 and 1853 negotiated Arabo-Islamic vocabulary and the perpetual conundrum of transporting the ideas of the 1st century Judeo-Christian New Testament into a context distant across both time and place. The three main figures in this process, Rev. Claudius Thomsen, Munsyi Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, and Rev. Benjamin Peach Keasberry, contended with each other over the various ways they thought the translation of the Christian text should either coopt or reject Arabo-Islamic vocabulary. Though Thomsen published his New Testament, with Abdullah’s help, in Singapore in 1831, both Keasberry and Abdullah had vigorous criticisms of his work. Ultimately Keasberry’s 1853 translation, also completed with extensive help from Abdullah, followed by an 1866 revision, became the standard Bible translation in the British-controlled Malay world well into the 20th century. Keasberry and Abdullah’s accommodation to vernacular Malay, and simultaneous standardizing of it, won out in those Malay-speaking areas not held by the Dutch. This thesis also places the story of the 1831 and 1853 Malay Bibles in context with similar 19th century Protestant translation efforts aided by Muslim interlocutors in Zanzibar with Swahili and in Beirut with Arabic.