What Is the Chinese Union Version? The 1919 Bible and Its Revisions

If you have been to a Chinese-speaking church, the Bible in the pews was almost certainly the Chinese Union Version, known in Chinese as 和合本. Here is where it came from, and why there are several versions of it.

Where it came from

At a missionary conference in Shanghai in 1890, Protestant missions in China agreed to produce a shared, or “union”, translation instead of competing ones. The Mandarin version was completed and published in 1919. Its official name is the Mandarin Union Version (官話和合譯本), and it quickly became the standard Bible for Chinese Protestants.

Shen and Shangdi editions

Missionaries disagreed about how to translate the word “God”. Rather than choose, the translation was printed in two editions: one uses 神 (shén), the other 上帝 (Shàngdì). The rest of the text is the same. In the Shen edition, a blank space is often left before 神 as a traditional mark of respect.

Later revisions

• Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation (新標點和合本, 1988): the same text with modern punctuation, paragraphs and section headings.
• Revised Chinese Union Version (和合本修訂版, 2010): a revision of the wording, published by the Hong Kong Bible Society.

The 1919 text is in the public domain. The 1988 and 2010 editions are still under copyright.

What the 1919 text looks like

The original uses characters that were standard at the time, such as 爲, 喫 and 纔, where modern texts usually write 為, 吃 and 才. Some wording differs slightly too: Psalm 23:1 reads 不至缺乏 in 1919 and 不致缺乏 in the 1988 edition.

Many files online labelled “Chinese Union Version” are actually the 1988 edition, or a mix of the 1919 text with modern punctuation and place names. If you want the original, check the source.

In Penned Grace

Penned Grace includes the 1919 Chinese Union Version (Shen edition) in Traditional and Simplified characters, alongside the Berean Standard Bible. The Traditional text keeps the original characters. You can write in Chinese with an English interface, or the other way round.