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{"id":17305,"date":"2015-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2015-06-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T00:00:00","slug":"the-world-the-missionaries-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/06\/the-world-the-missionaries-made\/","title":{"rendered":"The World the Missionaries Made"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

He points to the correspondence of Max M\u00fcller, or J G Frazer, or A C Haddon, with missionaries; not because these luminaries could identify with missionary aims, but because they were aware of no other group of Western people so regularly engaged at such a fundamental level with the languages and cultures of the nonWestern world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study of \u201ccomparative African linguistics was the almost singlehanded creation of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle,\u201d and the \u201csignificance of tone, and the devising of a system of marking it, was due to the insistence of the African missionary Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the most important influence in the production of the Bible in his mother tongue, Yoruba.\u201d The \u201cmost important single figure in the western understanding of the Chinese classics is probably the Scottish missionary James Legge,\u201d and another \u201cAberdonian, John Nicol Farquhar, produced the fullest comprehensive compendium of information on Indian religious literature, still in print in India.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walls concludes mournfully: \u201cthe missionary movement affected every department of scholarship \u2013 except theology.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"