Joshua Marshman

Marshman, Joshua, D.D., was born at Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, April 20, 1768, and educated for the Baptist ministry at the College at Bristol. In Oct. 1799 he joined Dr. Carey at Serampore, India. In 1826 he visited England, and returned to India in 1829. He died at Serampore, Dec. 5, 1837. His translation of Krishnu Pal's hymn is noted at p, 633, ii. In his Baptist Hymn Writers, Portland, U.S.A., Dr. Burrage attributes the original hymn, “Hail, precious book divine" (Holy Scripture) to him, but leaves its date and place of publication unnoted.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)

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In ear­ly life he evinced a fond­ness for books and stu­dy. In 1794, he ac­cep­ted the charge of a school con­nect­ed with the Broad­mead Bap­tist church, Bris­tol, and not long af­ter he was bap­tized, and unit­ed with the church. At the same time he en­tered the the­o­lo­gic­al sem­in­a­ry at Bris­tol, and de­vot­ed him­self to the He­brew, Syr­i­ac, and other lan­guag­es. Be­com­ing in­ter­est­ed in Dr. Carey’s work in In­dia, he and his wife, in 1799, of­fered them­selves for mis­sion­a­ry ser­vice, and sailed May 29, for In­dia. They land­ed at Se­ram­pore Oc­to­ber 13, and the mis­sion was es­tab­lished there, Dr. and Mrs. Marsh­man open­ing a board­ing-school to aid them in the pro­se­cu­tion of their work. In 1806, Dr. Marsh­man com­menced the stu­dy of the Chi­nese lang­uage for the pur­pose of trans­lat­ing the Scrip­tures in­to that tongue. In 1814, he published his “Key to the Chi­nese Lan­guage,” and in fif­teen years from the time he com­menced his stu­dy of the lang­uage he com­plet­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of the first por­tion of the Scrip­tures in the Chi­nese lan­guage, con­sist­ing of the book of Gen­e­sis, the four Gos­pels, and Paul’s Epis­tles to the Ro­mans and Co­rinth­i­ans. In 1826, he vis­it­ed Eng­land, and re­turned in In­dia in 1829…In 1811, Brown Un­i­ver­sity con­ferred up­on him the hon­or­ary de­gree of Doc­tor of Di­vin­ity.

Marshman’s works in­clude:
Dissertation on the Char­ac­ters and Sounds of the Chi­nese Lang­uage, 1809
The Works of Con­fu­cius, Con­tain­ing the Orig­in­al Text, with a Trans­la­tion, 1811
A De­fence of the De­i­ty and Atone­ment of Je­sus Christ, 1822
Sanskrit Gram­mar, with Hen­ry Carey
Bengalee and Eng­lish Dic­tion­ary, with Hen­ry Carey

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/m/a/r/s/marshman_j.htm

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Marshman