Nathan Brown (missionary)

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The Reverend Nathan Brown (22 June 1807 - 1 January 1886) was an American Baptist missionary and Bible translator.

1 Early life and missions to Burma and Assam
2 Abolitionism
3 In Japan
4 External links

[edit] Early life and missions to Burma and Assam

Born on in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, he attended Williams College, where he graduated first in his class. He and his wife, whom he married in 1830, went on to serve as missionaries in Burma. 0riginal intention had been to translate the Bible into Burmese, but he soon found himself pulled into a mission along with Oliver Cutter and Mile Bronson in the Indian region of Assam.

In 1848, Brown published an Assamese grammar, followed by an Assamese translation of the New Testament in 1850 (language regained recognition in part due to Assamese publications edited by him, and his association with Hemchandra Barua); in the same year, Brown returned to America to join his brother William in the growing abolitionist movement.

[edit] Abolitionism

In his satirical work Magnus Maharba and the Dragon, an account of the battle against slavery, Rev. Brown used the pen name Kristofer Kadmus. This shows that he truly identified with the character in Greek Mythology that his life so paralleled. Cadmus was best known as a traveller and vector of culture and ideas. His journey in search of his lost sister Europa led to importation of the idea of alphabet into Greece. In myth, Cadmus killed a dragon that prevented mortals from reaching a sacred spring. He planted the dragon's teeth on the spot; they sprouted into armies that fought nearly to death, with the survivors building the city of learning.

The haystack missionaries, including Nathan Brown, associated the account of the introduction of the Greek alphabet with the New Testament creation, and the idea of sreading local alphabets for every language seemed to them an important first step towards their goal of a Bible for every language. The printing presses and schools of these missions sometimes became a vehicle for empowerment of local language and culture.

Following his return from Assam to New England in 1848, Nathan Brown joined the abolitionist movement, delivering anti-slavery sermons in Boston. This was a struggle that eventually resulted in terrible American Civil War. No doubt, many proponents of the anti-slavery movement had to deal with the bloody results of their efforts in secret personal struggle of conscience. Rev. Brown dealt with the question of violent means in Magnus Maharba, then, by 1868, turned his attention to the newly accessible Japan, at first by interacting with the students that Japan was sending to the Bridgeport Academy and Princeton University for education in Western world culture and technology.

This cultural exchange was a two way process. Rev. Brown published another satire showing America as seen through the eyes of one of these Japanese students, which was sharply critical of New England's materialism, in place of spirituality. One exchange student, for whom Nathan Brown wrote a letter of reference to the Bridgeport Academy, eventually became an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

[edit] In Japan

Brown's first wife died in 1871, and in 1872, having married again, he returned to missionary work, this time traveling to Japan to join Jonathan Goble, the first Baptist missionary to that country. The two collaborated to construct the first Japanese Baptist church in 1876. Brown also worked with Japanese scholar T. Kawakatsu to produce a Japanese-language Bible based on what where then the oldest known Greek manuscripts; he would go on to print thousands of Hiragana copies for distribution print versions (with the goal of access to the Bible by less educated persons who might not understand Kanji). Brown died in Yokohama.