23 Facts About James Legge

James Legge was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator who was best known as an early translator of Classical Chinese texts into English.

James Legge then continued his studies at Highbury Theological College, London.

James Legge went, in 1839, as a missionary to China, but first stayed at Malacca three years, in charge of the Anglo-Chinese College there.

The College was moved to Hong Kong, where James Legge lived for nearly thirty years.

James Legge was appointed headmaster of Ying Wa College in Malacca in 1839 and continued in that position until 1867, the college having removed to Hong Kong in 1844.

James Legge was pastor of the Union Church in Hong Kong from 1844 to 1867.

James Legge was third and final editor of the Chinese Serial, the first Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong.

In 1867, James Legge returned to Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, where he invited Wang Tao to join him, and received his LLD from the University of Aberdeen in 1870.

James Legge then returned to Hong Kong as pastor at Union Church from 1870 to 1873.

James Legge took a long trip to North China, beginning 2 April 1873 in Shanghai, arriving at Tianjin by boat, then travelling by mule cart and arriving in Peking on 16 April 1873, where he stayed at the London Missionary Society headquarters.

James Legge visited the Great Wall, Ming Tombs and the Temple of Heaven, where he felt compelled to take off his shoes with holy awe.

James Legge left Peking, accompanied by Joseph Edkins, and headed for Shandong by mule cart to visit Jinan, Taishan, where they ascended the sacred Mount Tai, carried by four men on chairs.

James Legge returned to Shanghai by way of the Grand Canal, and thence to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.

In 1879, James Legge was a member of a committee formed to create a women's college at Oxford "in which no distinction will be made between students on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations".

James Legge was given an honorary MA, University of Oxford, and LLD, University of Edinburgh, 1884.

James Legge was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1895.

James Legge died at Oxford in 1897 and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery.

James Legge drew from his education in Scottish common sense realism various hermeneutical principles in translation.

Ultimately, by the 1850s, James Legge concluded that the word "Shangdi" represented a monotheistic god, and argued it was the most appropriate term for translating words in reference to the Christian God into Chinese.

James Legge believed that using a term already deeply entrenched in Chinese culture could prevent Christianity from being seen as a completely foreign religion.

James Legge's opponents argued that this would cause confusion due to the word's use in Taoism and Chinese folk religion.

James Legge's most enduring work has been The Chinese Classics: with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes, 5 vols.

James Legge originally planned his Chinese Classics as seven volumes, but his translations of the I Ching and Book of Rites were instead included in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Muller :.