The clear and well-formed characters are those of an educated native copyist. The handwriting is the same as that of MS Add.10067, fully proving the authenticity of the latter.MS Add.10067 is written on paper of European manufacture which bears a watermark of a hunting horn on a shield and the initials IB and PP. It was the gift of Giovanni Giacomo Fatinelli (1653-1736), who acted as procurator in Rome for Cardinal de Tournon (1668-1710), the ill-fated Papal legate to China. Only in 2006 was a Chinese manuscript in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome (Codex 2024) recognised as the one formerly supposed to have been in the Propaganda Fidei.In this newly-identified manuscript the Four Gospels appear as separate works, the other books being identical with the two previously known versions. Although in a different hand, its content is identical with Sloane 3599 either the latter had been copied from the former, or both from the same archetype.The existence of a Chinese translation of the New Testament, said to be in the library of the Propaganda Fidei in Rome, was mentioned in several learned publications during the nineteenth century, but no-one had ever seen it. He subsequently based his own Bible translation on it, and thus laid the foundation of the entire Protestant missionary enterprise in China.In 1964 the Bible Society acquired the manuscript shown here (now MS Add.10067). In 1805 Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China, transcribed this manuscript with the help of a Chinese assistant.
Proposals were made in 18 to publish the manuscript, but the technical difficulties and consequent vast expense of such a procedure (£60 copies) meant that nothing was done. At the time of his death the translation had reached the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.In 1739 an anonymous copy of a Chinese Harmony of the Gospels, plus the remaining books up to Hebrews 1, came into the hands of Sir Hans Sloane and was deposited in the British Museum (MS Sloane 3599). 1734), undertook to translate the New Testament from the Vulgate into literary Chinese. Jean Basset (1662-1707) a French missionary of the Missions Etrangères de Paris in Sichuan Province, assisted by a Chinese convert Johan Xu (d. Chinese Works : Chinese Harmony of the Gospels Chinese Works
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