Grebo Bible History (3)

**List: Grebo Ministry the Bible ( the Bible ) Grebo... GREBO. "The Grebo language is predominant in the immediate vicinity of Cape Palmas, and is supposed to extend considerably into the interior: it prevails from Sinou to Barcby, but its precise area is undeter- mined.   Tribes of this family are to be met with from Grand Cape Mountain on the north to St. Andrew's on the Ivory Coast.   The Grebo people have, in general, less intelligence than their neighbours: they are pagans, but possess no fixed system of idolatry, each individual adopting such notions and practices as accord with his own fancy.   Their mode of political government is equally anomalous: they have no system of legislation whatever, but live in disorderly masses, without rulers; those who bear the name of chiefs having a mere nominal authority.    The Grebo is a cognate language with the Vci spoken at Grand Cape Mountain, the Dcy spoken by the former inhabitants of Cape Mesurado, the dialects of Drewin and St. Andrew's, the Bassa, and the Kru, all of which are usually included in the Grebo family.   The Grebo is characterised by many difficult nasal and guttural sounds, by a disproportion of monosyllabic words, and by great deficiency in inflections.   It possesses, however, a variety of tenses, whereby the time of an action can be expressed with singular precision.   In a negative verbal proposition, the particle of negation takes the tense inflection instead of the verb.   Many of the words of this language have no fixed office, but are employed indiscriminately as nouns, adjectives, particles, and verbs.    The first translation of the Gospel into Grebo was made by the aid of the American Board of Missions: the Gospel according to St. Matthew was printed, and the Acts translated, prior to the year 1840.   This edition of St. Matthew consisted of 1000 copies.   In 1848, the Gospel according to St. Luke was translated from the original by the Rev. John Payne, an agent of the Protestant Episcopal My. Society of America, and an edition was printed at the expense of the American Bible Society.   The following portions of Scripture have also been translated and published, at the expense of the American Bible Society, in the Grebo language:-- Acts, by the Rev. Theodore Schulz, in 1802:--New York, 1850 Genesis, by the Rev. John Payne,   ditto   1850 Acts, by   ditto   ditto   1851" --The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)   Samuel Bagster   [Info only] GREBO.--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: n.d. Luke 6:27-36 unknown.]

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