Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky
Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (6 May 1831 – 15 October 1906), also known as Joseph Schereschewsky, was an Anglican bishop who led the Shanghai mission from 1877 to 1883 and founded St. John’s College in Shanghai in 1879 (later St. John’s University).
Born in Tauroggen, Russian Lithuania, he was orphaned young and raised with a half-brother. He originally planned to become a rabbi, learned many languages, and moved to the United States in 1854. After exploring several Christian denominations, he joined the Episcopal Church and studied at the General Theological Seminary. He went to China as a missionary, was ordained a priest in 1860, and arrived in Shanghai in 1859.
In China he began translating the Bible into Chinese and helped translate the Book of Common Prayer into Mandarin. He returned to the United States for health reasons in 1875, but in 1877 he became Bishop of Shanghai with hopes of building a Chinese-language college. He founded St. John’s College in 1879. He resigned as bishop in 1883 due to health problems after a sun stroke in 1881, but continued translating biblical texts.
His Mandarin translations of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible appeared in 1898–1899, and he later worked on a Wenli (classical Chinese) translation. He moved to Tokyo, Japan, where he died in 1906 and is buried. St. John’s began with 39 students and later shifted to English instruction with an emphasis on science. In the Episcopal Church, he is honored with a feast day on October 14.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:24 (CET).