** مسيرة الموحِّد \ جون بونيان \ ترجمة : محمود عباس مسعود **

John Bunyan (28 November 1628 – 31 August 1688) was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on August 29.

In 1628, John Bunyan was born to Thomas Bunyan and Margaret Bentley at Bunyan's End, in the parish of Elstow, Bedfordshire, England. Bunyan's End was located approximately halfway between the hamlet of Harrowden (one mile southeast of Bedford) and Elstow's High Street.
He is recorded in the Elstow parish register as having been baptised John Bunyan, on 30 November 1628.
On May 23, 1649, Thomas married his first wife, Margaret Bentley. Like Thomas, she was from Elstow and she was also born in 1603. In 1628, Margaret's sister, Rose Bentley, married Thomas' half-brother Edward Bunyan. They were ordinary villagers, with Thomas earning a living as a chapman but he may also have been a brazier - one who made and/or mended kettles and pots. Bunyan wrote of his modest origins, "My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land".
John was probably educated at his father's house, possibly with other poor country boys, but in his writings he refers to his days in school. So he must also have spent some time at a school, possibly the one in Houghton Conquest Some think that Bunyan may have attended Bedford Grammar School but some records show that only pupils living in the Borough of Bedford were eligible for a place there. Either way, his later writings demonstrate a high degree of English literacy.
Like his father, John chose a job 'on the road', by adopting the trade of tinker. This was a semi-skilled occupation. Few people could afford to purchase new pots when old ones became holed, so they were mended time and time again. The arrival of a tinker was therefore often a welcome sight, although the semi-nomadic nature of their life led to tinkers being regarded by some in the same poor light as gypsies
1644was an eventful year for the Bunyan family.
in June, John lost his mother and,

في شهر حزيران 1644 ماتت امه وعمره 16 سنه
in July, his sister Margaret died.
بعد ذلك بشهر واحد ماتت اخته مارجرت

Following this, his father married (for the third time) to Anne Pinney (or Purney) and a stepbrother, Charles, was born. It

والده تزوج للمره الثالثة
may have been the arrival of his stepmother that, following his 16th birthday, led John to leave the family home and enlist in the Parliamentary army.
From 1644 to 1647 John served at Newport Pagnell garrison. The English Civil War was then nearing the end of the first stage.

John was probably saved from death one day when a fellow soldier volunteered to go into battle in his place and was killed while walking sentry duty.
انقذ من الموت بعد ان تطوع مكانه جندي بديل وقتل في المعركة

After the civil war was won by the Parliamentarians, Bunyan returned to his former trade.
In his autobiography, Grace Abounding, Bunyan wrote that he led an abandoned life in his youth and was morally reprehensible as a result.
كتب في مذكراته انه كان يعيش حياة عزلة واهمال في شبابه وحياة مجون

However, there appears to be no outward evidence that he was any worse than his neighbours. Examples of sins to which he confessed to are profanity, dancing, and bell-ringing. The increasing awareness of his (in his view) un-Biblical life led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity; in particular, he was harassed by a curiosity in regard to the "unpardonable sin", and a prepossession that he had already committed it. He was known as an adept linguist as far as profanity was concerned; even the most proficient swearers were known to remark that Bunyan was "the ungodliest fellow for swearing they ever heard".

He continually heard voices urging him to "sell Christ," and was tortured by fearful visions.

While playing a game of Tip-cat on Elstow village green, Bunyan claimed to have heard a voice that asked: "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins and go to hell?" Because Puritans held the Sabbath day sacred and permitted no sport,

John believed that this had been the voice of God, chastising his indulgent ways. John's spirituality was born from this experience and he began to struggle with his sense of guilt, self-doubt and his belief in the Bible's promise of damnation and salvation.
اعتقد ان ذلك كان صوت الله ولذلك اصبح يميل الى الحياة الروحية وبدأ يعاني من شعوره بالذنب

In 1649, when he was about 21, he moved into a cottage on the western side of the northern end of Elstow's High Street. In 1650 he married a young woman, an orphan whose father had left her only two books as her inheritance.
في العام 1649 وحين كان عمره 21 سنه اتقل الى كوخ في نهاية المنطقة التي كان يسكن بها وفي العام 1650 تزوج امراءة صغيرة في السن يتيمة ترك لها والدها كتابين فقط كورثه

The two books were Arthur Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety, and the content of these two books appears to have strongly influenced John towards a religious life. (

John's wife's name is not recorded, but the Bunyan's first, blind, daughter (born in 1650), was called
Mary, and it is possible that she was named after her.) The Bunyans' life was modest, to say the least. Bunyan wrote that they were "as poor as poor might be", not even "a dish or spoon between them".
يقول الكاتب بأنه كان يعيش حياة فقر مدقع حتى ان بيته كا يلو من صحن ومعلقه

As John struggled with his new found Christian faith, he became increasingly despondent and fell into mental turmoil.
اصابه نوع من الاضراب العقلي وكان يظن نفسه احيانا الراهب بول

During this time of conflict, Bunyan began a four year long discussion and spiritual journey with a few poor women of Bedford who belonged to a nonconformist sect that worshipped in St. John's Church.

He also increasingly identified himself with St. Paul, who had characterised himself as "the chief of sinners", and believed he was one of the spiritual elite, chosen by God.
وكان يظن انه مختار من الله

As a result of these experiences, John Bunyan was baptised and received into St John's church and he began to follow the teachings of its pastor, John Gifford.

A second daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1654, and in 1655 Bunyan moved his family to St Cuthberts Street, Bedford. That same year John Gifford died and John started preaching.

John's son Thomas was born in 1656, his first book “Some Gospel Truths” was published and John Burton was appointed minister at St John's church; in 1657 he became a deacon. His son John was born and his second book “Vindication” was published.

Imprisonments
As his popularity and notoriety grew, Bunyan increasingly became a target for slander and libel; he was described as "a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman" and was said to have mistresses and multiple wives. In 1658, aged 30, he was arrested for preaching at Eaton Socon and indicted for preaching without a licence. He continued preaching, however, and did not suffer imprisonment until November 1660, when he was taken to the county gaol in Silver Street, Bedford.

سجن عام 1660
In that same year, Bunyan married his second wife, Elizabeth, by whom he had two more children, Sarah and Joseph. .

Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in two parts, the first of which was published in London in 1678 and the second in 1684. He began the work in his first period of imprisonment, and probably finished it during the second. The earliest edition in which the two parts combined in one volume came in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693, and was reprinted as late as 1852. Its full title is The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come.
The Pilgrim's Progress is arguably one of the most widely known allegories ever written, and has been extensively translated. Protestant missionaries commonly translated it as the first thing after the Bible.
Two other successful works of Bunyan's are less well-known: The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), an imaginary biography, and The Holy War (1682), an allegory. A third book which reveals Bunyan's inner life and his preparation for his appointed work is Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). It is a classic example of a spiritual autobiography, and thus is focused on his own spiritual journey; his motive in writing it was plainly to exalt the Christian concept of grace and to comfort those passing through experiences like his own.

The above works have appeared in numerous editions. There are several noteworthy collections of editions of The Pilgrim's Progress, e.g., in the British Museum and in the New York Public Library, collected by the late James Lenox.
Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a prolific author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. Though a Baptist preacher, in theology he was a Puritan. The portrait his friend Robert White drew, which has often been reproduced, shows the attractiveness of his true character. He was tall, had reddish hair, prominent nose, a rather large mouth, and sparkling eyes.
He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but he knew scripture thoroughly. He was also influenced by Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in the translation of 1575.
Some time before his final release from prison Bunyan became involved in a controversy with Kiffin, Danvers, Deune, Paul, and others. In 1673 he published his Differences in Judgement about Water-Baptism no Bar to Communion, in which he took the ground that "the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of the communion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint of the word, the Christian that walketh according to his own light with God." While he owned "water baptism to be God's ordinance," he refused to make "an idol of it," as he thought those did who made the lack of it a ground for disfellowshipping those recognised as genuine Christians.
Kiffin and Paul published a response in Serious Reflections (London, 1673), in which they argued in favour of the restriction of the Lord's Supper to baptised believers, and received the approval of Henry Danvers in his Treatise of Baptism (London, 1673 or 1674). The controversy resulted in the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists leaving the question of communion with the unbaptised open. Bunyan's church admitted paedobaptists to fellowship and finally became paedobaptist (Congregationalist).
At one time, The Pilgrim's Progress was considered the most widely read and translated book in the English language apart from the Bible. The charm of the work, which gives it wide appeal among old and young, learned and ignorant, readers of all possible schools of thought and theology, lies in the interest of a story in which the intense imagination of the writer makes characters, incidents, and scenes alike live in the imagination of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves, in its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and its pure, nervous, idiomatic English. Macaulay has said, "Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road on which he has been backwards and forwards a hundred times," and he adds that "In England during the latter half of the seventeenth century there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other The Pilgrim's Progress."
The images Bunyan uses in Pilgrim's Progress are but reflections of images from his own world; the strait gate is a version of the wicket gate at Elstow church, the Slough of Despond is a reflection of Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden, the Delectable Mountains are an image of the Chiltern Hills surrounding Bedfordshire. Even his characters, like the Evangelist as influenced by John Gifford, are reflections of real people. This pilgrimage was not only real for Bunyan as he lived it, but his portrait evoked this reality for his readers. Rudyard Kipling once referred to Bunyan as “the father of the novel, salvation's first Defoe.”
Bunyan wrote about 60 books and tracts, of which The Holy War ranks next to The Pilgrim's Progress in popularity. A passage from Part Two of The Pilgrim's Progress beginning "Who would true Valour see" has been used in the hymn "To be a Pilgrim".
The Scottish philosopher David Hume used Bunyan to illustrate the idea of a "standard of taste" in aesthetic matters: 'Whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean.' (Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste", originally published in his Four Dissertations (1757).)
Works