Confucian Classics and the Bible
After a brief survey of the encounter between the Confucian and Christian canons, the essay discusses the issues that arose when the Bible was translated into Chinese as Shengjing (the Holy Canon). To find out how Chinese Christians (missionaries and Chinese) treat Confucian classics and the way they translate and read the Bible in light of the Confucian language/classics, the essay explores the following issues: (1) the distinction between the Bible being interpreted as the Holy Canon and Confucian classics being considered as humanistic Canons; (2) the kind of authority that can raise a jingdian (classic) into a jing (canon) in the Chinese context; and (3) the fact that, because Confucians understand canons in the light of humanistic criteria, they treat the Bible as a humanistic classic rather than a divinely revealed canon. The essay ends by introducing a Christian-Chinese intertextual reading of the Bible and the Analects and a proposal of “Sino-Christian academic biblical studies.”