Sacredness in the Bible and Chinese Cultures

This article is an introduction to the meaning of sacredness in the Bible and the Chinese culture, ending with a synthesis of the concept. The methodology of this article consists of biblical studies, Chinese philosophy, and religious studies. What is particular to this article are the three stages of development of sacredness in the Bible, as well as the idea of sacredness as transformation according to the nature ordained by Heaven (Confucianism) or as a modeling after the nature of Dao (Daoism) in the Chinese culture. The finding of this study is to confirm that, despite different interpretations, both the biblical and the Chinese traditions would agree that each human being is destined to be a sacred or a divine person.

Yin-Yang (Yijing) and the Bible

Chinese religions, philosophy, and especially Confucianism constituted a great challenge for the Catholic mission since its beginnings in China in early modern times. This essay looks at the way the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, made several attempts to solve the problem. Niccolò Longobardo s.j., for example, refused to use Chinese terms for the Christian God, dismissing them as insufficient or atheistic. Most Jesuits, however, advocated for terms such as Tian, Shangdi, Tianzhu, and Taiji for God in China. The Mandate of the Vicar Apostolic Charles Maigrot m.e.p., prohibiting the use of the Yijing and Taiji as the Chinese name for God, became a great challenge for Joachim Bouvet s.j. in developing his Figurism. With this system, he found complements for Christianity in China and created a new theology combining Eastern and Western ideas. These efforts were stopped by the prohibition of the Chinese rites and by the historical-critical method for reading the old Chinese books.

The Bible and Popular Christianity in Modern China

This essay investigates the influential role that the Bible played in the sphere of Chinese popular Christianity. It explores the widespread use of the Bible among the lay populace who were traditionally excluded from the concerns and pursuits of Chinese Christian elites in cosmopolitan cities. Beginning with an overview of the cultural influence of the Bible in the mid-nineteenth century, this study argues that the liberating power of the Word was leveraged by peasant converts looking for new cosmologies and norms to change society. The twentieth century witnessed multiple levels of direct engagement with biblical texts, unmediated by foreign missionaries, among Chinese evangelists and congregants. Some drew on new biblical inspirations to found independent churches and sectarian groups, and some relied on the practice of bibliomancy to seek guidance in times of chaos. These examples offer complex view of the symbiosis between Bible reading and conversion in Chinese popular Christianity.

The Basset-Su Chinese new Testament

This essay examines the first Chinese New Testament translated by the missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (M.E.P.) Jean Basset (1662–1707) in collaboration with Confucian convert Johan Su in the early Qing period. Though they did not complete a full translation of the New Testament, the work carried unique characteristics that went beyond the limitations of its time. One of the original manuscripts also exerted direct influence on nineteenth-century Protestant translations. With in-depth analysis of this exemplary piece among early Catholic endeavors, the essay addresses a set of key concerns that have not been sufficiently studied, including Basset’s vision of a Chinese Bible, the translation principle and techniques, Christian and Chinese terminology, and the interface of biblical translations and Chinese language and literature. The findings of this study offer fresh insights and facilitate a re-evaluation of Catholic contributions and legacy in the history of the Bible in China.

Christian Poetry from Tang to Republican Era

This essay surveys Christian poetry in the Tang dynasty to the Republic of China era. It discusses two basic criteria for defining the constitution and requirements of Christian poetry. It also looks at poetic elements of Christian motifs and biblical genres as they were used in Christian poetry composed by foreign missionaries, non-Christians, and Chinese Christians. This essay also describes how Chinese Christian poets used the styles of Chinese poetry to express the themes of Christianity in different historical periods. According to this period, Xu Guangqi, Wang Zheng, Wu Li, Zhao Zichen, and Bing Xin are the important Christian poets. Wu Jingxiong, Zhu Weizhi, John Chalmers, and Frederick William Baller are excellent translators who translated Hebrew poems into Chinese poetic style. The essay discusses the contributions of Chinese Christian poetry to Chinese writing and the limitations of their writing based on context.

The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ has been the subject of manifold and intensive reflection in the Chinese context and has shown various faces. The essay surveys the innumerable works of biblical, apologetical, catechetical, liturgical, general theological, literary, and art-historical nature on Jesus Christ covering the periods from Tang and Yuan dynasties (seventh–ninth centuries and twelfth–fourteenth centuries) to the “Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). The essay observes how various Chinese portraits of Jesus Christ engage with Chinese religions, and how the Chinese context limited the possibilities for the unfolding of a specific face and image of Jesus much more than other Asian and Western contexts. It raises the question of the future: Which faces and images of Jesus Christ will the Chinese context still generate? In this vast part of Asia, will he remain a vox clamantis in deserto?

The Bible and Missionary Novels In Chinese

While foreign missionaries to China spared no effort in translating and disseminating the Bible, they recognized the fact that the Holy Scripture, with all its cultural and theological peculiarities, was too alien and difficult for most Chinese readers to comprehend during the early Qing and Republican periods. Some missionaries, Protestant and Catholic alike, were committed to the production of a sizable corpus of Christian novels in Chinese by making creative use of traditional Chinese literary forms to rewrite biblical stories. Fictional representations of the biblical narratives might provide greater leeway to indigenize the Christian thoughts by offering their intended Chinese audiences culture-specific commentaries and nuanced interpretations. The literary fruits of the missionaries not only had facilitated the reception of the Bible and the spread of the associated religious message but also had reshaped the literary and social landscapes of late imperial and early Republican China.

Sino-Christian Theology and the Bible

This essay offers an analysis of the relationship of Sino-Christian theology, a cultural qua theological movement flourishing in contemporary China, with the Bible. Based on a survey of the articles published in Logos & Pneuma: Chinese Journal of Theology (Dao Feng), the organ journal of Sino-Christian theology, and some other relevant publications, it argues that due to the political atmosphere, the institutional restriction, and the intellectual as well as religious orientations of the relevant scholars, Sino-Christian theology had made very limited efforts in developing biblical studies as an academic discipline in mainland China until the mid-2000s or so. Since then, the publications related to biblical studies proliferated dramatically in mainland China, and some approaches to biblical studies with certain Chinese characteristics have been developed. It is expected that some innovative approaches to the Bible as well as biblical studies will be further developed in the Chinese-speaking world.

Christian Biblical Tradition in the Jing Chinese Culture

Most studies of the Bible in China focus on Protestant churches starting in the nineteenth century, as a Chinese Catholic Bible was absent during the first two-hundred-year history of Christianity in China until an official edition was published in the twentieth century. In fact, despite the absence of a full translation, the Bible was rendered into a wide variety of genres corresponding to the native Chinese culture of sacred texts called jing in Chinese. This essay provides a broadened view of the Bible reception in China by presenting a range of Chinese Christian sacred texts from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. These texts conveyed biblical words and messages to Chinese audiences of the time, and they creatively integrated genres from the European Church’s convention of Christian literature and the Chinese literary courses of classical studies and religious texts. This overview demonstrates major examples and organizes them according to their compositions. The diverse types form a spectrum of Chinese Christian sacred texts, in which most individual Chinese Christian works studied in this volume can find a proper place to fit.

The Bible and the Public Square in China

This essay examines the Bible as it manifested in the public square in China, both before and after 1949 as the communist power ruled New China. It looks at: (1) the context and controversy of the Bible in the public square; (2) the concentration and conservation of the Bible in the public square; (3) the culture and control of the Bible in the public square; (4) the current and construction of the Bible in the public square; and (5) the challenge and contribution of the Bible in the public square. A broader and brighter prospect is provided, as insights and lessons drawn from history, with a positive perspective looking forward to the Bible and the public square in China.