Moral Cultivation and Divine Revelation: James Legge’s Religious Interpretation of the Yijing (Book of Changes)

Abstract

James Legge (1815–1897), arguably the most prominent missionary sinologist in the nineteenth century and the founding Professor of Chinese in Oxford in 1876, produced an English translation of the Yijing (Book of Changes), the prominent Chinese classic, in 1882. This translation was included in Max Müller’s monumental Sacred Books of the East series. While existing scholarship has outlined some background and features of Legge’s Yijing translation, this version deserves more in-depth textual analysis to unearth Legge’s primary sources of reference and theological positions behind his interpretive approach. Perceiving the Yijing as a Confucian classic with profound moralistic connotations, Legge even revered it as a “sacred book” containing certain elements of divine revelation. He asserted that the Chinese term Shangdi (Supreme Ruler) referred to the Christian God, insisting that “God” was the “correct” translation of Shangdi, and that the operations of nature in the different seasons are the work of Shangdi. This paper examines Legge’s pioneering attempt of translating the Yijing to the West, with special reference to his religious interpretation of the seminal Chinese classic. This endeavor engendered profound inter-religious encounters and dialogues between Confucianism and Christianity.