The Bible in China

Abstract

The “Bible” and “China” may appear to be incompatible. Yet a challenging and creative mutual impact of the Bible and the Chinese world is evident in the storied and torrid landscape interconnecting the Bible, world Christianity, and Chinese society in the last fourteen centuries. Since 635 ce, China’s Emperor Tang Taizong (唐太宗) commissioned Alouben (阿羅本), the Syrian monk, to translate the “true sutra” of the Church of the East for the Chinese Imperial Library. In the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties, Jews, synagogue, and stone and scroll inscriptions were already in Kaifeng. In the Yuan dynasty, John of Montecorvino (b. 1247–d. 1328), an Italian Franciscan, arrived in China in 1291 ce and began translating some of the New Testament and Psalms texts into Chinese and Mongolian. Other Catholic missionaries, Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans arrived in China in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, including Michele Ruggieri (羅明堅, b. 1543–d. 1607) and Matteo Ricci (利瑪竇, b. 1552–d. 1610). Robert Morrison (馬禮遜, b. 1782–d. 1834) arrived in Macau in 1807, and the Chinese Protestant missions expanded biblical translation to publishing, education, and welfare services. The Russian Orthodox missionaries arrived in China at the end of the seventeenth century, and they translated the liturgical and catechesis texts into Chinese. Foreign missionaries and scholars together with national Chinese leaders and lay believers collaborated on the works of: (1) the Bible translations in various Chinese versions; (2) the Bible expressions in diverse Chinese literary and religious contexts; (3) the Bible interpretations in wide-ranging mediums of readings; and (4) the Bible receptions in China’s multiple cultural life, social institutions, and the arts. The four-fold paradigm of the relationship between the “Bible” and “China” ebbs and flows on the tides of historical flux and encounter, as it navigates through the ever-shifting cultural and linguistic changes, institutional metamorphoses, sociopolitical shifting contexts. The challenge of any researcher in this field is to interpret the data and explain the seemingly illogical characteristics of the Bible in China. Further research may show how the Bible is not a relic of the past but a culturally enlivened writing for the world, including China for centuries past, for the present, and even for its future prospects.