Abstract
This article explores the integration of Marxism into the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bible in Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian (1950). It argues that Zhu in this Chinese Life of Jesus refashioned a Gospel according to Marxism, with a proletarian Jesus at its center, by creatively appropriating a wealth of global sources regarding historical Jesus and primitive Christianity. Zhu’s rewriting of Jesus can be appreciated as a precursor to the later Latin American liberation Christology.
Highlights
In recent decades, scholarly attention has been increasingly paid to Chinese intellectuals’ rewriting in the early twentieth century of the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bible (Ni 2011; Wang 2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2019; Starr 2016; Chin 2018)
Jesus the Proletarian, a Chinese historical novel falling under the genres of both Life of Jesus and leftist/proletarian literature, can be read as part of world literature
In an epoch when all religions including Christianity were plunged into a precarious situation, Zhu’s literary apologia might be doomed to fail, but what might be worth rethinking even until now is his very endeavor in quest of the relationship between Jesus and proletarity, religion and politics, literature and ideology, and spirituality and secularity
Summary
Scholarly attention has been increasingly paid to Chinese intellectuals’ rewriting in the early twentieth century of the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bible (Ni 2011; Wang 2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2019; Starr 2016; Chin 2018). I firstly offer a synopsis of Zhu Weizhi’s life and literary career up until the year 1950 when he published Jesus the Proletarian, before moving to discuss in detail Zhu’s borrowing from contemporary global sources for its composition. In this regard, Jesus the Proletarian, a Chinese historical novel falling under the genres of both Life of Jesus and leftist/proletarian literature (zuoyi wenxue or wuchan jieji wenxue), can be read as part of world literature. In an epoch when all religions including Christianity were plunged into a precarious situation, Zhu’s literary apologia might be doomed to fail, but what might be worth rethinking even until now is his very endeavor in quest of the relationship between Jesus and proletarity, religion and politics, literature and ideology, and spirituality and secularity
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