Nov. 20, 2003; ETS Annual Meeting, Atlanta
In 1998, the Englishman Martin Palmer announced the discovery of a seventh or eighth
century Christian building in central China. In October of 2001 I was able to visit the
pagoda, and a second important early Christian monument in China, the Nestorian Stele. A
third legacy of early Chinese Christianity are the Dunhuang Christian sutras, a group of
Christian manuscripts discovered in a cave in western China where they had been sealed for
900 years.
In my paper I will first describe how scholars first became aware of this early Christian
mission to China through these three major discoveries. I will then discuss some of the
theological struggles faced by this early crosscultural mission.
I. The Discoveries
A. The Nestorian Stele of 781
In 1623 an ancient stele was discovered near the Tang Dynasty capital known today as Xi'an.
By 1625 the stele had already been published by the Jesuit Father Trigault, and by the early
20
ancient steles.
The tablet stands about 8 feet high, is just over 3 feet in width and about a foot thick, and
weighs nearly 2 tons. It contains 32 vertical lines with approximately 1800 beautiful and
well-preserved Chinese characters. Setting this inscription apart from similar ancient
inscriptions are the words in its bottom margin -- 23 short lines in ancient Syriac script. On
the narrow sides of the stone are an additional 70 lines in Chinese and Syriac.
Atop the stone is a heading of 9 characters. The two characters Da-Qin mean "from the
West" and could refer to anything arriving in China from the west. In other documents it
refers to the Roman Empire, Palestine, or another Middle Eastern country. The entire
heading can be translated as: The Monument that Commemorates the Spread of the Western
Religion of Light in China.
The stele dates itself to Sunday, Feb. 4, AD 781 and was composed by a priest whose name
is given both in Chinese as Ching-Ching and in Persian as Adam. He is described as a
"priest of a Da-Qin monastery", and as "priest and rural bishop and Papash of Chinestan."
He is probably the same Adam who is mentioned in one of the Christian manuscripts we will
mention later as translator of more than 30 Christian books into Chinese.