The Church of the East in Central Asia and China / edited by Samuel N.C. Lieu and Glen L. Thompson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Chinese University of Hong Kong, host institution.

University of Hong Kong, host institution.

Lieu, Samuel N. C., editor.

Thompson, Glen L., editor.

Series:

China and the Mediterranean World ; 1.

China and the Mediterranean World ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church of the East--Congresses.

Church of the East.

Church history.

Asia--Church history--Congresses.

Asia.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Church history.

Physical Description:

xiii, 245 pages : color illustrations ; 31 cm.

Place of Publication:

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols [2020]

Summary:

A collection of papers on the history of Christianity along the Silk Road and in pre-modern China, pushing back the frontier of knowledge in a fast developing new area of research. The diffusion of Christianity along the Silk Road from Iraq and Iran to China in the pre-modern era has attracted scholarly attention in the West since the discovery of the famous Xian (Nestorian) Monument c. 1623. This initial discovery was dismissed as a Jesuit forgery by Voltaire, Edward Gibbon and many other scholars of the Enlightenment. However, its authenticity has been more than vindicated by the discovery of genuine (Nestorian / Jingjiao) Christian texts in Chinese from Dunhuang and in Syriac, Sogdian and Old Turkish from Turfan (Bulayïq) at the beginning of the last century. The discovery of a second major inscription which included part of a Chinese Christian (Jingjiao) text already known to scholars from Dunhuang, and the recent re-discovery of several Dunhuang Christian texts in a Japanese library, has removed any lingering doubts about the authenticity of the texts recovered from Dunhuang. The surviving material spans almost a millennium from the introduction of Christianity along the Silk Road in the sixth and seventh centuries through the Mongol period and beyond.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: pt. One The Church of the East in Central Asia

1. Erica Hunter, The Christian Library from Turfan: commemorating the saints in MIK III 45

2. Nicholas Sims-Williams, Sogdian biblical manuscripts from the Turfan oasis

3. Hidemi Takahashi, Representation of the Syriac language in Jingjiao and Yelikewen documents

pt. Two The Church of the East in Tang and Yuan China

4. Huaiyu Chen, Shared issues in a shared textual community: Buddhist, Christian, and Daoist texts in Tang China

5. Max Deeg, Messiah rediscovered: some philological notes on the so-called `Jesus the Messiah Sutra'

6. Samuel N.C. Lieu, From Rome (Daqin) to China (Zhongguo): the Xi'an (Nestorian) Monument as a bilingual and transcultural document (Keynote Address)

7. Glen L. Thompson, Strange teaching from a strange land: foreignness, heresy, and our understanding of the Jingjiao and Yelikewenjiao

8. David Wilmshurst, Interfaith conflict in Yuan (Yuan) China

pt. Three The Art and Iconography of the Church of the East

9. Niu Ruji, History is a mirror: on the spread of Nestor ianism in China from the newly discovered bronze mirror with cross-lotus and Syriac inscriptions

10. Ken Parry, Images in the Church of the East: the textual and art historical evidence in the light of contemporary practice

11. Patrick Taveirne, The study of the Ordos `Nestorian bronze crosses': status quaestionis.

Notes:

Selected conference proceedings from an international conference held in Hong Kong, June 10-12, 2015.

"International Union of Academies (Union Académique Internationale) Project 67. China and the Ancient Mediterranean World."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9782503586649

2503586643

OCLC:

1127985542

Publisher Number:

99987899797