Jingjiao

Peter Yoshirō Saeki was an eminent Japanese scholar who devoted much of his career to the study of Nestorian/Syriac Christianity in China. One overlooked aspect of his work is the development of the concept that Nestorians had both missionary and secular contacts with Japan throughout its premodern history. These controversial theories were taken up by his peers, transported into Western scholarship, and have trickled down to this day in historical, theological and conspiratorial works which are riddled with confusion, truth, and untruth. This paper provides a chronological and contextual history of the genesis and development of Saeki's theories throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries within his own work and in the work of others. It is argued that such theories have been utilised in three broad schools of thought; historical, religious and pseudo-historical. Furthermore, it is suggested that to develop more rigorous theories on a Nestorian presence in Japan it is essential for contemporary scholars to abandon Saeki's paradigm to address the topic with greater clarity and historicity, and to shift away from a reliance on an inherently erroneous set of theories.

La Estela de Xi’an o “Estela Nestoriana” y los “Documentos Jingjiao” hallados en Dunhuang, testimonian la presencia del Cristianismo en China en época tan temprana como el año 635 d. JC. Se muestra con ellos el mensaje cristiano considerando el contexto cultural y religioso en que se manifiesta y por ello se “viste” singularmente con los “ropajes del budismo y del taoísmo”. Con todo hay indicios, de clara verosimilitud, que atestiguarían expresiones cristianas en China en época tan incipiente como el siglo III de la Dinastía Han y aun más todavía, en el periodo apostólico del siglo I. Por asombroso que pueda parecer, es necesario recordar el puente fluido de comunicación que desde antes del comienzo de la era cristiana ya existía entre el occidente y el oriente conocidos: La Ruta de la Seda y las rutas marítimas.
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The Xi’an Stele or “Nestorian Stele” and the “Jingjiao Documents” found in Dunhuang, testify to the presence of Christianity in China at an early time as 635 AD. JC The Christian message is shown with them considering the cultural and religious context in which it manifests itself and, therefore, it "dresses" singularly with the "clothing of Buddhism and Taoism." However, there are indications, of clear credibility, that would witness Christian expressions in China at a time as incipient as the third century of the Han Dynasty and even more so, in the apostolic period of the first century. As amazing as it may seem, it is necessary to remember the fluid bridge of communication that, since before the beginning of the Christian era, already existed between the known west and east: The Silk Road and the sea routes.

The Luminous Way to the East offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium.
The book provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.

Proceedings of the first international conference on the traces of the Church of the East and her Christian doctrine – Jingjiao – in medieval China, held in Salzburg/Austria 2006. – In this upload are copied only the table of contence, the preface by Peter Hofrichter and the introduction to this volume by Roman Malek. - My dear friend fr. Roman SVD went to God on November 29th 2019. We thank so much to him. Requiescat in pace!

Syriac Christian communities reached China starting from the seventh century and their presence has been widely debated by recent scholarship. Their cross-cultural interactions with Chinese elites and the presence of monasteries and Christian objects in the Tang empire attracted the attention of scholars as early as the 17 th century, when the Xi'an stele was unearthed. This paper aims to provide a concise account of the objects, images and artifacts produced, or discovered, since the 7 th century to the 15 th century in China showing the cross-cultural and interreligious interactions between Christianity and Chinese culture along the Silk Roads. Given the substantial scholarship on the topic, this paper will take into consideration especially objects and images that are particularly relevant in reconstructing the daily life of Christians in China and their liturgical and religious innovations showing the active role of inculturation between Christianity and Chinese culture.

This paper is the first study of Ikeda Sakae's letters and articles in the journal "Light from the East" and his theories elucidated therein that Jǐngjiào (Nestorianism) came to Ancient Japan. The paper provides a descriptive overview and analysis of the letters and articles comparing them to previous incarnations of the theory.

This article was first delivered at the Third International Conference on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia (Salzburg,  2009). It traces the history of the term "Nestorian" and how it came to be attached to the Tang Dynasty church in China. It is published in "From the Oxus River to the Chinese Shores: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia," Li Tang & Dietmar W. Winkler, eds.  Orientalia-Patristica-Oecumenica 5 (Wien: LIT Verlag, 2013), 417-439.

Long before the Jesuits embarked on their missions in China in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, the Nestorian mission led by Āluóběn gave birth to one of the most spectacular examples of interaction between religion(s) and politics, resulting in a thoroughly sinified version of Christianity. In this short essay, our aim is to uncover the way that the politico-religious sympathies of the Táng court have shaped the transmission of Nestorian Christianity in China, taking as a point of reference the Nestorian Stele of Xī'ān. I restrict my study to the initial part of the inscription, outlining the history of the world and of man up to the Incarnation. This is mainly due to considerations of space, as a more complete treatment of the subject could very well expand into one or more doctoral theses. However, I believe that the chosen fragment is representative of the whole, in the aspects of politico-religious interaction that it reveals.

This article was first presented at the Second International Conference on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia (Salzburg,  2006). It argues that arrival of Alopen in China was in response to the request of local Christians for a bishop. It is published in "Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia;" Dietmar Winkler and Li Tang, eds. (Wien: Lit Verlag, 2009), 267-78.

When three centuries ago information began emerging about the Jingjiao (the Tang Dynasty Christian church in China), it was immediately labeled as "Nestorian." This article traces how that name arose, what that name meant in the West, and how it has been an obstacle to interest in and the study of the Jingjiao by both westerners and Chinese.

POLISH:
Autor rozdziału porusza problem orientalizmu w badaniach i popularyzacji wiedzy na temat jingjiao, chrześcijaństwa w Chinach z okresu dynastii Tang. Pierwsze doniesienia na temat „nestorianizmu” w Chinach pojawiły się w XVII wieku i były ogłoszone przez jezuitów. Do XX wieku odkryto jednak nowe zabytki (artefakty jak i teksty zwane „Sutrami Jezusa”). Specjalistyczne publikacje historyków i orientalistów w tym temacie są mało rozpowszechnione i mają słabą dostępność dla przeciętnych czytelników zainteresowanych tematem. Większość popularnych monografii nie stanowią prace naukowe, ale popularyzatorskie – jak The Jesus Sutras Palmera, czy The Lost Sutras of Jesus Riegerta i Moore’a, które posiadały liczne do druki i były przekładane na wiele języków. Już od wieku jednymi z najbardziej wpływowych publikacji na ten temat są prace Saekiego. Sprawia to, że narracja tam zawarta, stała się dominująca w przekazie wiedzy na temat jingjiao. Dlatego w tym artykule poruszone zostają najważniejsze problemy związane z tym obrazem chrześcijaństwa w Chinach, który jest prezentowany w tej popularnej narracji.

ENGLISH:
The author of this chapter deals with the problem of orientalism in the research and popularization of knowledge about jingjiao – Chinese Christianity during the Tang Dynasty. The first reports of "Nestorianism" in China appeared in the 17th century and were announced by the Jesuits. However, by the 20th century, new monuments (artifacts and texts called "Jesus Sutras") were discovered. Specialist publications written by historians and orientalists on this topic are not very widespread and are poorly available to the average reader interested in the topic. Most popular monographs are not scientific, but popular books – such as the Palmer’s Jesus Sutras and Riegert and Moore's The Lost Sutras of Jesus, which have been printed and translated into many languages. For a century, Saeki's work has been one of the most influential publications on the subject. This makes their narrative dominant in the transmission of knowledge about jingjiao. Therefore, this article takes up the most important problems related to the image of Christianity in China presented in this popular narrative.

Resumo: No capítulo CCXIII de Peregrinação, Fernão Mendes Pinto faz uma apresentação da doutrina budista, por intermédio da personagem de um «bonzo», um monge zen budista japonês. Se bem que sucinta e fragmentária esta apresentação é a primeira no género, na Europa. No contexto da grande literatura de viagem europeia é a primeira vez que a doutrina budista é assim apresentada a um público geral. Certos aspetos da doutrina budista passam por este meio a ser comunicados a um público alargado, a partir de 1614 com a publicação de Peregrinação, e o universo dos leitores que primeiro recebem esta informação é, logicamente, o universo dos leitores de língua portuguesa. Pode-se assim afirmar que, pelo menos desde a publicação de Peregrinação, o público literário europeu, em geral, passa a ter uma notificação do que seja a doutrina budista.

The history of the church of the East in East Asia is one in which it is often difficult to divide fact and fiction. This is the result of an over-reliance on late 19th- and early 20th-century Orientalist scholarship, which sought to show the all-encompassing influence of Christianity in global history, and is often repeated in modern works without critical attention. In this article, I explore claims that Christianity arrived in Korea and Japan prior to the 9th century. I offer a critical assessment of these claims in order to suggest that they do not have an historical basis. Similarly, I seek to question what evidence we have to suggest that Christianity was present in pre-Táng dynasty China. I seek to illustrate that reliance on early scholarship has resulted in a number of fictional claims, which either cannot be maintained or require more research. The article seeks to act as a starting point for greater criticism of a number of assumptions made by scholars of early East Asian Christianity, historians and missiologists alike.

In 1916 P.Y. Saeki devoted a page of his book “The Nestorian Monument in China,” to a short thought experiment which linked a Persian by the name of Li-mi-i 李密翳 who was present in Emperor Shōmu's 聖武天皇 court and whose arrival was mentioned in the Shoku Nihongi 続日本紀 with a priest named on the Nestorian Stele. Since that first suggestion, several scholars have expounded the idea that Li-mi-i and another figure who arrived alongside him, Kōho Tōchō 皇甫東朝, were Christians and/or missionaries. In this paper I assess these claims, returning to the Shoku Nihongi in order to suggest that there is a lack of data to establish them as true. I then seek to explore the origins of this theory situating it within the joint context of Japan's imperial expansion and her modernization. Whilst the latter cannot be conclusive, I hope that it may shed light on the significance of the theory which can be seen as a search to discover Japanese history, a statement of the equality between Japanese and Western histories, or an attempt to justify imperial aims in China academically.