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The Secret Sayings of Ye Su The Secret Sayings of Ye Su The Secret Sayings of Ye Su A Silk Road Gospel Jay G. Williams iUniverse, Inc. New York Lincoln Shanghai The Secret Sayings of Ye Su A Silk Road Gospel Copyright © 2004 by Jay G. Williams All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting: iUniverse 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com 1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677) The picture on the cover is of the Da Qin pagoda, which is believed to be of Christian origin. ISBN: 0-595-33684-1 Printed in the United States of America To Mr. Wang and Mr. Chang Acknowledgements For permission to reprint from copyright materials in excess of fair use, acknowl- edgement is made to the following: Coleman Barks for poems from The Essential Rumi, Columbia University Press for poems from Cold Mountain (New York, 1970), Po Chu-I: Selected Poems (New York: 2000), and Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan (New York, 1977); State University of New York Press for Songs of Kabir from the Adi Granth (Albany, N.Y., 1991); Bantam Books for The Bhagavad-Gita (New York, 1986); New Directions for “9/9. Out Drinking on Dragon Mountain” and “Facing Wine” in Li Po, The Selected Poems of Li Po, trans. David Hinton (New York, 1996); Doubleday and Co. for Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; Sickness Unto Death (New York, 1954); and Penguin Books Ltd. for The Dhammapada, trans. Juan Mascaro (New York, 1973). Needless to say I must also thank Messrs Wang and Chang for giving the privilege of translating the text of The Secret Teachings of Je Su and my wife, Hermine for her careful editorial work. Jay G. Williams Hamilton College vii Contents Introduction ................................................................................................xi The Secret Sayings of Ye Su: The Translation ................................................1 The Document ..........................................................................................11 The Nature of the Document ............................................................12 The Text’s Provenance: Preliminary Considerations ............................14 China Before and During the Tang Dynasty ..............................................21 Buddhism ..........................................................................................22 The Indigenous Traditions ..................................................................25 The Sui and the Tang ..........................................................................29 The Sutras of the Religion of Light ............................................................37 Buddhist and Daoist Concepts in The Secret Sayings ................................45 Buddhist Concepts ............................................................................46 Daoist Concepts ................................................................................48 The Theology of The Secret Sayings of Ye Su ..............................................53 Notes and Comments ................................................................................61 Concluding Matters ..................................................................................101 Why was this Text Written in Greek? ................................................102 Further Conclusions ........................................................................103 Epilogue ..................................................................................................105 Works Cited ............................................................................................109 About the Author ......................................................................................115 ix Introduction xii • The Secret Sayings of Ye Su The Circumstances behind the Discovery of The Secret Sayings of Ye Su On July 31, l996, I was attending a Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference at DePaul University in Chicago. I returned to my dormitory after an evening ses- sion, intending to spend a little time in the lounge watching the TV coverage of the summer Olympics. As I entered the lounge, I was approached by two Chinese men who, I would guess, were in their late sixties or early seventies. They were dressed in western-style, dark suits, but had very short-cropped hair that made me think they might be Buddhist monks. They were both quite short, I would say about 5'4" or 5'5" in height. They spoke simple, textbook English without great difficulty. I am sure they were Chinese because, later, they conversed with each other briefly in that language. Although I wore a nametag that advertised my identity, they asked whether I were Jay Williams. I said I was. “The author of Yeshua Buddha?” Yes, I said, now some- what surprised. They identified themselves as Mr. Wang and Mr. Chang. I assumed that they were conference participants, but I was to discover later that they were not registered for the conference nor were they members of the society. None of my acquaintances there had ever met them. “May we speak to you in private?” they asked. They looked quite harmless, so I suggested we go up to my room. Once upstairs, they explained that they had “come into possession of” an ancient scroll written in Greek. Mr. Chang drew from his briefcase six photographs. The uncial text in majuscule1 appeared written on a mildly tattered papyrus scroll that looked to be quite ancient. The words were separated but punctuation was at a minimum. There were no accents or breath marks. The upper and lower edges of each sheet were somewhat “erose” but the text itself showed little damage. There were a few little holes, but the letters lost (like an iota in a kai) were very easily surmised. My curiosity was obviously peaked. They had apparently come to know of me through my book, Yeshua Buddha, and had concluded that I might have some sympathy for the text, though how they knew what was in the text they never explained. They also had apparently checked with someone who knows me because they seemed to think me quite trustworthy. Would I translate the text for them? I told them that although I had 1 That is, with fairly large, rounded letters. Jay G. Williams • xiii studied Greek and still use it occasionally, translation of an ancient document was not something I felt competent to do. They, however, urged me to consider the task and did not seem to want to take no for an answer. I tried to find out where the scroll was found and if they knew where it originally came from. If they knew, they were not telling. Instead, they emphasized repeat- edly how secret the whole venture must be kept. They had apparently taken the scroll to a Catholic priest (I gathered from what they said, in China) and he had copied the manuscript so that it could be easily read. He refused to translate it, however, telling them that it was highly unorthodox and unacceptable to Catholics. I spot checked his copy with the photographs of the scroll and found no obvious errors. Actually, the original scroll itself was fairly easy to decipher, so that copying it would not have been all that difficult. For reasons that I am still not sure I can articulate, I relented and said that it was conceivable that I might be interested in trying my hand at translation. Much pleased, they then laid out the rules that the translator was expected to follow: 1. The whole enterprise must be kept secret. I must not show the Greek text to anyone or ask for anyone else’s help. When the translation is com- pleted, the Greek text must be returned to them. I would not be allowed to create a copy of the Greek for my own use. 2. I should work from the priest’s copy. They would keep the photographs of the original. 3. I would be allowed to copyright and share my translation informally with others. (In fact, they seemed to urge that I do the copyrighting, per- haps because they did not want their names made public.) I should not, however, tell anyone about the circumstances by which I received the document. 4. Finally, they told me that if, after five years, they had not produced a published work involving my translation, I would be allowed to release my translation more formally to the public. I told them that without the original, the translation would not be worth much to scholars. They agreed, but said it had to be that way. My publication of the work, how- ever, seemed a remote possibility, for it appeared that they intended to publish the text very quickly after the translation was accomplished. They told me that they would let me know when the work was in print and would send me a copy. xiv • The Secret Sayings of Ye Su My guess at the time was that the scroll came from the west of China where there are desert areas and where ancient documents might be preserved. Since I know little or nothing about Greek epigraphy, I could not guess at the age of the work, though the Greek itself struck me as very similar to that of the New Testament. Quite frankly, had the Greek been of the later Byzantine Empire, I doubt that I could have translated it at all. Although I really do not know with any certainty either when the scroll was written or where it came from, my theory, which I will greatly expand upon, is that it is a “silk route” product
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