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Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts Edited by John T. P. Lai Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts Special Issue Editor John T. P. Lai MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editor John T. P. Lai Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) in 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special issues/ Christian Literature). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03921-842-4 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03921-843-1 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor ...................................... vii Preface to ”Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts” ........................ ix Chin Ken-pa Jingjiao under the Lenses of Chinese Political Theology Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 551, doi:10.3390/rel10100551 ................... 1 Sher-Shiueh Li Rhetorica and Exemplum: The Genesis of Christian Literature in Late Imperial China Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 465, doi:10.3390/rel10080465 ................... 23 Sophie Ling-chia Wei Sheng Ren in the Figurists’ Reinterpretation of the Yijing Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 553, doi:10.3390/rel10100553 ................... 35 John T. P. Lai and Jochebed Hin Ming Wu The Catholic Yijing:Lu¨ Liben’s Passion Narratives in the Context of the Qing Prohibition of Christianity Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 416, doi:10.3390/rel10070416 ................... 45 Wai Luen Kwok Theology of Religions and Intertextuality: A Case Study of Christian–Confucian and Islamic–Confucian Dialogue in the Early 20th-Century China Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 417, doi:10.3390/rel10070417 ................... 62 Dadui Yao Shakespeare in Chinese as Christian Literature: Isaac Mason and Ha Zhidao’s Translation of Tales from Shakespeare Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 452, doi:10.3390/rel10080452 ................... 75 Zhixi Wang The Gospel According to Marxism: Zhu Weizhi and the Making of Jesus the Proletarian (1950) Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 535, doi:10.3390/rel10090535 ................... 88 Chlo¨e Starr A New Stream of Spiritual Literature: Bei Cun’s The Baptizing River Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 413, doi:10.3390/rel10070413 ...................100 v About the Special Issue Editor John T. P. Lai Having received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford (2005), John T. P. Lai is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and was Visiting Scholar of the Harvard-Yenching Institute (2015–2016). His research interests revolve around the interdisciplinary study of religion, literature, and translation, with a focus on Chinese Christian literature. He has published four monographs: Negotiating Religious Gaps: The Enterprise of Translating Christian Tracts by Protestant Missionaries in Nineteenth-Century China (2012); The Afterlife of a Classic: A Critical Study of the Late-Qing Chinese Translations of The Pilgrim’s Progress (in Chinese) (2012); Attuning the Gospel: Chinese Christian Novels of the Late Qing Period (in Chinese) (2017); Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China (2019). He obtained the “Research Excellence Award” (2011) and “The Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award” (for six times) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been awarded the “General Research Fund” from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council for four times. vii Preface to ”Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts” Christianity in China has a history dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), when Allopen—the first Nestorian missionary—arrived there in 635. In the late sixteenth century, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) together with other Jesuit missionaries commenced the Catholic missions to China. Protestant Christianity in China began with Robert Morrison (1782–1834), of London Missionary Society, who first set foot in Canton in 1807. Over the centuries, the Western missionaries and Chinese believers were engaged in the enterprise of the translation, publication, and distribution of a large corpus of Christian literature in Chinese. Apart from the direct reading of the Chinese translations of the Bible, the biblical stories and messages were more widely received among the Chinese audiences in a variety of modes, including hearing biblical stories paraphrased or recapitulated in sermons, singing of hymns and making use of liturgical texts, reciting catechisms and trimetrical primers, consulting Bible dictionaries and commentaries, reading or hearing the Christian novels read aloud, among others. While the extensive distribution of Chinese publications facilitated the propagation of Christianity, the Christian messages have been subtly re-presented, re-appropriated, and transformed by these works of Chinese Christian literature. This Special Issue entitled “Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts” examines the multifarious dimensions of the production, translation, circulation, and reception of Christian literature (with “Christian” and “literature” in their broadest sense) against the cultural and sociopolitical contexts from the Tang period to modern China. The eight articles collected in this volume address an array of fascinating topics, including the political theology of Jingjiao Christianity in Tang China (by Chin Ken-pa); the introduction of European rhetoric to China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties (by Sher-Shiueh Li); the Catholic reinterpretations of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) by both the Jesuit missionaries (by Sophie Ling-chia Wei) and Chinese believers (by John T. P. Lai and Jochebed Hin Ming Wu) in the Qing period; the intertextual theology of religions from the perspective of early 20th century Chinese religious periodicals (by Wai Luen Kwok); the missionary translation of Shakespeare as a piece of Chinese Christian literature (by Dadui Yao); the integration of Marxism into the biblical narratives of the life of Jesus (by Zhixi Wang); and the emergence of “spiritual writing” in contemporary Chinese literature (by Chloe¨ Starr). John T. P. Lai Special Issue Editor ix religions Article Jingjiao under the Lenses of Chinese Political Theology Chin Ken-pa Department of Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan; [email protected] Received: 28 May 2019; Accepted: 16 September 2019; Published: 26 September 2019 Abstract: Conflict between religion and state politics is a persistent phenomenon in human history. Hence it is not surprising that the propagation of Christianity often faces the challenge of “political theology”. When the Church of the East monk Aluoben reached China in 635 during the reign of Emperor Tang Taizong, he received the favorable invitation of the emperor to translate Christian sacred texts for the collections of Tang Imperial Library. This marks the beginning of Jingjiao (景教) mission in China. In historiographical sense, China has always been a political domineering society where the role of religion is subservient and secondary. A school of scholarship in Jingjiao studies holds that the fall of Jingjiao in China is the obvious result of its over-involvement in local politics. The flaw of such an assumption is the overlooking of the fact that in the Tang context, it is impossible for any religious establishments to avoid getting in touch with the Tang government. In the light of this notion, this article attempts to approach this issue from the perspective of “political theology” and argues that instead of over-involvement, it is rather the clashing of “ideologies” between the Jingjiao establishment and the ever-changing Tang court’s policies towards foreigners and religious bodies that caused the downfall of Jingjiao Christianity in China. This article will posit its argument based on the analysis of the Chinese Jingjiao canonical texts, especially the Xian Stele, and takes this as a point of departure to observe the political dynamics between Jingjiao and Tang court. The finding of this paper does show that the intellectual history of Chinese Christianity is in a sense a comprehensive history of “political theology”. Keywords: Xian Stele; Jingjiao Christianity; Tang Dynasty; Political Theology; politics-religion relationship 1. Introduction Conflict between religion and politics is a persistent phenomenon in history. In an introductory preface to Chen Yuan’s (陳垣 1880–1971) Mingji Dianqian Fojiao kao 明季滇黔佛教考 [Late Ming Period Buddhism in Yungui Region], the prominent Chinese historian Chen Yinke (陳寅恪 1890–1969) claims: “General
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