in our case study for this week we are going to look at a piece of primary source evidence for those who haven't taken a history class in a while the primary source is something from the period you're studying it's not what a historian thinks it's actually the evidence that they're dealing with to think through the dynamics of history so we'll talk about that in just a moment but one thing that's interesting when i think about this moment right you have persian and afghan and syrian missionaries bringing the gospel to tang china it is quite a cultural cross-cultural move linguistically culturally uh they're from different ones from a persian empire one's from the tong dynasty that you have quite a lot going on across cultures this is a fascinating case study in contextualization right this is an early moment perhaps the first moment that christianity comes into the imperial capital in china so what are they going to do to communicate the gospel right alpine didn't know chinese we don't think from the beginning so what's going to happen uh and when you think about the context of the mission in china right there's religious pluralism and toleration there's collaboration we'll find you'll read it in the text there's collaboration with buddhists because buddhists are also at this time seen as foreign missionaries so they've been on the ground a little longer they might help you with the language with translation and there's there are some similarities not obviously it's not the same thing but there's some similarities with buddhist monastic practices and christian monastic practices you think we have missionary monks they might say oh you you buddhists do a lot of similar things that we do we pray we fast we're celibate we live in communities so there's some overlap right there's collaboration and finally right christianity is really really for it you'll see in the primary source document they sort of see it as this import from rome they see it as something coming from the roman empire even though the missionaries coming from the persian empire they recognize that christianity was founded in jerusalem which is part of the roman empire at the time right jesus was killed by roman soldiers so they knew as the chinese empires a chinese you know land empire in asia they knew of the persian empire and the roman empire they recognized they were sort of large players in geopolitics so again the context is religious pluralism toleration of collaboration between religious groups right and a very very foreign first engagement this is a very very new engagement so the strategy and you'll find out soon that many of these early missionary monks used was was to borrow buddhist terminology and confucian concepts in order to translate the gospel message right not only are they translating the gospel into a new language they're decisions you have to make right do you and here's the one of the fundamental decisions anyone who's done translation work understands this whether you're a missionary or you're you're translating english into your native language theologically do you transliterate a concept meaning uh if the word if the hebrew word for jesus is yeshua do you just sound out the word yeshua in your own language right or do you translate do you so do you say what it means right yeshua means god saves and then translate that meaning into your language are you translating sounds or or the ideas and you always have a combination of both just to give you one quick example in english bibles the word lord l-o-r-d in all caps is not lord right it's yahweh right in the old testament that's yahweh over and over and over but there is a decision made right we're not translating the sounds of the word we're actually translating the meaning of it right and lord lower k-l-o-r-d in lower case means sort of is adonai so there's all sorts of decisions that are made doing translation contextualization there's a similar thing in muslim culture one thing in muslim culture is right do you um translate uh do you have you find a neutral word for god or when you're translation reproduce allah right is allah does that mean a generic term for the creator of the universe or is that the islamic god you have to make these decisions and you know there's a whole history of contextualization biblical translation of how you make these decisions of con translating concepts and sort of proper names and proper nouns into new uh languages and sort of new cultures you'll find and obviously most not a few people in the cohort might but most of the group doesn't know chinese we don't know the chinese confucian culture that well so we can only kind of imagine to kind of read between the lines on what's happening but you can see when you begin to read the document right but there's a borrowing of buddhist terminology confucian concepts um and right they call their their writings and even the books of the bible sutras right which is a buddhist genre of of of sacred writings right they use the term buddha for divine person right they use the term i'm going to butcher it liang feng cool wind for the holy spirit right so there are decisions being made they use lord of the universe as the christological title for jesus but interestingly they transliterate jesus christ or jesus messiah so they would actually when they when they're doing chinese they'd actually say just those sounds it's a proper name in english we kind of do a mixture actually um so it's a fascinating thing when you think about terminology when you think about some of their theological writings took the structure and genre of buddhist sutras and there's just a comment you'll read it in the textbook smither writes despite the pure motives of these missional efforts the church of the east monks probably went too far and identified too closely with chinese buddhism and later when china came under taoist leadership in the 9th century christianity was still viewed as a foreign religion and was suppressed alongside buddhism so here he's actually talking about how because they were linked with buddhism when persecution of buddhists came christians also got pulled under but he also and many commentators have reflected on these very fragmentary writings we have of christian theology in chinese from the 7th century and this very creative use of buddhist concepts and go hmm does this help or does this hinder people's understanding of the christian message that's always the challenge right if you if you don't engage the culture enough it's unintelligible if you engage it too much it's not distinct that is the challenge of contextualization we are not going to go into in great detail because we have a global mission class in just a few months you'll get to engage this much more and we'll give you paradigms and lots of case studies but this is a a a test case study what we're going to have is you guys are going to in path right you'll see you're going to have the text of the chi the xi'an stella right that that monument that was found in 1623 right from telling the history it was actually made in the 8th century but telling the history of 7th century missions on that monument in that chinese inscription you can see in the images i have a trans you know a transcription of that you're going to have as a pdf and path right with the chinese translation english translation some of the key terms but in that text it's about i don't know nine pages of text maybe then there's some commentary behind it the first two pages are a the first you know of course contextualize articulation of christian doctrine or the christian message into chinese it's a fascinating thing to read right and then the next like four or five five pages is actually the history of aleppin's mission of the emperor's response of some of the growth of the church it's a fascinating thing to read in a whole the main thing you're focusing on is the first two pages but i encourage you the whole thing where they're doing the theological theological articulation and again most of you don't know chinese and most you don't know confucian culture but again you can read between the lines and see where contextualization is happening right especially where it feels jarring to you that's private contextualization contextualization happening so when we read this uh i want you to there's going to be specific questions to answer in a discussion post on password but i want you to think of this question of where are you seeing really really creative and in your opinion fruitful contextualization obviously we're not experts we're just beginning to to read these things and think about them critically but where do you see fruitful contextualization going on or at least creative that was a good idea or where do you see uh potentially problematic syncretism and sort of a blurring of lines that might be unhelpful that's what that's the task i hope this is a fun thing for you because you're reading something out of the 7th century the first articulation of christianity in chinese or obviously in translation it was found on a historical artifact in the 17th century this is the thing of nerds enjoy this i certainly did um but read that reflect on it really think about what it might mean what contextualization looks like what synchronism looks like what's fruitful what's what's unhelpful you're going to write a discussion post we have a great discussion and if it creates too much controversy of course we'll address it on zoom on one of our synchronous calls so enjoy looking forward to hearing your comments [Music] you