The relationship between Nestorian Christianity and Chinese culture through the 6th century is fascinating. We discussed how the Nestorian Christians came to be in their divergent beliefs from the Roman Catholics, and how they were forced to move. Their move took them to China where they were able to flourish because they were tolerated by Chinese society. In the articles of the week, this influence is evident as being reciprocal as they played off of each other. What is interesting is that the main historical sources of Nestorian Christianity survived in the Dunhuang manuscripts instead of where the religion was originally started - in Europe. This religion was able to flourish because they were far away from the opposing Christians in Europe. This enabled them to develop in China completely independently with many methods and teachings adopting Buddhist terminology and iconography. They did this as a way of reaching out to the Chinese and explaining their religion in a way the Chinese could grasp.
As much as we are not supposed to use Wikipedia as anything but a source to quickly browse, I found it interesting that when I googled 'NESTORIAN CHRISTIANITY' this link came up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_Church_of_the_East_in_China
This provides evidence of the enormous impact of the Eastern Chinese culture on Nestorian (or Assyrian) Christianity.
In this picture of the top portion of the Nestorian Stele, ["STELE (RECORDING) THE SPREAD OF THE RELIGION OF LIGHT (CHRISTIANITY) FROM ROMSE TO CHINA] we can see that it is written in Chinese characters.
Also, the influence of the Chinese on Nestorian Christianity is evident with the different forms that the Cross took. We can see that Buddhist iconography and Chinese characters became part of the new form of cross on the following website, which shows a variety of shapes and sizes that the cross took in this eastern form of Christianity.
http://swastika-info.com/en/news/china/1062812701.html
No comments:
Post a Comment