Customer Reviews

The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I frequently speak on Christianity and Chinese culture, and am often asked about this book. I think the authors have put together a very interesting set of evidence, showing that a Christian message can be found in many of the most significant Chinese characters. Whether you think the inventors of the Chinese language did this on purpose, the Holy Spirit guided their choices, or that these analogies are coincidental, anyone who is interested in Chinese culture and Christianity will I think find this book fascinating. The strongest objection to Christianity among Chinese and Japanese has always been "Christianity is a foreign religion." Even if the authors are only letting their imaginations run wild, it seems to me they are running in a productive direction. But I think most readers will feel the evidence shows there is something more to their argument than that.

While I reccommend this book to anyone interested in Chinese culture, I have three criticisms. First, the human mind has an amazing ability to find patterns. If the authors were to take a slightly more critical approach to their own ability to imagine, I would feel more free to recommend this book to critical thinkers. Second, some of the characters they analyze are a stretch. Some skeptical readers might be put off by the bad arguments and overlook the good ones.

My main objection, though, is to the author's historical framework. I doubt the Chinese were consciously trying to encode the Genesis record in their language. This for four reasons. First, I don't think you can link the Chinese and the Jews that closely historically or genetically. Second, redemptive analogies can be found in many culures. (Polynesian, Japanese, and American, African, and New Guinea tribes.) They are not always related to Genesis. Third, many Chinese characters, like the words for "come" and the old word for "world," show meanings related not to Genesis but to the death of Jesus on the cross. And nobody thinks the ancient Chinese had a copy of the New Testament. And fourth, when Paul went to Athens and preached the "unknown God," he didn't need to link him historically to Jehovah to show his audience that the God he spoke of was not a "foreign God." Neither do we. I think the book should be read and passed on, but with caution. But I've heard the authors themselves have been more cautious in recent editions.

I strongly disagree with the reader below who called this book "a bunch of crock" and said the God the ancient Chinese worshiped was not the Christian God. In fact, the concept of God in ancient China (the books of Poetry and History, for examples) described a God who was "parent" of mankind, wholly good, loves mankind, rewards the good and punishes evil, is far above all other gods, and has never been worshiped with an idol. Even non-Christians, like Chen Jingpan, admit, "From the very ancient days of Chinese history, down through the time of Confucius to the present, we have records about the Chinese belief in one supreme God, the ruler over heaven and earth."

I've recently been editing final drafts of a book, due in July, called Jesus and the Religions of Man. It includes a chapter called "The Non-History of God," showing the universal and changeless character of the concept of Creator. I'd be happy to e-mail a copy of that chapter to Jing Wang if he contacts me.

Author, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture (d.marshall@sun.ac.jp)

This book is an intriguing look at the thought behind the characters of written Chinese. China's ancient pictographic writing has survived nearly unchanged for at least 3000 years. It is the contention of the authors that the written symbols of Chinese "bear witness to the original beliefs of the Chinese, handed down by oral tradition. The record contained by many specific characters carries such a close similarity to the Hebrew Genesis that it would seem only logical to believe that both civiliations must have access to the same common historical knowledge."

This book is accessible to a person with no prior knowlege of Chinese writing. The characters under discussion are explained step by step and also printed large size in the margins, so that the various elements may be seen.

There are many striking points. For example the Chinese character for "to covet" has the woman symbol combined with two trees. Simularly, "to warn" is God combined with two trees. The character for a boat combines vessel with person and the number 8. (There were 8 persons in Noah's ark).

I found it fascinating and thought provoking. It is a peek at ancient Chinese thought that is not available to us by any other means.

The best test for the accuracy of this book was to have native Chinese speakers read it. They devoured the book and begged to keep it. We've ordered extra copies for our next visit to China.

Important events recorded in Genesis were archived in the ancient pictograms of the Chinese language. The worldwide flood of Genesis, the creation of man in the Garden of Eden, and other events are discussed in light of written Chinese. The information in this book gives unexpected support that the events recorded in Genesis are true, historical records.

This book presents some intriguing information and historical-cultural analysis on Chinese ideographic characters. The historical and cultural analysis is very informative. The authors trace back possible meanings and origins of the complex characters of Chinese ideographs.

It was helpful to understand how various ideas are built up from combinations of simpler symbols, to tell a story of meaning, that often seemed to tell much about the context in which it developed. It appears, from a general historical-comparative perspective, that this method offers great promise for reconstructing details of cultural exchange and connections or merging of the many ethnic streams in the history of Asia.

It is possible that historical reconstructions have already been done on aspects of Chinese culture in this manner. But I have not had experience in the Chinese ideography, and this introduction was of great interest.

Both the authors served in Chinese contexts for long years as Christian missionaries, and Kang is a native speakers of a Chinese language, now retired in Singapore. They were particularly concerned to find ancient connections to the monotheistic concepts of God and the accompanying moral codes in the Semitic heritage as recorded in the Old Testament.

It is their contention that originally, Chinese culture was also based on a simple monotheism, and other forms of religion and devotion developed later as this heritage was forgotten. Some of the examples, however, seem over-drawn and analysis includes some pretty shaky connections.

I was surprised by the high instance of "could be," "might refer," and similar phrases in trying to make connections. One surprising aspect of the portrayal of some the biblical situations they reference is the cavalier handling of the actual biblical text. I was disappointed that the authors added a lot of detail and extended the context of several of the biblical passages to make their supposed connections work.

They give explanations and interpretations that the biblical text itself does not contain, and it is questionable that it could support them in many cases. Let me put it this way: the explanations of some of the biblical passages, and the contexts that make the Chinese connections work, are drawn from other perspectives or contexts than the simple biblical passage itself. I would like to see some of these investigated from a linguistic and historical perspective. Some of the connections are challenging and informative.

The basic premise argued in this book is that the original religious perspective of the ancient Chinese culture was monotheistic with similar concepts as those portrayed in the biblical book of Genesis.

The authors point out, though, that the development of the Chinese ideographs that seem to indicate a monotheistic origin would have been developed before the time the book of Genesis was written. Thus the knowledge was not derived from Hebrew/Jewish sources after the writing of Genesis (which occurred comparatively late in history), but separately derived from the same or similar primitive awareness in human knowledge.

This is of interest in the category of curiosity. But there just seem to be too many steps of supposition intalongthe way to their goal. There was some solid critical analysis done here, but it needed to be taken further, to more clearly establish the connections. Those connections shown do not definitively indicate a definite connection to any direct line of culture or faith back to the Hebrews, as they have presented it. There are too many details for which there could be other explanations, and the actual connections do not seem to be of a higher occurrence than would be accounted for by ordinary chance coincidence.

At any rate it was an interesting study, and I would recommend the book for its value on insights into ancient Chinese culture and language. This stands on its on aside from any contention related to Hebrew or Christian beliefs.

It's amazing that this book is still being sold, considering that the chief author, Dr. Nelson, has long since admitted that the book was "not accurate", and has tried to save the theory by changing the details, resulting in several newer books. This particular book is based on modern character forms, many of which are little or nothing like the earliest versions we know about, which even Dr. Nelson admits was a serious flaw. A worse flaw, though, is her thorough misunderstanding and ignorance of the developmental history of Chinese writing. If you want to know what real linguistic scholarship looks like, try "The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System" by William G. Boltz, published by the American Oriental Society. If you prefer feel-good fantasy to truth, grab this one while it's still available.

The kinds of analysis given in this book are totally without foundation.

The most obvious problem with this particular book is that the analysis is based on modern Kaishu forms, which are often totally different from the original forms, so that the elements into which the characters are analyzed do not even exist in the original forms. Typical examples are "huo3" ("fire"), "rou4" ("meat"), and "yu3" ("rain").

When this was pointed out to Nelson after the publication of this book, she then came out with "Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn't Solve", scrapping most of her previous contentions and producing new ones, using older character forms as a basis. That alone shows that this book is all wrong. Since then, she has explicitly stated that this book is "not accurate".

However, this book and the second one share another set of problems. Nelson and her co-authors seem to have no idea that the origins of specific Chinese characters have been well understood for quite some time. They don't even recognize that the vast majority of characters are not simple indicative or compound indicative forms, as they would have us believe, but are semantic-phonetic compounds. They consistently miss this well-know point. It is obvious that they have never read a single work on this subject, but have simply made up their own stories out of whole cloth. This is nothing more than a work of imaginative fiction.

They also don't realize that many characters are known to be phonetic loans. For example, "lai2" ("to come") was originally a character for "barley" or some related grain, also pronounced "lai2". For a while, the same form was used for both. Later on, the "grass" radical was added to the "barley" character to distinguish it. This becomes quite obvious when you compare the character for "barley" with the character for "wheat" ("mai4"), as they have many elements in common. It is simply ridiculous to analyze the character as two people (presumably Adam and Eve) coming from behind a tree. They even analyze the hook at the bottom of the vertical center stroke as "possibly representing a foot...to indicate movement". They didn't even know that the hook is a modern innovation in the brush-written form, and does not even appear in older forms. It's really sad to see people taken in by such nonsensical fantasies.

A final problem with both books is that many of the characters that they analyze did not even exist in the beginning stages of the writing system, which is what these books are trying to deal with. That is, there are no examples of the existence of these characters among the Shang period oracle bone characters--only about 1000 of which had even been deciphered at the time of publication.

If you want to know something about how Chinese characters are really composed, in addition to the Boltz book, I suggest starting with "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", by John DeFrancis.

A more technical study is: "Chinese Writing", by Qiu Xigui (Eary China Special Monograph Series No. 4, translated into English by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman), The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkely, 2000.

If you want to know more about Chinese oracle bone characters, try "Sources of Shang History" (pretty expensive), by David N. Keightley. A cheaper, but less reliable, source is "The Composition of Common Chinese Characters: An Illustrated Account", from Peking University Press. Even Wieger's "Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification, and signification." is light years ahead of Nelson's attempts.

My dad bought this book back when I was in elementary school in Hong Kong. So, I guess the version my dad bought isn't the current up to date version.
I am in my 30's now and I know Chinese fluently. My dad and mom are both very well educated in Chinese history, and both of my parents have spent over 10 years connecting meanings with Chinese words.
We read the book, and we thought it was average at best. There are many lost traditions, translations and meanings in Chinese words. The average Chinese will be able to understand and agree with 40% of the books content. Another 30% of the book will be pushing the meaning of some Chinese character. And the remaining 30% unconvincing.
It is an interesting book. But be very careful if you want to introduce it to an unbeliever. Here is the typical reaction i get when a Chinese reader reads this book.
Starts out surprised and very interested because the books starts with the basic words with the most obvious meanings. Then slowly they might have a negative reaction or feel uneducated since the books introduces meanings that they never read about in school.
Finally, this book uses 'traditional' Chinese which is where the meanings come from. China uses simplified Chinese and most people from China can't read 'traditional' Chinese. Only people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or south Asia still use 'traditional' Chinese.
The only person i know that agreed with this book 80% of the time is an old Chinese professor. Born in 1940s that still remembers how to read and write 'traditional' Chinese. He is a language professor, and knows some of the 'lost' meanings. Not only can he explain the meaning, but he can also tell me where and why the meaning was lost.
In conclusion, its an interesting book. But, needs to be read carefully.

I have read this book for the second time after 10 years. Coming from an Asian culture, read and studied in english. Then coming to know Christ and reading the Bible. There are too many connections to disregard this subject. The simplest strokes in the chinese writing offer so much insight. I have personally found more fascinating "CHINESE CONNECTIONS". I am glad that a "Foreigner" could see into this so well. I just obtained the "Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn't Solve". I could not wait to find more "connections" and put in a review of that book. I welcome any discussion by E-mail. and author contact.

I think this would be indispensible for your collection of Christian apologetic collection. It's a rudimentary study and much of the material can be disputed but it hasn't been, largely because so much of Chinese linguistical research is untouched. Regardless, this book is definitely food for thought.

This book should be read by any Chinese who are saying that Christianity is a foreign religion. The very simple daily used Chinese characters reveal the meaning that matched the stories described in the first book of the Bible. The author analized every stroke in each chosen character and explaied its meaning well in the light of the story in Genesis. After reading this book with the evidences the authors presented in the Chinese character analysis you will undoubtly acknowledge that the Chinese ancestors knew very well the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

This book has opened a door in linguistic study that deserves further intensive research. The authors fall short of their goal to prove the Genesis account. But, it does seem to have evidence connecting the Oriental and Semitic mythology(in the genre of myth, I use 'myth' but I am not promoting that the accounts never happened).

Actually, the underling goal from cover-to-cover is the evangelism of Christianity. I praise the research of C.H.Kang but I wish Nelson wrote with less bias. Some ideographs are a stretch to intrepret but others would be a grand coincedence if in reality there is no connection.

I warn the uninformed that some scripture versions Nelson uses are awful translations(if they can be called translations). He adds extra events and ideas that are not found in the Genesis account so I advise everyone to have a good respectable Bible version in hand. Read the entire story passage to understand what he adds. I recommend the Jewish Publication Society's translation because the Book of Genesis was originally written in hebrew and passed orally in hebrew therefore it is only logical to use a translation that relies heavily on hebrew texts. Christian Bible versions put a lot of weight on the Septuagint(Greek translation of the Old Testament/Tanach) because there is some doctrinal issues that can be argued from it but hold no weight if you examine the hebrew it is founded upon. Or, if you are afraid of Jews translating their own religious books for you, stick with the King James version. An example is of Nelson's choice of An American Translation in chapter 8 which says "I have gotten a man, the Lord" for Genesis 4:1. In his notes he backs up this translation using Martin Luther's translation. He is basically trying to say that Adam and Eve expected Cain to be a messiah.

The authors examine ancient forms of the ideographs which sometimes reveal a clearer connection. They don't show the ancient forms for every example whether by lack of reference or maybe to hide that there is no real connection. That actually makes me weary of some claims so I advise everyone to check the Study Notes and References along with borrowing some books from your library on chinese characters. Remember the authors are biased.

I admit, my review sounds negative; but, I recommend you read it. On the whole this book deserves to be read and studied. These authors didn't create the chinese language so don't discredit the book based on the authors' motivation.