In 2001, the author, ecumenist, and BBC broadcaster Martin Palmer
announced the discovery of a seventh- or eighth-century Christian
pagoda in central China. Palmer’s claims were reported in Christianity
Today and U.S. News and World Report.
I was teaching in Hong Kong that year and had been planning a ten-day
trip into China when I first heard the news. As a church historian, I
was intrigued. I was able to get a rough idea of the location and
added an extra day to my itinerary in the hope of visiting the site.
It lies about thirty miles southwest of the ancient Tang Dynasty
capital that today is called Xi’an, in the famous area of Lou Guan
Tai, now a national park.
The Da Qin Pagoda
Lou Guan Tai sits at the base of a pass leading westward through the
Qingling Mountains. Something about its location—its feng shui—made
the site revered as a spiritual place, and in the sixth century B.C.,
the scholar Laozi (or Lao-Tzu) is said to have settled there to pursue
the Tao after leaving the royal court in disgust at its worldliness.
Here he wrote Tao Te Ching, “The Book of the Way and Its Power,”
founding the philosophy known today as Taoism.
Lou Guan Tai later grew into an important Taoist center, and it was
just a mile or two to the west, either just inside or outside the
Taoist complex, that twelve centuries later the Da Qin monastery was
built by Christian monks. Only one tower of the monastery remains, a
seven-story pagoda that Palmer says was near to falling.
Since Palmer’s announcement, repairs have been made, and the tower now
seems in rather good shape for a 1,300-year-old structure. It is
octagonal and looks exactly like other ancient Chinese pagodas. In a
Chinese book of 1563, the pagoda is clearly named and described, and
at that time had even more extensive ruins visible.
Palmer cites four strands of evidence that point to this as a
Christian structure: (1) Its name, Da Qin, links it with an earlier
Christian mission (more on this below); (2) the pagoda was cut into
the hillside so as to face east, whereas all Chinese temples face
north and south; (3) several lines of Syriac graffiti were found in or
near the structure; and (4) several pieces of Christian statuary were
found on the second and third floors of the pagoda. By the time of my
visit, the statuary had been moved for safekeeping until a new museum
could be built, so the description I give here is based solely on that
of Palmer and the photographs reproduced in his book.
The statue that dominated the second floor of the pagoda was a
10-foot-high and 5-foot-wide mountain scene. In the mountain was a
cave, and in the cave a remnant of a nativity scene. The only parts
surviving are a bent right leg and an extended left leg. Such a
posture, Palmer says, is unknown in Chinese art, but is common in
Eastern Orthodox renditions of Mary in nativity scenes.
The third-floor statue, 6 feet high and 4 feet wide, is also in poor
condition. The background here, however, can clearly be identified as
a city wall (with Chinese-style bell and drum towers). Also visible is
a tree with the remnants of a human figure seated beneath it. Palmer
has identified the scene as Jonah beneath the gourd tree outside
Nineveh.
Although these identifications should be accepted with much caution,
when its features are taken as a whole, there seems good reason to
identify the pagoda as an ancient Christian structure. It had, after
all, been identified as such—back in 1933. As Palmer admits in The
Jesus Sutras (2001), “the pagoda was believed by Saeki and other China
scholars who had visited the site in 1933 to be associated with the
early Christian Church.” Indeed, Peter Yoshiro Saeki, a Japanese
religious scholar, had asked some local Chinese scholars to visit the
site, and they confirmed that it was the remnant of a Nestorian
building complex; they saw the same statuary Palmer discovered 65
years later.
Dr. Saeki, author of The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China
(1937), had long been on the trail of Christianity in China. Back in
1916, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge published
his The Nestorian Monument, a book about a well-known Chinese
Nestorian stele.
When I visited the pagoda in 2001, I was also able to see this even
more important early Christian monument, the Nestorian Stele. These
two monuments, along with a third discovery, the Chinese equivalent of
the Dead Sea Scrolls, confirm that there was a significant Christian
presence in seventh- and eighth-century China. An examination of these
artifacts also highlights some of the problems missionaries encounter
when presenting the gospel to a new and alien culture.
The Nestorian Stele
In 1623 an ancient stele was discovered near Xi’an, just thirty miles
from the Christian pagoda. By 1625, the stele’s inscriptions had been
published by the Jesuit Father Trigault. In the early twentieth
century the stele stood near a Buddhist temple, a mile outside the
western gate of Xi’an. In 1907 it was moved to its present location
among the Xi’an historical museum’s famous collection of ancient
steles.
The tablet stands about eight feet high, is just over three feet wide,
and about a foot thick. It weighs nearly two tons. It contains 32
vertical lines with approximately 1,800 beautiful and well-preserved
Chinese characters. Setting this inscription apart from similar
ancient inscriptions are the words in its bottom margin—23 short lines
in ancient Syriac script. On the narrow sides of the stone are an
additional 70 lines in Chinese and Syriac.
Atop the stone is a heading of nine characters. Two characters— Da
Qin—mean “from the West” and could refer to anything arriving in China
from the West. In other documents from the period, they refer to the
Roman Empire, Palestine, or another Middle Eastern country. The
heading can be translated “The Monument That Commemorates the Spread
of the Western Religion of Light in China.”
The stele dates itself to Sunday, February 4, 781, and was composed by
a Christian priest whose name is given in Chinese as Jingjing and in
Persian as Adam. He is a “priest of a Da Qin monastery,” and “priest
and rural bishop and Papash of Chinestan.” He is probably the same
Adam who is mentioned in one of the Christian manuscripts we will
mention later as translator of more than 30 Christian books into
Chinese.
The main text begins with an extended eulogy to “the One who is true
and firm, the Uncreated, the Origin of Origins . . . our Aloha
[Elohim], the Triune, the mysterious Person, the unbegotten and true
Lord.” This long passage also describes “the Messiah,” who in “his
true majesty appeared on earth as a man. . . . A virgin gave birth to
the Holy One in Da Qin. A bright star announced the blessed event.”
It also states that “27 standard works of his sutras (or scriptures)
were preserved,” a clear reference to the New Testament. “His law is
to bathe with water and with the Spirit and thus to cleanse from all
vain delusions and to purify men until they regain the purity of their
nature.” “[His ministers] carry the cross with them as a sign, and
travel about wherever the sun shines and try to re-unite those that
are outside the kingdom.” This religion is referred to as “The
Way”—“but its meritorious workings are shown so brilliantly that we .
. . call it by the name of ‘the Luminous Religion’” (adaptation of
Saeki’s translation).
The text then recounts the arrival of Christian missionaries at Xi’an,
the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The mission team was led by “a
highly virtuous man named Alopen in the kingdom of Da Qin,” who
“arrived in Xi’an in the ninth year of the period named Zhenguan”
(A.D. 635). “The Emperor dispatched his Minister of State, Fang
Xuanling, with an imperial guard, to the western suburb to meet the
visitor and conduct him to the palace. The sutras were translated in
the Imperial Library. [The Emperor] studied The Way in his own
Forbidden apartments, and being deeply convinced of its correctness
and truth, he gave special orders for its propagation.”
The text then quotes the imperial decree about this new religion,
issued by the emperor in 638, which concludes, “This teaching is
helpful to all creatures and beneficial to all men; so let it have
free course throughout the Empire.”
We are then told that a monastery was built in the capital, a portrait
of the emperor was hung in it, and 21 priests were ordained to serve
there. When the Emperor Tai Zong died, he was succeeded by Gao Zong
(650–683) who “allowed monasteries of the Luminous Religion to be
founded in every prefecture . . . and the law spread throughout the
ten provinces. . . . Monasteries were built in many cities while every
family enjoyed great blessings.”
The text goes on to describe how, between 698 and 712, first Buddhists
in the East, then Taoists in the West slandered the new religion. But
Christian leaders rose up to strengthen the church; under Emperors
Xuan Zong (712–756), Su Zong (756–762) and Dai Zong (763–779) the
church again flourished with royal favor. This section of the text
then concludes with praise for the present emperor, De Zong (780–805).
The blessings of that time are then enumerated, closing with “all
these are the meritorious fruits of the power and working of our
Luminous Religion.”
This is followed by a eulogy for the Christian dignitary who likely
paid for the stele, Yi Si. He is described as a highly decorated court
official and general in the Chinese army of the three emperors, but
also as a priest and rural bishop of Khumdan.
The last major part of the inscription is a lengthy poem honoring God
and the emperors who championed his church. The concluding lines give
the imperial date, name the ruling patriarch of the “Luminous
Communities of the East,” and name the artist who inscribed the text
on the stele. The Syriac sections give a list of names of over 70
bishops, priests, and monks.
The story told in the inscription was so amazing that, after the
inscription’s publication in the early seventeenth century, its
authenticity began to be questioned. Debate and study continued
periodically until, by the late nineteenth century, numerous scholars
had personally examined the stone and vouched for its authenticity.
However, it took a second great archaeological event to lay any final
doubts to rest—the discovery of the scrolls of Dunhuang.
The Scrolls from Dunhuang
In 1908 the French archaeologist and explorer Paul Pelliot came upon a
cave at Dunhuang, 800 miles northwest of Xi’an (1,350 miles due east
of Samarkand), that had been sealed in 1036. Inside was a treasure
trove of ancient art and manuscripts. While many of the precious
scrolls were taken to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, others
found their way onto the black market. Among those that surfaced in
private collections during the following decades were a number of
Christian texts.
One set of four texts may have been authored by Alopen himself, the
leader of the mission journey in 635. The oldest of the texts is the
Jesus the Messiah sutra, purchased in 1922 by Dr. Takakusu. Prof.
Saeki dates the text between 635 and 638, declaring it the first
Nestorian sutra ever composed in China. A second manuscript contains
three other early sutras attributed to Alopen—a Discourse on
Monotheism, a Parable, Part 2, and a Lord of the Universe’s Discourse
on Almsgiving. These were purchased in 1916 by another Japanese
collector, Mr. Tomeoka. All four of the documents were published in
1931 by the Kyoto Institute of the Oriental Culture Academy with an
introduction by Prof. Haneda, and dated to c. 641.
A second series of documents also supposedly came from the caves at
Dunhuang but are held to be of later date. A hymn, On the Adoration of
the Trinity, a work, On Mysterious Rest and Joy, and an excerpt of a
work, On the Origin of Origins, are usually dated to the late eighth
century, about the same time as the stele was erected. Two other
documents—a hymn, On Penetrating Reality and Taking Refuge in the Law,
and a second work, On the Origin of Origins—are now considered by most
scholars to be modern forgeries (the Dunhuang discoveries spawned an
active market for forgers). A final tenth-century work is entitled The
Book of Praise and seems to be equivalent to the diptychs and
triptychs used in the early Greek and Latin churches, a set series of
prayers and thanksgiving to God for various living and departed
Christian saints and leaders.
While additional archaeological evidence came to light in the early
twentieth century confirming that the Nestorian branch of Christianity
spread in many areas along the Silk Road, it was not widely noted by
scholars. Except for Dr. Saeki’s excellent and thorough 1951 book in
English, the story of the Nestorian church in China fell into almost
total obscurity among English-speaking scholars until Martin Palmer
made his announcement of the Christian pagoda that still stands in
central China, not far from the Nestorian stele.
Christians on the Move
The dramatic story of the arrival of Alopen at the imperial court
captures the imagination, perhaps too easily. The church historian
immediately thinks of parallel stories in which the ruler is converted
and the people quickly follow—Abgar of Syria and Vladimir of Kiev,
among others. Is this what happened?
A closer look gives a slightly different picture. While Alopen
certainly played an important role in the spread of Christianity in
China, he was not the first to do so. Christian traders had
undoubtedly shared their faith in China in the first centuries of the
Church, since there is much evidence of trade between China and the
Roman Empire.
In 431 the Council of Ephesus excommunicated Nestorius together with
his followers for holding that there were two separate persons in the
incarnate Christ (one divine and the other human). Nestorius’s
teachings, however, had a strong following in the East that gradually
coalesced into a separate “Church of the East.” When the Western
church, with its imperial backing, began physically enforcing the
council’s decisions, many Nestorians moved across the border into
Persia, where they soon dominated the growing church.
In 424 what was to become the Nestorian church had bishoprics as far
east as Merv (in what is now Turkmenistan). Back in Persia, by the
mid-sixth century the local magi and other leaders of Zoroastrianism
had gained enough political influence to begin a severe persecution of
Christians. About the same time, Monophysite Christians were steadily
gaining influence in Persia as well. By the early seventh century,
persecution became a normal part of life for all Persian Christians,
and many opted to leave. Since the West still did not allow freedom of
worship, and Islam was beginning to foment in the south, and the north
was barred by mountains, east was the natural direction to go.
Only occasionally do historical sources give us details of this
migration. One example is from a Chinese record of 578, telling how a
large Nestorian family from Mar Sagis emigrated from the western lands
to Lintao (Gansu Province). Another involves the upheaval caused by
fighting between the eastern Turks and the Chinese around 630. In the
aftermath, about 1.5 million people migrated into China, 10,000
families settling in Xi’an alone. These immigrants would have brought
their religion with them—Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian
and Monophysite Christianity.
So the gospel did not first penetrate China with Alopen’s mission. The
faith had spread through China at the grassroots level for some time
before. What Alopen did achieve, however, was bringing the visible
church and its organizational structure to China. Before his arrival,
Christians may have worshiped at home, may have had only limited
access to the sacraments, and probably had few if any trained clergy.
Alopen, under official patronage, was able to set up a series of
churches and monasteries that could provide what had been missing,
with the monasteries, as in the West, serving as theological schools.
Royal Patronage
Imperial patronage did not necessarily mean imperial conversion. The
Nestorian Stele commends Emperor Gao Zong for “giving the True
Religion (Christianity) the proper elegance and finish, causing
monasteries of the Luminous Religion to be founded in every
prefecture, and honoring Alopen as great Patron and Spiritual Lord of
the Empire.” But we also know from other historical sources that in a
decree of 666, the same emperor honored Laozi with the title “Most
High Emperor of Mystic Origin” (placing him above even Buddha and
Confucius), ordering temples to be built to him, and ordering high
officials to study his writings.
Chinese tradition and culture did not make it necessary to choose one
religion over another. A wise person might well hedge his bets by
extolling and supporting several religions simultaneously. While the
royal patronage was real and was highly significant and useful, it was
not exclusive.
What imperial patronage did provide was legality and backing. The
statements about building churches and monasteries in every province
were not mere hyperbole. The geographical spread of surviving evidence
confirms that Christianity did spread significantly during this
period. Yet it probably never became more than one of the many
minority religions. The famous monk Kukai stayed from 804 to 806 in
the Buddhist monastery of Xi Ming in the Yining Ward of Xi’an, within
a few blocks of the Nestorian monastery, yet he never mentions the
Christians once in his 50-volume literary output.
Patronage also came at a price. The stele tells how the emperor had
Alopen’s books translated in the Imperial Library. Was there a check
on the accuracy of the translation? Missionaries today would not trust
Buddhists to produce an accurate translation of the New Testament, but
that seems to be what happened at Xi’an.
Was the title “Great Patron and Spiritual Lord of the Empire”
conferred upon Alopen just an honorary title, or did it require
certain actions of its holder? Did he now have to attend court
functions and take part in traditional courtly religious observances?
The experience of Jesuit missionaries a millennium later would suggest
that some accommodation might have been required. Patronage by the
mighty is always a two-edged sword.
Syncretism & the Savior
When missionaries enter a new culture, they have to translate the Word
into a new language and dress it in local clothing without
compromising the gospel by fitting it to local customs and beliefs.
How well did Alopen and his successors walk this tightrope?
The stele begins with a summary confession of the doctrines of God,
the Trinity, creation, original sin, the Incarnation, and redemption.
Dauvillier comments: “The attributes of God—his eternity, being a
spirit, transcendence, infiniteness and impassibility, existing before
all, and being without end—these correspond to the most rigorous
Christian orthodoxy.” Pelliot and others have noted that the actual
terminology used was popular among Taoists of the time, but Taoism has
no creation ex nihilo nor a personal God. In other words, familiar
terms were used to express new teaching. This is standard missionary
practice.
The sutras clearly do, however, interact with Buddhism and Taoism in a
way that some have seen as syncretistic. The Jesus-Messiah sutra says,
“All Buddhas as well as Kimnaras and the Superintending-Devas and
Arhans can see the Lord of Heaven, but no human being has ever seen
the Lord of Heaven” (verses 4–5). Or later, “All Buddhas flow and flux
. . . but the Lord of Heaven remains always in a place of comfortable
joy and peace” (13–14). The Discourse on the Oneness of the Ruler of
the Universe seems to inject a dualistic passage based either on the
Chinese concept of Yin and Yang or on Persian dualism. It also refers
to the Buddhist concepts of the “four elements” (4–5), the “five
attributes” (68), the “three wicked ways,” rebirth, the Kalpa of
formation, and “the law of the myriad Kalpa” (210–213).
On the other hand, one repeatedly finds accurate statements of
Christian doctrine in these same documents. The Jesus-Messiah sutra
states that “the Messiah gave up his body to these wicked men to be
sacrificed for the sake of all mankind” (198). The Monotheism text
states that “all things are made by the one God” (5), and that “the
one Godhead begot the other one [Jesus] out of one and the same
substance” (42). In The Oneness of the Ruler of the Universe we read
that “when heaven and earth shall pass away . . . all the dead shall
rise again” (68), and that the Messiah “bore all the sins of mankind,
and for them he suffered the punishment himself; no meritorious deed
is necessary [for salvation]” (136–137). The Almsgiving text gives an
extensive description of Christ’s death and resurrection and quotes
several complete verses from Isaiah 53. And the stele says “the true
Lord . . . took human form, and through him, salvation was made free
to all; the Sun arising, the darkness ending.” This is far from the
wonderful “Taoist Christianity” that Palmer seeks to find in the
scrolls.
A Fruitful Path
The path of Christianity was not smooth even under the imperial
patronage of the seventh and eighth centuries. A resurgence of
pro-Buddhist ideologies in the ninth century led to growing problems
for Christians. An imperial edict of Emperor Wu Zong in 845 ordered
Christian monks and nuns to “return to their secular life and cease to
confuse our national customs and manners.”
Christianity began to wane, but we do not know at what rate. The
Arabic writer Abu Sayd states that Christians were among the 120,000
people massacred at Canton (modern Guangzhou) in 878. As we have seen,
the Book of Praise sutra was composed in the tenth century, and when
manuscripts were being gathered for preservation in the cave at
Dunhuang in 1036, some Christian scrolls were still to be found and
thought worth preserving. (Someone also painted a Christian figure on
one of the cave walls.)
Farther north, near the present border of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,
two Nestorian graveyards were discovered in 1885. Six hundred ten
Nestorian tombs with crosses and Syriac inscriptions were discovered
there, with dates ranging from 858 to 1342.
Saeki accumulates archaeological evidence from other parts of China as
well. The presence of an influential Nestorian church in late
thirteenth-century China is confirmed by numerous literary sources,
including the journal of Bar Sauma (a Nestorian monk from northern
China), the writings of the Western monk John of Montecorvino, and
those of Marco Polo. It is now clear that between the tenth and
fourteenth centuries, several Turkish tribes along the Silk Road and
in northern China became predominantly Nestorian Christian, but it is
uncertain whether this was due to the influence of Chinese
missionaries or new missionary endeavors from the Middle East.
This story, however, is more than an arcane piece for mission
historians. Martin Palmer, the most recent “discoverer” of
Christianity in ancient China, can be credited with bringing the
pagoda, and the forgotten story of early Chinese mission work, back to
our attention.
The pagoda, the stele, and the sutras remind us that Christianity is
not just a Western phenomenon. The Church spread eastward as well, and
took root and prospered there. Alopen, from the modern Chinese
viewpoint, might be viewed as one Asian coming to another. He did not
come in Western dress, nor did he carry all the imperialistic baggage
of more modern missionaries. To the extent this early history can be
known in China today, perhaps it can help Chinese take a second look
at Christianity and see that it is not just a “Western religion,” but
really is universal.
Perhaps the teachings of the Nestorians clouded the gospel message,
but the texts suggest that they did not totally obscure it. In fact,
historians now believe that while the Church of the East continued to
honor Nestorius among its founding fathers, it did not follow his
Christology. This gives us even more reason to believe that many Tang
Dynasty Chinese came to faith in the one true God, and that many came
to know their Savior Jesus Christ.
We should never sell short the work of the Holy Spirit. It has been
said that the Chinese church today is the fastest growing church in
history. Perhaps the seeds sown along the Yellow River and Yangtze
River so long ago are even now bearing fruit.
Bibliography
• Malek, Roman, ed. The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, vol. 1
(Monumenta Serica Monograph Series L/1). Sankt Augustin, Germany,
2002.
• Malek, Roman, ed. Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and
Central Asia (Collectanea Serica). Sankt Augustin, Germany, 2006.
• Palmer, Martin. The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of
Taoist Christianity. New York, 2001.
• Pelliot, Paul. Recherches sur les Chretiens d’Asie Centrale et
d’Extreme-Orient, 2.1: La Stele de Si-Ngan-Fou (Oeuvres Posthumes de
Paul Pelliot, Jean Dauvillier ed.). Paris, 1983.
• Pelliot, Paul. L’Inscription Nestorienne de Si-Ngan-Fou (Oeuvres
Posthumes, Antonio Forte ed.). Paris, 1996.
• Saeki, P. Y. The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China. Tokyo, 1951.
Still Lost
Since Martin Palmer’s The Jesus Sutras gives a very slanted view of
the scrolls, it would seem a happy event that a second book on the
subject has appeared even more recently: The Lost Sutras of Jesus:
Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks (Ulysses Press,
2003/2006). But before rushing to find a copy, let’s look a bit
closer.
The 140-page volume is divided into three parts. In the first 40
pages, “Wisdom from a Cave,” we find a rather straightforward (if
fanciful) story of the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts, the
Nestorian Stele and the Da Qin Pagoda. This is followed by the heart
of the book—about 75 pages of topically organized excerpts from the
scrolls and stele in a new translation. The book concludes with “The
Soul of the Scrolls: Guidance for Today,” 25 pages of spiritual
observations and applications for modern man.
Who is responsible for this attractive little volume? The cover gives
no author but says that the editors are Ray Rieger and Thomas Moore,
and the title page lists Jon Babcock as the translator. While the
volume does not specify which man was responsible for which part, it
appears that the two “editors” are responsible for everything except
the actual excerpts from the Sutras.
Ray Rieger is best known as the author of over a dozen guidebooks to
the islands of Hawaii and other American tourist destinations. He also
appears to be the driving force behind Ulysses Press, which began as
the publisher of Rieger’s travel guides and then branched out into
works on alternative health, fitness, and spirituality. In the
Foreword Rieger calls himself “a lapsed Christian with a passion for
biblical history and Eastern thought.”
Thomas Moore’s website states that he is a Catholic who went to
seminary, but then left before ordination. After earning a Ph.D. in
religion from Syracuse University and doing a brief stint in academia,
he became a freelance psychotherapist, lecturer, musician, and author
of a bestseller entitled Care of the Soul. On his website he states,
“My theological work has to do with observing and reverencing the
awesome depth of the smallest and most ordinary of things.”
And what about the man responsible “for capturing the passion and
poetry of the Sutras in a brilliant translation” (cited from the
Acknowledgments)? What are Jon Babcock’s credentials for translating
Tang Dynasty Chinese texts? We are not told, and the volume never
mentions him again.
Untrustworthy Resource
The bottom line is that we have no reason to trust the qualifications
of any of these writers on a complicated subject that involves the
mastery of two ancient languages (Chinese and Syriac) and the history
of Nestorian Christianity, the Tang Dynasty, and Chinese Buddhism and
Taoism. The lapsed Christian with a passion for Eastern thought and
the author on psychotherapy appear neither qualified nor unbiased in
their approach to the subject. And although Moore still pays lip
service to his “birthright as a Catholic,” his affinity for Eastern
religious practices is evident.
So the volume gives us what we should expect—an even less careful and
equally slanted presentation of the sutras as works that “combine
religions in a way that brings out the best in each of them and the
best in all of us” (from the Foreword).
This volume fits well in Ulysses Press’s series of “spiritual” works.
These include books on the “Lost Words of Jesus” in the Gospel of
Thomas, the “Lost Gospel Q,” and the parallel sayings of Jesus and
Buddha—all “edited” by Rieger along with names such as Marcus Borg and
Dominic Crossan. And don’t miss the latest addition, Caesar’s Messiah,
which proves that the four Gospels “were actually written under the
direction of first-century Roman emperors”! Alas, this is not a place
to look for any objective study of history, and especially for the
true story behind the Christians of Tang Dynasty China.
— Glen L. Thompson
Glen L. Thompson is Associate Professor of History at Wisconsin
Lutheran College. ?Christ on the Silk Road? is an updated version of
his presentation at the 2003 Evangelical Theological Society meeting
in Atlanta, Georgia.
Christ on the Silk Road
The Evidences of Nestorian Christianity in Ancient China /
Glen L. Thompson