by
Damien F. Mackey
Some have raised
the point that the ancient Chinese dynastic civilisation is - just as the
archaïc Egyptian civilisation was once thought to have been - so ancient that
it antedates even the Genesis estimations for the beginning of humanity and the
Flood.
Introduction
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How
could there be sophisticated civilisations on earth
prior
to the creation of the world?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a long time, until
evolutionary thinking and dating models set in, the date for the creation of
the world was generally accepted (by those who believed that it was indeed
created by God) at around 4000 BC. James Ussher (1581-1656),
Archbishop of Ireland, famously dated this grand event to midday
on Sunday October 23, 4004 BC.
But
when, some centuries later, chronologists of ancient civilisations arrived at
dates for the beginnings of dynastic history that well pre-dated this biblical
estimation, then the Genesis account fell into ridicule.
How
could there be sophisticated civilisations on earth prior to the creation of
the world?
Taking
the case of ancient Egypt, the highly-regarded chronologist, Eduard Meyer, of
the Berlin School of Egyptology, had astronomically dated the beginning of
Egyptian dynastic history to 4240 BC, some centuries earlier than archbishop
Ussher’s date for creation.
I
discussed the worth of Meyer’s astronomical model in my:
Meyer’s fictitious long-range calendar
…. Meyer‘s belief that
the ancient Egyptians had actually used this Sothic period of 1,460 years as a kind of long-range calendar is pure supposition, with no
evidence in support of it. In fact Meyer had to go to Classical texts to get
some of his key information: to Theon, an Alexandrian astronomer of the late 4th
century AD, and to the 3rd century AD
Roman author, Censorinus. According to Meyer’s interpretation of the Sothic data as provided by Censorinus, a coincidence had occurred between
the heliacal rising of Sirius and New Year‘s Day in the
100th year before
Censorinus wrote his book, De Die Natali Liber, c. AD 140.7 Meyer was therefore able to determine from
there, using multiples of 1,460, his Sothic series of AD 140, 1320 BC, 2780 BC
and 4240 BC. However, Censorinus had not actually connected the 1,460-year
period with Sirius; his evidence contradicts that of Theon, according to whom
the conclusion of a 1,460-yearperiod had occurred in the 5th year of
the emperor Augustus — 26 BC, as opposed to Censorinus’ testimony
that a Great Year had commenced in c. AD 140. ….
[End of quote]
That
date of 4240 BC for the unification of Egypt under pharaoh Menes (First
Dynasty) became the accepted norm until wiser heads prevailed. However, whilst
the date for Menes currently stands at c. 3100 BC - considerably lower than
both Meyer’s estimation and the era of Creation - the broad pattern of Meyer’s
artificial Sothic arrangement still prevails.
But
even 3100 BC is about a millennium too early for Menes, I have argued in:
Narmer a Contemporary of Patriarch Abraham
and:
Today,
a more fertile ground for critics may be ancient China, which, like Egypt once
again, has known many dynasties. Biblical lecturer John D. Morris (Institute
for Creation Research) tells of his having been the recipient of such a query
from a scholar about the Chinese (http://www.icr.org/article/how-can-chinese-dynasties-extend-back-many-thousan/):
I was
lecturing on the Biblical and scientific evidence for recent creation to a
university audience in Hong Kong, China, when a scholar raised the objection:
"The Chinese have a documented history going back many thousands of years,
much earlier than your dates for creation and the Flood. We have known
dynasties and named rulers. The Bible must be wrong."
Critics
have said the very same thing about the Egyptian and other ancient histories,
presuming them to be right, hence the Bible must be wrong.
The
fact is that, when exposed to the torch of scrutiny, they are found to be, not
right.
What
about China?
China’s Documented Dynasties
According
to Morris, reliably documented Chinese history does not even precede 2000 BC:
The
solution lies in an examination of the earliest Chinese dynasties. Actually,
precisely documented dynasties go back only to about 2000 B.C. The first true
dynasty was founded about 4000 years ago by a leader remembered for having
"sweetened the waters," making the land habitable after wide-spread
flooding. The ten listed dynasties before that, however, were of a different
sort, with very long lives and questionable details attributed to them.
[End of
quote]
This sounds suspiciously Noachic
and reminds one of the great Genesis Flood.
And I shall be having more to say
about Noah and the Chinese.
Fr. Hieromonk Damascene will begin by exploring an
earlier phase of Genesis in his article, “Ancient Chinese
History in Light of the Book of Genesis” (I do not necessarily accept Fr.
Damascene’s dates) http://www.orthodox.cn/localchurch/200406ancientcnhist_en.htm
1. The Chinese Border Sacrifice:
The Earliest Chinese
Theology and Worship of God
In looking at the Chinese
history in light of the Book of Genesis, it will be helpful to look first at
the earliest known religion in China. Later, we will see how this ancient
religion fits in with the Biblical account of ancient history.
The earliest account of
religious worship in China is found in the Shu Jing (Book of History of Book of
Documents), the oldest Chinese historical source. This book records that in the
year 2230 B.C., the Emperor Shun “sacrificed to Shangdi.” That is, he
sacrificed to the supreme God of the ancient Chinese, Shangdi meaning Supreme
Ruler. This ceremony came to be known as the “Border Sacrifice,” because at the
summer solstice and Emperor took part in ceremonies to the earth on the
northern border of the country, and at the winter solstice he offered a
sacrifice to heaven on the southern border.
The Chinese have been called
one of the most history-conscious and tradition-conscious peoples of the world.
This is seen in many aspects of Chinese culture. Perhaps it is seen most of all
in this very Border Sacrifice which the Emperor performed twice a year. This
ceremony, which goes back at least to 2230 B.C. was continued in China for over
four thousand years, up until the fall of the Manchus in A. D. 1911. Even
though the people gradually lost an understanding of what the ceremony was all
about, and Shangdi was obscured behind all kinds of pagan deities in China,
nevertheless the worship of the one God, Shangdi, was continued faithfully by
the Emperor up into modern times.
The oldest text of the Border
Sacrifice that we have dates from the Ming Dynasty. It is the exact text of the
ceremony that was performed in A. D. 1538, which was based on the existing
ancient records of the original rituals. Let us look at portions of the
recitation script that the Emperor used.
….
The Emperor, as the high
priest, was the only one to participate in the service. The ceremony began: “Of
old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The
five elements [planets] had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and the moon to
shine. In the midst thereof there existed neither forms for sound. Thou, O
spiritual Sovereign, camest forth in Thy presidency, and first didst divide the
grosser parts from the purer. Thou madest heaven; Thou madest earth; Thou
madest man. All things with their reproductive power got their being.” This
recitation praising Shangdi as Creator of heaven and earth sounds surprisingly
like the first chapter of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep” (Genesis 1: 1- 2).
So, in the earliest records of
Chinese religion, we see that the people worshiped One God, Who was Creator of
all. We also see that the original people of China looked at Shangdi with a
sense of love and a filial feeling. The Emperor continued his prayer: “Thou
hast vouchsafed, O Di, to hear us, for Thou regardest us as a Father. I, Thy
child, dull and unenlightened, am unable to show forth my dutiful feelings.”
As the ceremony concludes,
Shangdi is praised for His loving kindness: “Thy sovereign goodness is
infinite. As a potter, Thou hast made all living things. Thy sovereign goodness
is infinite. Great and small are sheltered [by Thee]. As engraven on the heart
of Thy poor servant is the sense of Thy goodness, so that my feeling cannot be
fully displayed. With great kindness Thou dost bear us, and not withstanding
our shortcomings, dost grant us life and prosperity.”
These last two recitations,
taken together, bear the same simile as found in the Prophecy of Isaiah in the
Bible: “But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our
Potter and we all are the work of Thy hand” (Isaiah 64: 8).
In general, reading the text
of the Border Sacrifice reminds one strongly of the prayers of the ancient
Hebrews as found in the Old Testament: the same reverent awe before God, the
same self abasement, humility and gratitude before His greatness. For us
Christians, these most ancient of Chinese prayers to God are strangely
familiar. Why is this? It seems that the most ancient Chinese religion and the
ancient Hebrew religion are drawn from the same source. And that is indeed the
case, as we will see.
….
Further on, Fr. Damascene returns
to earliest Genesis and the Chinese.
{Some of his conclusions here may
be a bit strained}:
The first people of China
could have heard about the creation, the Fall, and life before the Flood from
Noah himself. And Noah, as we have said, could have learned about these things,
through one or at most two intermediaries, from Adam himself. This gives us an
idea of how close were the first Chinese people to the first man, Adam.
We know that when the original
settlers of China came to their new land, they brought the religion of Noah
with them. We know this from the Border Sacrifice of which we spoke earlier.
The Border Sacrifice was like the sacrifices of Noah, which were like the
sacrifices of Adam. And, as we have seen, the God that was invoked at the
Border Sacrifices was the One God, the Creator of universe, that both Noah and
Adam worshiped. The prayers that were at the Chinese Border Sacrifice bear
remarkable similarity to the prayers of the ancient Hebrews because both come
from the same source: the religion of Noah.
An interesting point to ponder
is why the Chinese called their sacrifices “Border Sacrifices,” and why the
Emperor traditionally performed them at the border of the Empire. We know that
Adam would have performed his sacrifices outside the borders of Paradise,
probably as close as possible to Paradise, outside the Gate that was guarded by
the Cherubim. It is possible that the Chinese Border Sacrifice were based on
the tradition of a “border sacrifice” from the time of Adam.
[End of quotes]
Part Two:
Noah, the Flood,
and Chinese history
“The
first thing that students of Chinese history learn is that Chinese history
began with a Flood. This is not surprising, since we know that ancient peoples
from all the continents of the world have a story of a Great Flood which
covered all the earth as a judgment on man’s sin. In many cases, the details
are remarkably like the details recorded in the book of Genesis. The Aboriginal
peoples of Australia, for example, speak of a global flood and how only eight
people escaped it in a canoe”.
Introduction
As
we learned in Part One:
Chinese
dynastic history goes back only as far as c. 2000 BC. Hence, the accusation by
certain critics that early Genesis (Creation and the Flood) is negatived due to
a presumed antedating of it by well documented Chinese history, is found to be
quite groundless.
And
this revised chronological perspective found apparent support in a related
article:
according
to which the origins of the Chinese people was from Canaan, a post-Flood
descendant of Noah’s son, Ham - that Canaan’s descendant, Sin, gave rise to the
Sinites, or Chinese (Genesis 10:17).
These
conclusions, if correct, would strictly regulate the beginnings of Chinese
dynastic history.
The
following article (not all details, e.g. the dates, of which I would
necessarily endorse) likewise argues for a close relationship between the
earliest Chinese and Mesopotamia
Nineteenth century French
Academy laureate Albert Etienne Terrien de Lacouperie extensively studied the
relationship between China and the West, and wrote numerous articles and books
on the subject. In Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization
(London, Asher & Co., 1894), he wrote:
"The early civilization
and writing of the Chinese were simply derivations from those of Elam and
Chaldea, about and after the time of Gudea and Dungi [Shulgi], derivations
carried eastward later on to the Flowery land, namely in the XXIII century
before our era" (1)."The comparatively late beginnings of the Chinese
civilization showed themselves to be the outcome of an importation, not a
distinct growth from common seeds, but simply a loan, a derivation, an extension
eastward from a much older form of culture in the west. I was led slowly by
overwhelming evidences, direct and circumstantial from the Chinese and W.
Asiatic sides, to the unexpected disclosures alluded to, and which, however
astonishing they may appear to those who have not followed the gradual advance
of my researches, are now proved to be an assured progress of our knowledge and
solid discoveries of historical fact" (1-2). "sifting all fabulous
accounts, we find a residue of undisputable evidences showing a small number of
families arriving in the N.W. of present China, and in possession of a
comparatively advanced civilization which explains the enthusiasm of after ages
for these men, and has left a deep impression surviving to the present day in
the mental habits of the whole people. The existence of these feelings and
beliefs would have been difficult and even impossible, should traces or
traditions of savage beginnings, slow development of civilization, pictorial
rudiments of writing, and successive progresses of knowledge by self-growth,
have ever existed among Chinese, but nothing of the kind exists in their early
souvenirs " (3-4). "Everything in Chinese antiquity and tradition
points to a western origin. No Sinologist who has studied the subject has been
able to ascertain any other origin for the Chinese than one from the West"
(4).
"C.J. Ball...a
collaborator of The Babylonian and Oriental Record, in several papers
published in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology�has concluded in favor of a
close relationship of the Akkadian and Chinese language, a derivation
(established by me in 1888) of the Chinese characters from those of Babylonia
between Gudea and Khammurabi, and a migration of civilized Akkadians to China
at that time" (xi-xii). Terrien de Lacouperie observed that the ancient
Chinese records appear to describe the cuneiform writing of their Bak
ancestors:
"There are however in the
ancient Chinese traditions several allusions which point in so precise a manner
to the cuneiform writing, that we must mention them here. Shen-nung=Sargon was
reputed to have used signs like tongues of fire to record facts, at a time when
the ancestors of the Chinese were not yet acquainted with the art of writing,
and Dunkit (modern Tsang hieh) whose name has the same meaning as that of the
Chaldean Dungi [Shulgi] of which it was a rendering and under whom the Bak
tribes were taught to write, made marks on clay like claws of birds and
animals. The primitive writing was always compared to drops of rain finely
drawn out and freezing as they fall. It is difficult to mistake in all this,
most distinct descriptions of the cuneiform writing of south-west Asia"
(5).
The identification of the
Chinese founders with the Bak people has been challenged by Firth, as referenced
in my article "Ethnography, Biblical Studies, and Higher Criticism."
Indeed, there is some question whether specific tribal identification can be
made due to difficulties of transliteration, changes of pronunciation, the lack
of adequate original Chinese records from the earliest eras, and linguistic
shifts over time. At best, we can say that Terrien de Lacouperie makes an
interesting case for identification of the Chinese founders with the Bak tribes
of Elam which falls short of the mandate of proof.
Furthermore, our understanding
of both chronology and the Sumerian language has changed considerably since
Terrien de Lacouperie's day: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, King "Dungi" of Ur, under whom orthographic reforms occurred
and tribes of the Sumero-Akkadian empire were taught to read and write, was
believed to have lived in the twenty fourth century BC, leading Terrien de
Lacouperie to postulate an exodus for the Bak tribes toward China in the twenty
third century BC. Modern scholars now know "Dungi" as Shulgi of Ur,
and assign his chronology to the twenty first century BC. Similarly,
contemporary scholars date Gudea's rule circa 2144-2124 BC. Either Chinese
migrations would have had to come after this time - which is certainly plausible
in view of the lack of proven evidences of these forms of Chinese culture
before this date - or they would have had to come earlier under a prior ruler,
which is also possible. On the other hand, modern chronologies makes certain
elements of Terrien de Lacouperie's theory more plausible. For instance, Sargon
the Great's reign was attributed to the period of approximately 3900 BC by the
Sumerian King lists, which have since been shown to contain serious
chronological errors. Modern scholars accept a date in the 23rd century BC,
which would explain a persistent memory of these events closer in time and
place to the exodus of the putative Chinese ancestors.
Yet the uncertainty of
specific tribal identification does not allow Terrien de Lacouperie's overarching
hypothesis to be lightly dismissed in demonstrating compelling similarities
between Akkadian and Chinese language, culture, and technology.
A few of the borrowings of
China cited by Terrien de Lacouperie from Chaldea include:
The remains and loans of
Chaldean culture, which we can still now discover in the early Chinese
civilization, are so numerous and bear on so many points that we cannot without
difficulty summarize them with clearness...The ancient Chinese, through their
civilizers, had learned from Chaldea: the solar year; its duodenary division,
with the system of an intercalary month, its subdivision into twenty-four
parts, and into periods of five days; also the division of days into double
hours, and a certain use of a period of seven days. They preserved from their
early teachers the same fourfold division of the year into seasons; and they
hand not entirely forgotten the symbolism of the names of the twelve months.
Nor had they forgotten the allusions in the names of the planets and their
symbolical colours the special colours...
LaCouperie continues for many
pages citing and documenting various Chinese borrowings from their Chaldean
predecessors. ….
[End of quote]
China and the
Great Genesis Flood
According
to the emphatic statement by Fr. Hieromonk Damascene at the
top of this article:
“Chinese history began with a Flood”.
Based upon what Dr. John Osgood has written about the
watery traces of the Great Flood in the Iranian plateau (http://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age-part-2):
Prior to
the earliest appearances of man in the Iranian Plateau, there is strong
evidence of much residual water and of wet conditions, the sort of conditions
we would expect following the great Flood.32
‘Recent
geological research has shown that at the time when the greater part of Europe
was covered by glaciers, the Iranian Plateau was passing through a pluvial period,
during which even the high valleys were under water. The central part of the
plateau, today a great salt desert, was then an immense lake or inland sea into
which many rivers ran from the high mountains.’33
then - given also our association of the early Chinese
with the ‘Ubaid culture of Mesopotamia - it would make logical sense if “the
earliest appearances of man” in China, further east than Iran, had post-dated
the Great Flood.
Now, Fr. Hieromonk Damascene tells of
an early post-Flood account of the Chinese (op.
cit.):
3. Chinese Recorded History in Light of the Bible
Let us go back now and look at
the recorded history of China in light of what we’ve just been talking about,
that is, in light of the Biblical history of the world.
We’ve already mentioned the
oldest book of Chinese recorded history: the Shu Jing, or Book of
Documents. This book was written in about 1000 B.C. and was based on material
from the Shang Dynasty, which began in 1700 B.C. (1700 B.C., by the way, is 200
years before the time of Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis.) Even if we
assume that the original materials for the Shu Jing came from the beginning of
the Shang Dynasty in 1700 B.C., this means that at least 500 years would have
passed from the beginning of China to the first written record of its history.
Mackey’s comment: These
chronological estimates may need to be modified (presumably downwards) in the
light of further revision.
Back now to Fr. Damascene:
The flood story was the most
pervasive of all the other legends in ancient China. The Shu Jing
records: “The flood waters are everywhere, destroying everything as they rise
above the hills and swell up to heaven.”
Since the Shu Jing only
begins with Chinese history, however, this statement does not refer to the
global Flood, but rather to the local flooding that was caused in China by the
remnants of the Great Flood. The Shu Jing speaks of how, after the Great
Flood, some of the land was not yet habitable because the flood waters were
still inundating the land. This was certainly possible. The time between the
Flood and the founding of the first Chinese dynasty was as little as 143 years,
and we would expect that huge pockets of water would have been on the land at
that time, which are not there today.
….
These leftover Flood waters
made parts of the land uninhabitable. At that time, according to Chinese
history, there were the first righteous Chinese Emperors, Yao and Shun: the
first emperors to offer the Border Sacrifices to Shangdi. To a man named Kun
given the task of ridding the land of the flood waters, but he was not able to
do so. It was not until Kun’s son, Yu, devised a new technique to channel the
waters out to sea that the land was eventually made habitable.
It took nine years for Yu to
channel the waters out to sea. He became a hero because of this amazing feat.
As a result, Shun turned the rulership over to Yu. Yu became emperor, thus
beginning China’s first dynasty, the Xia. After that, China’s dynastic culture
lasted almost another four thousand years.
Fr. Damascene proceeds in the
next section to describe a possible Chinese version of the Noachic Flood, the
colourful story of Nu-kua:
4. Indications of Ancient Chinese Knowledge of the Creation and the Global Flood
So, now we have looked at Chinese
history in relation to the Bible. If we start with the most ancient record of
Chinese history, the Shu Jing, we find that the history of ancient China
matches very well with the history of mankind as recorded in the Bible. (The Shu
Jing, by the way, was the source of Chinese history used by Confucius,
considered by him to be the most authentic source of Chinese history.)
Since the Shu Jing begins with
specifically with Chinese history, however, it does not refer to Noah, or to
what occurred before the Great Flood. Is there anything in ancient Chinese
history that refers to the Great Flood or to what occurred before it? Yes,
there is, but unfortunately it was written much later than the Shu Jing,
and thus filled with legendary material. In the Huainan- tzu, written in the
2nd century B.C., we read the story of Nu- wa (also pronounced Nu- kua), whose
name sounds a lot like “Noah.” The story says that, in very ancient times, the
habitable world was split apart, waters inundated the earth without being
stopped, and fires flamed without being extinguished. “Therefore,” the text
reads, “Nu- kua fused together stones of the five colors with which to patch
together the azure heaven.” This is perhaps a distorted retelling of the Flood
story, over 2,000 years after it happened. The stones of Five Colors by which
Nukua patched the heavens may be a legendary retelling of the rainbow that Noah
saw in the sky after the Flood, which was to be a covenant between God and the
earth that God would never again destroy the earth by water. ….
[End of quote]
Part Three:
Babel and the
Dispersion
“From a Biblical viewpoint, as did all of humanity, the Chinese descended
from Adam, then Noah through the Tower of Babel incident. The amazing
"Table of Nations" in Genesis 10, which chronicles the language
groups and their destinations, mentions the "Sinite people" in verse
17, which probably became the Asian groups. The Asian people descended from
language groups migrating away from the Tower of Babel after God confounded
their languages. In all likelihood, the well-documented dynasties date to that
event, while the prior ones were faded memories of pre-Flood patriarchs,
preserved as legends”.
This is a quote from Dr. John Morris’s article, “How Can the Chinese Dynasties Extend Back Many Thousands
of Years?”:
He presumes, as is
common, that all humanity who survived the Flood was present at the Babel
incident. I have often discussed the Creationist tendency to ascribe a
universal meaning, such as “the whole world”, to the Hebrew phase (כָל-הָאָרֶץ) that we find, for instance,
in Genesis 1:11: “Now the whole world had one
language and a common speech”. The phrase can be used in the Pentateuch, for
instance, to indicate merely the region of Moab – that is hardly global!
Another common view, that the biblical Babel, “in the
land of Shinar” (Genesis 11:2-3), was located in ancient Sumer (southern
Mesopotamia), now also needs to be reconsidered.
I have explained this in, for instance:
Fr. Hieromonk Damascene, too, in “Ancient Chinese History in Light of the Book of Genesis”,
has taken it for granted that the original Chinese were present at Babel.
And well they may have
been, but that cannot, I think, be taken for granted.
He writes (and I do not
necessarily accept his dates):
Only 101 years after the
Flood, evil abounded again; and therefore, as the Bible tells us, “the earth
was divided.” This occurred at the Tower of Babel,
when God confounded the languages, and people began to be scattered about the
earth. The Tower of Babel incident occurred at about 2247 B. C. And it is soon
after this point that Chinese history begins.
The original people of China
were undoubtedly a group of people (of unknown number) who traveled to China
from Babel. It is probable that most of the people living in China today have
descended from this original group.
Many Christians who have
looked into this question have suggested that, in the Genesis “table of
nations” chronicling the language groups migrating from Babel, the “Sinite
people” (Genesis 10: 17) could refer to the group that became the Asian peoples.
Whether or not this is the
case, here is a very interesting fact to consider: According to the Chinese
records, the establishment of China’s first dynasty, the Hsia (Xia) dynasty,
occurred in 2205 B.C. Modern scholars ascribe a somewhat later date of between
2100 and 2000 B.C. Therefore, depending on which reckoning one accepts, the
establishment of China’s first dynasty occurred anywhere from 42 to 205 years
after the approximate date of the Tower of Babel incident. That was the time it
took for the protoChinese to migrate to China from present- day Iraq (the site
of the Tower of Babel) [sic] and already begin their dynastic civilization.
[End of quote]
Fr. Damascene, who next goes on
to refer to Dr. Morris on the subject of Babel, will proceed to attempt to
refute the evolutionary view of Chinese origins with the hominid, Sinanthropus:
Dr. John Morris points out
that many of the language groups migrating from Babel “took with them
technological knowledge which they put to use in their new homelands. History
documents the fact that several major cultures sprang into existence seemingly
from nowhere at about the same time— the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the
Phoenecians [sic], the Indians, as well as the Chinese— and each possessed a
curious mixture of truth and pagan thought, as would be expected from peoples
only briefly separated from Noah and his teachings as well as the star-
worshipping, pyramid- building heresy of Nimrod at Babel.”
5. About the Evolutionary Explanation of the Origin of the Chinese People
Now that we have gone this far
in our examination of Chinese history in the light of Genesis, a few questions
may remain. First of all, it may be objected that, according to secular scientists,
the first inhabitants of China were actually hominid ancestors of man. About
thirty years ago, it was generally believed by evolutionists that the hominid
ancestor of Chinese man was the Asian Homo erectus, otherwise known as “Peking
Man” or Sinanthropus (meaning China Man). Sinanthropus was
supposed to have lived from a million or two million years ago in China. Today,
however, some scientists disagree that this Sinanthropus is really an
evolutionary ancestor of today’s Chinese people. In fact, the whole field of
paleoanthropology is becoming more and more confused as time goes on. The
paleoanthropologists can’t agree on the evolutionary tree of man, and different
parties among them have heated fights over this question. Now it is generally
thought that there is not an evolutionary tree at all in relation to man, but
rather a confused “bush.”
If we look at the so- called
ancestors of man, we can see that, in some cases they are extinct apes, and in
some cases they are human beings. Sinanthropus, whose skulls have been found in
China, is a case in point. What is this Sinanthropus? Clearly, he is a human
being, probably one of the early settlers in China after the dispersion at
Babel. He did not live two million years ago, which is an inconceivable amount
of time. All over the world, recorded human history begins no earlier than
about 2,400 B.C., which is the approximate date of the Flood. The radiometric
dating methods that are used to get ages of a million or a billion years are
based on untestable and unprovable assumptions, as the scientists who believe
in them will admit themselves. (As an indication of hypothetical nature of
these methods, rocks known to have been formed in volcanic eruptions within the
last 200 years have yielded radiometric dates of up to 3.5 billion years.)
Many secular and even
evolutionist scientists today say that the distinction between Homo erectus and
Homo sapiens (human beings) is an artificial one: Homo erectus,
including Sinanthropus, is nothing else than a human being. This claim has been
made by paleoanthropologists both in the West and in China (such as Wu Xin Zhi
at the Institute of Paleoanthropology in Beijing).
Professor William S. Laughlin
(University of Connecticut), in studying the Eskimos and the Aleuts, noted many
similarities between these peoples and the Asian Homo erectus people,
specifically Sinanthropus (Peking Man). He concludes his study with a very
logical statement:
“When we find that significant
differences have developed, over a short time span, between closely related and
contiguous peoples, as in Alaska and Greenland, and when we consider the vast
differences that exist between remote groups such as Eskimos and Bushmen, who
are known to belong within the single species of Homo sapiens, it seems
justifiable to conclude that Sinanthropus belongs within this same diverse
species.”
[End of quote]
A Babel enthusiast, Gary Moyers,
apparently influenced by Fr. Damascene’s connections between Chinese religion
and early Genesis, “The Border Sacrifice”, has asked (also presuming that the
early Chinese were at Babel):
Is Chinese a Language of the Tower of Babel?
March 4, 2012 ….
I first heard of this possibility in the mid-90’s, as
the Internet was coming of age. I had always been fascinated with the story of
the Tower of Babel and wondered about the languages that came from the
incident. Could some of them survived? What new forms and derivations did they
take over the years? As I researched, I ran across the idea of Shangdi, the
Chinese creator God. The literal translation of Shangdi is “the heavenly
ruler.”
I am not a scholar and won’t pretend to
be. Still, I’d like to share some of the things that I’ve found and that are
easily discoverable all over the Internet. Shangdi
(sometimes interchangeable with Tian, or Heaven) was the single deity that the
Chinese emperor worshipped from as long as 4000 years ago. Documentation has
been discovered that shows the Chinese royalty offered sacrifices (called the
Border Sacrifice) to Shangdi once a year. This practice continued until as
recent as 1911.
The Border Sacrifice
As the emperor would begin the
sacrifice, costumed singers would lift their voices in song, reciting the
following lyrics (translated into a somewhat King James style):
“To Thee, O mysteriously-working Maker,
I look up in thought. . . . With the great ceremonies I reverently
honor Thee. Thy servant, I am but a reed or willow; my heart is but that of an
ant; yet have I received Thy favoring decree, appointing me to the government
of the empire. I deeply cherish a sense of my ignorance and blindness, and am
afraid, lest I prove unworthy of Thy great favors. Therefore will I observe all
the rules and statutes, striving, insignificant as I am, to discharge my loyal
duty. Far distant here, I look up to Thy heavenly palace. Come in Thy precious
chariot to the altar. Thy servant, I bow my head to the earth reverently,
expecting Thine abundant grace. . . . O that Thou wouldest vouchsafe
to accept our offerings, and regard us, while thus we worship Thee, whose
goodness is inexhaustible!”
As the emperor continued the ceremony,
he would recite the following words:
“Of old in the beginning, there was the
great chaos, without form and dark. The five elements [planets] had not begun
to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. You, O Spiritual Sovereign, first
divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made heaven. You made earth. You
made man. All things with their reproducing power got their being.”
All this sounds very biblical to me. The
emperor’s words very clearly echo verses from the first chapter of Genesis.
This, by itself, is fascinating and
could prove that the ancient Chinese were knowledgeable of God, El Shaddai, and
worshipped him. It doesn’t necessarily follow that Chinese is a language of
Babel. If you take a look at the structure of the Chinese pictography, a
different picture takes shape (excuse the pun).
Chinese as a Written Language
The written Chinese language is based on
a series of representational pictures. Each picture has a certain meaning. When
you combine two pictures, they take on a new meaning. For instance, if you drew
a picture of a hand and a picture of a spear, you could assume the combination
of the two would mean hunting. This is the essence of the Chinese written
language, which is generally agreed to be somewhere between 4000 to 4500 years
old.
Looking at the Chinese language itself,
you can clearly see that not only were they aware of the biblical story of
creation and the flood, they also had a grasp of sin, salvation and redemption.
All of this is pictured in the written Chinese language and it is still in use
today!
For instance, the Chinese symbol for the
word garden, as seen here, is a combination of the symbols for dust, breath, two people and
enclosure. The simple word “garden” is a beautiful picture of the formation of
man, the breath of God which gives life, and the placement of Adam and Eve into
the garden of Eden.
Likewise, the symbol for “to create”, as seen here, is a combination of speak, dust (or mud), life and walk. Again, it is
the imagery of God speaking life in to the dust and man arises to walk.
The symbol for forbidden, or “to warn”, as seen here, is a combination of two trees and the abbreviated form of God.
As the story progresses, the symbol for covet, or desire, as seen here, is a combination of two trees and women. And the imagery behind the
word tempter is amazing. Take a look.
Here’s a fun one. moving forward in time
a bit to the flood of Genesis, the word boat,
as seen here, is comprised of three symbols: vessel, eight and people (count them –
Noah, his wife, three sons and three wives).
And one of my favorites… Righteousness. It’s the
combination of me and sheep. What a wonderful foreshadowing of the coming of
our salvation through Jesus Christ.
So, is Chinese a language of Babel? You
tell me. It’s old enough. Its earliest speakers conducted rituals that mirror
the Bible. Its written form tells the story of creation and the flood. It seems
a likely candidate to me.
Should a Chinese person tell you that
Christianity is a foreigner’s religion, you can reply that quite likely the
Chinese in antiquity worshipped the same God as Christians do today. Pretty
cool, huh?
[End of quote]
Fr. Damascene even goes so far as to
suggest that the famous Chinese Dragons arose from dinosaurs that still existed
after the Flood.
Whilst I would accept that dinosaurs may
still, then, have roamed parts of the “earth” (the word here taken in a more
global sense) - since my model of the Flood, while being vaster than very local
(e.g. confined just to Mesopotamia), is not global - I find quite ridiculous
the notion of certain Creationists (also held by Fr. Damascene) that Noah took
on board the Ark dinosaurs, even baby ones. Fr. Damascene now gives his view
on:
6. Chinese Dragons
Another question arises: If,
as we believe from the Biblical account, the earth is only several thousands
and not billions of years old, and if Adam lived only two or three thousand
years before the first Chinese dynasty, then how do we account for the
dinosaurs, which supposedly became extinct seventy million years before the
first man appeared on earth?
This is a very fascinating
subject to discuss, especially in relation to China. What about dinosaurs? Were
there dinosaurs in China? The Censer Dragons, of course, are depicted
everywhere in Chinese culture. But these are only legendary creatures, some
will say. No, not at all. Later depictions of dragons, to be sure, contained
fanciful elements, because they were drawn by people who did not see dragons
themselves but had only heard about them from others or from historical
sources. But dragons did live contemporaneously with humans in the history of
ancient China. Dragons are written about in ancient Chinese annals, and not as
imaginary creatures, but as real live animals. It is known from Chinese history
that certain parts and fluids of dragons were used for medicines. And one
historical account even mentions a Chinese family that bred dragons to be used
to pull the Royal Chariot during Imperial processions!
What the ancient Chinese wrote
about dragons fits in with what ancient people all over the world had to say
about them. In all the ancient cultures of the world, people wrote about seeing
dragons or killing dragons. They painted pictures of them or, in the case of
some Central American cultures, made statues of them. Many of the historical
descriptions and depictions of dragons match precisely with the physical
features of known dinosaurs such as Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were
not called dinosaurs then, because the word “dinosaur” was not invented until
1841 (by the way, it was invented by a Christian scientist who believed the
Biblical account of origins).
When the army of Alexander the
Great (356- 323 B.C.) went through India, they went to see a dragon living in a
cave, which the Indians worshiped as a god, bringing it sacrificial food. This
is only one of many historical accounts of dragons from places in the world
other than China. One of the Holy Fathers of the Church, St. John Damascene (A.
D. 674- 750), wrote of dragons as actual creatures that still existed in his
time in small numbers. When people with an evolutionary frame of mind read of
such things, they automatically think of them as legends. But it is very hard
to explain why peoples from all over the world have spoken of dragons as real,
living creatures. From these accounts from all over the world, we know that
some dinosaurs went onto the Ark with Noah (probably as babies) [sic]. There is
much evidence that, after the Flood, the climate and conditions of the earth
became harsher; and thus the dinosaurs had a more difficult time surviving
(hence Alexander the Great’s army saw one living in a cave). They did spread
all over the earth, since people from China to South America tell of seeing
them. But they were much more rare than other creatures, and they eventually
died out due to the new conditions of earth and also, undoubtedly, to the fact
that people killed them because they saw them as a threat.
To
the ancient Chinese, dinosaurs or dragons were a symbol of power. It was
natural that they would be fascinated with them and make them such a frequent
subject of their art, because of all the land creatures that ever lived, what
was greater and more powerful than a dinosaur?
Fr.
Damascene is wrong, though, I believe, to associate the “Behemoth” in the Book
of Job with a species of dinosaur:
In
the book of Job, chapter 40, God calls Job’s attention to his greatness by
reminding him that He created the great and powerful creatures of the earth.
And the land creature that God mentions is the behemoth, which has a tail like
a cedar tree. The Biblical description of the behemoth matches no other
creature than a sauropod dinosaur.
For, as
I pointed out in:
based on
the Rev. Knight’s Nile and the Jordan, Behemoth
is from the Egyptian p-ehe-mau, undoubtedly indicating the Hippopotamus:
Behemoth and Leviathan
Now all
these creatures thus far mentioned, while having a habitat in Egypt, had
nevertheless a range in other countries, and therefore, as I have stated,
little stress perhaps can be laid on their insertion here to prove an Egyptian
origin to the book, except that no animal is mentioned which did not reside in
the Nile Valley. But the book closes with an elaborate description of two
animals, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, which are acknowledged by all to
be Egyptian, and as to whose African habitat there can be no question.
Behemoth [Job 40:15-24] undoubtedly
refers to the hippopotamus. The very name is seemingly Egyptian – p-ehe-mau,
“ox of the water” …. All the description here of its habits suits the Nile.
He lieth under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed, and the fen: the
lotus trees cover him with their shadow: the willows of the brook compass him
about [Job 40:21, 22]. The allusion to the lotus, the favourite, beloved,
and sacrosanct plant of the Egyptians, is peculiarly Nilotic …. A reference to
the annual inundation of the Delta is seen in If the river overflow, he
trembleth not; he is confident though a Jordan swell even to his mouth, that
is, even if a steam as impetuous as the Jordan were to overtake him. The
hippopotamus is of course unknown in the Jordan itself. In the Chapel of Senbi
I … a nomarch of the time of Amenemhat [Amenemes] I (XIIth Dynasty), there is
shown a fine group of hippopotami, who bellow and display their gleaming white
tusks at the intruding sportsman as he skims over the water in his frail canoe.
As the hippopotamus is an animal entirely confined to Africa, it is difficult
to see how a dweller in Central Arabia, or in Babylonia (localities which have
been advocated as the scene of the authorship of the book) could have given
such an accurate and full description of its characteristics as we find here.
But all is natural if the author was acquainted with the Nile Valley.
By the leviathan
of the 41st chapter the crocodile is unquestionably meant:
and in the 34 verses devoted to the description of this vast saurian we have
the testimony of an eye-witness who had often observed the habits of the animal
in the Nile …. It is true that crocodiles are to be found elsewhere, particularly
in the so-called Crocodile River in Palestine. Both Strabo and Pliny give this
name to the small Zerka River which falls into the Mediterranean a little south
of Caesarea. A 13th century tract states that crocodiles were
introduced here from Egypt by a rich man of Caesarea, in order that his brother
might be devoured by them …. But it has also been asserted … that an Egyptian
colony transported crocodiles to the spot about B.C. 400 for purposes of
worship …. During the succeeding centuries a few survivals have been seen, but
only on the rarest occasions …. The extreme rarity of the animal in Palestine,
imported in a probability from Egypt, could never have allowed its habits to be
so well known to the residents in Canaan that the author of Job could have
spoken of them as he did. It is in Egypt, where the crocodile was so thoroughly
at home that one of the border lakes (on the line of the present Suez Canal)
was actually called Lake Timsah, the “Crocodile Lake”, and where the city of
Crocodilopolis in the Fayum was wholly given over to the worship of this
creature, that we must look for the habitat of this huge saurian.
The whole
details of the habits of the crocodile are so brilliantly depicted that we feel
instinctively that the author was describing the animal from first-hand
knowledge. He was acquainted with the fact that Egyptian conjurers were
accustomed to play with the crocodile with immunity from danger by arts which
were kept secret from the uninitiated: Wilt thou play with him as with a
bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens [Job 41:5] When he says, His
eyes are like the eyelids of the morning [Job 41:18], he is reminding us
that the Egyptians employed the eye of the crocodile to denote the rising sun,
inasmuch as it is the streaming red eyes of the amphibian which first become
visible when the creature rises out of the water ….
But the
most recent theory about the hippopotamus and the crocodile in these chapters
is one which at least is deserving of very careful discussion. Briefly it is,
that the description of these vast creatures refers not to the actual animals,
but to mythological animals which they embody. Professor Cobern says … “Modern
archaeology has proved that, in the time of Job, the crocodile and hippopotamus
were, in contemporary religious literature, constantly associated with the
thought of a future world. These animals are mentioned hundreds of times in the
religious texts of Egypt, and in no single instance, I think, are they
mentioned because of their zoological importance, but always because of their
demonic character. At least six chapters of the Book of the Dead are
given up to magic texts which shall protect the deceased from the dreaded
crocodile, as he fights his way trough the underworld. In many other chapters,
the crocodile, and the hippopotamus his closest ally, are referred to when
incantations are used against the foes of Osiris, and this is equally true in
other ancient sacred books of the Egyptians”. ….
[End of quote]
Finally, Dr. D. Livingston
tells, in “The Flood and Subsequent
Civilization”, http://davelivingston.com/postfloodciv.htm
of a theory connecting the early Chinese with the mysterious Olmecs of
Mexico:
….
Tale of Two Cultures: Ancient Chinese Dynasty Linked to New World's Earliest Civilization
Abroad for the first time in
his life, Han Ping Chen, a scholar of ancient Chinese, landed at Dulles
International Airport near Washington, D.C., the night of September 18, 1996.
The next morning, he paced in front of the National Gallery of Art, waiting for
the museum to open so he could visit an Olmec exhibit -- works from
Mesoamerica's spectacular "mother culture" that emerged suddenly with
no apparent antecedents, 3,200 years ago. After a glance at a 10 ton basalt
sculpture of a head, Chen faced the object that prompted his trip: an Olmec
sculpture found in La Venta, 10 miles south of the southernmost cove of the
Gulf of Mexico.
What the Chinese scholar saw
was 15 male figures made of serpentine or jade, each about 6 inches tall.
Facing them were a taller sandstone figure and six upright, polished, jade
blades called celts. The celts bore incised markings, some of them faded.
Proceeding from right to left, Chen scrutinized the markings silently,
grimacing when he was unable to make out more than a few squiggles on the
second and third celts. But the lower half of the fourth blade made him jump.
"I can read this easily," he shouted. "Clearly, these are
Chinese characters." ….
