The Jingjiao Documents ( Chinese: 景教經典; pinyin: Jǐngjiào jīngdiǎn; also known as the Nestorian Documents or the Jesus Sutras) are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia, and the 8th-century monk Adam. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen's arrival in China, and around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed.
By 2011, four of the manuscripts were known to be in a private collection in Japan, while one was in Paris. Their language and content reflect varying levels of interaction with Chinese culture, including use of Buddhist and Taoist terminology. [1]
There is no agreed upon name for the collection of texts as a whole. The Japanese scholar P. Y. Saeki described them as the "Nestorian Documents," [2] which has continued to be used. [3] More recent scholars have moved away from the language of "Nestorian" and simply use the Chinese term, describing them as "Jingjiao Documents." [4]
Sinologist Martin Palmer has attempted to describe these collectively as sutras to connect the documents to Buddhism, given their tendency to use Buddhist terminology. But this is partly related to the names of a subset of the Jingjiao texts which bear the character jing ( 經). While it is often used to translate into Chinese the Buddhist idea of a sutra, Palmer explains that the character actually means "sacred literature." [5] The character is also used to speak about "classical texts," such as the Confucian Four Books and Five Classics ( 四書 五經), and in the modern rendering for the Bible, Shengjing ( 聖經). [6] Many of the Jingjiao texts do not use jing but lun ( 論), which carries a different meaning of "discourse" or "treatise."
The following list gives some approximate English titles for the various writings and an indication of the present location of the manuscript where known. Scholars are still debating the best translation for many of the terms. [1]
The Xi'an Stele was erected in 781 to commemorate the propagation of the Da Qin Luminous Religion (" Da Qin" is the Chinese term for the Roman Empire), and covers the preceding 150 years of Christianity in China.
Palmer recently claimed, on the basis of research conducted by scholars in the 1930s, that the Daqin Pagoda near Lou Guan Tai was part of a Da Qin monastery.[ citation needed] Lou Guan Tai was the traditional site of Lao Tze's composition of the Tao Te Ching. Buried during a time of religious persecution in the 9th century, the stele was re-discovered in 1625 and is now on display in nearby Xi'an, the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty.
The Jingjiao Documents ( Chinese: 景教經典; pinyin: Jǐngjiào jīngdiǎn; also known as the Nestorian Documents or the Jesus Sutras) are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia, and the 8th-century monk Adam. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen's arrival in China, and around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed.
By 2011, four of the manuscripts were known to be in a private collection in Japan, while one was in Paris. Their language and content reflect varying levels of interaction with Chinese culture, including use of Buddhist and Taoist terminology. [1]
There is no agreed upon name for the collection of texts as a whole. The Japanese scholar P. Y. Saeki described them as the "Nestorian Documents," [2] which has continued to be used. [3] More recent scholars have moved away from the language of "Nestorian" and simply use the Chinese term, describing them as "Jingjiao Documents." [4]
Sinologist Martin Palmer has attempted to describe these collectively as sutras to connect the documents to Buddhism, given their tendency to use Buddhist terminology. But this is partly related to the names of a subset of the Jingjiao texts which bear the character jing ( 經). While it is often used to translate into Chinese the Buddhist idea of a sutra, Palmer explains that the character actually means "sacred literature." [5] The character is also used to speak about "classical texts," such as the Confucian Four Books and Five Classics ( 四書 五經), and in the modern rendering for the Bible, Shengjing ( 聖經). [6] Many of the Jingjiao texts do not use jing but lun ( 論), which carries a different meaning of "discourse" or "treatise."
The following list gives some approximate English titles for the various writings and an indication of the present location of the manuscript where known. Scholars are still debating the best translation for many of the terms. [1]
The Xi'an Stele was erected in 781 to commemorate the propagation of the Da Qin Luminous Religion (" Da Qin" is the Chinese term for the Roman Empire), and covers the preceding 150 years of Christianity in China.
Palmer recently claimed, on the basis of research conducted by scholars in the 1930s, that the Daqin Pagoda near Lou Guan Tai was part of a Da Qin monastery.[ citation needed] Lou Guan Tai was the traditional site of Lao Tze's composition of the Tao Te Ching. Buried during a time of religious persecution in the 9th century, the stele was re-discovered in 1625 and is now on display in nearby Xi'an, the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty.