From Library Journal
Palmer's work in recovering the history of Christianity in China, Tibet, and Central Asia reads like an Indiana Jones-style travel adventure, in which the author journeys to faraway lands and escapes countless dangers to recover priceless antiquities. Long before Marco Polo's travels, the Christian faith had spread from the Middle East along the Silk Route all the way to the Pacific. Merchants and diplomats carried it there before the seventh century, and it flourished until at least the 12th. This Christianity, moreover, had adapted to animist, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist worldviews and influenced their evolution in turn. Owing to political repression in China and Tibet and the rise of Islam elsewhere in Asia, this brand of Christianity eventually died out. To track its history, Palmer who directs the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture and has published translations of the Tao Te Ching and other Chinese texts here presents an engaging fusion of scholarly treatise, travelog, and autobiography that will attract both casual readers and scholars. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Five hundred years before Marco Polo's tales of China popularized it among Christians, Christian missionaries lived, worked, and converted souls there. The remarkable interaction between seventh- and eighth-century orthodox Christian missionaries and their largely Taoist neighbors is the subject of this fascinating study of religious pluralism and synchronicity. Noted scholar and activist Palmer details the re-discovery of the Christian monastery at Da Qin, which tilts precipitously, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He then examines the history of the Christian presence in China, which began in 635 CE, and the writings its communities left behind. Careful, well-wrought translations of those writings--the Jesus Sutras or, perhaps, Taoist Gospels--are presented chronologically, which allows readers to appreciate that the Sutras become less and less Christian, creating an extraordinary union of Taoism and Christianity. If the story behind the sutras reads like a novel, they themselves are sometimes baffling. Palmer obviously thinks highly of the worldview proffered by this Taoist Christianity, and others interested in interreligious dialogue may, too. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"The Jesus Sutras tells a valuable history of the beautiful teachings of a faith built on living practices of brotherhood and peace. The Sutras show us the interbeing nature of Jesus, Buddha, Tao, peoples, cultures, transformation, salvation and unity through deep and mindful living."
--THICH NHAT HANH
Author of Living Buddha, Living Christ
"The Jesus Sutras is a spellbinding story of the rediscovery of the earliest traces of Christianity in China and an imaginative reconstruction of the subsequent development of this alien faith from the Far West in the Middle Kingdom. Martin Palmer's infectious enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout and enables him to illuminate numerous facets of the Religion of Light that were hitherto unknown to modern scholars. The result is not only the moving account of the author's personal quest to comprehend a phenomenally important but strangely mysterious stele inscription, it is also one of the most fascinating chapters ever written in the history of world religions."
--VICTOR H. MAIR
Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Translator of Tao Te Ching and Wandering on the Way
"In offering a tantalizing glimpse of a distant past when Christian, Taoist, and Buddhist ideas achieved a brilliant fusion in China, The Jesus Sutras inspire hope for a future in which celebration of diversity may one day triumph over the sterile certainties of exclusivism."
--STEPHEN BATCHELOR
Author of Buddhism Without Beliefs
"The Jesus Sutras vividly brings to life the partnership teachings of Jesus and their application in a surprising setting. Palmer's account of Chinese communities that honored both women and men and lived equitably and nonviolently is a fascinating story and a stunning contribution to religious history."
--RIANE EISLER
Author of The Chalice and The Blade,
Sacred Pleasure, and Tomorrow's Children
"Martin Palmer has written a book in the great tradition of English scholars and explorers. He has put together the evidence of the presence of early Christianity, in the first millennium, in China. He has reread and retranslated the Jesus Sutras to present a view of Christianity that was independent of the accepted definitions in the West. He has found in this Christianity, in ancient China, a liberating and healing expression for the whole of the human spirit. Men and women of all the faith traditions will be moved by this book."
--ARTHUR HERTZBERG
Bronfman Visiting Professor of the Humanities
New York University
From the Inside Flap
lorers discovered a vast treasure trove of ancient scrolls, silk paintings, and artifacts dating from the 5th to 11th centuries A.D. in a long-sealed cave in a remote region of China. Among them, written in Chinese, were scrolls that recounted a history of Jesus' life and teachings in beautiful Taoist concepts and imagery that were unknown in the West. These writings told a story of Christianity that was by turns unique and disturbing, hopeful and uplifting. The best way to describe them is collectively, with a term they themselves use: The Jesus Sutras.
The origins of Christianity seem rooted in Western civilization, but amazingly, an ancient, largely unknown branch of Christian belief evolved in the East. Eminent theologian and Chinese scholar Martin Palmer provides the first popular history and translation of the sect's long-lost scriptures--all of them more than a thousand years old and comparable in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Gathered, deciphered, and
From the Back Cover
"The Jesus Sutras tells a valuable history of the beautiful teachings of a faith built on living practices of brotherhood and peace. The Sutras show us the interbeing nature of Jesus, Buddha, Tao, peoples, cultures, transformation, salvation and unity through deep and mindful living."
--THICH NHAT HANH
Author of Living Buddha, Living Christ
"The Jesus Sutras is a spellbinding story of the rediscovery of the earliest traces of Christianity in China and an imaginative reconstruction of the subsequent development of this alien faith from the Far West in the Middle Kingdom. Martin Palmer's infectious enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout and enables him to illuminate numerous facets of the Religion of Light that were hitherto unknown to modern scholars. The result is not only the moving account of the author's personal quest to comprehend a phenomenally important but strangely mysterious stele inscription, it is also one of the most fascinating chapters ever written in the history of world religions."
--VICTOR H. MAIR
Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Translator of Tao Te Ching and Wandering on the Way
"In offering a tantalizing glimpse of a distant past when Christian, Taoist, and Buddhist ideas achieved a brilliant fusion in China, The Jesus Sutras inspire hope for a future in which celebration of diversity may one day triumph over the sterile certainties of exclusivism."
--STEPHEN BATCHELOR
Author of Buddhism Without Beliefs
"The Jesus Sutras vividly brings to life the partnership teachings of Jesus and their application in a surprising setting. Palmer's account of Chinese communities that honored both women and men and lived equitably and nonviolently is a fascinating story and a stunning contribution to religious history."
--RIANE EISLER
Author of The Chalice and The Blade,
Sacred Pleasure, and Tomorrow's Children
"Martin Palmer has written a book in the great tradition of English scholars and explorers. He has put together the evidence of the presence of early Christianity, in the first millennium, in China. He has reread and retranslated the Jesus Sutras to present a view of Christianity that was independent of the accepted definitions in the West. He has found in this Christianity, in ancient China, a liberating and healing expression for the whole of the human spirit. Men and women of all the faith traditions will be moved by this book."
--ARTHUR HERTZBERG
Bronfman Visiting Professor of the Humanities
New York University
About the Author
Martin Palmer is the director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture (ICOREC), which specializes in religious, environmental, educational, and developmental projects and works with a variety of international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, UNESCO, and the World Bank. He is the author of many books on religious topics and one of the foremost translators of ancient Chinese texts, having published translations of the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Chuang Tzu, and Kuan Yin. A regular broadcaster on BBC TV and radio, Palmer records for them on his frequent visits to China. A leading expert on Taoist ritual, Palmer studied theology at Cambridge, with a special emphasis on Chinese and Japanese studies.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Lost Monastery Dust rose in clouds around us as our minibus sped along the country roads of central China in the summer of 1998. Through the windows we could see rural life flashing past: horse-drawn carts, old men on bicycles, young girls walking arm in arm. Earlier that morning we had left far behind us the modern city of Xian, which stands on the site of the greatest of ancient Chinese cities, Chang-an. Some twenty-five miles to the southeast, the great eternal army of the first Emperor of China, Shih Huang Ti, was disinterred. Thousands of slightly larger than life-size terra-cotta warriors and wooden horses there guard the tomb of the Qin Dynasty founder. Enormous tombs surround Xian, however, so even as we traveled the road southwest we passed signs of the ancient city’s former glory: temples, gateways, city walls, and huge mounds that cover many acres dedicated to long-gone emperors.
Within an hour we were deep in the countryside. We rumbled our way over a long bridge spanning one of the mighty rivers that flows down from the mountains south of Xian. In the riverbed, truckers loaded boulders flushed down by the winter storms. Now, in the heat of summer, the river flowed shallowly through the ravine carved by its full force over millennia.
On we went through small towns whose main roads doubled as a marketplace and displayed all the confusion and variety of contemporary China, from Mao jackets to fake Gucci bags. Decrepit buses belching fumes roared straight at us in the continual game of chicken that constitutes driving in China, passing at the last possible moment with but a hairbreadth to spare.
Smog made it difficult to see beyond the small towns and villages through which we sped. The haze of heat and pollution from countless fires and the fumes of trucks and buses create a dense miasma that blankets the countryside up to thirty miles away from Xian. Tall trees planted along the roadside further block the traveler’s view.
Thus it was that the Qingling Mountains and the Pass to the West, the traditional route out of China to the mysterious West, came on us suddenly. The towering walls of the mountains, rising like some vast curtain sealing us from the rest of the world, appeared and disappeared, only to appear again through the dust, smog, and clouds. As we drew nearer, the mountains solidified into a range that rose dramatically from the flat plains. It was now clear why the Pass to the West was so fabled and important. Without it, the mountains would have been impenetrable.
Had you asked my friends, as we headed out of Xian toward the Pass to the West, how they thought the day would progress, you would have had an almost unanimous response: it was mad but fun, so they had come along for the ride. We were a motley group: Zhao Xiao Min, head of my group’s China office, a historian and classical Chinese scholar; Tjalling Halbertsma, a Dutch anthropologist who works with me in China and Mongolia; Jay Ramsay, poet and thinker with whom I have worked on translations of ancient Chinese books such as the I Ching and Taoist classics; Val de Monceau, a feng shui specialist; and Jane Routh, photographer.
We were in China primarily to help preserve the sacred mountains of China. My research for the Jesus Sutras, however, had convinced me that it was just possible that in a mountain range (not one of the sacred mountains!) south of Xian, near the Pass to the West, the remains of a once major Christian monastery might have survived fourteen hundred years of wars, uprisings, dynasties, empires, and earthquakes.
The particular bit of research that had led me to this remote area was an old book on the early Church in China, published in English in 1937 by a Japanese professor, Saeki. In it, Saeki reproduced a small, mysterious map he had somehow acquired. The map marked the site of a pagoda, or tower, identified as the Da Qin monastery, all that remained of a much larger structure that could be as much as fourteen hundred years old. 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.
I contend that this map was almost certainly drawn by Japanese spies who had visited the area in the late 1920s or early 1930s to determine what Chinese military installations in the region could mount resistance to the planned Japanese invasion of 1936. At that time, it was common for such spies to pretend to be archaeologists, geologists, or botanists, so their notice of an ancient pagoda on the terrain they were mapping would have been in keeping with their disguise.
Professor Saeki noted that Da Qin means, and would have been an old Chinese way of saying, “the West” or “the Roman Empire” or “Christian” monastery. Sadly, Saeki never had the opportunity to visit the site, although he provided directions to it along with the map.
Unfortunately for me, the map was very obscure. It indicated only temples in the region and gave no indication of where they or the Da Qin monastery might be in relationship to towns and cities. In addition, the directions to the location that Saeki gives in the book are strangely misleading and virtually useless for someone who wants to find it. Despite much research, I could find no record of any visit after that of the Chinese to help clarify how to get there. Frustratingly, the pagoda at Da Qin, after one thousand years, had slipped back into the obscurity from which it had briefly and peculiarly emerged, leaving not much more than a trace.
It was only by the most extraordinary of circumstances that I discovered the true location of the site. This coincidence still makes me shiver with the strangeness of it. Since I had first come across the professor’s book, I would repeatedly and frequently peer at the sketchy map to try to work out where Da Qin might be. Finally, in 1997, seventeen years after I had found the map, I got out a huge magnifying glass, put the map under a strong light, and seriously turned my attention to the different names written in tiny Chinese characters that indicated the other temples. Suddenly the name Lou Guan Tai leapt out at me and I realized I knew exactly where the pagoda was. Not only that, but I had actually been there just a few months earlier while recording a four-part series for Radio 4 (the equivalent of National Public Radio in the United States) on the history of China! I had been within a mile or so and had had no idea it had any relationship to the site of the elusive Da Qin pagoda and the Taoist Christians!
Fourteen hundred years ago, Lou Guan Tai had been the most famous Taoist center in China. Today, very few Chinese even know of its existence and not a single Western travel guide to China of which I know mentions it. From working on a translation of the classic Taoist book, the Tao Te Ching—The Book of the Way and Its Power, as it is sometimes translated—and researching the origins of this great teaching, however, I had learned the legend of Lou Guan Tai. There, in the mid–sixth century b.c., the great sage Lao Zi is said to have written the classic Tao Te Ching. Traditionally, Lao Zi is thought to have been an adviser at the emperor’s Court. Famous throughout the country for his wisdom, he eventually grew tired of the corruption he saw at Court. Believing that all China had become as degraded as the Court, he decided to leave.
The story goes that a watchman, told by the gods to be vigilant for a sage leaving China, built a lookout tower at the Pass to the West. One day he saw a sage riding upon an ox and rushed from his tower to invite him to stay the night. Recognizing that his guest possessed great wisdom that would be lost when he left the country through the Pass, the watchman pressed Lao Zi to write down his philosophy of life. The next morning, legend says, having stayed up all night writing, Lao Zi shook the dust of the kingdom from his feet and departed for the West, never to be seen again. But his book, which became known as the Tao Te Ching, survived and is the foundation of Taoism.
For centuries, the site where Lao Zi was supposed to have written his book remained obscure. Then, in the seventh century a.d., a new dynasty, the Tang, arose. The founder of the dynasty was a peasant who found it necessary to claim that he was from an ancient family of nobles. Specifically, he claimed to be a descendant of Lao Zi, and so he elevated Taoism, the only indigenous faith of China, to most favored religion. Huge sums were poured into building shrines, temples, and complexes to honor and practice Taoism. Chief among these chosen places was the little temple at Lou Guan Tai. By the a.d. 630s the site had been declared the Imperial Ancestral Temple and had grown so vast that it covered hills and valleys with dozens if not scores of temples and shrines. Today, though much is in ruins, Lou Guan Tai still dominates the landscape, its grandeur and majesty still very much apparent.
Thus it was that my friends and I were heading resolutely toward Lou Guan Tai that day, toward the nearest recognizable landmark to the purported Christian monastery. Knowing of my deep fascination with any hint of early Christianity in China, they were happy to indulge my latest pursuit of what I am sure they were convinced would be a dead end. As they kindly pointed out to me, since the 1933 visit of Chinese scholars to Da Qin, the Japanese had invaded China, World War II had occurred, and civil war between the communists and nationalists had raged over the area. In 1949, communism had become the only political force in China and the Party had declared war on all that was old, religious, or feudal. The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 had destroyed probably three-quarters of all religious sites and virtually all religious statues and artifacts in China. There was little chance that even the ruins for which we were searching could have survived. Furthermore, despite initial inquiries on my behalf by my Chinese colleagues in Xian, we had no evi...
