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Stones indicate earlier Christian link?
By Wang Shanshan (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-22 06:34
One day in a spring, an elderly man walked alone on a stone road lined by
young willows in Xuzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province. At the end of the road
was a museum that few people have heard of.
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A Chinese theology
professor says the first Christmas is depicted in the stone relief from
the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). In the picture above a woman and a
man are sitting around what looks like a manger, with allegedly "the three
wise men" approaching from the left side, holding gifts, "the shepherd"
following them, and "the assassins" queued up, kneeling, on the
right.
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As he wandered into the dimly-lit gallery, he was stunned by what he saw. Was
he standing, he asked himself, in front of the famous Gates of Paradise in
Florence?
Wang Weifan, a 78-year-old scholar of early Christian history in China, said
he saw images from Bible stories similar to those engraved in the doors of the
Baptistry of St John. But in Florence he didn't.
Even so, the art objects could be more precious in their own way if the early
Christian clues that Wang believes he detected can ever be confirmed. They are
from the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220), China's parallel to the Roman Empire,
and almost a millennium older than the gilt-bronze gates of Florence.
"There was Christmas. There was Genesis. There was Paradise Lost. They were
on display, one by one, on 10 stone bas-reliefs excavated from an aristocrat's
tomb in the Han Dynasty," said Wang, a professor of theology at the Jinling
Theological Seminary in Nanjing, as he told his story to China Daily.
Before Wang's discovery tour to the Han Dynasty Stone Relief Museum in 2002,
no one seriously believed that, merely 100 or so years after the crucifixion of
Jesus Christ, his teachings could have reached as far as to China.
There were myths. There was legend. But hardly any evidence.
But now Wang says the early Christian connection with China no longer seems
entirely groundless. "It really happened," he said.
The reliefs were carved on the stone tablets from two tombs, discovered in
1995 at a place called Jiunudun, or "Terrace of Nine Women," in suburban Xuzhou.
Many stone reliefs were found when tombs at the site were first excavated in
1954.
Art historians have long believed that the stone carvings portray the tomb
owners in their life after death in ancient China. The styles and the themes
were simliar to those found in Shandong Province.
But Wang has a different interpretation.
"The Bible stories were told on the stones in a kind of time sequence," he
said.
One of the reliefs showed the sun, the moon, living creatures in the seas,
birds of heaven, wild animals and reptiles - images that Wang linked to the
Creation story in Genesis.
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