From “Here” to Persia: The Place of Authorship of Yishen Lun (Discourse on God)

What is it about?

The conventional view of the Chinese Christian manuscript Yishen lun (Discourse on God) is that it was composed in the early seventh century in Chang’an, at the invitation of the Tang emperor, by the Christian missionary Aluoben. We have shown that this view, though widely disseminated in scholarship for almost a century, is poorly substantiated and does not match up with internal features of the text. We have shown that the internal information of the text strongly hints at the Western Region (Xiyu), and in particular its eastern Gaochang-Turfan area, as the place of authorship.

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Photo by Steve Long on Unsplash

Photo by Steve Long on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In scholarship, it has long been held that Aluoben’s mission to China in 635 CE marks the beginning of Chinese Christianity, a history and profile (Jingjiao) revealed not only by the “Nestorian Monument” discovered in 1625 but also by a few Chinese manuscripts that emerged in the beginning of twentieth century. Central to these manuscripts is Yishen lun, as it is the longest (taking up almost half of the total word count) and most theologically profound. By arguing that Yishen lun was not written in Chang’an, this article in effect takes it out of the Jingjiao tradition and corpus, and by demonstrating that it was instead written in the Turfan area, it associates it with Turfan Christianity which is endowed with its own archaeological sites and text fragments. It would reopen the question of how and where a Christian tradition using Chinese began, and if Yishen lun serves as a guide, it began not with Aluoben’s mission but a community in the Western Region of China prior to the seventh century.