Product Description

In 1907 in China, explorers discovered ancient scrolls dating from the 5th to 11th centuries, recounting a history of Jesus' life and teachings in Taoist concepts unknown in the West. This book provides a popular history and translation of these texts. It recounts the story of the first Christian missions to China and explains how the Church of the East blended Eastern and Western spiritual principles, and how Jesus became a Buddha Christ. The contents of each of the sutras are detailed and Martin Palmer also tells the story of the Taoist Christians and their teachings as well as his own rediscovery of one of the earliest Taoist Christian monasteries, an intact 8th-century pagoda, and its amazing statues and artefacts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #658687 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

A good story and a challenge to our ideas about Christianity
This book suits the general reader with no background knowledge. It also has notes and references to other books to suit the specialist. It tells a good story of the arrival of Christianity in China in AD 635, about the same time as Augustine arrived bringing Christianity to England. It gives new translations of the early religious writings (Sutras) of Chinese Christianity, written when in England the venerable Bede was at work. The Sutras have been known since the 1920s but Martin Palmer and his team of translators connect them with recent archaeological discoveries to make for the first time a coherent story.

Why is this book of interest to us at the other end of the world in Britain? The Jesus Sutras shows how the first Christian teachings in China expressed the original ideas in the life of Jesus through the culture of China such as Buddhism and Taoism. Archaeological discoveries show Christian symbols fused with eastern dragons and lotus flowers. The theology presents Jesus as a way to freedom from the inevitable round of reincarnation and suffering which dominated that society. This Christianity is vegetarian, anti-slavery and killing in any way, gives equality to male and female and tells people that they are basically good. And it lives contended alongside other faiths.

Compare this with the Christianity of the same time in England. The original ideas in the life of Jesus are expressed through Greek and Roman culture, Christian symbols fuse with strange beasts and designs of Celtic art as can be seen in the Lindisfarne gospels. This Christianity accepts the warfare, slavery and male dominance of western society. It tells people that they are basically bad because of Adam and Eve and "original sin". And it seeks to be the only religion.

At the time of the Jesus Sutras Christianity was an eastern religion; there were more Christians east of the Holy Land than there were to the west. But there had been a theological argument over the nature of Christ so that the west disconnected itself from the eastern Christians and labelled them Nestorian heretics. There was also the political split between the western idea of Christianity run as the Roman Empire had been and the east where different areas (Indian, Persia, Tibet, China) had always been politically independent.

This book is of interest to us in Britain because it asks whether our Christianity is home grown and best suited to us. Or may it have distortions which are harmful to us of the original ideas in the life of Jesus? If so may early Chinese Christianity correct these distortions? I have been brought up so that the Jesus Sutras at first reading seem distorted. And I lived in China as a child of Christian missionaries.

Read the book and see what you think. And get into the story so that you can follow it as it unfolds in the future, with more archaeological discoveries and possibly more early documents.