References to Israelites
in Ancient Chinese Literature
Tiberiu Weisz
The Jewish community in ancient China came to the world ’s historical stage in 1605 suddenly and without history. Though awareness of their presence spread like a wildfire in the West, their journey in China remained a mystery. The only clue was engraved on the 1489 Chinese Stele that led to a “logical” assumption that the Chinese Jews were merchants who entered China and settled there in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
Unfortunately that assumption proved to be incorrect. First, it failed to take into account the low social status of merchants in China. As traders, their status would have been at the bottom of the social ladder, below peasants, and not entitled to imperial gift of land to build a temple. Second, the Chinese text of the Stele contained gross mistranslations and lead to misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions.
Ancient Chinese annals mentioned hundreds of unidentified tribes in the Western Regions (Taklamakan Desert), a place where the Chinese
“sinicized” the “barbarian tribes” and ultimately absorbed them in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE). Among those tribes was a small community, who one Chinese sage noted, had "few followers whose activities, dress, hat, custom, and prayers” fit the description of Israelite priests called Levites (and Cohanim) in biblical times. The earliest Chinese literature recorded them as youren or “holy men”, reference to Levites priests. Post Han Dynasty they were known as followers of the gujiao, or “old/ancient religion”, reference to Judaism, and in Kaifeng they were called youshang, or holy priests, reference to the Kaifeng Jews.
The first encounter with the youren, was mentioned by Laozi ( 7th century BCE), the mythological figure and founder of Daoism (Daodejing). In one of the chapters he described an ideal, utopian country that was more prevalent in the Kingdom of Israel during King Solomon than in China. He admired the devotion of the people to their faith, yet he wondered “How can a small country with few people... and a small community of youren survive with so few believers? Without enough believers there is no faith! "
Confucius (551-479 BCE ) also made a reference to youren “If I were a youren, I would debate the issues within my own people and prevent going to litigation/court”.
[NOTE: Chinese commentators declared this sentence " defective” and scholars and translators were puzzled by it. But from a Sino- Judaic perspective, it encompassed the biblical relationship between the youren, and am ha-aretz, or common people. [ in Hebrew].
Mencius (372-289 BCE) a sage second to Confucius, encountered a group of strangers he called xizi - (Western Sons) who practiced peculiar customs that corresponded to the biblical command of kashrut:
"If [these] Western Sons (xizi) did not keep spotless clean (kosher), then people would plug their nose when passing by, [because] it was not kosher. Though they were some sinners among them, if they fasted and bathed they could sacrifice to [their] Shangdi “ (Biblical God).
Mozi (470-391BCE?) the founder of Universal Love ( Mohism) school of thought preached a philosophy that lay in between Confucianism and Judaism.
Mozi version “Enjoy equally, suffer equally” and the biblical version “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:33) .
More specifically, in a discourse between Mohism and the Confucianism, Mozi said that he preferred burying one’s parents following the biblical rites to the traditional Chinese burial ceremonies.
And indeed centuries later, in the Sui Dynasty (541-604 CE) a teacher of gujiao, called Nan Liuxi, given name Dewei (David ) was given permission to bury his people, whose lives were cut short due to flooding, according to his native (Biblical) customs. The emperor instructed him to perform the burial ceremony reciting both the traditional Confucian and the gujiao rites (kaddish).
Then in the Han Dynasty, General Li Guangli lead an expeditionary force deep into the Kingdom of Fergana (Afghanistan today) in 108 BCE, where he noticed people with "sunken eyes, big noses and distinguished hair dress... growing grapes, grazing and raising horses”. The distinctive headdress attracted his attention as they were quite unique and his description corresponded to the biblical headdress worn by Levites priests while performed religious ceremonies in the Temple.
Wang Chong (27-97) CE), a critic of Confucianism who never missed an opportunity to highlight the shortcomings of Confucian learning: “Even parrots that can utter words but not able to speak in sentences”.
His dislike of the Confucian etiquette lead him to write a 200,000 character essay called Lun Heng (On Balance), where he stated that the King of gudi, mentioned in the Book of Poetry (shujing) was not an ordinary Chinese Shangdi [emperor/god] but the Biblical gudi (God).
One of his disciples called Xu Gan (170-217 CE) focused on the social standing and contribution of the followers of gudi,: “their skill and talent rested in beauty, education and music”.
After the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE, the youren became an integral part of Chinese society and were considered natives by locals. Ever since then, China considers them native Chinese and refuses to recognize the descendants of the Chinese Jews as minority.
These are just a few short excerpts from the books:
The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions (2006)
A History of Kaifeng Is
