Genesis in Ancient China

The Creation Story in China's Earliest Script

Ginger Tong Chock

• Publisher: Eastward Garden Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780989665421
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Excavated and deciphered less than a hundred years ago, China's 3500 year old written script held within it a group of pictographic characters that recorded the Creation story as told in the Book of Genesis.

Genesis in Ancient China: The Creation Story in China's Earliest Script, highlights 39 of these ancient characters. By way of pictographic formations, these ancient character graphs utilize similar images and concepts found in Genesis chapters 1-3 in depicting their ideas pertinent to the Creation story.

These ideas and scenes include the Creator God of heaven and earth, the creation of man from the earthen soil, Adam and Eve, the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the garden of Eden, the Fall, and more. From Genesis chapters 1 to 3, the main storyline of Creation is narrated according to these pictographic character formations.

How these early concepts relate to Chinese legends, Chinese mythology, and underlying principles of thought are also explored.

Here is evidence that the Genesis Creation story somehow reached China at least 3500 years ago. Moreover, it verifies the historical identity of the God Chinese still call ShangDi, "Lord on High".

Includes a brief explanation of their pictographic formation, the evolution from earliest to present day Chinese characters, and an index of referenced pictographic characters.

Chapter One

GENESIS 1:1

IN
THE BEGINNING,
GOD

GOD CREATED HEAVEN AND EARTH

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

上帝 [Shang Di] “Lord on High”

The name of God as written in the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions is “Shang Di” 上帝, meaning “Supreme Ruler” and “Lord on High.” True to this name, the Shang writings reveal Shang Di as residing in the highest heaven above, with supreme power and authority over all other deities throughout heaven and earth. In this hierarchy, even the revered ancestral spirits of the Shang pantheon fell under the sovereignty of Shang Di. This veneration for Shang Di is clearly confirmed in the formative Classics¹ of the succeeding Zhou dynasty. Passages in the Classic of Odes [Shijing 詩經], hereafter called Odes, resonate with praise for Shang Di.

Sovereign is the Lord-on-High,
Beholding this lower world in majesty.²

How vast is the Lord-on-High’
The ruler of men below!

How arrayed in terrors is the Lord-on-High,
With many things irregular [unfathomable] in
His ordinances!³

`

As “Lord on High,” Shang Di’s epithet compares in title to an ancient Israelite name for God, El Elyon. This Hebrew title also meant “Most High God.” The word “El,” or God, means “strength, might, or power.” Alone, the term “el” could refer to pagan “gods” and “mighty” beings, but when paired with the name Elyon, it identified the true God of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. “Elyon,” was the attribute of God as “Most High, supreme, high in rank, exalted,” and “in the highest” realm of heaven. The patriarch Abraham, when still called “Abram,” was blessed in the name of El Elyon by the king and priest Melchizedek (Genesis 14:19):

Blessed be Abram of God Most High [El Elyon],
Possessor of heaven and earth.

El Elyon held sovereignty, supremacy, and power over all heaven and earth, including the order of the constellations and their regulation of the laws on earth. This power of God and God alone was displayed before Job⁴ when God Himself declared His rule over the celestial order of the heavens.

Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the belt of Orion?
Can you bring out Mazzoroth [constellations]
in its season?
Or can you guide the Great Bear [Arcturus] with its cubs?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you set their dominion over the earth?
(Job 38:31-33).

The Book of Job, thought to originate from pre-exilic times and transmitted orally until captured in written form by Moses or Solomon,⁵ narrates an ancient revelation of God by Job, a historical person of the patriarchal period, ca. 2000-1800 B.C. The above passage, in ...