Jingjing (monk)

Jingjing or Adam (Chinese: 景淨; pinyin: Jǐngjìng; Wade–Giles: Ching3-ching4) was an 8th-century Persian Christian monk and scholar in China. He composed the text on the Nestorian Stele, which described the history of the Church of the East in China from 635 to 781.[1] Many scholars believe he is also the author of the later Jingjiao Documents.[2]

Biography

Scholars place Adam's probable birth at around 750 or 751.[3][4] Adam's father was named Yisi, who was part of a fighting unit invited to come to China by the Tang court to help quell the An Lushan Rebellion.[3] Adam's grandfather was a missionary-priest from Balkh (in northern Afghanistan).[4] It's posited that Adam was raised or born in China and received a Chinese education due to his grasp of Classical Chinese and Chinese religious thought that's seen in his writings.[5][6]

Around 781, Adam composed the Nestorian Stele.[7] Sources also state that Adam translated (by imperial order) multiple Biblical texts into Chinese. The texts in question seemed to be paraphrases of certain portions of the New Testament and to a smaller extent, parts of the Old Testament.[4] In 786, Adam helped an Indian Buddhist monk from Kapisha called Prajna translate the Buddhist text Sutra of the Six Mahayana Paramitas from an Iranian language (Sogdian or Bactrian) to Chinese. The translated text was presented to Emperor Dezong in 787, who rejected the translation on the grounds it was faulty, corrupted, and confused by a fusion of Buddhist and Nestorian concepts.[8][9]

Adam was bilingual in Persian and Chinese. He may also have been literate in Syriac, Arabic and possibly Sogdian or Bactrian.[10]

References
  1. Toshikazu S. Foley (July 2008). "Translating Biblical Texts into Chinese: The Pioneer Venture of the Nestorian Missionaries" (PDF). Technical Papers for the Bible Translator. 59 (3): 113–121. doi:10.1177/026009350805900301. S2CID 163841626.
  2. Malek, Roman; Hofrichter, Peter (2006). 景教: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia. Institut Monumenta Serica. p. 93. ISBN 978-3-8050-0534-0.
  3. Godwin (2018), p. 142
  4. Kurian, George Thomas; III, James D. Smith (2010). The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature. Scarecrow Press. p. 251. ISBN 978-0-8108-7283-7.
  5. Tang, Li; Winkler, Dietmar W. (2013). From the Oxus River to the Chinese Shores: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 114. ISBN 978-3-643-90329-7.
  6. Covell, Ralph (2004). Confucius, the Buddha, and Christ: A History of the Gospel in Chinese. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-59244-533-2.
  7. Godwin (2018), p. 10
  8. Gillman, Ian; Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim (1999). Christians in Asia Before 1500. Psychology Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-7007-1022-5.
  9. Godwin (2018), p. 145-146
  10. Godwin (2018), p. 176

Bibliography
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