Some believe that Chinese characters hold clues to the Christian Bible
Some Biblical and secular scholars have observed correspondences between the composition of contemporary and ancient Chinese characters and symbols and stories in the Christian Bible. Since Chinese pictographs contain several images, a reading of the meaning of these is believed to tell the Biblical story of Genesis and reveal connections with Christian concepts of sacrifice and humility
The Chinese System of Writing
The Chinese system of writing uses characters (hanzi) which originally represented people, places and things. These pictures have become increasingly stylized, and characters have been combined to express new concepts, abstract ideas and things. The components of these complex characters, when read individually along with the general meaning, appear to tell the story of the Biblical book of Genesis.
Chinese Characters and the Bible
Chinese missionary C H Kang and medical pathologist Ethel Nelson first observed correspondences between Chinese characters and the Bible in 1976. They claimed that when the components of Chinese characters are read individually, they correspond to events in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The character for "forbidden," for example, contains the elements "tree" plus "tree" and "god." According to Kang and Nelson, this refers to God's forbidding Adam and Eve to eat from two trees in the Biblical Garden of Eden.
Chinese Characters and Genesis
Building on Kang and Nelson's observations, some Biblical and secular scholars have connected the complete book of Genesis to numerous modern Chinese characters. While Biblical scholarship has focused on demonstrating the truth of the Bible's account of creation, linguists and anthropologists explore these relationships for clues to the sharing of cultures and beliefs. Skeptics point out, however, that Chinese writing appears not to have been influenced from other cultures, and the stylized nature of the characters leave the correlations open to interpretation.
"Dragon Bones" -- the Chinese Bone Oracles
Dating from the Shang Dynasty (1300 -- 1046 BC) the Chinese oracle bones are the earliest examples of Chinese writing. These pieces of turtle shell and bone were used for divination and the recording of events, and since their discovery in 1899, scholars have identified about 2,000 characters. Among these, numerous instances of the element representing "sheep" or ""lamb" have been identified, and Biblical scholars suggest a connection with Christian concepts of humility, sacrifice and meekness.
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