Study of the Bible in Chinese Academia

Abstract

Since Christianity came to China, the Bible has been translated, preached, and studied, and church-based universities have been instrumental in the Bible being taught and studied in Chinese institutions of higher learning. For the mainland Chinese academic system, however, the history of studying and teaching the Bible is relatively short, getting traction only in the past four decades by this period surveyed in this essay. This essay observes that, since there is no clear distinction between “religious or non-religious” classics in the Chinese tradition, and because of Confucius’ emphasis on “inspiration from the Poems, steady with the ritual, and fulfillment in music,” both factors give literary reading a crucial role in the study of religious texts. Although the studying and teaching of the Bible in China’s academia also can be found in the fields of philosophy, ethics, history, and art, the “Bible as literature” is the most obvious feature, thus becoming the focus of this paper.