The Thoughts of Wesley son of Cornelius

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. … For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Psalm 19:1-3; Romans 1:20 NIV)

India and China appear to have developed outside of the influence of Mesopotamian and Mediterranean regions. Their connection to the Biblical worldview is very puzzling. A historian has to rummage through historian garbage to try and determine the first settlers in this region. I believe the devout belief in the Evolution Hypothesis has disabled us from understanding the early Asians. Could the early settlers in China have brought with them stories of old?

Dr. Ethel R. Nelson, a pathologist and resident of Thailand; Richard E. Broadberry, a medical laboratory specialist in Taipei, fluent in Chinese; C.H. Kang; Kui Shin Voo; Larry Hovee and many others believe to have found a connection with ancient Chinese characters and Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood as told by Moses.

The earliest understood writing in China is found on Oracle bone scripts. Interestingly, this writing is during the time of the Shang Dynasty, as was the worship of ShangTi (see post on Religion-Chinese). As with cuneiform and hieroglyphics, the earliest characters are pictographic in nature. Some linguists believe some of the characters to be phonograms. However, it can clearly be seen at the following site that many were logograms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character
As seen in the website above, Chinese still use a variation of ancient characters today. Sadly, in order to reduce the number of characters in their language, the Chinese are tending toward the Simplified Script. I hope they are not losing the ancient details with this transition.

But how does a language depict concepts and ideas in a pictographic nature? This topic is debated among historians. For the most part, they believe a lot of the concepts came from phonetic sounds of the words you could depict with pictures. Other historians believe they used pictures by association.

Dr. Nelson, et al, believes the ancient Chinese brought with them stories of the Creation, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood. Therefore, ancient characters for various concepts depict some of these stories. For example, the character to covet is a woman between two trees. Nelson believes this represents Eve and the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Furthermore, the character for tempter is the character of devil, trees, and cover.

As with any discovery, a historian or archaeologist must be careful to come to any conclusion too quickly. I believe Nelson has given substantial evidence for her theory. However, sometimes I believe she forces many of the characters and associations. You can come to your own conclusion (see the references below).

I return back to the character for tempter and give a modern day Chinese perspective. One of my Chinese friends says that the Chinese did not have devils in their early mythologies. The character now used for devil is the same used for ghost. Chinese were and still are very superstitious. It was believed that the ghosts lived in the woods under the cover of darkness. He believes this is the understanding of this character. Maybe. But the idea is still thought provoking.

REF: Nelson, Ethel R., and Richard E. Broadberry. Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn’t Solve. Shunichi Yamamoto: 1994.

http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm (MUST SEE)

http://www.creationism.org/genesis.htm

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/pdf_notice.asp?pdf=/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/tjv13n1chinese_lamb.pdf

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i3/china.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/388.asp