The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language

It was a fun book to read upon the authors endeavor in rendering the reflection in a list of Chinese characters with Genesis and related chapters in Hebrew Bible.

They picked a few Chinese character like `forbidden' composed of a forest and a notice - God's warning in Eden; boat, a floating vessel with eight mouths - in Noah's Ark. All in the lists is a beautiful allegation through the rosy lens of Chinese cultural background Christians who have the agenda to sell and convert. It reminded another Chinese Christian Yuan Zhiming, who, having been baptized, researched vigorously in Chinese Classics. In his book, Bible vs Lao Tzu (in Chinese), he claimed the holy man in Tao Te Ching referred to Jesus, the carpenter and heavenly king.

It is interesting to find Tao of Yin and Yang in Christian Bible with a few quotes:
1. Sermon on the Mount (Mark 5:3-12)
2. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant (Matthew 20:27)
3. He that loveth his life shall lost it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal (John 12:25)
4. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Roman 1:22)
5. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good (Roman 12:21)
6. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is natural body, and there is a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44)
7. For if we have been planted together in the LIKENESS of his DEATH, we shall be also in the LIKENESS of his RESURRECTION (Roman 6:5)

Similarly, the English language is operated by the Tao of Yin and Yang with a few examples below:
1. cult, true cult is culture
2. excessive sucks will lead to SUCCESS
3. to live upside down is EVIL
4. to still find lie in BE(LIE)F
5. words can turn into SWORD
6. aid can become RAID
7. cash, sin, no, warning: CASINO ( a sin & no no place)
7. FAMILY - code word for FATHER AND MOTHER I LOVE YOU (family composed of yin and yang)

How to spell relief, freedom, salvation and enlightenment, God, Jesus, Tao?

This book has in depth history on the Chinese language and its characters. You can tell that the author has done her research. Great book for doing studies proving creation from secular history.

It was a wonderful discovery of God's Creation. I could find the human history very fresh and new from the sight of faith in God. Chinese letters, even though I used to write and read them very simply, are a real history of God's existence.

Very fascinating for me as Chinese is my first language. I even found my father's name, a theologian in Hong Kong, mentioned in the prologue. The explanation of how the chinese language relates to the Genesis story is incredibly fascinating, but may not be biblically based.

However, it's incredible for me to learn how chinese is the only pictographic language left of popular languages. I believe some of the characters have to do with the Genesis story, but may not be as much as what the book claims!

This book presents some intriguing information and historical-cultural analysis on Chinese ideographic characters. The historical and cultural analysis is very informative. The authors trace back possible meanings and origins of the complex characters of Chinese ideographs.

It was helpful to understand how various ideas are built up from combinations of simpler symbols, to tell a story of meaning, that often seemed to tell much about the context in which it developed. It appears, from a general historical-comparative perspective, that this method offers great promise for reconstructing details of cultural exchange and connections or merging of the many ethnic streams in the history of Asia.

It is possible that historical reconstructions have already been done on aspects of Chinese culture in this manner. But I have not had experience in the Chinese ideography, and this introduction was of great interest.

Both the authors served in Chinese contexts for long years as Christian missionaries, and Kang is a native speakers of a Chinese language, now retired in Singapore. They were particularly concerned to find ancient connections to the monotheistic concepts of God and the accompanying moral codes in the Semitic heritage as recorded in the Old Testament.

It is their contention that originally, Chinese culture was also based on a simple monotheism, and other forms of religion and devotion developed later as this heritage was forgotten. Some of the examples, however, seem over-drawn and analysis includes some pretty shaky connections.

I was surprised by the high instance of "could be," "might refer," and similar phrases in trying to make connections. One surprising aspect of the portrayal of some the biblical situations they reference is the cavalier handling of the actual biblical text. I was disappointed that the authors added a lot of detail and extended the context of several of the biblical passages to make their supposed connections work.

They give explanations and interpretations that the biblical text itself does not contain, and it is questionable that it could support them in many cases. Let me put it this way: the explanations of some of the biblical passages, and the contexts that make the Chinese connections work, are drawn from other perspectives or contexts than the simple biblical passage itself. I would like to see some of these investigated from a linguistic and historical perspective. Some of the connections are challenging and informative.

The basic premise argued in this book is that the original religious perspective of the ancient Chinese culture was monotheistic with similar concepts as those portrayed in the biblical book of Genesis.

The authors point out, though, that the development of the Chinese ideographs that seem to indicate a monotheistic origin would have been developed before the time the book of Genesis was written. Thus the knowledge was not derived from Hebrew/Jewish sources after the writing of Genesis (which occurred comparatively late in history), but separately derived from the same or similar primitive awareness in human knowledge.

This is of interest in the category of curiosity. But there just seem to be too many steps of supposition intalongthe way to their goal. There was some solid critical analysis done here, but it needed to be taken further, to more clearly establish the connections. Those connections shown do not definitively indicate a definite connection to any direct line of culture or faith back to the Hebrews, as they have presented it. There are too many details for which there could be other explanations, and the actual connections do not seem to be of a higher occurrence than would be accounted for by ordinary chance coincidence.

At any rate it was an interesting study, and I would recommend the book for its value on insights into ancient Chinese culture and language. This stands on its on aside from any contention related to Hebrew or Christian beliefs.