The Luminous Way to the East : Texts and History of the First Encounter of Christianity with China

The Luminous Way to the East explores the little-known story of an encounter of Christianity with Central and Eastern Asia that took place more than a thousand years ago. It provides a documented look at what was not only the first stage in the history of Christianity''s dialogue with Asian cultural and religious traditions, but also one of the most extraordinary and fruitful moments in that history. The core of the book is a richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian documents produced in Tang China (618-907). It offers the reader an introduction to the extraordinary missionary diffusion of the Church of the East from the Middle to the Far East along the Silk Road.

The Luminous Way to the East offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium.Matteo Nicolini-Zani provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.