Product Description

In 1907, explorers discovered a vast treasure trove of ancient scrolls, silk paintings, and artifacts dating from the 5th to 11th centuries A.D.  in a long-sealed cave in a remote region of China.  Among them, written in Chinese, were scrolls that recounted a history of Jesus' life and teachings in beautiful Taoist concepts and imagery that were unknown in the West. These writings told a story of Christianity that was by turns unique and disturbing, hopeful and uplifting. The best way to describe them is collectively, with a term they themselves use: The Jesus Sutras.

The origins of Christianity seem rooted in Western civilization, but amazingly, an ancient, largely unknown branch of Christian belief evolved in the East. Eminent theologian and Chinese scholar Martin Palmer provides the first popular history and translation of the sect's long-lost scriptures--all of them more than a thousand years old and comparable in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Gathered, deciphered, and interpreted by a team of expert linguists and scholars, these sacred texts present an inspiring use of Jesus' teachings and life within Eastern practices and meditations--and provide an extraordinary window into an intriguing, profoundly gentler, more spiritual Christianity than existed in Europe or Asia at the time, or, indeed, even today.

Palmer has devoted more than a decade to seeking the extant writings and other evidence of this lost religion.  His search was triggered by an encounter with an immense, mysterious carved (stele) stone from the 8th century that resides in a Chinese museum collection called the Forest of Stones. The Chinese text on this stone commemorates the founding of a "religion of light" in China by a great Western teacher and features a unique cross that merges Taoist symbolism with the Christian cross. The scrolls, the stone, and a strange map of the area around a hallowed temple (where Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching before disappearing forever) gave Palmer enough information to rediscover one of the earliest Christian monasteries.  At the site was an  8th century pagoda still intact, and within it, in 1998, Palmer and his team found more evidence, including statues, underground passageways, and artifacts, that helped them uncover and recreate the era and rituals of the Taoist Christians.  

The Taoist Christians, who wrote the Jesus Sutras recognized equality of the sexes, preached against slavery, and practiced nonviolence toward all forms of life. In particular, this tradition offered its followers a more hopeful vision of life on earth and after death than the dominant Eastern religions, teaching that Jesus had broken the wheel of karma and its consequent punishing, endless reincarnations.

Vividly re-creating the turbulence of a distant age that is remarkably evocative of our own times, Palmer reveals an extraordinary evolution of spiritual thought that spans centuries. A thrilling modern quest that is also an ancient religious odyssey, The Jesus Sutras shares a revolutionary discovery with profound historical implications--imparting timeless messages and lessons for men and women of all backgrounds and faiths.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #629788 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-14
• Released on: 2001-08-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Amazon.com
It's no secret that there were Christians in China as far back as the seventh century. But exactly what they believed has been difficult to discern. In his book The Jesus Sutras, translator and interfaith pioneer Martin Palmer begins to shed light on what he has come to call Taoist Christianity, referring to ancient texts found only a century ago and drawing on his own sleuthing in China. In a book of ambitious scope, Palmer recounts Christianity's spread eastward from Jerusalem, where it encountered and adapted to local cultures. One of those cultures was the most powerful and advanced civilization in the world--Tang China--but which was also steeped in a retro-shamanic faith known as Taoism. Just as the Chinese assimilated Buddhism by interpreting it in Taoist terms, a similarly fascinating fusion of beliefs appears to have taken place in China's Christian monasteries. Palmer takes us to the site of one of these sanctuaries, which was once the Taoist equivalent of Canterbury Cathedral and which the Chinese government is now excavating and restoring in earnest. He also offers full English translations of what he calls the Jesus Sutras, Christian tracts translated into Chinese from an unknown Eastern language. While bearing clear resemblance to traditional Christianity, differences, and what one may call advances, are also apparent--for instance, original sin becomes the goodness of original nature. The Jesus Sutras is a powerful combination of research, translation, and interpretation that not only brings the past to light but lights the way for future interfaith dialogue. --Brian Bruya

From Publishers Weekly
almer (Kuan Yin; Travels Through Sacred China) has the ability to make readers feel as if they have joined him in an exuberant and breathless Indiana Jones-style adventure, as he weaves his clues and discoveries of the early Christian Church in China. Here he examines the "Jesus Sutras," discovered by a Taoist priest in a cave in northwestern China near the end of the 19th century. Among hundreds of scrolls, books, artwork and artifacts were Christian documents dating from the early seventh to the early 11th century C.E.; the earliest texts seem to have been recorded by Persian missionaries, while those that followed seem more indigenous to Chinese culture. There are sutras of liturgy, as well as odd reinterpretations of the Bible and a form of catechism. These Christian sacred books have been translated into English only twice, both times in the 1930s by translators who knew the language but were unfamiliar with Chinese sacred works such as the Tao Te Ching and the Lotus Sutra. Palmer, with his firm grasp of early Christian history, Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism, Confucianism and Chinese history and languages, makes a fascinating case for the scrolls' syncretism of classical Western Christian orthodoxy and Taoist beliefs. For example, the texts place a strong emphasis on Jesus' ability to save believers from the wheel of karma. Palmer has written an important and wonderful book that is accessible for a general audience. (Aug.)Forecast: What's next after the phase-out of the Celtic Christianity craze? Given the tremendous interest in Eastern spirituality in America, perhaps the market is ripe for intelligent books like this that marry historic Christianity with the wisdom traditions of the East. Many Judeo-Christian Americans who practice Buddhist or Taoist meditation techniques will be fascinated to know, as Palmer puts it, that "fourteen hundred years ago, the Jesus Sutras had already created a synthesis of Tao, Christ, and Buddha." Promotions in Tricycle and other publications should help move the title, which has a modest initial print run of 15,000.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Palmer's work in recovering the history of Christianity in China, Tibet, and Central Asia reads like an Indiana Jones-style travel adventure, in which the author journeys to faraway lands and escapes countless dangers to recover priceless antiquities. Long before Marco Polo's travels, the Christian faith had spread from the Middle East along the Silk Route all the way to the Pacific. Merchants and diplomats carried it there before the seventh century, and it flourished until at least the 12th. This Christianity, moreover, had adapted to animist, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist worldviews and influenced their evolution in turn. Owing to political repression in China and Tibet and the rise of Islam elsewhere in Asia, this brand of Christianity eventually died out. To track its history, Palmer who directs the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture and has published translations of the Tao Te Ching and other Chinese texts here presents an engaging fusion of scholarly treatise, travelog, and autobiography that will attract both casual readers and scholars. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

In the beginning was the Tao.
Martin Palmer has packed three or four interesting books into one moderately-sized volume. First, there is the Indiana Jones-like story of how he discovered the oldest church in China, a Nestorian site that dates to the 7th Century and was apparently a center of the earliest Chinese Christianity. (X marks the spot.) Second, he and his colleagues give translations of a series of early Chinese Nestorian writings, from the famous Nestorian stele (8th Century) to later, more syncretistic works. Third, there is Palmer's reconstruction of the history of what he calls "Taoist Christianity." And finally, there are his own, always enthusiastic and interesting, but sometimes debatable, views on East, West, and how the twain might meet.

I found the combination a great deal of fun. Palmer's good cheer is infectious and understandable: he has done a clever and romantic piece of detective work. The translated Scriptures contain many striking images, and I am thrilled, as a student of the interaction between the West and China, to have these resources together, and translated into pithy English. (Though I wish he'd included the Chinese as well.) The book is, furthermore, physically lovely.

Palmer's analysis of the Nestorian church and its relation to Western Christianity is probably the weakest link in the book. He has a bit of a grudge against Western Christianity. He improbably ascribes much of what he finds attractive among Chinese Nestorianism to influence from Jainism, of all things, though the same qualities can be found in early Western Christianity. He seems to imagine the Nestorians as ecologists based on a shaky interpretation of a single Chinese character (zhen), and supposes them free of the original sin of believing in original sin, based on equally scanty evidence. (Even while one modern Chinese philosopher writes enviously of how that concept helped create Western freedom.) Nor does he notice that in one respect, the Nestorians fell far short of Western Christian tradition: they seem to have preferred buttering up emperors to rebuking them -- no Ambrose, Solzhenitsyn, or Wang Mingdao here. (The doctrine of karma didn't seem to help, as these texts show: the poor are poor because of past crimes, the emperor is powerful because of past virtue.)

Two other points may be worth mentioning. First, there is an important difference between the approach Jing Jing, the author of the Nestorian stele, took in the 8th Century, and the later "Jesus Sutras" translated in earlier chapters. The first is in my opinion an orthodox attempt to contextualize Christian thought in Asian terms, like what Matteo Ricci would do later, except that while Ricci identified with Confucianists, Jing Jing related Christianity to Buddhist and Taoist thought, or at least images. Some later sutras, by contrast, are a mish-mash of images and beliefs from the various traditions. Palmer seems to prefer the latter; I prefer the former.

Second, the word "Tao" needs some explanation. Palmer is right to call the Chinese Nestorians "Taoist Christians." But really, all Chinese Christians are "Taoist." This for the simple reason that "Tao" means "the Way," and philosophically, something pretty close to "Logos." The term does not belong to Taoists -- every school of Chinese thinkers use it, beginning with Confucius. And so the Bible reads in Chinese, "In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God" -- referring to Jesus. Furthermore, many Chinese Christian thinkers -- Lin Yutang, John Wu, Yuan Zhimin -- have felt the teachings of Lao Zi were in fact a pretty good introduction to Jesus. I think so, too.

author, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture

Well Researched but Faulty Conclusions
The Jesus Sutras is very well researched, poorly footnoted, and the author drew some faulty conclusions. Palmer assumes that the Church of the East was a confederation of churches without any central control. This is wrong. The Church of the East was highly centralized with canon law which required that all Bishops come to Bagdad every four years. Its liturgy was the same throughout the world. The texts mention of prayer seven times a day supports this. The chapter on liturgy is simply incorrect. While there may have been new theological poetry written, it would not have been used in the liturgy. Finally, the Chinese Diocese of the Church of the East adopted other traditions in the later Tang period due to its isolation and the need to address foreign doctrines. Some of these doctrines eventually were unfortunately adopted.

Filet Mignon in a Bun
It's not easy to assign a single star rating to "The Jesus Sutras." You couldn't ask for a more mouth-watering subject than ancient China's Religion of Light as portrayed in its adherents' own words. But this book gives you a lot of bread with that beef. The result is a gourmet cut of literature wrapped in doughy mass of unremarkable prose. It's better than your usual junk food, but the nutritional content of the meal falls short of what it could have been.

The sutras themselves form the meat of the book. These fascinating texts, authored by the contemplatives of China's ancient Da Qin monastery, offer a remarkable view of early Christianity. Palmer brings formidable collaborators and personal skills to the effort of rendering these documents into English. This valuable service allows readers today to experience the provocative breadth of ideas explored in the manuscripts.

To serve a feast like this a simple plate works fine. Palmer serves it on a double bun from his own kitchen. In addition to the actual Sutras the reader gets "Sutras--The Adventure" and "Sutras--The History." The adventure story shows Palmer taking justifiable pride in calling Da Qin society to the attention of Western scholars. The "Indiana Jones" hype does justice neither to Da Qin nor Doctor Jones, and it's unnecessary. The merit of this investigation attests to itself. I'm sure many readers will share my interest in learning more as excavation at Da Qin proceeds. Meanwhile, the history side of the tale aims to put Da Qin society in context for the non-specialist. This results in a vivid, if oversimplied and somewhat mythologized, portrait of first-millennium Asia. Illustrations abound. The reader gets photos, maps, samples of ancient calligraphy and inscriptions. Most of these are helpful, though some (a clouded photo of a Guan Yin statue, redundant views of the pagoda) seem superfluous.

The reader soon sees, though, that Palmer's interests go far beyond scholarship-as-usual. The ancient Chinese Christians are to this book what the indigenous American peoples are to the film "Dances with Wolves." Here is a culture that offers us The Solution to Our Modern Problems. The book romanticizes Da Qin at every turn. Its history is bathed in a warm Utopian light. The author weeps when he visits its ruins. The text sidesteps even the most obvious questions that threaten to bring the subject down, even for a moment, to earth. (Why wasn't this faith more popular in its time? How much did it owe its existence to well-placed patronage in the absence of widespread observance?). As for the Sutras themselves, Palmer envisions (p. 254) how "voices from the Church's first millennium, unheard in the second millennium, could be a turning point for Church or Churches in the third millennium"--a vision that just happens to give Palmer's book a little millennial importance of its own.

At moments like this it's hard to feel we are in the best of hands. The endeavor is valid, of course. Wisdom transcends time, and here we find a community that framed the great questions of faith in novel ways and achieved a remarkable synthesis of ideas. These documents deserve to be better known. But when the person bringing us the documents holds grandiose plans for both the documents and for us, readers become skeptics. When we are told, for example, that the Da Qin monks treated women in a far more just and enlightened manner than did their Confucian and Buddhist contemporaries, can we trust the statement? Does it come from the author's research into the past or from his hopes for the future? With only the author's own book to consult as a guide, it's hard to feel sure.

Score: 5 stars for Beef, 2 stars for Bun

What readers need now is a new translation of the Da Qin sutras--a book that eschews mythmaking and illuminates the instrinsic beauty of the texts themselves. it would be welcome if this book could balance popular and scholarly interests in the textual commentary and notes. Perhaps an enterprising publisher will soon give us such a book. Until then, "The Jesus Sutras" will have to serve.