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景案
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'brilliant scholars', and a Christian community ching-chung
the 'brilliant assembly'. The Christian monasteries which
appeared all over China in Kao-tsung's reign filled the land with 'brilliant happiness', ching-fu. Christ is described as 'the brilliant and reverend (ching-ch'uan) Messiah'. At his birth a brilliant star (ching-shu) told of good fortune'. In the most emotionally-charged context of all, ching occurs in a veiled and ambiguous reference to the crucifixion: the Messiah 'hung up a brilliant sun (ching-jih) to take by storm the halls of darkness'. The use of the character ching in this way shows that the composer of the Sian tablet inscription wanted to extend and deepen its normal meaning 'brilliant', thereby adding to its effectiveness as a descriptive term for Christianity.
Until the beginning of this century the Sian tablet was the only source for the expression Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, Syrian brilliant teaching', as an official identity for Nestorian Christianity in T’ang China. We now have more evidence for its use. The expression occurs in a number of Nestorian manuscripts discovered in 1980 at Tun-huang, where there was a Nestorian monastery in the Tang period. Altogether seven separate works, all in Chinese, have been discovered. Two, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, and the Essay on Monotheism, are seventh-century documents composed shortly after Reuben's arrival in China, and neither the geographical term Ta-ch'in nor the descriptive term ching-chiao are found in these early works. Of the other five works, one, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, contains three occurrences of the term ching-chiao, but none of Ta-ch'in. The manuscripts of three other works, the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Origin of Origins, all display Ta-ch'in ching-chiao prominently in their titles, but neither Ta-ch'in nor ching-chiao occurs in their contents. All three works, however, are listed in a fifth work, the Book of Praise, with the phrase Ta-ch'in ching-chiao omitted from their titles. The Book of Praise, which was found together with the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity on a single manuscript, is rather different in style from the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. It contains one reference to Ta-ch'in pen-chiao, ‘our teachings of Syria', but does not contain the expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching'. All occurrences of ching-chiao in these documents use the curious variant form of the character ching found on the Sian tablet.
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