http://www.wbschool.org/Chinese.swf

I've been shown this in the past, but I don't know anything about the Chinese language, nor do I have knowledge of the way the written language developed over time. Does anybody know someone with a background in this area and can comment on the validity of the analysis provided?

In particular, I would like someone who can elaborate a little on the combining of simple symbols that leads to complex symbols in Chinese writing, and whether it is appropriate to read into them the way that is done in the link.

I am officially intrigued. I casually pick up bits of Chinese on occasion, although not much, as I'm currently in South Korea. It's my understanding that the way the characters "work," according to the video, is correct.

I do, however, question the end assumption that this "proves" the Bible is true and correct.

At best, it proves that, prior to migrating apart from one another, the people that would later become Jews and the people that would later become Chinese had a similar folk religion.

Such a find would be interesting, but unsurprising, to a historian. Migrating peoples splitting and then populating different areas with eerily similar creation stories is pretty commonplace. We could even do it today - I could have someone from each state come visit me in Las Vegas, then I'll tell you all a really elaborate story. Then, you go home and tell it to everyone you know. 20 years from now, you've all got weird variants in your home states of the same urban legend.

I think the finding suggested in the video are very interesting, personally (I was a linguistics/communications minor in college). However, (IMO) showing that people groups have similar stories doesn't make Christianity either more or less true.

Cool link OP.

6 or 7 months ago I made the discovery that there was an ancient philosopher who lived just before Confucius who preached universal love. His name was Mo Tzu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Tzu

I think a lot of his teachings are endemic to the Chinese people.

About a month ago I was surfing. I can't remember the web site off hand. But it mentioned the Hebrew word for violence is chamas which is pronounced hamas. Of course, Hamas is the group currently in the Old Philistine area of Gaza that were recently sending rockets into Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

You'll probably love this OP. Up in the northwest area of China they found a group related to the Lost Tribes of Israel. The Chiang Min People.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Min_people

Yes I do believe your OP is dead on. Because I tried to learn Japanese and learned a few Japanese characters before I gave up and basically its all derived from symbolic pictographs just like your video describes.

Interesting section from the Mohism link above:

Supernatural forces

Mohists believed in the heavens as a divine force (天 Tian), which knew the immoral acts of man and punished them, encouraging moral righteousness. Due to the vague nature of the records, there is a possibility that the scribes themselves may not had been clear about this subject. Nevertheless, they were wary of some of the more atheistic thinkers of the time, such as Han Fei. Using historical records, Mohism shows that the spirits of innocent men wrongfully murdered had appeared before to exact vengeance. Spirits had also been recorded to have appeared to execute justice. In fact, rulers have ritually awarded punishments and rewards in spiritual places to ensure that justice was done. The respect of these spirits were deemed so important that prehistoric ancestors had left instructions on bamboo, plates and stones; to ensure the continual obedience of future descendents. In Mozi's teachings, sacrifices of bulls and rams are mentioned during appointed times during the spring and autumn seasons. Spirits were described to be spirits of nature, or souls of men who died. They polemicized against elaborate funeral ceremonies and other wasteful rituals, and called for austerity in life and in governance. On the other hand, spititual sacrifices were not deemed wasteful as they consume food offered for sacrifices afterwards.


(When I clicked on Han Fei in the link above we see he's the father of legalism in China which undermined the serious practice of Confucianism in ancient China.)

Quote: Han Fei's philosophy experienced a renewed interest under the rule of the Communist Party during the leadership of Mao Zedong, who personally admired some of the principles laid out in it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Fei

Here's an explanation OP from this site: http://www.zhongwen.com/

Welcome! Alone among modern languages, Chinese integrates both meaning and pronunciation information in its characters. Zhongwen.com deciphers this rich information to help students understand, appreciate and remember Chinese characters, one of humanity's greatest and most enduring cultural achievements. Until recent centuries, China had one of the highest literacy rates in the world and more than half of the world's literature was written in Chinese characters. Due to the central role of calligraphy in Chinese art and the vitality of Chinese civilization, Chinese characters have held a similarly preeminent position in the world's art.

Despite these unparalleled achievements, many people in the last century viewed Chinese characters as inferior to the more purely phonetic writing systems of Western languages. As a result, China nearly decided to abolish characters in the 1950s and even now most Chinese are not taught the rich tradition behind their writing system. This website counters the simplistic myth of character inferiority by translating traditional Chinese character etymologies into English to show how Chinese themselves have used and understood the symbols they created.

While Chinese characters are often thought of as overly complex, in fact they are all derived from a couple hundred simple pictographs and ideographs in ways that are usually quite logical and easy to remember. These wen (or zigen) are the true radicals of Chinese as identified by Xu Shen in his classic Shuowen Jiezi nearly 2000 years ago. Xu Shen also devised the bushou, meaning "section headings", to help organize his dictionary into more manageable parts. With minor changes this bushou system has been the foundation of almost all subsequent Chinese dictionaries. Often mistranslated as "radicals", not all of the bushou are true radicals in that some of them can be further broken down into their component wen. Moreover, many of the true radicals are not included in the list of bushou.

This web site and its associated printed dictionary present a series of zipu or "character genealogies" which show graphically the close interconnections between over 4000 characters according to the Shuowen Jiezi and subsequent research by traditional etymologists. Aided by computerized cross-referencing, these charts allow the dictionary to be organized around Xu Shen's true radicals, avoiding the expediency of arbitrarily dividing the dictionary by bushou. This new zipu system effectively generalizes the bushou system by allowing any character to be found if the viewer knows any part of the character or knows any character which shares the same component. Students can quickly locate characters while also better remembering the relations between characters. It is hoped that other dictionary compilers will also recognize the potential that computerization now offers to fully realize Xu Shen's original project.

Since the zipu are based on traditional etymologies, which themselves are based primarily on the "seal" characters from about 2,200 years ago, this dictionary does not represent the current state of research into character etymologies. In the last century far older characters have been uncovered, allowing modern researchers to go beyond the traditional etymologies and obtain a better understanding of the true history of Chinese characters. As this research is systematized and made available on the web, I will link the character entries into the relevant research. I also hope to link the entries directly into web versions of traditional Chinese sources on etymology. For now almost every character entry includes page references to various printed reference sources on traditional etymology.

Since English understandably does not have a specific word for character etymology relative to word etymology, many English speakers unfamiliar with Chinese terminology mistakenly conflate the two. This site deals only with character etymologies. Characters form the basic unit of meaning in Chinese, but not all characters can stand alone as a word and most Chinese words are formed of two separate characters. For instance "zhongwen", meaning the Chinese language, has two characters as explained above. The etymologies of these words are usually quite obvious as long as the individual characters are known - a feature of Chinese which is probably its greatest strength and cannot be adequately duplicated in a simple phonetic writing system. This website does not discuss these word etymologies but rather helps students understand the less transparent character etymologies which are the object of most traditional research on Chinese etymology.

(you can enter the word "mouth" for example and it shows the character corresponds to the one in the OP's video or the word "migrate" and it also corresponds) - Enter the word you want to search under the block for English on the left and click enter and it will bring up a list of corresponding characters.

The ancient Chinese name for God OP was Shang Di. Its easy to lose track of it while you watch the video.

I looked that name up and its linked to Mo Tzu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangdi

I agree that this doesn't "prove" the Bible is correct, but it is a way of showing that corruption of the stories may not have happened between the time the first Chinese-to-be began migrating to the East and the time that the stories were committed to writing in the Bible. Some sort of dating on that might be interesting.

Thanks for the link.

True. But, I guess I tend to take the Bible as a story and a narrative, rather than a piece by piece literal retelling. The authors were trying to tell us something by their inclusion of specific types of writing. (For example, Psalms is all poetry, Proverbs is, well, proverbs, and while there is some debate, Esther was mostly likely a play - that is, the original authors knew the story of Esther wasn't "literally true", but that was understood, and it's still a useful and important story. Also, it's extremely unlikely that Revelation was intended as something literally predicted to happen. Apocalyptic literature was popular and well known at the time, and a reader from that era would have easily realized the things in Revelation were intended as symbolic.)

So, for the most part, the individual details matter little, in comparison to what the narrative hopes to tell the reader about reality.

The bible has a lot of history in it and sometimes its the only or major source for much of ancient times. I lean towards the story of Esther as being historically accurate because when you check on the kings listed in the bible they are actually real kings.

I was checking on the story of Nebuchadnezzar II once and his living with animals and eating grass as mentioned in the bible and found out its an actual condition called porphyria or clinical boanthropy. In the bible Nebuchadnezzar was said to have been humbled by God through this disorder.

Anyways when I wiki'd him I found out there's an actual tablet recording this happening where Nebuchadnezzar II went crazy then he came back 6 or 7 hears later to rule Babylon again. Its in a British museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebucha...l_and_Jeremiah

[Threadjack]

Yes, but in this case, you're automatically assuming that because the book of Daniel is a history, Esther is as well. If you check historical records, dates, etc., the reign of Xerxes doesn't line up with the story of Esther at all, nor does the history we know about Xerxes mention Esther. Scholars can't even agree on which king the "Xerxes" in the story represents.

Also noted is that the book is the only story in the Bible Jews in the time period would "perform," and they would do so at Pirum, since Pirum is established at the end of the story.

Also noteworthy are the clear myth-like establishments of characters, and the clear storytelling structures, in which we have defined heroes and villains, clear story progression, and a deft "twist ending" that sees everything put to rights, with the heroes exalted and villains punished.

The idea that Esther should be read as a play or allegory isn't new, nor is it a fringe theory. It's actually one of the leading theories on the book, and is supported by Religious Christian and Jewish scholars as well as non-religious Biblical scholars. Of course, there are other theories too.

Finally, if Esther is a play/allegory, Christians shouldn't find this alarming. After all, if God can inspire teachings, laws, allegory, apocolyptic literature, parables, prophecy, poetry, and even a lusty love song for good measure, it's not really that much of a jump that he might have also inspired a play, is it?

[/threadjack]

You could have a point. I'd like to do more research into the book of Esther's history but for me its one of the most obvious starting places for the war down thru time on the Jews.

Its even possible God has accomplished both a play and a history of the Jews at the same time.

If you get a chance to read the book of Ruth read it. Its a very short biblical book. I used to think it was the story about a good woman when I read it years ago but I re-read it recently and I now think its a prophetic allegory showing the unique relationship between the Jews and the Gentiles. At the same time it is part of history because Ruth is an ancestor of Christ's according to his genealogy.

Ruth is indeed a pretty masterful blend of history and allegory.

(Also, a bump for an interesting OP.)

True, complex characters are made by combining simple symbols or characters; however, the way the link takes apart each complex character and looks at the meaning of each element individually and assigns value to them all is only one way to look at it and not applicable to all complex characters. For example, take the character for fish: 魚. The four dashes on the bottom represent "fire," and the boxy character in the middle represents "field," (not "garden," as the link mentioned). I'm not even going to pretend I know what the thing on top is. Now you tell me, how does ? + field + fire = fish?

Sometimes, elements of a character are used for phonetic purposes. Take the characters for mama (mother): 媽媽. Girl (女) + horse (馬) = mama? I don't think so. However, when you take how 'horse' (馬) is pronounced (ma) and pair it with "girl" or "female" (女) for meaning, you get "mama".

Some of the interpretations have been stretched to fit in with the Bible verses. In the slide for "sorrow" (ancient + weeds = sorrow), the symbol for what they call "weeds" is actually "grass." When combined with other elements to give a character meaning, it is usually indicative of all vegetation, dead or alive. What if you want to take it to mean "weeds" anyway? In a country where most of the population was (and still are) farmers, I would imagine that weeds destroying their crops was indeed a most sorrowful event.

And, like I mentioned before, 田 does NOT mean "garden." There is a different character for "garden" altogether. This character means "field," as in rice fields (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...eld_china2.jpg see the resemblance!).

Just a few more quick examples:

- The character they use for ShangDi is the same one they use for "command," just written differently (some characters take on two forms). To demonstrate or command is a more accurate definition, and it does not mean God or god, or even to demonstrate or command in a godly way.

- In the "Migration" slide, "division" is actually the basis for the word "holiday."

- About the "two trees"- 木 is most accurately defined as wood, and yes, I know, it's understood that wood comes from trees. Still, when you put two together to create a new character, it does not mean "two trees" (again, there is a more complicated character for "tree"). 林 actually means forest; the full term is 森林 (cute right?). If interpreted in the link's manner, apparently the ancient Chinese thought there were only five trees to a forest.

- In the slide about the fruit and nakedness- why is fruit (果) not further broken down as they've done with all of the other characters? We've seen the same elements in previous slides, it's "field" + "wood." I'm sure the answer is obvious.

- Righteousness does not equal me + sheep. When the character sheep is shortened and placed atop of another character, it is indicative of a headdress made of goat horns and feathers. Perhaps only the righteous got to wear it, I don't know.

Here's what I think happened: someone broke down a character into all of its separate elements and then looked for corresponding words or numbers in Bible passages. Some meanings were stretched, and methods were not consistent. And so, my reply to the people behind the link is this: "You're reading it out of context."

tl/dr; nice try, wbschool.


Background Information:
- I am Chinese.
- I went to a terrible place called Chinese School every Saturday from K-9.
- Two Chinese tutors my sophomore year in high school got me a 790/800 on my Chinese SATII, wtfail.
- Three additional years of Chinese in college (for that easy A).
- Most importantly, I have nine Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionaries!

If anyone wants more examples... I may or may not do. Have you ever tried looking something up in a Chinese dictionary?

I have a close friend who also attended Chinese school. She's a medical doctor and pretty sharp. I emailed the link to her. She didn't analyze each character but she didn't dispute it either. She was rather impressed by it.

The best thing would be to have a Chinese language expert take a look at it.

Its funny when you think about it. The Chinese language which is based on symbols has a pretty anthropomorphic feel to it.

Anthropomorphism seems to signal the divine because the divine and nature are so closely intertwined.

I just put "Chinese language and Garden of Eden" in my browser and came up with a number of hits:

http://bibleprobe.com/chinese.htm

Ancient Chinese Language Supports Creation:

http://www.donet.com/~rcooper/museum...misc/aclsc.htm

http://www.lookinguntojesus.net/20070304.htm

http://www.icr.org/article/chinese-l...ive-hands-god/

(A footnote of references for the foregoing link says:

References
1 For more information regarding China's original religion, as well as an introduction to analysis of Chinese characters in the light of Genesis, see C.H. Kang and Ethel R. Nelson, Discovery of Genesis (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1979).
2 Until 1911, the Chinese emperors celebrated a sacrificial rite very similar to that of the Hebrews. Analysis of the early character forms indicates that the ancient Chinese worshiped the same Creator-God as the Hebrews. See Ethel R. Nelson and Richard E. Broadberry, Mysteries Confucius Couldn't Solve (South Lancaster: Read Books Publisher, 1986).


http://www.morgenster.org/signs.htm

See sacrificial animals:

http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm

I just put "Splendour is delusional" in my browser and came up with a number of hits as well.

Search hard enough and youll find anyone willing to support any number of crazy beliefs.

---

but on a serious note, i am chinese as well and did not find the slide convincing at all, and in fact seemed very disingenuous

Are you a theist? If so, what kind?

You do have a funny avatar name for a Chinese.

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/...1&zi=%E8%88%B9

So, according to the Yellow Bridge dictionaries, boat/large vessel (船) does NOT equal boat (舟) + eight (八) + mouth/people (口), but rather, boat/large vessel (船) = boat (舟) + "a marsh at the foot of the hills" (㕣). The pictograph "boat" for meaning, "a marsh at the foot of the hills" for pronunciation.

Of course, 㕣 can be further broken down into "eight" and "mouths" as presented in the slides, but like I mentioned in my previous post, so can the character "fruit" (果), yet they chose to leave the character "fruit" in its entirety. It's not really fair to change the rules in the middle of the game, is it?

If you still want to insist that the "eight" and "mouth" is elemental in forming the word, you should instead be looking into why "eight" + "mouth" = "a marsh at the foot of the hills" since they technically lend no meaning in forming the overall word "boat."

Here's the etymology for "migrate": http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/...1&zi=%E9%81%B7

I think this is a good example: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/...1&zi=%E5%85%88
The character "frist" (先) is actually comprised of 止 + 儿 , even though 止 doesn't exactly match the top half of 先 perfectly. Like I said before, some characters are changed when combined with other characters. And so, "first" does not equal "alive" + "dust" + "man" at all.

Etymology for "blessing/happiness": http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/...1&zi=%E7%A6%8F

Etymology for "west": http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/...1&zi=%E8%A5%BF (Pictographic. Picture of a nest, where birds return when the sun sets in the west)

So far, every word I've checked has had a different etymology than presented in the slides.

Try them yourself; at the bottom of the page, it says "New Search." If you can't find the right word by using English (since the slides have stretched the meaning of some words a bit), you can click on the paintbrush and there's a nifty little tool that lets you draw the character, and then select the character you are looking for.

csma, your advice is too rational and logical. Its easier (and more fun) to just believe what we want to! who cares about facts!

You put a lot of hard work into this but there's at least 2 things wrong with it.

1) You're no Chinese language expert.

2) You need to be an expert because language shifts and evolves from simplicity to complexity and subtleties over time.

I'm more apt to believe someone that wrote a book on this than someone posting on a forum site. Because the book writers are a lot more likely to have looked at the origins and roots of the language then someone taking things out of context.

But it's totally OK to accept what a bunch of people have written on the internet, and only on religious websites no less.

(By the way, I hope you weren't trying to assert that dknightx was inclined to disbelieve the slides because s/he is not a theist, because I'd just assert that you only want to believe the slides because you are a theist and the whole thing becomes a moot point anyway. If you really just wanted to know, well, disregard this.)

Those aren't just my opinions or observations anymore. When you click on the links, you can see that the etymologies are from the Yellow Bridge Dictionary. And it's probably all written down somewhere in a book, like say, a dictionary. And if it's in one dictionary, it's probably in many others. In my experience, I have not come across many dictionaries that vary greatly from others in information, English or Chinese (or Spanish, or Japanese).

For the record, books can be wrong. Just because it's published, it doesn't mean everything in it is true. I'm sure this is not something anyone needs to debate.

I am much more inclined to believe what's written in dictionaries, which are largely objective and expected to be up-to-date and accurate. Tell me, when you read in a dictionary that "zoology" is derived from the greek roots zoo- (zoion) + -logy (-logia, from logos), do you go to the library and check out the latest book on etymology to verify it?

Actually, I can demonstrate what the slides did with the Chinese characters using "zoology" as an example:
zoology = zoo + logy.
zoo = a zoo! (a parklike area in which live animals are kept in cages or large enclosures for public exhibition)
logy = "the study of"
therefore, zoology = the study of the zoo.
I take it you are not an English etymologist, yet you can still see what I did wrong (and even tell me why).

According to some of your previous links, this idea that the etymology of Chinese characters supports the Bible was introduced as early as 1987 and has been re-introduced countless times throughout the years. If it really had merit, why has it not stormed the world yet? Wouldn't Chinese Etymologists have looked into this by now? If this legitimately proved that the Bible was true, I would think it'd make headlines, in the religious world and out.

I think people should check things out for themselves.

I mean you don't hold a degree in Chinese linguistics or the ancient language of China do you?

Is language static over time? Do the rules of today apply unilaterally to earlier times?

Also China is under an atheist government as far as I know. Its currently a place where its unsafe to be a Christian. My guess is that to be a Christian in China is perceived as being a dissident. They are jailing Christians and burning down their churches today. So why would you think they'd even be receptive to this discovery if it runs counter to their political objectives?