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Copy of Nestorian Stone
Gimet Museum, Paris France
Replica of Christian stone of Chang'an (now Xian) in China (eighth century). The title here depicted commemorates the coming of missionaries from Mesopotamia bringing the "Luminous Religion." The original stone was found in 1625 AD and has an amazing history associated with its discovery. The stone was inscribed in Syriac and with Chinese characters. The Chinese could not read the characters. This was alarming to them because it had long been their boast that their written characters had remained unchanged for thousands of years. The fact that they could not read Chinese characters from the 8th century undermined this boast. Also, by this time, the Jesuits had infiltrated China. The inscription in Chinese indicated that there were millions of Nestorian Christians in China in the 8th century (estimated at millions from the description on the monument of the organization of the Chinese church which followed the Assyrian model). This undermined the claims of Rome to universal spiritual domination. So both the Chinese and the Jesuits did not appreciate what had been found. A replica was made. Now, neither the Chinese nor the Jesuits could read Syriac. When scholars investigated the replica, they found that the Syriac account on the monument differed from the Chinese account. It is clear that the Chinese inscription had been tampered with in order to bring it into conformity with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They did not want the world to know that the hated Eastern Church, which would not acknowledge the authority of the Roman Church had achieved such widespread success in the East. |
