The Church Fathers · c. 635–641
The Sutra of Jesus the Messiah
Alopen and the Church of the East mission
What it is
The gospel explained to a Tang audience in Buddhist and Daoist vocabulary: God is the Emperor of Heaven, the Messiah is born of the Cool Breeze upon a chosen woman, and the duties owed are to God, to the emperor, and to one's parents, in that order.
Why it lasted
The first Christian text written in Chinese, produced within a decade of the mission's arrival at Chang'an. It is the earliest surviving attempt to say the gospel in a language with no Jewish or Greek vocabulary behind it at all.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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