Jesus Sutras : Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity

by PALMER, MARTIN

• ISBN13: 9780345434241
• ISBN10: 0345434242
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-08-01
• Publisher: Wellspring/Ballantine

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Martin Palmer is the director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture (ICOREC), which specializes in religious, environmental, educational, and developmental projects and works with a variety of international organizations, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, UNESCO, and the World Bank. He is the author of many books on religious topics and one of the foremost translators of ancient Chinese texts, having published translations of the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Chuang Tzu, and Kuan Yin. A regular broadcaster on BBC TV and radio, Palmer records for them on his frequent visits to China. A leading expert on Taoist ritual, Palmer studied theology at Cambridge, with a special emphasis on Chinese and Japanese studies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Author's Note	xvi
Introduction	1	(10)
The Lost Monastery	11	(28)
Beginnings of the Church in China: The First Sutra	39	(36)
Missions from the West	44	(6)
The Early Jesus Sutras	50	(6)
The Story of Jesus	56	(4)
The First Sutra: The Sutra of the Teachings of the World-Honored One, Third Part	60	(15)
Panorama of the Early Christian World	75	(22)
The Political Geography	76	(9)
The Geography of the Mind	85	(8)
Unity and Division	93	(4)
The Church of the East	97	(19)
Caught between Two Empires	98	(1)
The Church of the East Goes Its Own Way	99	(1)
A Different Spirit	100	(2)
The Church in Persia	102	(2)
The Indo-Greek Cultures	104	(1)
Buddha and Apollo	105	(2)
Christianity Meets Buddhism	107	(2)
St. Thomas and the Church in India	109	(3)
The Teaching of Nonviolence	112	(1)
The Church in Tibet	113	(3)
The Multicultural World of Seventh-Century China	116	(19)
Shamanism	121	(1)
Confucianism	122	(3)
Taoism	125	(5)
Buddhism	130	(5)
The Early Church in China	135	(34)
The Encounter with Buddhism: Karma and Reincarnation	137	(2)
The Second Sutra: The Sutra of Cause, Effect, and Salvation	139	(7)
The Third Sutra: The Sutra of Origins	146	(4)
Gathering Many Strands	150	(9)
The Fourth Sutra: The Sutra of Jesus Christ	159	(10)
The Fruits of the Church: The Great Liturgical Sutras	169	(37)
How the Church of the East in China Worshiped	169	(6)
Original Nature, Not Original Sin	175	(2)
The First Liturgical Sutra: Taking Refuge in the Trinity	177	(4)
A Great Chinese Saint and Scholar	181	(1)
The Second Liturgical Sutra: Let Us Praise	182	(3)
The Third Liturgical Sutra: The Sutra of Returning to Your Original Nature	185	(17)
The Fourth Liturgical Sutra: The Supreme	202	(4)
The Way of Light: The Stone's Teaching	206	(27)
The Taoist-Christian Creation	207	(2)
Original Nature	209	(2)
Guardians, Not Masters, of Creation	211	(1)
The Wheel of Suffering and Karma	212	(1)
The Incarnation	212	(2)
The Buddha Christ, the Jesus Bodhisattva	214	(1)
The Immortal	215	(1)
China's Bible	215	(1)
The Light as the Resurrection	216	(1)
The Daily Cycle of the Monks	217	(2)
The Story of the Church	219	(2)
Persecution and Recovery	221	(3)
The Stone Sutra	224	(9)
The Fate of the Church	233	(18)
Dissolution of the Monasteries	235	(3)
A Broken Church	238	(1)
The Goddess of the Silk Road	239	(5)
A Last Resurgence	244	(7)
Postscript	251	(4)
Notes	255	(6)
Bibliography	261	(2)
Index	263

Excerpts

The Lost Monastery Dust rose in clouds around us as our minibus sped along the country roads of central China in the summer of 1998. Through the windows we could see rural life flashing past: horse-drawn carts, old men on bicycles, young girls walking arm in arm. Earlier that morning we had left far behind us the modern city of Xian, which stands on the site of the greatest of ancient Chinese cities, Chang-an. Some twenty-five miles to the southeast, the great eternal army of the first Emperor of China, Shih Huang Ti, was disinterred. Thousands of slightly larger than life-size terra-cotta warriors and wooden horses there guard the tomb of the Qin Dynasty founder. Enormous tombs surround Xian, however, so even as we traveled the road southwest we passed signs of the ancient city’s former glory: temples, gateways, city walls, and huge mounds that cover many acres dedicated to long-gone emperors.

Within an hour we were deep in the countryside. We rumbled our way over a long bridge spanning one of the mighty rivers that flows down from the mountains south of Xian. In the riverbed, truckers loaded boulders flushed down by the winter storms. Now, in the heat of summer, the river flowed shallowly through the ravine carved by its full force over millennia.

On we went through small towns whose main roads doubled as a marketplace and displayed all the confusion and variety of contemporary China, from Mao jackets to fake Gucci bags. Decrepit buses belching fumes roared straight at us in the continual game of chicken that constitutes driving in China, passing at the last possible moment with but a hairbreadth to spare.

Smog made it difficult to see beyond the small towns and villages through which we sped. The haze of heat and pollution from countless fires and the fumes of trucks and buses create a dense miasma that blankets the countryside up to thirty miles away from Xian. Tall trees planted along the roadside further block the traveler’s view.

Thus it was that the Qingling Mountains and the Pass to the West, the traditional route out of China to the mysterious West, came on us suddenly. The towering walls of the mountains, rising like some vast curtain sealing us from the rest of the world, appeared and disappeared, only to appear again through the dust, smog, and clouds. As we drew nearer, the mountains solidified into a range that rose dramatically from the flat plains. It was now clear why the Pass to the West was so fabled and important. Without it, the mountains would have been impenetrable.

Had you asked my friends, as we headed out of Xian toward the Pass to the West, how they thought the day would progress, you would have had an almost unanimous response: it was mad but fun, so they had come along for the ride. We were a motley group: Zhao Xiao Min, head of my group’s China office, a historian and classical Chinese scholar; Tjalling Halbertsma, a Dutch anthropologist who works with me in China and Mongolia; Jay Ramsay, poet and thinker with whom I have worked on translations of ancient Chinese books such as the I Ching and Taoist classics; Val de Monceau, a feng shui specialist; and Jane Routh, photographer.

We were in China primarily to help preserve the sacred mountains of China. My research for the Jesus Sutras, however, had convinced me that it was just possible that in a mountain range (not one of the sacred mountains!) south of Xian, near the Pass to the West, the remains of a once major Christian monastery might have survived fourteen hundred years of wars, uprisings, dynasties, empires, and earthquakes.

The particular bit of research that had led me to this remote area was an old book on the early Church in China, published in English in 1937 by a Japanese professor, Saeki. In it, Saeki reproduced a small, mysterious map he had somehow acquired. The map marked the site of a pagoda, or tower, identified as the Da Qin monastery, all that remained of a much larger structure that could be as much as fourteen hundred years old. The pagoda was believed by Saeki and other China scholars who had visited the site in 1933 to be associated with the early Christian Church.

I contend that this map was almost certainly drawn by Japanese spies who had visited the area in the late 1920s or early 1930s to determine what Chinese military installations in the region could mount resistance to the planned Japanese invasion of 1936. At that time, it was common for such spies to pretend to be archaeologists, geologists, or botanists, so their notice of an ancient pagoda on the terrain they were mapping would have been in keeping with their disguise.

Professor Saeki noted that Da Qin means, and would have been an old Chinese way of saying, “the West” or “the Roman Empire” or “Christian” monastery. Sadly, Saeki never had the opportunity to visit the site, although he provided directions to it along with the map.

Unfortunately for me, the map was very obscure. It indicated only temples in the region and gave no indication of where they or the Da Qin monastery might be in relationship to towns and cities. In addition, the directions to the location that Saeki gives in the book are strangely misleading and virtually useless for someone who wants to find it. Despite much research, I could find no record of any visit after that of the Chinese to help clarify how to get there. Frustratingly, the pagoda at Da Qin, after one thousand years, had slipped back into the obscurity from which it had briefly and peculiarly emerged, leaving not much more than a trace.

It was only by the most extraordinary of circumstances that I discovered the true location of the site. This coincidence still makes me shiver with the strangeness of it. Since I had first come across the professor’s book, I would repeatedly and frequently peer at the sketchy map to try to work out where Da Qin might be. Finally, in 1997, seventeen years after I had found the map, I got out a huge magnifying glass, put the map under a strong light, and seriously turned my attention to the different names written in tiny Chinese characters that indicated the other temples. Suddenly the name Lou Guan Tai leapt out at me and I realized I knew exactly where the pagoda was. Not only that, but I had actually been there just a few months earlier while recording a four-part series for Radio 4 (the equivalent of National Public Radio in the United States) on the history of China! I had been within a mile or so and had had no idea it had any relationship to the site of the elusive Da Qin pagoda and the Taoist Christians!

Fourteen hundred years ago, Lou Guan Tai had been the most famous Taoist center in China. Today, very few Chinese even know of its existence and not a single Western travel guide to China of which I know mentions it. From working on a translation of the classic Taoist book, the Tao Te Ching—The Book of the Way and Its Power, as it is sometimes translated—and researching the origins of this great teaching, however, I had learned the legend of Lou Guan Tai. There, in the mid–sixth century b.c., the great sage Lao Zi is said to have written the classic Tao Te Ching. Traditionally, Lao Zi is thought to have been an adviser at the emperor’s Court. Famous throughout the country for his wisdom, he eventually grew tired of the corruption he saw at Court. Believing that all China had become as degraded as the Court, he decided to leave.

The story goes that a watchman, told by the gods to be vigilant for a sage leaving China, built a lookout tower at the Pass to the West. One day he saw a sage riding upon an ox and rushed from his tower to invite him to stay the night. Recognizing that his guest possessed great wisdom that would be lost when he left the country through the Pass, the watchman pressed Lao Zi to write down his philosophy of life. The next morning, legend says, having stayed up all night writing, Lao Zi shook the dust of the kingdom from his feet and departed for the West, never to be seen again. But his book, which became known as the Tao Te Ching, survived and is the foundation of Taoism.

For centuries, the site where Lao Zi was supposed to have written his book remained obscure. Then, in the seventh century a.d., a new dynasty, the Tang, arose. The founder of the dynasty was a peasant who found it necessary to claim that he was from an ancient family of nobles. Specifically, he claimed to be a descendant of Lao Zi, and so he elevated Taoism, the only indigenous faith of China, to most favored religion. Huge sums were poured into building shrines, temples, and complexes to honor and practice Taoism. Chief among these chosen places was the little temple at Lou Guan Tai. By the a.d. 630s the site had been declared the Imperial Ancestral Temple and had grown so vast that it covered hills and valleys with dozens if not scores of temples and shrines. Today, though much is in ruins, Lou Guan Tai still dominates the landscape, its grandeur and majesty still very much apparent.

Thus it was that my friends and I were heading resolutely toward Lou Guan Tai that day, toward the nearest recognizable landmark to the purported Christian monastery. Knowing of my deep fascination with any hint of early Christianity in China, they were happy to indulge my latest pursuit of what I am sure they were convinced would be a dead end. As they kindly pointed out to me, since the 1933 visit of Chinese scholars to Da Qin, the Japanese had invaded China, World War II had occurred, and civil war between the communists and nationalists had raged over the area. In 1949, communism had become the only political force in China and the Party had declared war on all that was old, religious, or feudal. The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 had destroyed probably three-quarters of all religious sites and virtually all religious statues and artifacts in China. There was little chance that even the ruins for which we were searching could have survived. Furthermore, despite initial inquiries on my behalf by my Chinese colleagues in Xian, we had no evidence that Da Qin had any more significance than any of the other hundreds of Tang Dynasty pagodas in the area.

At last we bumped our way up the foothills of a mountain to the hilltop temple of Lou Guan Tai. Covered in dust, we clambered out and made our way up the winding path to the main temple. The 1933 report indicated that the pagoda of the Da Qin monastery site could be seen from this spot at the entrance, but we had no idea in which direction to look. Remembering something I had read in the 1933 report, I looked to the East. Nothing. My heart sank. Then we all turned and looked, as common sense should have told us, to the West. And there it was. Across the valley, about a mile and a half away, a solitary, magnificent pagoda rose like an elegant finger pointing to heaven. Excitement rose in us all. Now we had to find out if this really was the building we were looking for.

Sitting beside the temple entrance was an old woman selling amulets. We turned to her and, after gently declining to buy a cheap plastic amulet of Lao Zi, asked who the pagoda belonged to.

“It’s Buddhist,” she said, again offering us a cheap plastic Buddha amulet. My heart sank again. Thanking her, I turned away.

“But it hasn’t always been Buddhist,” the old lady said. Turning back I asked her what she meant.

“Oh no. It used to be Taoist.”

Disappointment hit me like a brick. Thanking her again I turned once more to go away.

“But it doesn’t really belong to either of them,” continued the enigmatic old lady. I turned again and asked her to elaborate.

“Before either of them it was founded by monks, who came from the West and believed in One God.”

Her words stuck me like some ancient prophecy. They were words I could never have dreamed of hearing. Monks from the West who believed in One God could only mean Christians. Thanking her, tipping her generously, and still refusing the plastic amulets, we rushed down the hill. Inquiring among the small groups of local people, sightseers, and Taoist worshipers, we soon found a guide willing to take us across the valley to the site.

By now I was in a state of high excitement. Not only was the pagoda still standing, but local legend said it was Christian. Now we needed physical proof. As we drove the old dirt roads across paddy fields and through tiny hamlets of surprised peasants—no foreigner had been seen here for decades—the pagoda slipped in and out of our vision like a mirage. I was so afraid that it would prove to be only an ancient Buddhist pagoda. As we drew closer we could see that it had seven stories and that sprouting from its terra-cotta–colored walls and roofs were bushes, shrubs, even a complete tree! Somewhat alarmingly, the entire edifice leaned like a Chinese version of the Tower of Pisa, looking as if a good push would send it crashing down.

At last we arrived at the foot of the hill, halfway up which stood the pagoda. Below us were mud-and-thatch houses and many villagers, oblivious to our sense of excitement but fascinated to see so many foreigners. Looking up at the towering pagoda, we could clearly see its classic Tang design—as well as the toll that the centuries had taken on it. As we began to climb the dirt track up to the pagoda, we stumbled over fragments of decorated terra-cotta tiles and molding, most a dark earthy color but occasionally a piece with traces of green and even blue glazing. Such finds are common at ancient Chinese temple sites and most were standard designs of the sort to be found on sites from the fifth century a.d. onward: flowers, dragons, and scrolls.

But among all these pieces, one stood out as very differ- ent. It was a leaf design, classically Greek in style, and it would not have looked out of place in the great churches of Constantinople or on the pillars of the Byzantine churches of Ravenna. Western styles and in particular classical Greek-style designs and motifs entered China around the fifth century a.d. with the coming of Buddhism, yet they were also used in early Christian churches.

After climbing for ten minutes my colleagues and I reached a plateau cut into the steep hillside where the pagoda and other remains stood. A small Buddhist temple, a couple of farmhouses, and a tiny house for the nun who cared for the Buddhist temple occupied perhaps one-tenth of the site. The local people, farmers, and some Chinese visitors were surprised to see us, but all made us as welcome as if we were dear friends. Among them, the elderly Buddhist caretaker nun informed us she was 115 years old. Wizened but vigorous and sharp, she was delighted to have such visitors. She had become a nun in the first few years of the twentieth century and had survived the collapse of the empire, the war lords of the 1920s, the Japanese invasions of the 1930s, the civil war of the 1940s, and then the increasing persecution of people of religious faiths under communism from the 1950s onward. The Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 had nearly killed her, but when more liberal attitudes toward religion arose in the late 1970s she had reopened the temple here.

As she and her young assistant busied themselves making tea for us, we wandered the site. The plateau was large, about three hundred feet long, and toward the eastern end stood the impressive seven-storey pagoda, rising maybe eighty feet into the sky. It was badly damaged with a great crack up the northern side and it tilted slightly to the west. We had been told by the nun that it had been hit by an earthquake in 1556 and that since then no one had been able to climb up inside. Around that time, she said, its entrance had been sealed. She did not mention its origin and I was too nervous at that point to ask.

Instead, I excused myself and roamed the site, hungry for anything that might declare to me that it was unequivocally Christian. No crosses leapt out at me; no statue of Jesus or inscription declared this to be a Da Qin site. The pagoda was very fine, of a classic late Tang design (ca. eighth century a.d.), but it bore no distinctively Western features.

Fearful of the gentle scorn of my friends, I sought sanctuary by climbing higher up the hillside so I could look down on the site. Settling myself on the grass, I was across from the tower’s fifth storey. It started to rain. Peering up through the drizzle, I surveyed the ancient pagoda. Then I looked down at the scurry of activity our arrival had created. Local people were climbing the hill from the village below. The diminutive, kindly nun was busy finding food to accompany our tea. To the west I saw the little fields and tiny house of the farmer who now occupied most of the site. Haystacks perched like little thatched houses beside the farm and its outhouse. Low stone walls separated much of the site into garden plots in which vegetables were growing. The little Buddhist temple was immediately below me, to the east of the pagoda itself. Lazy smoke rose from the nun’s house, drifting across the plateau. To the east, I could just see Lou Guan Tai, from where we had come. It was a scene that had not changed much in hundreds of years.

Suddenly I realized that the plateau of our pagoda ran east to west and I leapt to my feet with a triumphant cry. It is an immutable design of every Chinese temple, Buddhist, Taoist, or Confucian, that it runs north to south. Any plateau cut into a steep hillside like this for a Chinese temple would have been cut to run from the north to the south. Yet this one ran east to west, as does every Christian church, facing east to celebrate the rising sun. For example, the third- or fourth-century church at Wroxeter in Shropshire, England, runs thus, as do all the oldest extant churches from Britain to Jordan. Here was the first firm piece of evidence that this was no ordinary Chinese religious site but one whose feng shui, whose spiritual orientation, was classically Christian. If this site also followed standard Christian design, then the pagoda would have been part of the monastic buildings as its library, for that’s what pagodas were built for. To the west of the pagoda would have been the church itself, now covered by a mound of rubble and earth, and to the east would have been the monastic burial ground.

I bounded down the hill, shouting out my discovery. The commotion below increased, and the nun asked why I was so excited. I explained that I believed this site had once, long, long ago, been a most important Christian church and monastery.

A stunned silence fell as the villagers looked at the ancient nun. Drawing herself up to her full five feet she looked me in the eyes with astonishment. “Well, we all know that! This was the most famous Christian monastery in all China in the Tang Dynasty.” The locals nodded in agreement.

I was speechless, so she continued. Local legend had kept alive the memory of the Christian monks who had built the church, the monastery, and later the pagoda, and who had worshiped here from the seventh to ninth century a.d. Indeed, there was considerable local pride in this fact. Then they began to tell us of the discoveries made here: how in ca. 1625 a.d. the great Stone, now in the Forest of Stele Museum, describing the coming of Christianity to China had been dug up on this very site; how in the 1920s another inscription with a Christian cross had been dug up but was stolen during the Japanese Occupation and had never been seen since.

Looking back, even then it was quite clear to us that we had indeed found the lost monastery of the early Church in China. Lost, that is, to the West, and lost to most of China, but loved, honored, and remembered by the local people. I was elated beyond belief, and I was also humbled. Years of work would be needed to confirm the truth of our discovery to the satisfaction of historians and scientists, but the people of this ancient place had never lost the deep certainty that theirs was a site of spiritual importance, imbued with the spirit of centuries and of many cultures’ sacred beliefs.

We talked and talked that afternoon. Various finds were brought for us to see and identify. A small fragment of what we at first believed to be a marble statue’s robes classically Western in appearance was shown to us. We later were able to confirm that this frag- ment is actually a piece of an angel’s wing and is similar to that in a mural found at another site in China that dates to the fifth century. A carved mythological creature—half dog, half lion—that must once have guarded some sacred site here. The Chinese character for “horse” carved on an ancient stone slab. And many pieces of terra-cotta molding, mostly traditional Chinese, but a few whose style hinted at an origin in the West. Most were from buildings erected long after the Tang Dynasty, long after the Christians had gone. Meanwhile, Tjalling had been busy photographing everything, Val and Jane sketched maps, and Jay, Xiao Min, and I wandered the site looking for more evidence of its Christian past but mostly speculating as to what might be just beneath our feet.

As dusk fell we prepared to leave, packing up the many rolls of photographs we had taken, the drawings and maps we’d sketched, and the people’s stories we had written down. As we were about to descend the hill, I paused for a moment and the old nun gently touched my arm. “You want to pray, don’t you?” she asked and I nodded, wondering how she knew. “Go ahead then. They will all hear you.”

As night drew in and the features of the Christian pagoda of the long-lost Da Qin Christian monastery slid into the darkness, I stood where I guessed the church had been. I stood where fourteen hundred years ago Christians had faced east and prayed, and I too prayed. I felt I had finally come home after twenty-five years of searching for that home, of never really knowing if it did, in fact, exist. Yet here was evidence of a living Tao of Jesus, a once-vital practice of Jesus’ teachings in a Taoist context. I wept for joy, for love of my faith, for the gentleness of the Buddhist nun, and because my heart was full to bursting.

That was in 1998.

A year passed before I could return to Da Qin again. Meanwhile, my colleagues in China had notified the provincial gov- ernment and the national government of our discoveries and their significance. Within a month the pagoda had been cocooned in scaffolding and work had begun to heal the great crack, right the whole edifice, and restore it inside. During the course of the restoration, two unusual statues were found inside the pagoda and as a result I was invited back by the government. I was eager to see them and learn from the authorities what the future might hold for Da Qin.

On a warm May day in 1999 I once again watched the pagoda come into close view as my friend Zhao Xiao Min, a scholar of the Tang Dynasty, and I climbed together up the slope. A reception committee of the site manager, local magistrate, and two art experts from the Provincial Museum in Xian awaited us. The Cultural Relics Bureau of Shaanxi Province, the local branch of the main Chinese government agency responsible for antiquities, had sent Mr. Yin and Mr. Zhou, specialists respectively in Buddhist and Taoist antiquities, especially statues. To our great sadness they told us that our friend the nun had died a month after our visit. Her beautiful tomb near the pagoda records her 116 years, a dignified reminder of a long life. We laid the flowers we had brought with us to give her on her tomb, said a prayer for her spirit, and then turned our attention to the pagoda.

The site had been changed radically. A new dirt road had been cut to the plateau; shrubs and brush had been cleared from around the base of the pagoda; building materials were stacked up where previously there had been mounds of soil or dirt tracks. The whole scene, so peaceful a year ago, was now full of people, engines, backloaders, bulldozers, and noise. The restoration work on the external structure included the creation of a concrete raft to secure the base of the pagoda, repair of the crumbling bricks and stone work, and removal of the trees and other growths on top of the pagoda.

After the formalities of our reception and an inspection of the work under way, we were invited to climb up inside the pagoda to see the two statues. We had been told that the site team and art experts they brought in thought them strange, so we were particularly eager to get to them. The great crack in the pagoda was not yet completely mended, however, so we could not yet use the original ground-level entrance, but had to climb the scaffolding to get in.

Because of a terrible fear of heights and especially of climbing ladders, I stood weak-kneed at the bottom of the structure, knowing that I was going to have to go up. Adding to my anxiety was my responsibility for recording a program for BBC Radio on the discovery of the site and the work in progress. This meant I not only had to climb the awful structure but would have to do so with a microphone in one hand and the equipment slung over my shoulder. Every part of me shook with fear, but there was no way out of this. I had to do it.

With my good friends from the site ahead to encourage me and Xiao Min behind to catch me, I inched my way up the scaffolding. The members of the Chinese team working on the site all waited patiently while this terrified Englishman slowly, so slowly, made his way up. They even gave a cheer when I got to the top!

With knees like jelly and legs like blancmange I stood in the window of the pagoda and prepared to go in, Xiao Min graciously insisting that I go first. Wrapping the cord of the microphone around my arm as I had been taught, I switched on the recorder and stepped into the gloom of the pagoda. Crouching, I began to crunch my way across centuries of debris. Broken tiles, splintered remains of wooden stairs, bird and bat droppings, and dust and dirt were everywhere. In hushed tones I described all this into the recording machine to be broadcast to the gentle listeners of Radio 4. Scuffling the ground for added sound effects, I moved toward the center of the pagoda, keeping a careful eye on the ground, for the floor was missing in various places and the distance down to the next level was a plummet of a good twenty to twenty-five feet.

When I stood up, I saw a huge statue towering above me, looming unexpectedly out of the gloom, dwarfing and awing me. I was so astonished, so frightened, so excited that I fell back on the language of a rather misspent youth, yelling a grievous profanity loud and clear and straight into the microphone. Later, as this sort of thing could never be broadcast on our station, I had to go out and come back in again as if for the first time and exclaim something more acceptable.

Rising ten feet high and five feet wide, made from mud, plaster, and wood, was a huge statue set into a grotto. It was immediately clear to me that this was no ordinary Chinese statue, although the surrounds were classically Chinese. The basic shape was that of a sacred mountain. Indeed, it was the symbolic form of the Five Sacred Mountains of Taoism. Revered for more than two thousand years, these mountains are frequently used in traditional Chinese art. Set into this basic outline was a cave, within which were the broken remains of a human figure. Everything about this late eighth- to early ninth-century sculpture was grandly and beautifully Chinese—except the figure itself. Seated on the ground in a posture unknown in Chinese religious art, the figure’s left leg was fully extended. Rising behind it was its right leg, bent at the knee. No Chinese deity has ever been depicted in such a way. (This was later confirmed to me by the two Chinese art experts from the Cultural Relics Bureau.)

Because of my background in Christian religious art, I believed that I knew immediately what I was looking at. For many years I have had the privilege of working with Orthodox Christian churches from Russia to Greece. In the monasteries and churches, icons and paintings from over a thousand years of religious tradition are still highly prized, and their style and symbolism are still observed and replicated by leading icon painters today. Several artists had taught me their meaning and significance, in particular Brother Aidan, a monk of the monastery of Iveron on Mount Athos, Greece, the very heartland of Orthodox religious art.

In the Orthodox tradition, the icon of the Nativity of Christ is completely unlike that of Roman Catholic and other Western art. For reasons that I have never been able to understand, Orthodox icons take their images of the Nativity not from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but from a strange and beautiful nonbiblical book, The Book of James.

Mary said to Joseph, “Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth.”

But Joseph replied, “Whither shall I take thee? For this place is a desert.”

Then said Mary again to Joseph, “Take me down, for that which is within me mightily presses me.”

And Joseph took her down. And he found there a cave and led her into it. (12:10–14)4

Joseph then heads toward Bethlehem, as he later recounts:

Then I [Joseph] beheld a woman coming down from the mountains and she said to me “Where art thou going, O man?”

And I said to her, “I go to enquire for a Hebrew midwife.”

She replied to me, “Where is the woman that is to be delivered?”

And I answered, “In the cave . . .”

And the midwife went along with him and stood in the cave. Then a bright light overshadowed the cave and the midwife said, “This day my soul is magnified, for mine eyes have seen surprising things, and salvation is brought forth in Israel.”

But on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the cave so their eyes could not bear it. But the light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared and sucked the breast of his mother Mary. (14: 1–4, 9–12)

So it is that Orthodox icons, paintings, and statues of the Nativity usually show a fine high mountain, within which is a cave, within which lies Mary, right leg raised and bent at the knee, left leg extended along the ground. In her hand or lying beside her is the Christ Child.

On the statue at Da Qin, the remains of a hand resting on the bent knee show that the figure had held something, although it is now gone. Its outline can be seen, however, the outline of a much smaller figure, the size of a child. That and the style of the robes made me sure this was a mother holding her child. In other words, a depiction of the Nativity, made in China ca. a.d. 800 and using the tradition of the Taoist Sacred Mountains as a backdrop, was now before me. I was looking at what I believe to be the oldest known Christian statue in China and a stunning affirmation of the role of Mary in the early Church of China.

Astonishment, wonder, and a deep sense of being in the Presence of the Other overwhelmed me. I had not expected to find something as dramatic as this. For nearly an hour I sketched, photographed, examined, and prayed to this wondrous statue. Xiao Min called up others from the Chinese team to hear what I was saying and to record the details. The Chinese were as delighted as I to know what the statue represents.

After about an hour I was ready to see the other statue on the next floor up. In the center of the pagoda were the remnants of a wooden staircase that had connected all the floors through a stairwell that went directly through the core of the pagoda. The earthquake in 1556 and then four and a half centuries of decay had almost completely destroyed the first eight steps of the staircase on this level and the remainder hung down at a terrifying angle, with perhaps one step in three still intact.

Once again my stomach and heart quaked as I prepared to go up. While my colleagues held a plank of wood at waist level for me to mount, I reached up to the ends of the broken staircase. Slowly my friends and colleagues lifted me up as I grasped farther and farther up the railings of the crumbling staircase until I was raised some six feet and could step up and onto the staircase. Moving at what must have seemed a ridiculously slow pace that was to me unhealthily fast, I climbed one by one the few remaining steps until I reached the next floor. Here I found most of the floorboards had rotted, leaving just a rim around the edge on which to stand. Slowly, Xiao Min and art expert Mr. Yin also came up, accompanied by all but two of the team, who were left below to catch us if we fell—and to help us down if we didn’t.

This time I was so frightened all I could do was clutch the wall and stare across

---

Excerpted from The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity by Martin Palmer
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.