The Earliest Chinese Christian Manuscripts are Modern Forgeries?

Abstract

This paper represents the first attempt to systemically critique the recent forgery theory concerning The Messiah Sutra 序聽迷詩所經 and On One God 一神論, the allegedly earliest Chinese Christian manuscripts created by the first known missionary Aluoben 阿羅本 and used in his discussions with the Tang Emperor Taizong 唐太宗 in the 640s. To achieve this, the paper not only re-reads the original manuscripts, but traces the emergence of the forgery thesis, and also evaluates the skeptics’ arguments with an exposé of the inherent defects. The paper argues that the weakness of the arguments is in itself sufficient basis to discredit the forgery thesis, proposing to abandon the forgery theory and continuously to take The Messiah Sutra and On One God as authentic Chinese Christian religious documents.