I’ve been moving and in the pandemonium have stuffed up the schedule so you might have seen a half-baked version of this yesterday. Here’s the real thing!
A recent episode of the Atheist Experience has made me aware of one of the most ridiculous arguments for Christianity ever. It tries to take apart the meaning of some Chinese characters to show that the ancient Chinese knew the story of Genesis. From this it’s supposed to follow that Genesis is trye (since the Chinese “remember” the story through the structure of their writing system).
Here’s a 10 min video of Matt Dillahunty and Don Baker from the Atheist Experience deal with this ridiculous call on live TV. Their main line of argument is that even if the etymology were true it wouldn’t mean anything, especially since it would contradict the Bible (how exactly I forget). This is a correct response but I want to examine the actual claims. Many evangelical arguments are premised on outright lies, which take advantage of our social-primate brain (which finds it hard to imagine such blatant lying) therefore causing us to assume the premises and look for the fault in the argument itself. This one appears to be just that — blatant lying that should be addressed at the root.
Here’s one of the presentations, making the argument. You can flip through the 30-ish slides pretty quickly but I’d like to focus on just one:
This slide epitomises why the idea is utter bullshit. Firstly, the crude lies. The square-shaped part that says “man” actually means “mouth”. Oh, and that window-looking thing actually means “field” not “garden”. I wonder which religious story fits best given these little corrections? Not the garden of Eden story — luckily for my mocking, the Bible specifically says that Adam and Eve were forced to toil the fields AFTER their expulsion from the garden.
But the second, bigger reason why it’s nonsense is that this is not how Chinese characters work. A majority (maybe 75% of characters) are NOT made just combining meanings but have a phonetic component.(usually on the right hand side of a compound character). The phonetic bit is a simpler character with a similar pronunciation to the overall compound character*.
Let’s take the above character for happiness. Its Zhongwen.com entry shows that the left-hand side can indeed mean a god, but also an omen or something supernatural. However the right side is just the character for abundance. The character is fu (happiness) which is pronounced the same as fu (abundance). The two are somewhat related in meaning but this didn’t have to be: fu (happiness) could have been composed using another phonetic “fu” that means wakalixes for all we care. Indeed, many characters work like this. It does not mean that happiness is somehow related to wakalixes in the minds of ancient Chinese people.
Chinese characters (and culture) are often taken to be somehow magical, mystical or mysterious in a newage** way. By those who don’t know much about them of course. Combine that with a desire to prove Christianity right no matter what, and you get drivel of a kind that’s hard to match. And I say this as someone who reads about one stupid thing by Glen Beck per week.
*Or at least, there was a pronunciation similarity at the time the character was invented, there might be a divergence today.
**Pronounced to rhyme with sewage.
15 comments ↓
I think the left radical also only mean “altar” –> implying sacred.
So it would be “one mouth in a field before an alter” — begging for blessings.
Good post.
I guess so but I think most of the radicals have metaphorical extensions. For instance the water radical is generally used to write characters to do with any liquid. Similarly, I think this one may be a pictograph of an altar but from what I’ve seen is used to write characters to do with the supernatural and religious in general.
I was curious about this site. I had lived over there and love the Chinese language and characters. Since we had Chinese visitors coming to see America I decided to ask them about it. They are self-proclaimed communist atheists. We had to get the English part interpreted because they speak so little English – but they verified that this was an accurate representation and found it very interesting. Puleeze don’t try to educate others on Chinese language from your western perspective. It never works. Besides being blatantly egocentric and culture-centric you display your ignorance. Their entire thinking, culture and communication are radically different than ours and must be combined with their history in order to thoroughly understand the language. Textbook stuff is a laughably shallow interpretation.
Umm, what?
Ummm…Have you studied Chinese at all? I have, at Central China Normal University, in Wuhan, China. In fact, MANY Chinese characters combine radicals based on meaning, not just phonetics. Even if 75% of characters are based on phonetics rather than meaning, that other 25% of 10,000 characters in common use and 200,000 characters in the complete language are a heck of a lot of characters. Besides, who’s to say that the phonetic radicals did not originate from the original meaning of the characters? My Chinese wife took a look at the characters mentioned in this presentation, and confirmed the interpretation of each one (she was a little iffy one one or two).
I agree that Bible stories represented in Chinese characters does not “prove” the Bible stories; it only offers supporting evidence for (not proves) that the Hebrews and the Chinese had a common understanding of their history. If that history was complete bunk, then they shared complete bunk as their history; if the history was accurate, then they shared an accurate view of their history. But a shared history between two vastly different and geographically removed cultures does lend credence to the idea that the history is accurate.
As a followup, I would dispute your 75% phonetic radical statistic. Don’t have an actual number handy, but having studied Chinese, I would peg the number closer to 50-50 between phonetic and meaning.
tsk, tsk, such quibbles:
“These are often called radical-phonetic characters. They form the majority of Chinese characters by far—over 90%,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters
@Sabio Lantz – read the article more closely – it says that the radical-phonetic characters (allegedly 90% of the Chinese language) are comprised of “rebus” (a phonetic element) AND a “determinative” (radical – meaning element). Which actually bolsters the case for the meaning-based interpretation of the characters significantly.
Also, in response to the author’s stipulation that “mouth” and “man” are not the same thing, and that “field” and “garden” are not the same thing: If we assume that the Chinese characters and the Bible we have today are referencing the same story, then the original story was in Aramaic or whatever language was in use at the time. Thus, the Chinese version AND the English version are both translations of the original. If you are familiar at all with the mechanics of translation, you know that there is often no perfect “one-to-one” correspondence between words in different languages, and you have to go to for the best fit for the meaning (especially when dealing with pictographic ancient languages). Thus, “field” and “garden” could completely have the same meaning in the source text, and “mouth” could be equivalent to “man” if you are emphasizing the speaking or eating abilities of the man (i.e. “I have four mouths to feed at home” or “we have a real loudmouth in our group”). To suggest that such a correlation is impossible shows a lack of experience in translation, especially two-hop translation.
David, I’m finding it hard to believe that someone could confirm the meaning of the characters are per the presentation so maybe I’m not understanding something right. By “confirming”, I don’t mean to agree that the interpretation given in the presentation looks plausible based on the semantic interpretation of the elements or that it’s consistent with them. By “confirming”, I mean to agree (with evidence) that the explanation given in the presentation is the actual explanation for the historical origin of these characters. Is that what you’re saying?
In terms of the overuse of semantics in making up tortured explanations for Chinese characters I refer you to http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1811
I’m not sure how many phonetic components have a semantic element (would be interested in a citation) but the point is that these need to be studied on a case by case basis. Just because the phonetic element might have a semantic component doesn’t mean that it does — otherwise we could just make up stories about characters as I claim was done for the “fu” character by the presentation.
@ David,
I really don’t know what you are saying. Please make your claim clear. Remember, I care not what percent of characters have meaning or not, but am curious.
However, I absolutely think any theory positing that by examining Chinese Characters we can see that the ancient Chinese knew the same Genesis fictitious myth as the ancient Hebrews is twisted and laughable. So I thought I’d make that clear. But I am willing to discuss how much meaning is incorporated into Chinese Characters if you’d make your claim clear.
My suspicion is that if you buy into the genesis myth, we may have little common ground in discussion.
It has been fun watching some you tube stuff on this ridiculous theory which I actually had not heard of until today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7i_EaNnXhs&NR=1
As a native speaker, I teach Chinese in the States in the past decade. I agree that many Chinese characters not only have pictograph, ideograph, but also phonetic components (we call it “sound clues” for our students). But as suggested in the YouTube, even Matt agreed that many other cultures share the creation stories. In addition, there are so many other Chinese characters that tell the stories from the Genesis that you would get very tired to deny. Check out the website and decide for yourself whether is it “coincidence or by design”.
Blessings to you and your family ~
If you agree about the phonetic component, how does granting that many cultures share similar creation myths give support to this idea?
The mere existence of the phonetic component in Chinese characters suggests that the interpretations given in the presentation have almost nothing to do with the characters’ historical origin.
I wrote out the FU character for visiting Chinese guests. I explained to them a picture of Happiness from the Christian viewpoint I see incorporated in its design. On the left is a Cross lifted up with a line above it signifying an altar. This is the story of Jesus crucified to take away the sin of the world. On the right is correctly a field (all I possess) above it a mouth (me, myself) and the same line above it as on the left. I other words: when I accept the free gift of God’s forgiveness and I surrender my life to God I have found FU (happiness) My Chinese freinds were blown away being Buddhists but they agreed there’s alot more to it than meets the eye! Check out the character for righteousness and why do you think there’s a lamb covering a man to signify righteousness? Or the character for TRUTH. Why is the Cross prominent over all on that one? Of course if you don’t believe God is then nothing will convince you. Someone once said that God must love the Chinese more than any other race because He made so many of them! I actually believe God loves us all equally and loves to put trail markers along the path to discovering Him. I think some of those markers are imbedded in the chinese language.
I am researching for a blog on the origin of the meaning behind the Chinese Symbol for TRUTH.
It is a Church with a cross and the main radical is the square with 3 slashes (I say these represent the triune God) Taoism says this part means “the Immortal”
Then the next symbol for truth is a cross with a spear on one side and shed blood on the other and a tomb with 3 light squares (once again only my interpretation: 3 days in the tomb)
The Bible says that “the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth”
Could be christian missionary influence… or similar historic stories to the Jews (like the story of the great flood) but… why the cross?
Check for my post in a few days…
so the 4 squares is a field meaning ‘all I possess’
the rectangle is correct ‘one mouth’ that’s me, myself
I choose to confess Christ as my Lord and Saviour and have offered my field for His purposes in this world. Since I’m not taking my field with me when I leave this earth I’m going to be as faithful as I can with whatever I can grow in that field…my possessions. It’s actually pretty easy to understand once your mind is open to God.