Discovery of Genesis - Chinese Characters Tell Creation Story
Yesterday I wrote the Discovery of Genesis - Creation in the Chinese Characters and gave an example of one of the characters.
Today at TheBizOfKnowledge I was reminded of another Chinese character that reflects the Genesis story.
Rememberm, Chinese characters were created before the Bible was written, that is they are older than the Good Book. The Bible explains the characters. The characters were not made to reflect what was written.
There were two trees placed in the Garden of Eden. If you don't believe that, this post and others like it won't be of interest to you.
The Chinese character for forbid, or to warn-
Isn't that interesting?
When the original Chinese created a pictograph to express the idea of warn/forbid they chose the symbol for two trees and God.
What's up with that?
At TheBizOfKnowledge I am writing a series that I am particularly enjoying. Lessons from the Good Book.
I know it's not for everyone and I can live with that.
But, it reflects my own worldview which I suspect most/many people don't even have…a worldview of their own, that is.
What's your worldview?
Tags: characters, chinese, creation, storyPOSTED IN: All about China
1 opinion for Discovery of Genesis - Chinese Characters Tell Creation Story
Bjoern
Jan 16, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I have my doubts that this is indeed an ideographic character. “Forbidden” is pronounced “jin” today, while the two trees together (the character for forest) are pronounced “lin”. It seems very likely that the “lin” hints to the sound of the character, while only the character “shi” hints to the meaning. As far as I know “shi” is not the character for “god”, but rather for “altar”. Since an altar was probably forbidden to the ordinary people, this seems to make sense.
One always needs to be very careful reading too much into the character, even if the Chinese themselve tell you the story behind it. After all, the “shouwenjiezi”, the oldest book explaining the meaning of the characters, was written approx. 1500 years after the characters were developed.
A popular example for a conclusion that seems intriguing but is in fact wrong is this one: “安 - an” means “peace, peaceful, silent” and consists of the character of roof and woman. You often read that this is because Chinese belief that you should only have one woman at home to have a peaceful life or that women should be inside the house for the world to be in peace. However, the character for women, “女”, which today is pronounced “nü”, was also pronounced like “nan”, so woman is mearly a sound component.
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