The Spiritual World of Ancient China and the Bible

by Brian Godawa

  One curious artifact of history that makes it into the novel is the existence of gigantic warrior statues cast by the emperor as spiritual guardians of his realm. Ancient Chinese historian Sima Qin writes, “According to some reports, these colossal figures, which each weighed the equivalent of nearly twenty-nine English tons, represented twelve giants wearing “barbarian” garb who appeared at Lintao in Gansu... The statues were said to have survived until the close of the Eastern Han.” [36] Is this evidence of Nephilim? Not for historical purposes, but for fantasy fictional purposes, yes indeed. Though recent archeological discoveries do indicate that giants are not entirely absent from ancient Chinese history. [37]

  As a side note, though the characters and political issues of generals Meng Tian, Fan Zhao, scholar Xu Fu, counselor Li Ssu, and the imperial sons Huhai and Fusu are based on historical facts, the characters of the concubine Mei Li and the warrior Wu Shu are fictional.

  Chapter 3:

  The Spiritual World of China

  Tower of Babel and the Tomb of Qin

  In the novel Qin: Dragon Emperor of China , reference is made to Chinese oracle bones that record contact between King Cyrus of Persia and the Chinese in the sixth century B.C., four hundred years before the Qin dynasty. This is based on real modern discoveries of cuneiform clay cylinders about Cyrus the Great and his conquest of Babylon that match those found on Chinese oracle bones in China. [38] The ancient Babylonians most likely had interaction with the ancient Chinese.

  But there is also biblical evidence of that connection. As explained in Chapter 1, the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11 is a foundational narrative to the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, or as I call it, “the Watcher paradigm” that guides the Chronicles of the Watcher series along with its sister series, Chronicles of the Nephilim and Chronicles of the Apocalypse.

  This paradigm understands the fallen biblical Watchers over the nations to be identical or connected to the gods of the Gentile nations. And these gods were allotted the various nations as their “inheritance” of ownership. Every Gentile nation territory was under the authority of the demonic false gods that they worshipped.

  By way of review, the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat step pyramid that was built as a “stairway to heaven” for the gods to come down and meet with priests in the temple at the top of the pyramid. The word for Babylon in Akkadian is babil-ani , which means “gate of the gods.” [39] This temple tower symbolized a “cosmic mountain,” and its basic pyramidal structure is apparent in most ancient civilizations across the globe, from Mesopotamia to Egypt to India to South America. [40]

  One theory that explains this uniformity of structure across geographically and culturally diverse civilizations is that the original unified people at Babel were split up by God at the Confusion of Tongues incident and brought with them their knowledge of such sacred architecture. The biblical word “Babel” is a polemical mockery of the Akkadian name of Babylon that turns the “gate of gods” into “confusion.”

  One of those separated seventy nations from Babel would end up settling in the territory we now call China. Modern Chinese researcher Dr. Thong, Chan Kei writes,

  I have now come to the studied conclusion that the ancient Chinese were one of the many original nations dispersed after the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel, described in Genesis 11 of the Bible. Some among these dispersed nations were alienated from God, while others wanted to follow His way. Like the Pilgrims who went to America to preserve the purity of their religious beliefs, the people group that went on to found the Chinese civilization was, I believe, a God-fearing race that desired to worship God appropriately. [41]

  Another researcher of this issue, C.H. Kang concludes the same Babel origin of China at the Great Dispersion, concluding that because of China’s geographical isolation, it was cut off from the outside influence of the west and thus remained relatively undisturbed for 2000 years. This isolation meant that it retained a stronger connection to its Babel origins (and therefore Yahweh) than did the other nations. [42]

  I bring up this information about ziggurats because the tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang Di is in the shape of a ziggurat. Though it currently resides beneath an unexcavated dirt mound called Mount Li located in the Shaanxi province of China, artistic renderings of the tomb indicate its pyramid shape. [43]

  Though the tomb has never been opened, descriptions of the interior by Chinese historians and the like conjure rivers of mercury and a sky ceiling of gems as stars over the floor created as a map of the world. [44] The novel Qin depicts these historical elements as well as the famous army of thousands of terra cotta soldiers created as guardians in the afterlife. [45] It was also a fact that the emperor’s concubines as well as the designers of the tomb were sealed in alive in the structure after the emperor was buried in it. [46]

  So, who were the gods this temple tower mausoleum of Qin was servicing? Let’s find out.

  The Dragon

  The dragon is a well-known symbol of ancient Chinese history and mythology. Whereas the western tradition of dragons is of a fire breathing dinosaur-like behemoth, the Chinese dragon is born of water and is long and snake-like with small legs. These opposing images reflect a much deeper difference of spiritual understanding.

  As classicist scholar M.W. de Visser explains, the dragon appears in the oldest of Chinese literature, the I Ching, a divination text that dates back to the second millennium B.C. The dragon is a positive image of power.

  [It] symbolizes those among men who are fullest of Light, namely great men, and its appearance is considered to be an omen of their coming, i.e. of their birth. In the first place the greatest and fullest of Yang among them all, the Emperor, is, of course, symbolized by the dragon. He is, indeed, the representative of Imperial power. [47]

  From the Zhou dynasty onward (1122-249 B.C.) the dragon was used exclusively of rulers. [48] Visser reveals that the emperor Qin Shi Huang Di applied it specifically to himself, and even described him employing winged dragons in his battle with rebels, much like the fantasy battle at the Great Wall in the Qin novel.

  Qin Shi Huang Di was referred to as the “Ancestral Dragon” in the ancient Chinese Historical Records by Sima Qian. [49] Qin was one of the first emperors to set himself up as a personification of the dragon, and he is considered the first to introduce dragon worship into the Chinese culture. [50]

  In ancient Chinese literature, the dragon is a heavenly creature that symbolizes personal power, the origin of earthly creatures and wisdom. [51] The Chinese Classics compiled by Confucius describe the dragon as a god of thunder, clouds and rain, essentially a storm god. [52]

  In the Bible, the dragon is clearly understood to be a negative image. As explained in the section on Leviathan, the sea dragon is a symbol of chaos that battles against the Creator’s natural and covenantal order (Psalm 74). The Serpent of the Garden is cursed for his deception and lies (Genesis 3:14). His “seed” or offspring are prophesied to be at war with the “seed of Eve,” biting the heel that crushes his head (Genesis 3:15). This poetic prediction of the coming Messiah runs through the entire Bible as a picture of Satan’s people trying to destroy God’s people. And that serpent becomes linked to Satan as the seven-headed sea dragon of chaos in the final dissolution of the Old Covenant, a dragon who also seeks to kill Christians (Revelation 12:4-6).

  Revelation 12:9

  And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…

  This contrast of interpretation comes to play in the novel as the biblical reality of the satanic Watchers is unveiled behind the earthly Chinese dragons.

  One other tangent related to dragons in the story of Qin: Dragon Emperor of China was the red herring thrown out by the emperor to discourage the protagonist’s pursuit of a dragon. Huang Di shows Antiochus a graveyard of “dragon bones” to argue that dragons are long dead and therefore only a legend in the present. The revelation to the mo
dern reader, if not the protagonist himself, is that the dragons are actually misinterpreted dinosaur bones. This was not my creative imagination. It is based on a strongly supported theory by Adrienne Mayor in her book, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times . She argues that modern paleontology with its discovery and categorization of dinosaur bones is a relatively recent discipline of the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Until that time, most people did not know about the “terrible lizards.”

  But our ancient ancestors did. They just didn’t realize it. Occasionally, explorers or scholars would stumble across dinosaur bones in their explorations or travels, but didn’t know what they were. So they called them dragons, griffons, giants and other mythological beings. Mayor examines dozens of examples of classical Greek and Roman writers’ descriptions of mythical monsters that fit the pictures of dinosaur remains.

  She writes that the Chinese too found dinosaur fossils and called them dragons. “  It is generally believed that the earliest written descriptions of “dragon” bones appeared in a Chinese chronicle of the second century B.C. During the digging of a canal in north-central China, “dragon bones were found and therefore the canal was named Dragon-Head Waterway.” [53]

  There could not be two more opposite pictures than the ancient Eastern and Western symbols of the dragon. But rather than casting Chinese dragon imagery as inherently satanic, it actually reveals a much deeper nuanced picture of a civilization that had once maintained biblical roots, but fell with the introduction of the dragon and its false gods. So let’s take a look at that primeval religion of the land of ancient Tianxia (China).

  Shang Di

  Until the first emperor of Qin, ancient China actually worshipped a single creator God whose name was Shang Di (or Di or Tian). As Dr. Thong explains, “‘Shang’ means ‘above’ or ‘supreme’ and ‘Di’ means ‘Lord,’ ‘emperor’ or ‘God.’” So Shang Di would mean “emperor of heaven” or “the sovereign above all rulers.” [54] The use of “Di” in the emperor Qin Shi Huang Di’s name therefore indicates his claim to divine status.

  Shang Di’s attributes matched those of the biblical Yahweh. He was considered by the ancient Chinese to be fatherly, sovereign, eternal, immutable, all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, infinite, holy, loving, grace-filled, compassionate and just—just like Yahweh of the Old Testament. [55] This may not sound as significant to our western minds that are saturated in the Judeo-Christian understanding of God’s attributes. But in the ancient world, those traits stood out from the common notions of a pantheon of capricious deities with limited agency and contentious motivations squabbling for power.

  Like Hebrew religion and unlike all other religions, Shang Di was considered to be a father in the eyes of ancient Chinese religion. Also like Hebrew religion and unlike all other religions, visual images of Shang Di were forbidden. There are no pictures of him in Chinese history. [56] This would make the Hebrews and the Chinese the only peoples of that time who prohibited images of the Creator. Every other nation was awash in images of their gods.

  Lines from a song of the Border Sacrifice (explained below), called “Song of Central Peace,” reads like a Chinese translation of Yahweh creating the heavens and earth of Genesis 1.

  Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark.

  The five planets had not begun to revolve, more the two lights to shine.

  In the midst of it there existed neither form nor sound.

  You, O Spiritual Sovereign, came forth in your sovereignty, and first did separate the impure from the pure.

  You made heaven; You made earth; You made man. All things became alive with reproducing power. [57]

  In the sixteenth century, Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci became the first Western advisor to Emperor Wan Li and established mission bases in China that resulted in the conversion of thousands of Chinese to Christ. To this day, he remains one of the rare western foreigners still highly respected in Chinese history because of his love and accurate understanding of the Chinese culture. He wrote in his book, The True Meaning , “Having leafed through a great number of ancient books, it is quite clear to me that the Sovereign on High [Bible] and Lord of Heaven [China] are different only in name.” [58]

  Border Sacrifice

  The system of worship of Shang Di was also similar to Old Testament worship. Before the Qin empire, the various kings would perform animal sacrifices to Shang Di that they called “border sacrifices,” consisting of a burnt sacrifice of a bull, without blemish, by the sovereign on an “altar of heaven.” [59] Some of this annual ceremony shows up in the storyline of Qin: Dragon Emperor of China . It was originally performed on Mount Tai in coastal Shandong by previous rulers which is why it was called “border sacrifice.” [60] The ritual had lasted through the entire previous eighteen dynasties of China’s history, going back 4000 years. [61]

  Dr. Thong describes the details of the ceremony from ancient sources to show its similarity to the biblical ceremony engaged in by the Levitical priests of Old Testament Israel. The notion of blood covenant, of substitutionary sacrifice of an animal without blemish reflects the Old Testament sacrificial imagery of Messiah, ultimately fulfilled in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. [62]

  The Altar of Heaven was not a temple, because Shang Di does not dwell in temples built with hands. It was an altar, and it would be built wherever the capital city was for the ruler. The famous Temple of Heaven (more accurately, “Altar of Heaven”) in modern day Beijing is an imperial altar first built during the reign of Cheng Zhong (1295-1307) and rebuilt during the Ming dynasty of 1402-1424. It is the largest altar in the world for the worship of God as the ancient Chinese understood him. There are no idols or statues inside it.

  But that’s not all. The Chinese understanding of Shang Di was also quite similar to the Deuteronomy 32 worldview or Watcher paradigm of Psalm 82 that was explained earlier from the Bible.

  Let’s take a closer look at that paradigm.

  The Lesser Deities

  In the Nineteenth Century, Missionary John Ross wrote about the original religion of China as being quite similar to the biblical picture of a divine council of heavenly host called “gods” ( elohim ), that surrounds Yahweh’s heavenly throne and do his bidding (Psalm 82). The ancient Chinese spiritual worldview also contained a divine council whose spiritual host were called “shen.” Ross explains the primeval Chinese picture thus:

  There is one Supreme Being over all in heaven and on earth, the Ruler alike of gods and men. The inferior deities exist, not as the rivals of God but as faithful ministers of His. God has deputed to each of the inferior deities his own particular sphere of influence and of work. In his own sphere this deity exercises supreme jurisdiction over man, but under God… the references to the “host” of inferior deities clearly indicate not only that these deities were inferior, but that they were entirely subordinate. Yet they were superior to man, whom, in carrying out the will of God, they could protect, reward, or punish, according to his deeds. [63]

  Compare this to Psalm 82, and 1 Kings 22 and the similarities are startlingly obvious.

  Psalm 82:1–8

  1 God has taken his place in the divine council;

  in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

  2 “How long will you judge unjustly

  and show partiality to the wicked? Sela h

  3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

  maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

  4 Rescue the weak and the needy;

  deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

  5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,

  they walk about in darkness;

  all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

  6 I said, “You are gods,

  sons of the Most High, all of you;

  7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,

  and fall like any prince.”

  8 Arise, O God, judge t
he earth;

  for you shall inherit all the nations!

  A re-reading of Ross’ description of the Chinese divine council above illustrates that it could be applied in its entirety to the divine council of Psalm 82. A supreme creator with inferior “gods” as faithful subordinate ministers carrying out his will in specific spheres or territories.

  William Boone, another missionary of the nineteenth century, made it even more clear that a prayer at the Border Sacrifice contained the divine council understanding of the Bible:

  There is a special point, however, in the prayer, to which I wish to call attention—the distinction made between Shang-Te, and all the shin , or, as I translate the word, spirits . They are His guards or attendants. Just as Jehovah came from Paran with holy myriads, (Deut 32:2)—as He revealed Himself on Sinai among thousands of angels, (Ps. 68:17) —so do the Chinese believe that when Shang-Te descends to receive their worship offered by the Emperor, He comes attended by ten thousands of spirits. He is not one of them, though He is “a spirit.” [64]

  And these shen or spirits were also called “bright ones,” much like the “shining ones” of Yahweh’s heavenly host. [65] Divine beings are often described as shining with brilliance and glory in both the Old Testament (Ex 34:29; Ezek 1:4–7, 27–28; Dan 10:6) as well as the New Testament (Matt 28:3; Luke 24:4).

  What could account for this amazing similarity without precedent? Some researchers argue that the Chinese had migrated from Babel and were cut off from other nations, maintaining a less corrupt understanding of their Creator than the other Gentile nations that had devolved into idol worship. [66]