The Christian origins story is told by the Chinese language in a curious way.
We are all familiar with Adam and Eve being told not to eat the fruit of certain trees, Eve being tempted by the snake/devil, the two feeling shame due to nakedness after they ate, God killing an animal to make clothes for them, and telling them they would die.
In old Chinese, the characters are pictures of things: for example, Shu, meaning to restrain or forbid, is a picture of a mouth overlaid on a tree.
While Lan, to covet or desire, is a woman sitting beside two trees. Luo means naked and is composed of two parts: clothing and fruit.
Sang, or death, is a picture of a fruit tree with two mouths in it, showing two people ate and died. The list goes on.
These characters show that ancient Chinese people were familiar with the garden of Eden and the Christian origins story, familiar enough to make their language dependent upon it i.e. if you don't know about Eve desiring the forbidden fruit, why would a woman next to a tree mean anything? Likewise, if you aren't aware of Adam and Eve dying because they ate the fruit, the character death, with the tree and two mouths won't mean anything to you.
So the question for us is: where did they get this knowledge, 4000 years ago, when they invented their written language?
GJ PHILIP
Rotorua
