My Journal

Today I got an auto reply from the NYPL library saying that my request for the book was expired. I requested it years ago, AFAIK. And at the time, I am sure the book was available in one of those libraries.

But when I looked to request again, the book's nowhere to be found? Perhaps someone has stolen it, given it's market value now.

I guess I'll just add it to my Amazon wish list.

To find the true worth of the book, I did a quick search on some particulars. Because it is a familiar theme to me, I knew what to look for. I wanted to see if and how the book talked about words such as Big Boat 船, To Covet 婪, etc.

I already knew that this kind of approach is called Allegory (灵意解经). The Church Fathers were apt at allegory hermeneutics to bring the Gospel to pagans (e.g. Isaac went out to the field to study the star constellations in Genesis 24:63, even though there's no mention of stargazing, people were amazed at how Christians were so knowledgeable at the time, attr. Dr. Stephen Chan). The Charismatics love this method too, because it is new, it arouses curiosity. It is no surprise that many Chinese are very into allegorical interpretations, given that the Chinese culture has strong superstitious desire for personal gain, such as winning lotteries, Chinese Voodoos, etc. Allegory was also how Satan tricked Eve - "You'll be so smart until God feels jealous".

The authors, Chan & Fu, referred to another book "The Discovery of Genesis" by Kang as the source of their Chinese characters etymology. Kang's book has been criticized the way I have, as apparent in the Amazon reviews.

I will only bring out two errors here by using the 说文解释, the most reliable Chinese etymological source to date. I have a copy of Kang's book on Kindle, and he made no reference to his findings. From the way he writes, it was obvious, he relied heavily upon his own creativity, as I would illustrate below with lines and such.

1. 船: Big Boat. Kang: ...meaning boat, had been analyzed as follows: 舟 a vessel; 八 eight, and 口 mouth or person...interestingly, Noah's ark, the first great boat, had just eight passengers: Noah and his wife, with his three sons and their wives. If this is not a mere happenstance, there should be other Biblically relevant characters...

This is how Kang found out about the origin of the character 船.

Now, 说文解释: 清代段玉裁『說文解字注』
舟也。二篆爲轉注。古言舟，今言船。如古言屨，今言鞋。舟之言周旋也。船之言？沿也。从舟。聲。各本作鉛省聲。非是。口部有字。水部有沿字，聲。今正。食川切。十四部。Note that: 沿 comes from not "Eight Mouths", but from 水 & 谷 (click here for source reference)  (water & valley).
Thus, that means, the more reliable source showed us that the character came from the fact that a boat from water valleys to water valleys is called 船. Which has nothing to do with eight mouths.

2. 婪: To Covet. Chan & Fu: It is made up of "two trees" on top with a 女, which means "woman/female" on the bottom. The "two trees" as we have already seen, refer to the two trees in the Garden of Eden - the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of life...The composition of this character is even more interesting, when one recalls that in ancient China, women had no place in society...Yet, the ancient Chinese chose to use the character for "woman" rather than the one for "man"...This shows that the ancient Chinese had some knowledge of the story of the first act of disobedience against God.

Again, I've highlighted the cheesy assumptions, instead of credible reference.

And now, 清代段玉裁『說文解字注』
貪也。此與心部之惏音義皆同。从女。林聲。盧含切。七部。杜林說。卜者攩相詐譣爲婪。攩譣各本作黨驗。今正。攩者，許之黨字。譣者，許之驗字也。讀若潭。
The meaning? I actually don't know all of it, but it definitely has nothing to do with Eve and two trees.
Else where, there have been interpretation of 林 to mean "many" and not two trees. Many women, hence greed. I would vote for this, or that the meaning has something to do with coveting others' household goods.

I still don't understand why nobody voted for my allegorical insight of the word 王 or 主 as coming from the Chinese understanding of the Trinity.

I would get this book to learn about the errors people have been using. Improve my knowledge in the Chinese history. But no thanks to the careless authors.

"So what? As long as there are Chinese idiots convert to Christianity!"
But then you have to ignore the scholars. And don't forget you've lied. Our God is not a liar. If you can lie about this, what else would you lie about? Any careful person would not believe you eventually. Either they see you as a liar, or someone who does not care about the real truth, which is what the Gospel is, essentially, the real truth.