In Search of a Canon
When Today's China meets the Bible in a Flat World
Speaker:
Dr. Yiyi Chen
Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Monday, February 12, 2007
3:30 PM
As a scholar on the Hebrew Bible and Jewish culture, Dr. Yiyi Chen will reflect on the encounter between the cultural value of the Bible and Chinese culture during the last two centuries. Accompanying the fast economical development of China over the last two decades, and an ever intensifying interaction with the western world, more and more Chinese are looking into one of the corner stones of western civilization, the Bible, for experience and inspiration in order to solve many social problems. Among the topics he will cover are:
- A brief history of Christian missionaries in China and their contribution
- China's own renewed search for moral as well as religious Canon from within its own cultural heritage
- What is in this process that can be mutually beneficial to both China and the west?
About Dr. Yiyi Chen
Yiyi Chen's research includes the Hebrew Bible in its Ancient near East context, Ancient Judaism and early interactions between the near East and China. He is the Chinese translator of A. B. Yehoshua’s novel Three Days and a Child, which won him the Hebrew Literature Translation Institute Annual Prize in 1994. He has authored articles on the early Jewish community in China, Chinese translations of the Hebrew Bible, as well as various topics on the study of the Hebrew Bible. His recently published book The Hebrew Bible, from Textual and Archaeological Perspectives, till 586 B. C. E. is so far the only systematic overview on the subject written in Chinese. He is now working on a Chinese government commissioned introductory textbook for Chinese university students studying the Bible. Before joining Peking University, Beijing, China, where he presently teaches, he worked as a software developer and an internet evangelist in the Silicon Valley, U. S. A.. Chen holds a BA in Hebrew Language and Literature from Peking University, a MA in Near Eastern Studies and a PhD in Biblical Studies from Cornell University.
*This event is cosponsored by the Asian Studies program, the Religion Department, and the Nagel Institute.