Adam ( Syriac: ), also known by his Chinese name Jingjing ( zh, t=景淨, p=Jǐngjìng, w=Ching³-ching⁴), was an 8th-century Syriac Christian monk and scholar in China. He composed the text on the Nestorian Stele, which described the history of the Church of the East in China from 635 to 781. Many scholars believe he is also the author of the later Jingjiao Documents.

Biography

Scholars place Adam's probable birth at around 750 or 751.Godwin (2018), p. 142 Adam's father was named Yazedbozid ( Syriac: , Chinese: zh, t=伊斯, p=Yīsī, labels=no), who was part of a fighting unit invited to come to China by the Tang court to help quell the An Lushan Rebellion. According to the Syriac text on the stele, Adam's grandfather was named Mailas ( ), and was a priest from Balkh ( ) in Tokharistan ( ), in northern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. It has been posited that Adam was raised or born in China and received a Chinese education due to his grasp of

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

and Chinese religious thought that's observed in his writings.

Nestorian stele

Around 781, Adam composed the text of the Nestorian Stele. Sources also state that Adam translated (by imperial order) multiple Biblical texts into Chinese. The texts in question seemed to be paraphrases of certain portions of the New Testament and to a smaller extent, parts of the Old Testament. In 786, Adam helped an Indian Buddhist monk from Kapisha called Prajna translate the Buddhist text ''Sutra of the Six Mahayana Paramitas'' from an Iranian language ( Sogdian or Bactrian) to Chinese. The translated text was presented to Emperor Dezong in 787, who rejected the translation on the grounds it was faulty, corrupted, and confused by a fusion of Buddhist and Nestorian concepts. Adam was bilingual in Persian and Chinese. He may also have been literate in Syriac, Arabic and possibly Sogdian or Bactrian.Godwin (2018), p. 176 Syriac text Nestorian Stele 781AD 1

References

Bibliography

* Godwin, R. Todd (2018). ''Persian Christians at the Chinese Court: The Xi'an Stele and the Early Medieval Church of the East''. Bloomsbury Publishing. . {{Church of the East in China 8th-century Chinese people 8th-century Christian monks Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Place of birth unknown Iranian Christians Chinese people of Iranian descent Christians from Imperial China