IronChariots.org

[BryanJ]

http://www.morgenster.org/signs.htm

I did a little digging and found a few websites claiming the connection between ancient Chinese characters and Genesis. After listening to the show I decided to look into the subject since, while I am by no means an expert, I have been studying Chinese for a few years. If you know a couple pretty basic things about Chinese, the whole premise falls apart.

First of all, all Chinese characters are made up of 200-some basic parts called "radicals"(Many character dictionaries are organized by radical). An important thing to remember is that radicals can play a role in meaning or phonics. For example, the Chinese character for woman is 女(nǚ)and the character for horse is 马(mǎ). Put them together and you get 妈(mā), which means mom, as in mama. In this case 马 is providing the approximate pronunciation and not the meaning. It seems the website above doesn't take this sort of thing into account.

Case in point:
------------------------------------------
"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree in the garden, but you shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
This can be found in the Chinese symbol for prohibition or to prohibit:
------------------------------------------
The author constructs this etymology:
禁(jìn) = 林(lín) + 示(shì)
Prohibition
To Prohibit = Tree + (Divine) Command

What the author fails to mention is that in this case, 林(lín) plays a phonetic role and 示(shì) relays more of the meaning.
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%9E%97/1309590
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E7%A4%BA/1313780


Also, I have never seen 田(tián) used to refer to garden，just fields or farmland and stuff of that nature.

That's a start. I'll probably add this Chinese Character claim to the wiki sometime.
_________________
"A theologian is somebody who is an expert on the unknowable and has all the qualifications to prove it."- Pat Condell

http://flickr.com/photos/18612613@N06/

[eimerian]

Thats very interesting.

When listening to the show I came up with a different explanation:

I know that a lot of chinese words and characters were basically "invented" when concepts of western culture came to China.

For example the chinese name for the "planet" Pluto is "Underworld King Star". Since Pluto is Hades, King of the Underworld in the Roman pantheon it sort of makes sense to think that at some point in time a chinese scribe familiar with Greek/Roman mythology came up with this term.

My guess is that just as the chinese had no characters for Roman mythology they would also lack characters for beings from Hebrew mythology like the devil. Therefore it wouldnt surprise me at all if a scribe familiar with Genesis came up with a "devil" character that includes descriptive elements of the story.

Would that be plausible?

PS: The two "ma" words you used in your example remind me of something:
I was told that in order to practice chinese pronunciation you have to say the sentence "Ma ma ma ma?" which basically means "Why does mother beat the horse?" but I wasnt able to verify this.
_________________
Jesus saves.
Do not remove memory card, controller, or reset/switch off the console.

[BryanJ]

[GodBeLess]

Having just watched this episode, i couldn't help but be reminded of this article by the Onion.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/