In the Early Qing Dynasty, the Jesuit Figurists claimed the Yijing (the Book of Changes) as a precious treasure and treated it as bridging the gap between Christianity and Chinese civilization. The Yijing was viewed as preserving relics of this pure, true religion.
This book analyses the Chinese works by the Jesuit Figurists on the Yijing. The aim of the re-interpretation of the Book of Changes and their proselytization was to promote Catholicism as a national religion in China. This was not successful, however these works in Chinese played a very important role during the time of the Chinese Rites Controversy in China and before the Jesuit Order was disbanded.
The author shows that the Jesuit Figurists discovered connection and parallels between the Yijing and Christianity. The same mystical elements, such as numbers, images, characters in both the Western tradition of biblical hermeneutics, and the charts and hexagrams of Yijing, become tokens of exchange and disclose evidence of their deliberate interpretation.
A first analysis of these handwritten manuscripts in Chinese, this book uncovers the Jesuits mystic theological interpretation in their trans-textual dialogue in the intra-lingual translation of the Book of Changes. The book will be of interest to scholars working on the history of Christianity in China and East Asian Religion and Philosophy.
