About: Names of God in China   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

The oldest records of the term Westerners translate as "God", "Most High God", "Greatest Lord" appear to exist in the earliest documents of Chinese literature as Shàngdì (上帝, pinyin: Shàng+dì, literally "Above Emperor"). This representation may be as old as 2000 BCE. In addition to a reuse of some of the traditional titles, transliterations and new constructions became used by the Chinese for the "God" of the Abrahamic tradition, rather than for the supreme being of traditional Chinese religion and mythology.

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  • Names of God in China
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  • The oldest records of the term Westerners translate as "God", "Most High God", "Greatest Lord" appear to exist in the earliest documents of Chinese literature as Shàngdì (上帝, pinyin: Shàng+dì, literally "Above Emperor"). This representation may be as old as 2000 BCE. In addition to a reuse of some of the traditional titles, transliterations and new constructions became used by the Chinese for the "God" of the Abrahamic tradition, rather than for the supreme being of traditional Chinese religion and mythology.
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dbkwik:religion/pr...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • The oldest records of the term Westerners translate as "God", "Most High God", "Greatest Lord" appear to exist in the earliest documents of Chinese literature as Shàngdì (上帝, pinyin: Shàng+dì, literally "Above Emperor"). This representation may be as old as 2000 BCE. However, as Chinese religion changed to incorporate later interpretations of Confucianism, Daoism, & Buddhism, the term seems to have merged, in the views of some philosophers, with an impersonal Tiān, or Heaven, to produce the omnipotent omnipresent identity of Huáng Tiān Shàngdì=Huáng "Emperor"+Tiān+Shàngdì (皇天上帝) or Xuán Tiān Shàngdì=Xuán "Deep"+Tiān+Shàngdì (玄天上帝). The compounds Shàngtiān=Shàng+Tiān and Tiāntáng=Tiān+Táng "hall" have also been used for Heaven. The compounds tiānshén=tiān+shén "god" and tiānxiān=tiān+xiān "immortal" have been used for a deity, in a polytheistic sense. The word Dì by itself has likewise been used for God. In addition to a reuse of some of the traditional titles, transliterations and new constructions became used by the Chinese for the "God" of the Abrahamic tradition, rather than for the supreme being of traditional Chinese religion and mythology.
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