The "King Star"

In one of my Chinese classes my teacher, who formerly lived in China, told a very interesting story regarding one of the wise men. As it's getting close to Christmas time, I figured that this was a good time to post this.


While he (my teacher) was walking down the street one day with a friend. As they were walking the friend began to tell the story of how a very long time ago, one of the very important astrologers of the Chinese emperor saw a star in the sky and realized that this was the star of a king. The astrologer, wanting to pay a visit to the newborn king began the long journey to visit the king. My teacher's friend then said that the astrologer also brought a very nice gift with him, but could not remember the English word, though he did remember it started with an "f". My teacher asked if it could perhaps be frankincense. The friend, then very excited, said that this was exactly the word he had been looking for, and he was very curious as to how this American had known the name of the gift that the astrologer had brought.


After hearing this story I was very curious and wanted to know more. Here is what I've found.


According to many Chinese Christians, one of the wise men that visited Jesus when He was young was from China. Chinese Christians believe that this was an astrologer by the name of Liu Shang. The arguments that they have are sound pretty good too, if you ask me.


 Liu Shang was the chief astrologer for the Han rulers at the exact same time that Jesus was born. As an astrologer, he soon noticed that a new star in the west had appeared in the sky, a star known to the Chinese as the "king star". Supposedly, whenever the "king star" appeared in the sky a new king had been born. Shortly after seeing this star, Liu Shang disappeared for two years.


The Chinese were very advanced in their astronomy at the time and the Silk Road, one of the main roads of commerce that connected China to the West, was already in existence at this time. Shang could have easily taken this route west. A journey along this route at the time would have easily taken around one to two years to reach Jerusalem. It is interesting to note Matthew 2:16 at this point which says that King Herod, "gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi."


After finding all this out, I think that I've come to the conclusion that one of the wise men was Chinese. 

A Language's Genesis

I just finished my Chinese class for this semester not too long ago, and the last class dealt with a topic that I've been pretty interested in lately, how Chinese characters indicate that the ancient Chinese knew many of the stories told in the book of Genesis. 


To begin with, this is the Chinese character for field,


田


However, many people also interpret this as garden in some instances and the four lines that come from the middle remind one of the four rivers that flowed out from the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:10-11).


It's important to note this character when looking at the character for meaning "blessed".




福


One can see the "garden" at the lower right. The character at the left is a radical for God, the line at the top right means "one", and the box above the "garden" is commonly used to refer to a person. Someone that knows the Creation story can easily make the connection here. God places one man in a garden and he is blessed. There are many other characters like this.

船

This is the character for boat. If you remember from the example above, the box means person. The thing that looks like a pair of running legs means eight, and the character to the left means "vessel". Where would they have come up  with eight people in a vessel to mean boat? The story of Noah coincides perfectly with this character.

The link below is a great example of many other characters that show the relation between ancient Chinese and the book of Genesis. students.washington.edu/cbsf/cool/Chinese.swf

Also, though I haven't read it, the book God's Promise to the Chinese is supposed to contain hundreds of other characters that coincide with Genesis. answersingenesis.org has some good stuff too if you're interested.