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.