Chinese Christian hymnody

Chinese Christian hymnody Introduction: the Beginnings The earliest Christian missionaries to China were Nestorians, who were active during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Their version of Christianity (so-called Jieng Jiao, Luminous Religion) was received warmly by Emperor Taizong (唐太宗,599-649) and flourished throughout China. One hymn from this period, ‘Wushang zhu tian shen jing tan’ (‘All heaven worships in great awe’), was probably composed by Nestorian missionaries and thought to have been translated by Jing Jing, an 8th-century Nestorian priest and scholar. It was discovered in 1908 by the French sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) and British scholar Aurel Stein (1862-1943) (Loh, 2011,...