One of the most prominent religions in ancient and medieval China was Taoism, or Daoism. This is completely unrelated to Christianity, an Abrahamic religion related to Judaism and Islam. For this reason, it might be surprising to learn that some medieval Daoist texts include brief Christian prayers that were used as spells.
Lu Dongbin was born in China in the eighth century CE. He was a prominent scholar and poet, alleged to have performed miracles. His poems are collected in The Complete Works of Lu Yan or The Complete Book of Ancestor Lu.
The overwhelming majority of poems and spells in this collection of literature are purely Taoist. This makes sense, since Lu Dongbin himself followed the Taoist religion. In fact, after his death, he was deified and viewed as one of the Eight Immortals within that belief system.
However, something that makes Lu Dongbin’s works so fascinating is that there are some obscure Christian prayers contained within them.
Beyond simply being interesting because Lu was not a follower of Christianity, something else makes these obscure messages so peculiar. They are not even written in Lu’s native Chinese language.
While being written with Chinese characters, they are transliterations of sentences in Syriac, not Chinese. There are four of them. Concerning these four messages, Lu wrote that knowing these spells would enable one to elevate seven ancestors to the immortal realm.
The first one reads:
“Yes, the Christ did go up to high things!”
The second one reads:
“Yes, the divine Majesty protect this Jesus!”
The third one reads:
“Yes, let us exalt the image of the Christ!”
The fourth one reads:
“Yes, the present of the image of the King is the Jesus!”
However, an alternative translation for this final spell is:
“As it was written in prophecy, Jesus is King!”
As we can see, these Chinese spells, which could supposedly elevate seven ancestors to the immortal realm, are brief Christian prayers about Jesus.
It is well worth asking why the Chinese Taoist Lu Dongbin included some Christian prayers in his writings. Interestingly, Lu’s residence was likely just a short walk from a monastery of Christian monks. This was the Church of the East, also known as the Nestorian Church.
Given this geographical connection, it would have been easy for Lu Dongbin to have become familiar with the teachings of Christianity. Furthermore, there is evidence that he worked directly with these nearby monks.
One of the main objectives of the Nestorian monks was to share their beliefs with the Chinese, so they wanted to translate the Christian message into the native languages. Evidence indicates that Lu Dongbin helped them with some of their translation work.
This provides a straightforward explanation of how Lu Dongbin became acquainted with certain fundamental aspects of Christianity, enabling him to incorporate some Christian prayers as spells in his Daoist writings.
Lu Dongbin’s association with Christianity may also explain some other mysteries. As mentioned earlier, some records attribute miracles to Lu. These miracles include turning water into wine and healing the blind.
It may not be a coincidence that these are some of the most famous of Jesus’ miracles in the Christian gospels.
