The main
purpose
of trinityvase.com is to present Bible truth using Chinese writing forms.
These forms are commonly called “characters,” “ideographs”
and “pictographs.” Some informative sites about them among many which come
up when one searches “bone oracle Chinese” are
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-169.htm
http://www.paulnoll.com/history-Chinese-language.htm
http://www.chinapage.com/calligraphy/oracle/oracle00.html.
Since my introduction to Chinese characters was through
the Japanese language, the pronunciations found in my English articles are
based upon Japanese. The Japanese call the characters “kanji”
(the “a” is as in “father” and the “i” is as in
“fig”). I received much information and inspiration from three
books of Dr. Ethel R. Nelson and her co-authors:
The Discovery of Genesis (1979, Concordia), with C.H. Kang
God’s Promises to the Chinese (1997, Read Books), with Richard E. Broadberry and Ginger Tong Chock
God and the Ancient Chinese (1998, Read Books), with Samuel Wang
I also recommend David
Marshall's True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture
(Kuai Mu Press).
The
oldest Chinese writing appears to have related to religion. Often
the pictures were inscribed upon animal bones. This led to naming
the oldest known characters “oracle bone script.” Some of these
date back as much as 4800 years.
Beyond the books mentioned above, I primarily
use 漢字類編, Kanji-ruihen (木耳社, 1982 and 字統 Jitoh (平凡社, 1984) by 白川 静 Shirokawa, Sei. These are dictionaries of Chinese character origins
in Japanese. -- Pratt J. Dean
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