Local access dig. pdf. [Dudink-Biblical chronology.pdf]
See source text Gezhi aolüe 格致奧略 .

This article is primarily concerned with the question of what kind of text Gezhi aolüe (Outline of the mystery [revealed through] natural science), a unique ms. copy (1820) from the Zikawei Library in Shanghai and published for the first time in 1996, precisely is. Gezhi aolüe appears to be older than 1820 (dating to before 1723), and to be a summary of one of the "Manila incunabula" (as Van der Loon called them), viz. Gewu qiongli bianlan 格物窮理便覽 (Handy compendium for investigating things and extending knowledge, 1607) composed by the Dominican friar Tomas Mayor for the Minnan-speaking Chinese in Manila, which in turn is based on Luis de Granada's Introduccion del Simbolo de la Fe (1583). The article further concentrates on the biblical chronology (Vulgata) embedded in a scheme of six "world ages" (from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Salomo, and Zerubbabel to Christ) that Gewu qiongli bianlan presents (a chronology not found in the Introduccion). Due to the absence, at that time, of a Chinese translation of the Bible and especially of the Old Testament, Gezhi aolüe (as well as the ms. Renlei yuanliu 人類源流 (The origin of mankind) that seems to be based on Mayor's text too) that was not compiled by Western missionaries reproduces for quite a number of less well-known names in the genealogy from Adam to Christ the Minnan or Hokkien 'transliterations' used in Gewu qiongli bianlan. The article concludes with two appendices: 1) a survey of which biblical chronology Chinese Christian texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries use: the Vulgata chronology (the world was created some 4000 years before Christ), or the Septuagint chronology (the world was created some 5200 years before Christ); and 2) a reproduction of the genealogy of Christ (in Chinese and, of course, not using Minnan transliterations) that Carlo di Orazio da Castorano, a Franciscan missionary in Shandong, had printed in 1704 (the only known copy is preserved in the Vatican Library, see frontispiece and attached illustration of this issue of EASTM).

Abstract: This article focuses on the Chronology by the Graz Jesuit Joseph Stöcklein (1676–1732), published in 1729. Since late antiquity, intellectuals have been crafting chronological works with a view to making apparent God’s actions in the world. These attempts were primarily based on the Old Testament, which was seen as a historiographical narrative and thus counted as a record of factual truth. New chronographical insights from China, which had been reaching Europe since the beginning of the seventeenth century, contradicted this exegetical tradition, however. Whoever attempted to relate the new findings arriving from China to the Bible had no choice but to give up certain truths in order to save others. Seen in this light, the tight framework of biblical truth led directly to creative hypotheses such as Stöcklein’s Chronology, which demonstrated two main shifts in the conceptualizing of universal history: first, Stöcklein emphasized the significance of the Old Reich and therefore decentred his universal history from western Europe to (mainly) Augsburg and Nuremberg; secondly, he envisaged the Far East rather than the Middle East and Europe as the geographical centre of Christian universalism and of the beginning of universal history. One crucial step was his relocation of Paradise to the immediate vicinity of China. Discussing the manifold Buddhist, Muslim and Christian sources with which Stöcklein was playing, I argue that Stöcklein’s turned the biblical story of salvation into a Chinese story of salvation.

Local access dig. pdf. [Durr-Stocklein Chronology.pdf]
Online at: German History website, or at Academia.edu.