Do Chinese Characters Tell

Us Something About Genesis?

The Garden of Eden page is the second of five pages that attempt to relate the forms of Chinese characters to ideas from the Book of Genesis.

The first character on the Garden of Eden page is fu4, with the modern meaning "lucky, fortunate", which the authors analyze as a compund of the elements "god", "first", "man", and "garden". Nelson and Broadberry no longer support this interpretation.

Actually, the right side of the character is simply the phonetic element, and we see that, according to Wieger, the two top elements of the phonetic are not "first" and "man", anyhow.

Fu2. Abundance. ...the character means gao1 [high, tall] (contracted), the heaping up of the productions of the fields (tian2), goods of the earth, abundance, prosperity...Note the modern deformation.... (page 193, Lesson 75 D)

The second character on the Garden of Eden page is tian2, with the modern meaning "field". The authors claim that the division into four parts might reflect the division of a river into four parts, but it's not clear how this would come to mean "garden", which is one translation that they provide, though I've never seen this character used to mean "garden". At any rate, the common understanding is that the character represents a field divided into plots.

The third character on the Garden of Eden page is yuan2, with the modern meaning "first; head, chief". The authors analyze this as being "two" above one of the characters for "person".

According to Wieger, the upper element is not "two", but is the original version of shang4, "top; upper".

Yuan2. That which is on top (shang4), upon man (ren2). Head, principle, origin, as "caput" in Latin.

The fourth character on the Garden of Eden page is wan2, with the modern meaning "finished, completed". The authors say that this is a combination of the preceding character, "first", with "home". Nelson and Broadberry no longer support this interpretation.

However, the preceding character, yuan2, is simply the phonetic element of wan2. (For the sceptical, it might be worth noting that these two characters share identical pronunciations in Sino-Japanese, in Cantonese, and in Jian'ou.)

The fifth and sixth characters on the Garden of Eden page, jin4 (prohibit) and lan2 (desire, covet) are both analyzed as if the two tree characters at the top had a semantic value, but the two trees form the character lin2, forest, which Karlgren says is phonetic in both characters.

The seventh character on the Garden of Eden page is shi3, with the modern meaning "start, begin". The authors analyze this as "woman", "secretly", and "mouth, to eat". Nelson and Broadberry no longer support this interpretation.

According to Wieger and Karlgren, the appears to be another case of misidentifying a semantic-phonetic character as compound indicative. Still, it's worth looking at the element that they identify as meaning "secretly". The character that they are referring to is pronounced si4. Here's what Wieger has to say about it:

Si4. A cocoon. It represents a silkworm that coils itself up, and shuts itself up in its cocoon. By extension, selfish, to care only for one's self, separation, private, particular.

This is all very well and good, although taking "privately" to mean "secretly" might be a bit of a stretch. Unfortunately, there are several other characters which have come to be written in exactly the same modern form. Here they are:

Qu1. Basin, porringer. This representation is found in more intricate characters designating different vessels.

Gong1. It was at first a rudimental representation of the arm bent.

Next we have a single seal-style element that appears in four very different shapes in various compounds:

Yi3. This very ancient character is supposed to represent the exhalation of the breath, the virtue that emanates from any object, its action, its use. By extension, use till exhaustion, to terminate, to decline, to have done with, to be no more, passed. NOTE: Yi3 is uniform in the ancient writing. In the modern writing, it is different ways that we shall explain successively.

Finally, we get to the question of which form is used in the right side of the character shi3.

Yi2. The mouth exhaling a breath (yi3). By extension, to speak in order to make one's self known; I, one's self. It is used as an arbitrary abbreviation of tai2 (platform, terrace).

Yi2 seems a bit of a stretch as the phonetic element for a character pronounced shi3, but Karlgren reconstructs the Old Chinese of yi2 as something like [dj@g] and shi3 as something like [Sj@g]. (@ represents the schwa in ASCII IPA.)

This shows just how difficult it can be to figure out the origins of a Chinese character. It requires a depth of knowledge that is lacking on The Genesis Site--or, at least lacking in the sources from which their information is derived. (I don't know much, myself, but at least I know where to look for the facts.)

The eighth character on the Garden of Eden page is gui3, with the modern meaning "ghost, spirit". The authors say that this is a combination of elements meaning "moving", "garden", "man", and "secretly". Once again, the authors failed to do their research, substituting a fanciful explanation without any foundation in reality.

A part of the modern character is fu4. Here's what Wieger has to say about these two characters:

Fu4. Head of a devil; of a phantom. It forms

Gui3. The spirit of a ded man, a manes, a ghost, a spectre. Further, after the introduction of Buddhism, it meant a devil, a preta. The old character [at the upper right] is evidently a primitive representing a human form floating in the air. The more recent forms often show the split head of Buddhist pretas, and always have an appendage, that was sometimes taken for a tail, but that really represents the whirling made by the ghost, while it moves.

The ninth character on the Garden of Eden page is mo2, with the modern meaning "devil, demon; magic, mystic". The authors explain this one as being composed of "covering", "two trees", and "devil". Nelson and Broadberry no longer support this interpretation.

As usual, appearances are deceiving. The two trees are not originally trees at all. Furthermore, the "covering" and the "two trees" together are pronounced ma2, and are the phonetic element of mo2. Here are the details for ma2, one element at a time:

Pan4. To strip hemp and divide (ba1) the fibres from the stalk (che4). The modern form is to be distinguished from mu4, tree.

Pai4. Textile fibres. Not to be confounded with lin2 (forest-two trees), that comes from mu4.

Ma2. Prepared hempen tow, kept under a shelter.

The tenth character on the Garden of Eden page is zhi4, with the modern meaning of "legless insects" (though Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary says "legless reptiles"). However, the character originally had a different meaning, as is evidenced by its use as the semantic component (radical) in many characters relating to felines and canines--and to none relating to either reptiles or insects. (Nelson and Broadberry do not mention this character.)

Zhi4. A primitive. It represents a feline, a head with whiskers, paws, backbone. Feline beasts, that are characterized by their back long and supple, by their undulating gait, e.g. the cat, say the Glose.

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