Eighteenth-Century Joseon Confucian Readings on Jesus

Abstract

It is not easy to imagine the establishment of a Christian Church without the initiative of the Western missionaries on non-Christian continents. But the birth of the Korean Christian Church, at the end of the eighteenth century, is a unique exception to the general pattern. It was established by the theological volition of Korean Confucians prior to any intervention of foreign missionaries. This chapter examines Korean Confucian biblical readings by which the voluntary formation of Christianity in Joseon Korea was realized. Their readings were active intertextual interactions between the Christian Bible and Confucian scriptures. These readings resulted in both anti- and pro-Christian writings. They show the hermeneutical goals and the distinctive characteristics of intertextual readings. Their early historical and hermeneutical initiative is a model for today’s Korean or Asian contextual readings of the Bible.