The Jingjiao Stele and its Confucian history of reception in Late Imperial China

This research focuses on how Confucian intellectuals of 18th- and 19th-century Qing China engaged with the Jinjiao Stele. Rather than recognizing it as evidence of Christian presence in Tang China, these scholars frequently placed the stele into a broader discourse on foreign teachings (夷教), linking it with traditions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. This process of textual reinterpretation reflects not only the epistemic boundaries of Qing scholarly culture, but also the ways in which knowledge of foreign religions was reframed to fit into the intellectual norms in the Qing dynasty.

The Jingjiao Stele is an ancient stele referring to the earliest presence of Christianity in China related to the Church of the East dating back to the 8th Century. My research concentrates on the reception of this stele by Confucian scholars in the 18th and 19th Centuries.