Guang Wu

The Liu family failed their Han Dynasty at the turn of the Christian Era, falling to usurper Wang Mang. Guang Wu, from a cadet branch of Liu, reclaimed the Empire 5 August AD 25, as "Eastern Han" - if not immediately over all China, at least over Luoyang. It took the Han another decade actually to defeat all the die-hards and pretenders. In Chinese history this whole timespan is a BIG DEAL. The period is of some passing interest to Western historians also: its parallels to the Augustan Era, with its proclamations to Restore The Republic, are obvious. It has even caught the ear of [Protestant evangelical] "Christian" apologists. Let's discuss them.

In the seventh year of this tumultuous decade, the apologists tell of a portent in the heavens: the sun and the moon were eclipsed. Then we get this - The sins of all the people are now on one man. He proclaims pardon to all under heaven. Around here is some bantz about the man from heaven.

Guang Wu's seventh year should fall around the time of Jesus' Crucifixion, hence the deluge of ink among those apologists. These tend to be Westerners who - like me - own no Classical Chinese literacy themselves. Some such rely upon Chan Kei Thong, Finding God In Ancient China: How the Ancient Chinese Worshiped the God of the Bible. Chan Kei Thong's translation reads like a Josephus extract - far more Christian than its first-half-millennium authors should have been.

This tetragrammatic meal (食) made of the day (日) is credited to a "record of the latter Han" for which, we'd start with one of the 24 chronicles in the Chinese canon. I am looking at Fan Ye's Hòu Hànshū.

Fan Ye was a fifth century historian and the "Annals of Emperor Guangwu" are the start of this record. Not a primary; but we can assume it a fair secondary. Fan Ye is a topic of recent scholarship: S Durrant, "The Place of Hou Hanshu in Early Chinese Historiography", Monumenta Serica (2019), 10.1080/02549948.2019.1603446.

The date-marker before that event is 癸亥-dark. Guihai: Year of the Pig. Smoke if you got 'em.

The less-stupid Anglo transmitters of this guizi text tend to assume "he" doing the pardoning was someone in position to do such pardoning: the vincent Emperor, and that this proclamation was an amnesty - at least a political one, possibly a debt jubilee also. Such is what Wang Mang had proclaimed when he'd taken the crown two decades before.

We are certainly not considering some Jew dead thousands of miles across the Silk Road or, worse, risen again for some Chinese food on his way to Lake Titicaca. And to be fair to our apologists, they've mostly understood that. Chan Kei Thong hasn't been cited in his own right in about a decade. But to be more fair to the apologists - to judge them - they still trust that one's translation and presentation. Such is how they launder old text for new readers. Such is how they disguise their lies.

Those reading the apologists should keep going. As I read Fan Ye, there's an eclipse of the sun. AD 29 might have been seen in the west, partial southeast. 14 November 30 and then 10 May 31's annular will have been seen in the southeast of China, that last in Korea also. Those latter two are what matter, EH 3-4.

Fan Ye was hardly a dunce; his dates are generally considered correct. For AD 30 and 31. As in: not AD 32-3 when Jesus died. Which occasioned miracles = not a regular eclipse: which is no miracle, but just plain Kepler. Again: I don't read Chinese, but I can assuredly read people who do read Chinese, and none of those people think there was some miraculous event here. Well ... none but Protestant Christian apologists.

As for Chan Kei Thong - like a Moonie (or a Mormon), or a Taiping, he dearly would like to link his Oriental tradition to the Occident. I understand that most Chinese treat him as a crank because: he is.