A Series of Studies on Oracle Bone Script and the Bible, No.1

— 15 June, 2023

In an online video, a teacher said ‘every word is a window that opens a world to you’. I did not remember the content of the lecture, and the teacher’s name, but I always remember what she said. ‘Every word is a window that opens a world to you’, that inspired me to review my experience of grasping the meaning of words when using language and the result is I cannot agree with her more.

Like ‘rose’ representing a specific kind of flower, ‘joy’ representing a specific emotion, and ‘disguise’ representing a behaviour, words represent specific things that are real and factual in our world. To see a word as a window, we must open it—to know the meanings of it. Yes, the meanings, not only the original meaning, the contextual meaning, but also the meaning of its formation and its existence—what would happen if we do not have the word and to where the word could lead us, if the word inspires us to open new windows one after one.

The experience of digging the meanings of words has never been unfruitful. Usually, it reveals something new to my perception of the things they represented, as well as the real world they related. Unusually, they let me have a glimpse of a vast amazing world that beyond the factual world around me. For example, the exploring of the meanings of ‘sin’.

When I encountered the word ‘sin’, it is not in English form, but Chinese translation, 罪 (zui), in a Chinese translation of the Holy Bible. 罪 is a pictograph that comes from the ancient China. In Xu Shen’s Shuo Wen Jie Zi 說文解字 (Explanations of Characters and Words), the original pictograph of 罪 looks like the no.1 in the chart.

The character originally meant ‘a fishing net made by bamboo’, which is actually represented by the part no.2 in the above chart.

While the other part is an other Chinese character 非 (fei), the no.3 in the above chart. It is a representation of a pair of wings, seen from the back of them. The explanation of 非 in Shuo Wen Jie Zi suggests that the character shows the situation of one wing is opposite to the other, and the meaning of the character is ‘go against, being opposite’.

For my observation, the whole pictograph seems representing that the opposites two are all caught by the net. How can it represent the meaning same with the word ‘sin’ ? Then a new window emerged—the character 辠 (zui), no.4 in the above chart.

The character means ‘breaking the law’, noted in Shuo Wen Jie Zi, consisting of two parts, ‘自(zi)’ and ‘辛(Xin)’. The former represents ‘norse’ and the later ‘a pungent taste’. It expresses a situation of ‘worrying about, or suffering, the bitter and painful punishment caused by breaking the law’.

A note in Shuo Wen Jie Zi tells that Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of Qin dynasty, decided to discard 辠 and use 罪 instead in the language, because 辠 looked like 皇 (huang, meaning ‘the emperor’). Since then the meaning of ‘breaking the law’ of 辠 was carried by 罪.

In the modern Chinese, 罪 still consists of two parts. The upper part ‘罒’ still represents a net, and the lower part ‘非’ generally means ‘no’ or ‘not’, including not good, not right, not same, etc. And the meaning of the whole character 罪 includes ‘breaking the law, wrong doing, suffering, and the punishment of breaking the law’, to which the English translation firstly would be ‘crime’.

The Bible teaches that we are all sinners. But I never break the law and was not put into jail, and never have troubles with police. I am not a criminal, how could I be a 罪人 (sinner)? So what are the meanings of ‘sin’ in English is the question to ask.

In The King’s English Dictionary, ‘sin’ means ‘transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine command; moral deficiency in the character’; in The Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘(Act of )transgression against divine law or principles of morality’; in The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, it means ‘an act considered to break a religious or moral law; an act regarded as a serious offence’. Subtle changes occurred in the various explanations, but it is not difficult to find that the word was originally concerned with Judanism and then mainly with Christian believe.

Then I realised that the English Bible was translated from the original Greek and Hebrew text. So I went to the original Greek and Hebrew words of ‘sin’, ἁμαρτάνω (hamartánō) and חֶטְא (hātā). The root meaning of ἁμαρτάνω is ‘to miss, fail’; and חֶטְא is ‘to miss’. In the Biblical context, ‘to sin’ means ‘to miss’ the will of God, or the acts that are against the divine law of God. For instances, in the Bible, the חֶטְא was translated as ‘miss the way’—‘Desire without knowledge is not good—how much more will hasty feet miss the way! (Proverbs 19:2, NIV).’ Also, the text in Bible explains the word ‘sin’ further: ‘to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin (James 4:17, KJV).’ So the ‘sin’ refers to both doing wrong thing and not doing the right thing.

The important point is that ‘sin’ is the ‘sin’ in God’s sight, which means the standard to justify sin is the divine law of God, not the secular law made by human. Then, I read the Bible to find the content of the divine law, in order to know specifically what is ‘sin’, what is not.

Firstly, I read all the red words in The Gospel According to Matthew, the New King James Version, in which the words of Jesus Christ are printed in red colour. From Matthew 5, I started to fear, because the red words showed that I am probably a sinner, though I am not a criminal under the law of governments. For example, Jesus said ‘whoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire’, or ‘love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven’.

Then I read The Epistle of Paul The Apostle to the Romans. I was shocked that I probably a big sinner, when I read Paul 1:29-32, because it says those who are proud, envy, disobedient to parents, without understanding, implacable, unmerciful, are deserving of death, especially who has already known the righteous judgment of God. That is to say, not only sinful acts, if the thoughts merely in my mind is sinful, if the desire merely in my heart is sinful, then I am a true sinner. That is why the Romans teaches that ‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God (Paul 3:23, KJV)’. Then, my heart was burdened. I did not want to be a sinner.

Knowing the meanings of ‘sin’, for me, means that ‘sin’ is not merely a printed word in the Bible, or a digital word on the screen of my laptop. It opens a real world of ‘sin’ to me. Under God’s standard, ‘sin’ roots deeply in my daily life and thoughts and it is the power of sin that made my life sometimes heavy and sad, sometimes sick and depressed. And, when I overcome an old sin a new one is coming.

Also, I realised that may be no one is any better or worse than any one else in this sinful world. If I was Hitler, what  would I do? Can I resist the temptation to be a dictator? Born as the human flesh, ‘sin’ is the part of the human nature. We are naturally weak to refuse temptations; we naturally intend to self-indulgence, self-righteousness, and fear pain, sickness, and death; we are naturally rebellious and desire to go where the Bible says no. That is why, since we were little children we were taught and educated to be honest, to be good, to be polite, to control ourselves.

Exploring the meaning sin also taught me that the cause of sin is not only from the nature of our human flesh, but also from the evil one, the Satan. The evil one is powerful and smart, he has numerous ways to made us falling again and again, and paying the cost of our sin again and again. Let alone the sin in our nature is Satan’s convenient weapon and he uses it to attack us, when we try to put things right.

That is why when we fight for something good, such as freedom, justice that everyone would say it is a right thing to do, but we found that the fighting is so difficult; it is not the brutal human agency of the dark force that are difficult to deal with, it is the dark force behind that is much more powerful than us. Satan can use our sin to make us weak. He can use our coward to attack our courage, he can use our desire of revenge to blind our eyes to find love and to grow our spiritual strength. Therefore, when we fight the right fight, we are facing the difficulty like a super huge giant; it is essentially a war between the sinners who want to change and the darkest source of sin.

Unless, we overcome sin and are free from the power of sin. The good news carried by the Holy Bible is we can repent and ask for God’s forgiveness. It is not a easy thing to do, but the Bible says God is generous. Whenever you ask, God will give. God said His mercy is enough for us; as long as we don’t give up God’s mercy and forgiveness, we always have the hope to be cleaned and start again.

Looking again the character 罪, the meaning of which includes both ‘crime’ and ‘sin’. The difference between ‘crime’ and ‘sin’ helps me to comprehend ‘sin’ further. For example, the law to justify a crime is the law of a king, rulers, or a government; it is secular, comparing with the divine law of God to justify a sin. Therefore, a crime is usually a sin, but if the secular law is evil, then breaking the law may not be a sin; likewise, an act that transgresses the law of God may not be justified guilty in the secular society.

Also, if a crime is judged, the punishment followed, a fine or the jail; when the punishment is finished, the criminal may come back to the society to live. While for a sin, if the sinner repents, the sin will be forgiven and will not go to the last judgment; to most of the people, they always have the chance and time to repent and to be forgiven, as long as the last judgement has not come (it is quite near now though). And the punishment of sin after the last judgment is far more severe, not a certain amount cost like the punishment of a crime, but an eternal punishment, the everlasting hell. That is why God give us such a long time, such many chances to repent.

And the most important point is, a human judge may not judge based on justice; and if a crime is not caught, the criminal may escape from the punishment. While in the last judgement, judge Jesus Christ is holy and absolute just, thus no single sin can skip, unless the sin has been forgiven before the last judgment.

Looking back to the character 辠. I am thinking, if Qin Shi Huang did not discard the word, we may have both 罪 and 辠 in Chinese language today; thus they can respectively represent ‘crime’ and ‘sin’. Would that be easier for translating ‘sin’ into Chines? Moreover, the character  representation of ‘sin’ would not disappear in Chinese language.

I felt the consequence of the absent Chinese character of ‘sin’. Before I encountered the word ‘sin’, I knew envy, pride, laziness, that were not good but a part of human nature; thus I only needed to control them lest they were developed into immorality or committing a crime. But I did not know they are ‘sin’ that has the power to corrupt my life and spirit, I did not know they should be rooted out of my life and spirit. Before I knew what is ‘sin’, I always wanted to be a good person, obeyed the secular law, and followed the principles of morality, but I did’t know there is a much higher standard of being good—the divine law of God.

It is pointless to complain Qin Shi Huang now, I only thank God for letting me open the eyes to the word of ‘sin’, and then letting the word ultimately lead me to look at the kingdom that is high above the world of sin.

Then thinking again the ancient characters:

I cannot understand why a symbol of a pair of wings, no.3, can represent the meaning ‘go against, being opposite’? Should two wings of a pair work together? Why does a fishing net catch a pair of wings, but not two fish fighting each other? An idea comes into the mind. The pair of wings symbolises the falling angel; and the back of the pair of wings was seen from the sight of God, the heavenly Father, the Creator, when the falling angel turned his back on Him. Then the symbol can represent the meaning ‘go against, being opposite’.

The falling angel is the one who caused the first sin of the first human couple, Adam and Eve, by deception. He has many names in the Bible, including Satan (John 13:27; Acts 5:3; Romans 16:20), the ruler of this world (John 14:30), Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12), the huge dragon, ancient serpent (revelation 12:9), prince of this world (John 12:31), ruler of the darkness of this world(Ephesians 6:12), the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4).

So the whole ancient pictograph that represents a pair of wings caught by a net is the clue of God’s plan, recorded in the last book of the Bible, The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Also, I believe the ancient pictograph is a clue of the relationship between God and His people who speak Chinese language.

‘Every word is a window that opens a world to you’. The word ‘sin’ brought me a lot and I think about it a lot. It is sad to recall since when the most beautiful Jun, July, and August became sad months in a year; and through the word ‘sin’, I see not only the dark force wants to consume sinners who want to be good, but also a heavenly kingdom more powerful than the dark force. Can we do something, to make our spirit strong and healthy, to be the salt and light in the world? First of all, we must be aware of sin, be alarm and repent. Then, we endeavour to live and help each other to live the life that the evil one does not want us to live, to be the person the evil one does not want us to be. For example, spend time in the beautiful nature created by God with joy and gratitude, love our neighbours; or look up to Jesus Christ, to be a humble, gentle, honest and loyal person, to be a good and positive element in communities, etc. Easy to say but difficult to do. But we have Jesus Christ, who has won Satan on the cross and who is able to free us from the power of sin. So let us read the Bible and pray to understand God’s will.

[Pray to God: if any word in the wiring is not in accordance with God’s will, let the readers forget it immediately after they read it. Have mercy on us. Amen!]