Jesuits sought a Chinese Jewish Bible as polemical evidence against rabbinic corruption.

Evidence

With the publication of Ricci’s journals, his account of the Chinese Jews began to attract a certain amount of attention among the Jesuits and the Catholic Church. Their main concern was, however, the possible existence of a Kaifeng Jewish Bible. Like all Christian missionaries, they believed the divine word of their God should be brought to the whole world. Perhaps of equal importance to this missionary drive was that the existence of a Jewish Bible in China was seen as potential evidence in their polemic against the corruption of the existing Jewish Bible, as it was passed down by the rabbinic sages. It was suggested by the Jesuit Charles le Gobien that “the Chinese Jews may well own texts of the Scriptures which have been preserved in a pristine state and are free of those defects which our scholars and theologians believe they have found in the texts currently available to them.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 344

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern of Christian supersessionist polemics against rabbinic Judaism, echoing the Jewish Bible debates elsewhere in the literature on Orientalism.