Missionary expeditions scripted local converts as guided investigators

Evidence

Both of the delegates, Chiu Tiansheng and Chiang Jungchi, were Chinese converts to Christianity. Prior to their trip, they were given some background information about the community extracted from Finn’s book and a crash course in biblical Hebrew. They were instructed precisely on what to look for and what to bring back. They were also given a letter written in Hebrew by Isaac Faraj ben Ruben Jacob, a Sephardic merchant from Baghdad who was living in Shanghai. In the letter he posed the following questions to the Kaifeng Jewish community: Do they have a Torah scroll? Do they have the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible? Do they have Mishnah and the Zohar? — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 356

Categorization

• SEED: The delegates were coached on what to look for before arrival — a checklist that guarantees finding what was already presumed: a case study in confirmation bias as colonial method.
• XREF: connects to: A single home missionary made thousands of visits and organized hundreds of meetings — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 466; Baptist missionary women adopted social-work monitoring of young urban female migrants — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 838