Torrance argued non-Jewish Chinese tribes were descended from Israelite missionaries.

Evidence

Somewhat inconveniently the Ch’iang neither abstained from pork and other nonkosher foods nor did they circumcise their young. Yet, proclaimed Torrance, their own judicial regulations resemble those in the Old Testament. Clearly he admires the Ch’iang (“the soul of the man is dead who cannot love them”) and thinks of them as special. He knows that they are a people with an ancient lineage. In subsequent lectures he developed the idea further: the Jews had been appointed by the Almighty as missionaries to teach the world monotheism and those missionaries that got as far as China became the Ch’iang. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 305

Categorization

• QUESTION: Torrance’s 1937 book was praised as ‘the greatest missionary book of the century’ — worth chasing the reception history of how seriously it was taken.