ABSTRACT
One of the most important pillars of Jewish culture is the Hebrew Bible. No
matter which camp of Judaism a modern Jew belongs to, or whether or not he
or she considers him or herself a religious person, chances are the above state-
ment will be accepted. In the mind of every Chinese that has some knowledge
of the Jewish people, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, and probably Sigmund
Freud and Alan Greenspan are the typical caricatures of Jews. However, few know that the single shared book that all these four and probably all Jews must
have read is the Hebrew Bible, or one of its translations into many of the
world’s languages. This fact also gives us a very telling glimpse into the
knowledge of the Hebrew Bible among common Chinese today. If a group of
typical Chinese were asked in which book characters such as ‘‘Adam,’’ ‘‘Eve,’’
or the concept ‘‘Noah’s Ark’’ are depicted, for many, the answer ‘‘Bible’’ would
come as a fast response; however, few would know that the ‘‘Bible’’ that con-
tains these characters was written in the Hebrew Language, and even fewer would know that the main character of the Bible, ‘‘Jesus,’’ according to them,
was actually depicted in a different segment of the Bible that was written in
another language.
