ABSTRACT
Most attention from the part of researchers is devoted to its Christian, not to its Judaist legacy. This is certainly the outcome of the impact of Christian missionaries and later also of the indigenous Christian clergy, and their followers and admirers or critics among the men of letters. The situation in Taiwan and Hong Kong is, due to the shortage of material, outside of the authors' considerations in this paper. On the Chinese mainland before 1949, there was not much interest in the Old Testament of the Bible, but since 1980 we have seen a shift in emphasis among the literary critics and comparatists. According to Tolstoy, in Zhou Zuoren's interpretation: "The aim of the artist is to transmit the feelings observed in nature or experienced in human life to other people." In addition, "religious sentiments are the highest feelings of mankind and therefore art is the highest of its kind, only if it is religious."
