ABSTRACT
Different from the previous Jesuits of the late Ming Dynasty, the Jesuit Figurists in the early Qing Dynasty, including Bouvet and Prémare, followed the Hermetic tradition and applied typological exegesis in their intralingual translations of the Yijing. This chapter allows a glimpse into how they applied typological exegesis to the Yijing and extracted the Prisca Theologia from their intralingual translations of the Yijing. In their translations, the Figurists, especially Bouvet, used the metaphor of Jian 鑑 (Mirror) to gather the comprehensive image of God, employed Three One 三一 from the Daodejing and the Yijing to imply the Triune God, and transposed the meanings of hexagrams, especially the Qian 乾, to explain the life of Jesus Christ. These preexisting ideas from the Chinese classics were painted in tones of Christianity.
