Jesus as Model Revolutionary: Zhang Shizhang’s 'The Revolutionary Carpenter' (1932)

There are many biographies of Jesus in the Chinese literary world, which draw on aspects of the longer tradition of “Lives of Christ” writing in Europe and beyond. Zhang Shizhang (張仕章)’s Geming de mujiang  革命的木匠, written in the early 1930s, is unusual in its attempt to produce an imaginative, novelistic version of the gospels that focusses on Jesus’s role as revolutionary nation-builder. This talk considers both the narrative and the political context in Republican China of Zhang’s novella and its elucidation of the “people’s movement” in Roman Galilee.

About the Speaker

Chloë Starr is Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology at Yale University Divinity School. She works in the borderland of theology and literature, and has just published three edited volumes exploring Modern Chinese Theologies. At CIW she is pursuing her current project “A Life of Christ in Chinese Fiction,” concentrating on depictions of Jesus in c20 and c21 Chinese literature.

The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.