[KS] Religious terms

[Brother Anthony]

It must be perplexing for students to find such obviously false information as that contained in the quotation that launched this discussion. I think that "Never believe what you read" should be inscribed at the entrance to libraries as well as the Internet.

Anyone interested in Hells will do well to look at the web site "Hell-on-line"  http://www.hell-on-line.org/  where the Chinese Hells are shown to be especially well regulated.  Among the sinners punished (severely) in one hell are those "who filch letters, pictures, books, etc., entrusted to their care, and then pretend to have lost them; . . .  those who practice as doctors without any knowledge of the medical art; those who will not ransom grown-up slave-girls; those who, contracting marriage for the sake of gain, falsely state their ages."  Be warned!

I have just been translating a fun story by Shin Chae-Ho about 2 dragons and God where God is called Sangje上帝 which is not only the oldest and most common Chinese name (Shangdi) for what most people mean by 'God'   but is also said  (by Naver) to have been used by the earliest Catholic missionaries in China. Can anyone tell me if it was ever used by any Christian missions in Korea? It is still used by some Chinese Protestants, while others prefer Shen 神 and in Korea is the name used for the God of the  CheungSanDo.

Anti-Catholic Protestants in Korea take great joy in pointing out that Ch'onJu 天主 is the name of one of the rather folksy looking divinities often lined up as judges of the dead in the temple halls devoted to Ksitigarbha.

Everything is so much more interesting when it gets complicated

Brother Anthony
Sogang University, Seoul
http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/