The Flood in ancient Chinese writing

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

Creationists have claimed to have discovered support for the historical truth of the Biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood in ancient Chinese writing.

According to a book published by Nelson, Broadberry and Chock, in 1997, the word for "boat" in Chinese characters is composed of the symbols for "vessel," "eight," and "person" (literally "mouth" - Often Chinese uses the word mouth to mean a family member, ie. a mouth to be fed). According to Chinese tradition, the characters were developed by the historian Cangjie during the 3rd millennium BC. Nelson, Broadberry and Chock argue that Cangjie based this character on his historical knowledge of eight people saved on a ship through the flood. [1]

Scholars of Chinese have pointed out that given the many ways in which a particular character may be read, it is difficult to support Nelso, Broadberry and Chock's comparison with the Old Testament flood story. Chinese characters depict ideas and concepts, but do not give much detail as to the pronunciation. (This is more fully explained in the article on hanzi). For example, the word ma (媽), meaning "mother", is made up of 'woman' and 'horse'. The first element, "woman", indicates to the reader the general meaning of the word (in this case "relating to a woman"), while the second means that it rhymes with the word for "horse", which is also pronounced ma but with a different tone. Other patters are also found: the character for good on the other hand is a semantic-semantic compound. In short, the Creationist argument is based on a misconseption of the way Chinese works.

In addition, it is not true that Cangjie, or any other individual, 'invented' Chinese characters, whatever Chinese tradition might say. In fact it was far from certain that he ever existed. If he was indeed a real historical figure, it is more likely that he standardized an existing writing system which had developed in the usual ad hoc way.