Abstract

Despite the insubstantiality of the historical, archaeological, and literary documents, the study of East Syriac Christianity in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907) reveals the welcoming attitude of the Church of the East towards cultural and religious diversity in the Chinese context of the 7th to the 9th centuries. Contemporary Chinese Christian literature and art testify to a Christianity moulded by a different religious environment, in which the adoption of spiritual languages and artistic codes borrowed from other religious traditions was not perceived as a threat and a loss of identity but as a means of expressing the Christian faith in a pluralistic religious context