The Vegan Nestorian Church in Ancient China, Part II: Thou Shalt Not Kill Sentient Beings. By Dr Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- 1 day ago
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The Sutra of Hearing the Messiah states that God commands that no sentient being be killed, no flesh be eaten, and no animal be sacrificed, for all living beings share in the same divine life. It represents Jesus as a compassionate teacher who died for all sentient beings and John the Baptist as a strict vegan.
Thou Shalt Not Kill Sentient Beings!
第五願者。眾生自莫殺生。亦莫諫他殺。所以眾生命共人命不殊。“The fifth precept is this: sentient beings (眾生) must themselves refrain from taking life, nor should they counsel others to kill. For the lives of sentient beings are no different from human lives (my translation).”
The last crucial sentence is missing in Martin Palmer’s translation -- “The fifth commandment is that any living being should not only not take the life of another living being , but should also teach others to do likewise (Palmer 2001, p. 164).”
Prof. Yoshiro’s corresponding translation is: “The fifth vow is that all the people should not only not take life themselves but they should also persuade others not to do so, for the life of all living beings is of equal value to the lives of men (Saeki 1932).”
眾生 (Cantonese: zung3sang2; Mandarin: zhongsheng) should be translated as “sentient beings”, which includes humans and animals but not plants, instead of “living beings”, which includes not only humans and animals but also plants. Plants are lives but they do not have a central nervous system and are not sentient.
The fifth precept in the Sutra of Hearing the Messiah corresponds to the 6th Commandment in the Protestant Bible. In killing and/or eating animals, one breaks the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill". As put by Reuben Alcalay (1981), one of the greatest contemporary linguists cum author of The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary, the 6th Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13 KJV; Matthew 19:18 KJV) means "any kind of killing whatsoever." The original Hebrew, he points out, is לֹא תִּרְצָח Lo tirtzakh, which requires us to stop ourselves from killing any sentient beings altogether (see Rosen 2004:87).
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