Thierry Meynard

The Diffused Story of the Footwashing in John 13

History & Biography

“Scholars have long been puzzled on how the Chinese Catholic community was able to transmit biblical stories, especially the ones related to Jesus, in the absence of a Bible in the Chinese language. This excellent study by Dr. Chen Yanrong gives us an important answer. She methodically reconstructs how the washing of the feet in the Gospel of John was transmitted over and over through Chinese texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, progressively building a textual community which identifies itself in various ways with the figures of Peter and the other disciples.”