Archives par mot-clé : Tam Giao

Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors – An Interreligious Encounter in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam. Edited and translated by Anh Q. Tran

[ndlr] Nouvelle publication, présentation de l’éditeur suivie d’une courte présentation de George Dutton (UCLA) que nous remercions vivement.

  • The first translation and study of a never-published manuscript describing local religious beliefs and practices in 18th-century Vietnam
  • Provides a new look at the struggles of early Vietnamese converts to Christianity
  • Addresses issues of early Eastern encounters of Christianity with other religions

Source : Oxford University Press

This very handsomely produced book was inspired by, and includes a translation of, the 1752 Tam Giáo Chư Vọng (The Errors of the Three Religions). The volume is organized into two sections. The first is an invaluable and detailed discussion of the religious landscape in pre-19th C Vietnam and how Catholicism related to it. It is well research and quite thorough, and the best in-depth account that I’ve encountered. The second half is a fully annotated translation of the “Errors of the Three Religions” manuscript, which is held in the MEP archives in Paris. It is in the form of an imagined question and answer disputation between a Catholic and a Confucian scholar who seeks to represent the three major religious traditions in Vietnam. The volume is a welcome addition to scholarship on early Vietnamese Catholicism.

George Dutton
UCLA