The Power Discourse Of Evils In The Old Testament From The Cross-Culture Perspective

People hold different views as to whether human nature is good or evil. This divergence has great indelible influence on cultural communication between the East and the West. The Chinese Confucianism and the western Christianity maintain totally different perceptions on human nature. These different views of human nature influence the cultural communication between people.The Old Testament becomes a Bible to various religious and schools of thoughts with the development of history. There are a large number of descriptions about human sins such as: killing, stealing, adultery, fornication, violence, cheating, taking revenge and so on. However, where do the sins come from? Does God impart those evils to human beings? How does God establish, enforce and maintain his absolute authority in accordance with the step of history? And"Original Sin", though nothing is depicted in the Old Testament, becomes one of the core concepts in Christian theology. How is the theory consummated by theologian? Human beings, including theologians religious or not, have always been confused by these problems. In China, Confucianism representatives Mencius and Xun Zi hold different views on human nature: Mencius believes human nature is good; while Xun Zi holds the opposite view. Therefore, the humankind both in the East and West has controversies over human nature. In China Confucianism has been dominant for a few thousand years, yet it does not form a religion. Therefore, religion has become one of the cultural communication barriers between the East and West. The tools hidden behind these different beliefs are power—power discourse.With Carl G. Jung's collective unconscious theory and Foucault's power discourse theory as a cornerstone, the present thesis will carry on the preliminary exploration on God's power and the development of evils in the Old Testament. Western rulers create the image of"God"to control people's spiritual life, and this figure has been strengthened and perfected in the long process of constant historical development. In other words, God's power becomes the rulers'power. Yet most Chinese thinkers are common people, and because of the frequent wars, they didn't obtain important posts, and their thoughts were not appreciated by their rulers at that time. So some religious beliefs did not develop systematically in the whole country.The thesis further interprets the differences between Chinese and Western religious theories caused by different views of good and evil on human nature. Islam and Christianity are derived from Judaism with the constant evolution development of the historical. Theocracy appears in most of western countries during the Middle Ages, popes command armies and kings rule countries by divine right. However, ancient China encounters contention of a hundred schools of thought, there is no dominant religion in history. Nowadays, national values, ethical concepts and various national habits are gradually emerging with the increasingly frequent cultural exchanges, which inevitably result in the Cultural conflict of the society. Modern various evils prototypes can be found in the Old Testament and the evil types are also mentioned in the discussion of Mencius and Xun Zi. Consequently, understanding the background of different cultures will contribute to cultural communication.