Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing;... 2 Corinthians 6:17
"The Jesuit missionaries developed a policy of accommodation in relation to Chinese religious and cultural practices in the 17th
century. The Order further received permission in AD
1637 to use the Septuagint, instead of the Latin Vulgate, to try and
harmonize the biblical chronology with Chinese history. Chinese history
was believed to have extended back to nearly 3000 BC,
and the historical accounts contain within them both creation and flood
narratives that may loosely correlate with Biblical history.
The events of the Chinese Rites Controversy, which came to the fore in the 17th and 18th
centuries, reveal that there was a desire among the Jesuit missionaries
to accommodate non-Christian practices and beliefs with Christian
sacred texts, and Catholic doctrine.
The controversy arose because they
found it difficult to make converts in China through an open approach,
whereby Chinese converts were expected to fully replace Confucian
rituals with Catholic rites.
However, the Confucians believed in venerating ancestors, which led to
opposition from Dominicans and Franciscans to their policy of
accommodation—hence the rise of the Chinese Rites controversy in the
Catholic Church in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Jesuit priest Gabriel de Magalhães identified three opinions relating 
to the beginning of Chinese history in his major work Nouvelle Relation de la Chine, written between 1650–1668, and eventually published in 1688. Martino Martini’s work Sinicae historiae decas prima was
published earlier in Europe in 1658 (Martini had travelled to Rome from
China over a period of four years, from 1650 to 1654). Philippe
Couplet’s work was also available from 1686. Attempts at harmonizing the
biblical accounts with Chinese history continued through the 18th century. A number of Chinese texts were used for their historical accounts. Texts available included those from the Song dynasty (AD 960–1279), two important pre-Song texts, and later writing from the late Ming dynasty (AD 1368–1644), and the early Qing dynasty (AD
1644–1911).
The Jesuits further relied upon later commentaries, some of
which elaborated upon the shorter earlier texts. The first pre-Song
text available was that of Sima Qian’s Shiji (Records of the Historian),
the first part including the first five sovereigns, including that of
the Yellow Emperor Huangdi 黃帝. Later editions from the Ming dynasty
included a pre-text, the Bu Shiji, essentially a short commentary on three earlier emperors. The second pre-Song text, Zhushu jinian (Bamboo Annals), dates from the tomb of Prince Xiang of Wei (318–296 BC), being discovered in AD 284, and copied in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Among Song dynasty text is the Shaowei Tongjian jieyao (Summary of the Comprehensive Mirror by Shaowei) of Jiang Zhi (AD 1111), which includes the early period from Fuxi 伏羲; and the Huangwang daji (The Great Record of Emperors and Kings) from AD
1141, which begins its account with the mythical Pangu 盤古.
Pangu was considered a giant being asleep within an egg of chaos, with
the pantheistic creation narrative taking place over periods of 18,000
years. The god-like being was considered the ancestor of the twin
brother and sister, Fuxi and Nüwa 女媧.
Martini recognized that the flood in the time of Emperor Yao 
correlated
broadly with the period of the Biblical Flood (as outlined in Ussher’s
chronology and the Vulgate), but along with the Jesuit missionaries he
preferred the chronology of the Septuagint as a means of reconciling the
accounts.
He only tentatively suggested that Yao, or Jao, maybe connected to
Janus, a Greek flood survivor, and in some sources linked to Noah. Martini further questioned whether the Chinese flood accounts and the Biblical ones were identical, and expressed, with some certainty, that
East Asia had been inhabited from before the time of the Biblical Flood.
The Jesuit position was further outlined in 1686 by Philippe Couplet, with his work Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae (Chronological Table of the Chinese Monarchy)
published in Paris in 1686; the purpose being to reinforce agreement
between the Septuagint Chronology and the Chinese history. A year later
he published some of the works of Confucius in Latin Confucius Sinarum Philosophus.
Couplet had spent 20 years in China, having been inspired by one of Martini’s lectures to travel. As the attempt to harmonize Chinese history continued through the 18th century, the literal account of a global flood was undermined in Europe. Isaac Vossius, in his Dissertatio de vera aetate mundi,
of 1659, argued that the Biblical Flood was not universal, but only
local, and that the Bible was only dealing with the events of the Middle
East and not the whole of human society.
This debate also encouraged consideration of belief in pre-Adamic
races. The problem of the existence of ancient Gentile people groups,
such as the Africans, Chinese and Native Americans, and scepticism that
ancient people could cross the oceans, was one of the reasons that led
Isaac La Peyrère to argue for the existence of pre-Adamic people. The
work, Prae-Adamitae, was published in Latin in 1655 and in English in 1656.
as the French King Louis XIV, and Couplet had organized a questionnaire in Paris 1684, seeking further information about the Chinese history and chronology.
*The campaign for accommodation in China may seem to have been only a
small step, but it helped to open the door for heterodox beliefs to
arise in Europe, including the development of belief in deep time." CMI
