Why Should We Value the Cross--disciplines Approach when studying the history of Sino--western Cultural Relationship: A Reflection on the Chinese Study of "Nestorian Church".

To many contemporary western scholars who study the history of early Christianity or the Christianity history in Asia, ―Nestorian Church‖ is a wrong and misinterpreting title for the church developing in Persia for so long time. However, most Chinese scholars who pay attention to the topic of Christianity in Tang dynasty, one of the focal points of the field of medieval Sino-western cultural relationship, still base their studies on the inaccurate or completely wrong conceptions of the so-called ―Nestorian Church‖ which were formed almost one hundred years ago. It‘s so pity that they seem to have no interest on the new advancement of ―other‖ disciplines. I think it is quite necessary for the researchers of Christianity in Tang dynasty to learn and absorb the achievement of the study on history of western Christianity and probably some other discipline, because in contemporary context, the study of ―Nestorian Church‖ is no longer a pure philology study based merely on the excavated literature, it is some kind of synthetic culture study and religion study combining variety of knowledge. In this paper, I try to present and arouse the attention of the above mentioned problem according to analyse four wrong or misty statements being used to be followed by Chinese scholars, which could have been revised many years ago if referring to the achievement of other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]