Never for a moment, now that Yang is safely slaughtered, does Hong fail publicly to revere him. In proclamations for the remaining years of the Taiping kingdom, Yang’s role as Voice of God and Comforter is remembered, his princely title of East King always used. One of Yang’s brothers, who somehow survives the killing, is honored and enfeoffed in the nobility.1 And though Yang’s sons have all met their fate, Hong gives his own second son, Tianyou, to be the East King’s posthumous adopted son, to keep Yang’s family line alive. So that Jesus, too, can have his line maintained on earth as well as through his heavenly children, Hong also names his eldest son, Tiangui, the Taiping heir apparent, to be Jesus’ adopted son.2
These grandchildren of God are joined by the two surviving sons of the dead West King, Xiao Chaogui. The two boys merit inclusion in this select group since Xiao, married to one of the Heavenly King’s female cousins, had been awarded the title of Heavenly Brother-in-law, and hence Xiao’s two sons can be seen as nephews to Jesus and to Hong Xiuquan, and grandchildren to God. Given special recognition in view of their father’s heroic death, these two sons of Xiao are regularly invoked first among all the family in the state documents issued by Hong Xiuquan.3
Besides creating from among the children and the dead this inner core of relatives linked directly by marriage or descent to the Divinity, in the crisis of trust and confidence that follows the murderous months of 1856 Hong turns back to the adults of his own immediate family for solace and support. The two men he feels he most can trust are his own two elder brothers, Hong Renfa and Hong Renda. In 1850 they and their families made the hazardous journey from Guanlubu to join him in Thistle Mountain, and since those days they have campaigned at his side and served him loyally in his court. With only Shi Dakai left alive of the original five subordinate kings, Hong seeks to swell the numbers again by promoting his brothers to make up the lack, and he names Renfa as “Peace King” and Renda as “Blessings King.” Lest this seem a slight to Shi Dakai, he raises Shi’s title at the same time from “Wing King”—which always bore a slightly peripheral air when contrasted to the basic compass points of the earlier kings—to “Righteous King.” When Shi unexpectedly declines the new honor, Hong is in a quandary, and takes what seems to be a diplomatic course: Shi is left with his “Wing King” title, to which Hong adds the title of “Lightning of the Holy Spirit” to match that once held by Yang, while the two brothers are transferred to a new order of nobility just below the kingly level.4
The compromise pleases no one. Shi resents the power still given to Hong’s brothers, whom he believes to be incompetent. The brothers resent Shi’s status as the lone survivor of the earlier order, and do everything they can to undercut his power. Thus although for almost half a year, in 1857, Shi more or less runs the region of Nanjing, it is a solitary and lonely kind of rule, with all his family gone: he is reported to live “in seclusion” and not to receive oral messages but only petitions in writing. These he answers during the night, having his staff affix his responses next morning on the wall outside his residence.5 In the later recollections of a Taiping general familiar with this period in Nanjing, “When the Wing King returned to the Capital, the whole court recommended that he take over the government and the people welcomed this; but the Sovereign was not pleased and would only employ [his brothers] the Peace Prince and the Blessings Prince. . . . The people at court were very displeased at the Sovereign for using these two men. They had neither talent nor planning ability; but they were versed in the Heavenly Doctrines and in no way disagreed with the Heavenly King’s ideas.” According to this same general, Li Xiucheng, it was the brothers’ “suspicions and obstruction” that “forced” Shi to leave Nanjing, a defection that left “no one in charge at court.”6
Shi Dakai departs peacefully from Nanjing in the summer of 1857, taking his most loyal troops with him. Whatever his personal animosity toward Hong’s brothers may be, he does not put it into clear words, and his loyalty to his Heavenly King does not seem to have been affected by their behavior. The manifesto that Shi posts in the cities through which he passes gives as his reason for leaving his desire to continue with the campaign in the west and expand Taiping power there, “in order to repay the Sovereign’s grace and kindness.” The real reason is phrased by Shi in an elliptical form that would doubtless be clear to those who knew the full story, but would have left all others in the dark:
Shi, of the Heaven-ordained Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Lightning of the Holy Spirit, Commanding General of the Entire Army, and Wing King:
I regret my lack of talent or wisdom,
And thus being unworthy of the favor shown me by the Heavenly Kingdom.
But, having vowed to express my loyalty and integrity,
My humble heart has but one purpose:
Above, that I may face August Heaven;
Below, that I may bear witness to the men of old.
Last year, amidst the disaster and turbulence,
I hurried in anguish back to the Capital.
Confident that my unwavering loyalty
Would be clearly understood by my Holy Ruler.
However, things were not quite so,
And imperial edicts were issued one after another.
Dark suspicions abounded on all sides,
How can my own brush record them all?
Because of this, I am determined to exert my utmost,
To lead a military campaign and reemphasize my sincerity.
I shall endeavor to reward those who walk with God,
In order to repay the Sovereign’s grace and goodness.7
With Shi Dakai’s departure—he was never to return—Hong is in a predicament. “Morale declined and there was no unified policy,” in General Li’s words. “Each went his own way. The Sovereign did not place complete confidence in anyone. He had been frightened by the East, North and Wing Kings, and dared not trust other ministers, but placed all his trust in members of his own clan.”8
Yet the Qing forces are unable to take advantage of these inherent weaknesses in the Taiping ranks. With their main besieging camps around Nanjing smashed in the 1856 campaigns, and with their own morale and finances at a low ebb, the Qing also face two new distractions: one is the growth of a second major rebellion, this time in northern China, that of the Nian, which severs communication lines to the south and makes any coordinated assault on the Taiping almost impossible. The other is the slow drift of the Qing and British once again into a state of open warfare over the problems of residence of foreign merchants in Canton, the levels of tariffs to be imposed on foreign goods, and the stationing of a permanent diplomatic representative in Peking. Just as the Nian bring an end to the regular use of the Grand Canal as a supply route to the north, British sea power severs the last main lines of contact on the sea, effectively leaving the local regional commanders in the south and center of China to formulate their own strategies to deal with the Taiping.9
The financial records from the treasuries of Emperor Xianfeng’s own imperial household show the incredible straits to which the Qing court is reduced: suspending orders for the silks and porcelain that are such a conspicuous proof of imperial glory, canceling both wedding and funeral stipends for the Manchu Banner troops and their families, melting down “golden” bells—assays proved these to be only three-tenths gold, five-tenths silver, and two-tenths copper by volume—to make into small gold ingots of five to fifteen ounces with which to buy food and essential supplies, and melting bronze ritual vessels and Buddhist statues to make coins. The court also forces contributions by rank and seniority from all officials, reduces staff in selected government departments to economize on salaries, and cancels all repairs to palace buildings.10 By 1857 some Imperial Banner families have reached starvation levels of a few pounds of relief grain a month, and the emperor allows his Banner soldiers to found their own banks and rice stores in an attempt to shield military personnel from the effects of the dramatically increasing prices.11 Even so the Qing armies might have been able to crush the Taiping altogether, at this time of disarray, had it not been for the Qing leaders’ reiterated insistence that all the veteran Taiping troops from the Guangxi days would be executed if captured, with no exceptions. This meant that even those wavering in their loyalty to the Heavenly King had every incentive not to give up the fight.12
“The clan” in which general Li feels that Hong places “all his trust” includes not only Hong’s brothers, Renfa and Renda, his sister, and the family of his senior earthly wife, Lai. There are also the eight sons of his eldest brother, and the two sons of his second elder brother. Hong himself has two other young sons besides the two who have been named the adopted sons of Jesus and of Yang Xiuqing, and as many as eight daughters by various consorts, many of whom are married—though following Chinese practice several of these marriages are arranged ones among children, who have not yet reached puberty and begun to live together.13 There are also dozens of cousins from the Hong family in Guanlubu and other areas of Guangdong and Guangxi, many of whom trekked to Thistle Mountain to join Hong Xiuquan in the beginning of his movement, or fled their homes later when Qing troops moved in on Hong’s ancestral home to destroy the family gravesites and arrest or blackmail any living relatives they could find. Commencing in 1856 and 1857, these men are named by Hong to honorific titles in the newly established category of the Taiping “Imperial Clan.”14
In regulating the numbers of wives for his most senior associates, Hong Xiuquan has shown himself broad-minded: the East and West Kings were each allowed eleven (though whether in fact or as a posthumous honor is not made clear); the junior kings and Hong’s own brothers could have six; senior officials three, middle-rank officials two, and junior officials and the common people one each. As Hong explains to those who might feel frustration at this system: “Don’t be jealous. The Heavenly Father made Adam, and linked him with Eve. This at first was right, there was one man and one wife.” But later, when God and Jesus descended to earth, “by their grace it was given to me to increase the number of wives.” There would be no retroactive punishments for those who, carried away by the ending of the marital intercourse prohibitions in 1855, had in their enthusiasm exceeded the quotas due to them by rank: “Those who before this Edict have exceeded their allowance (or who have more than one) I shall overlook it.”15
Freed by the murder of the East King from obtrusive scrutiny of his palace affairs, the Heavenly King can now run the extended family of his palace women in any way he chooses. Hong’s palace complex in the heart of Nanjing is a universe in its own right. In the imperial palaces of China’s rulers, the administrative duties and much of the service for the emperor and his women were performed by eunuchs, while non-castrated males were restricted to the outer edges of the court, beyond the inner gates, where they staffed the regular bureaus and defended the palace walls. The Taiping employ no eunuchs, so Hong’s inner palaces are run entirely by the women themselves, under his general supervision. The approximately two thousand women working there are divided into three main categories—the female ministers and bureaucrats; the female maids and attendants; and the women of Hong’s immediate family, from his mother, mother-in-law, and senior consort Lai, to the many other consorts he has drawn into his chambers on the long road from Thistle Mountain to his Celestial Kingdom. According to his son Tiangui, Hong Xiuquan had eighty-eight such consorts in Nanjing.16
Hong’s son Tiangui, nine years old by Chinese reckoning in 1857, is considered too old by his father to stay any longer within the inner palace. He is given four wives of his own, and sent to live with them in the outer palace, forbidden even to see his own mother or sisters. But yearning for their company Tiangui sometimes, when his father is preoccupied with court business, manages to slip back into the palace, and visit with them.17 Tiangui, like his brothers and sisters, is bound by the stern rules their father has drawn up for their behavior, and made them learn by heart: at four, the boys are no longer allowed close contact with their older sisters; at seven, they can no longer sleep in their mothers’ or other consorts’ beds; they must also stay ten feet or more away from their sisters, and learn to bathe themselves; by nine they should not even see their grandmothers. Their sisters’ separation from their brothers is similar: after five, they must never be touched by their brothers, and after nine they stay entirely with the women and are not meant to see even their younger brothers any more.18
In the Eden from which he has just banished his son, Hong Xiuquan creates the rules of order for his women of all ranks and classes. The rules are at once meticulous and intimate, spread ruminatively across five hundred stanzas of Hong’s discursive verse.19 There shall be no weeping in this garden, no long faces, and no raised and angry voices like dogs barking. No one will be jealous.20 A perfect order will prevail, as each woman sees to the task assigned her in the duty rosters;21 there will be no leaving the precincts without permission, roll calls will be taken when the gong sounds once, the palace will be locked at night, and night inspectors make their rounds.22 Hong does not like the noisy use of gongs and drums, for all loud and sudden noises are upsetting to him, although they have their role in sounding the hours and rhythms of the day. But he likes to hear the fuller, deeper sounds of an organ, which has been found in the city and taken to his palace, where it is kept under lock and key when not in use.23 And most of all he enjoys the gentle, plaintive music of the plucked string Qin; to him, this is the truest sound of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, and he orders that Qin music sound through the palace every evening from twilight until after midnight, and that all the palace women practice their music when they are not attending to their other duties.24
In Hong’s palaces, everything must be clean, to avoid the dangers of fire or disease. Leprosy is a terror that has struck the palaces before, leaving “faces swollen, black and filthy, bodies putrid.” No piles of rubbish may be left around, all spittoons must be emptied carefully and neatly at every change of shift, and all flying insects must be kept away from Hong’s own person, especially in the evening. One attendant fans them away from Hong’s head, and one from his feet. The fan must not be nearer than five inches to his body, and never may it touch him.25 The bathhouse must be another world of cleanliness and order: no women may go there when not on duty, and those who use it must be recorded on a roster of attendance and afforded perfect privacy.26
When Hong himself is at his ablutions, the women always prepare four sets of clean and scented towels, some of yellow and some of white silk, and when the weather calls for it the towels are heated. His handkerchiefs, sweat towels, and cloths for face and beard are always clean and regularly changed.27 One group of attendants is assigned to the care of his upper body, one for his lower. His beard is trimmed, his hair is combed and neatly coiled, his nose is wiped, his feet and lower parts kept clean, and the area “near his navel” cleansed with special care.28 The two attendants assigned each morning to his dressing, may stand directly in front of him, and face him, but like every other woman in the court they may not raise their eyes higher than his shoulders, and never meet his gaze directly.29 Making sure not to touch his bared neck, they robe him in his gown, they see to the even hanging of his sleeves to right and left, and smooth the decorative collar round his shoulders. His hat is placed upon his head always by being held at the back, and completely straight.30
All the women in the palace, on rising, rinse their mouths so that their breath is fresh, and carefully clean the area round their eyes.31 Their hands too are always clean. Never may they pluck their brows or hair, never wear outlandish clothes and never bind their feet, but always keep their hair smoothly combed, their topknots neatly coiffed, their dresses bright and clean and trimmed with flowers.32 As Hong tells them, being pretty is not the point, for when did Jesus or the Heavenly Father mind an ugly woman? It is being well groomed that is essential to one’s looks.33
When Hong walks forth in his palace gardens, by day or night, his women check that his clothes are warm enough, and may even hold his arm to steady him. If he wishes to ride through the gardens, to see the flowers or hear the birds, they pull the traces of his ornamental carriage with their own hands, watching at all times for bumps, walking slowly, keeping their distance, and remembering that if they swing the front of the carriage to the left then the rear of the carriage will veer out to the right.34
Hong maintains a complete ban on all Confucian books, both for his palace women and for his own children. Unmoved by God’s message relayed to him by Yang Xiuqing before his death, Hong sees such “ancient” books as “all demonic.”35 But every day, amidst or after their other duties, the women must read the Bible and Hong’s poems in conjunction and in sequence: one day a chapter from the Old Testament, followed by some poems, next day a chapter from the New Testament. When reading the Bible, they must pay particular attention to the personal names, which are marked in their editions with a vertical line, and the geographical names, which are marked with two lines, reading them aloud to each other to make sure their pronunciation is correct. Every Sabbath, in addition, they read the Ten Commandments. Those failing to do their reading will be reported to Hong, and severely punished.36 In addition, at every morning assembly, the women will chant some of Hong’s poems aloud, and commit them to memory. They need never hide their admiration for Hong’s poetry, so long as they are sincere.37
The nights in Nanjing can be long and cold, and the Heavenly King’s health and happiness is everyone’s concern. Carefully they see to the rugs and quilts and braziers that will keep him warm, prepare his heated ginseng and shaved deer horn to give him strength, massage his head and feet, ankles, arms, and knees to ease the tiredness of his body.38 On the most private matters of all, Hong gives no precise instructions to his women, but he who calls himself both “fire” and “sun” throughout the cycle of the poems, in echo of the fiery name that once he shared with God, and in honor of his designation as the sun in apposition to his women moons, gives special praise and promise to those who “ease” the flame:
She who can truly ease the flame repels the demon’s snares,
She who can truly ease the flame is my true wife.
She who can truly ease the flame shows the greatest mercy,
She who can truly ease the flame understands the Way.39
Such easers of the flame are the “most treasured” of the palace women, the true niangniang, or “queens,” and the ones who can expect the “highest rewards.”40
Everywhere in this palace universe Hong’s rule holds sway, for he can “never be wrong” as far as his attendants are concerned, any more than God can be wrong to His daughters-in-law, or Jesus to his sister-in-law. In the awesome presence of these three, the demon devil Yan Luo and his minions “bow their heads like turtles and burrow into the earth.”41 Hong claims that there is now “no secret beating in dark corners” in his palaces, but that does not mean that there is neither fear nor violence among the members of his sprawling entourage, and the women are expressly told not to blame Hong if he shows a violent temper.42 His anger can be provoked by anything from a misplaced swing of a fan to the late arrival of his hot towels.43 Anyone making a mistake twice is considered a “habitual offender,” and though beating is the commonest punishment—those enduring the blows are expected to look cheerful and even to praise their Heavenly King as the blows fall—those who refuse to acknowledge their guilt may find that the punishment for their stubbornness is death, the woman being first ritually bathed and then carried to the back garden of the palace compound for execution with the “great sword.”44 “If you do not care for your Sovereign,” as Hong says bluntly, “there are others who will.”45
Hong not only has to see to the relationships between the dead, the living, and God the Father, between his earthly relatives and each other, and between his palace women and himself—he also has to heed the relationship between himself as God’s younger son and the Bible text that has dominated so much of his life. Even as his women chant their chapter of the Bible each day, Hong has to work with all his heart and mind to reconcile the previously accepted word with the echo of the dead East King’s charge—based itself on Captain Mellersh’s rejections of the Taiping claims to their personal relationships with God and Jesus—that both the Old and the New Testaments were full of errors and need revising.
Where to start? Hong decides to start at the beginning, in Genesis, and to focus on two basic categories of “errors” that he can both identify and try to set aright. One category concerns God’s journeys down to earth; the other involves the interconnections of family members with each other in ways that are not suitable for the Taiping faithful, and surely must be due to the devil’s work.46 As he has been telling his palace women, so brash are the devil demons that they even dare, at times, masquerade as God the Father or as Elder Brother, Jesus, and can thus deceive Hong himself, let alone his more gullible subjects.47
To alter the Bible’s accounts of God’s visits down to earth, and thus to reinforce the claims of Taiping revelation—whether Hong’s or Yang’s or Xiao’s, for all are intertwined and none can stand without the others—is in part a matter of grammar and of emphasis. Thus in Genesis 1:26, where the old Bible says, “And God said, let us make man,” Hong’s altered version reads, “And God said I will make man.”48 In Genesis 12, verse 13, whereas in the old Bible Abraham asks Sara, his wife, to protect him from Pharaoh, in Hong’s revision Abraham asks “the God of my ancestors” to do the protecting. In Genesis 19, verse 1, when the old Bible reads, “And there came two angels to Sodom at even,” Hong’s change is even more direct. He writes, “The Lord True God came down to Sodom,” and God as visitor and actor in his own earthly presence replaces the angels throughout the story, in verses 13, 15, and 16.49 At other times the words for “older brothers” or for “younger brother” are inserted into the text, even though not in the old Bible, to heighten the sense of family intimacy.50 Or, even more boldly, Jesus, identified as “God’s eldest son” (to leave room for Hong as the younger son), is introduced suddenly into the Old Testament story, as a forceful man of action. One example of such an insertion by Hong occurs in the mysterious verses 24 and 25 of Exodus chapter 4, when Moses is returning to Egypt and his wife, Zipporah, bloodily circumcises their son Gershom. In Hong’s version Jesus is in attendance at this event.51
Certain aspects of the story of Noah and his three sons are also disturbing to Hong Xiuquan. For here it is the father’s drunkenness that is most at issue in Hong’s mind, and makes him seek revision. In the early version of the flood, which Hong read in 1843 in the religious tracts of Liang Afa, the story ended with the ark still floating upon the waves, and the reader was never told if its passengers ever came safely back to land. The version of Genesis that now confronts Hong’s urgently exegetical eye tells of their landing and of God’s covenant, and continues the story this way:
(v. 20) And Noah began to be a farmer; and he planted a vineyard.
(v. 21) And he drank of the wine, and became drunk; and he was uncovered within his tent.
(v. 22) And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren outside.
(v. 23) And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. (v. 24) And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
(v. 25) And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. (Genesis 9:20–25)
Hong’s solution is to leave uncut the fact that Noah became a husbandman and planted a vineyard, for the Chinese version sounds innocent enough about these bucolic labors. But the two references to drunkenness and to nakedness in verse 21 have to go. “Exhausted,” Hong writes in substitution, “Noah while in a deep sleep tumbled from his bed onto the ground.” Only in verse 22 is it explained that by this unfortunate fall he exposed his naked body.* For the Taiping, banned from alcohol as from opium, the fact that a man beloved of God would drink himself to oblivion, and in this state show his private parts to his three sons, is safely smoothed away. A quick erasure of “Noah awoke from his wine” in verse 24 and substitution of “Noah awoke from his sleep” and the revision is complete.52
In purging the story of Noah, as he has already done for that of Lot, Hong Xiuquan is removing the taint of immorality and impropriety from the earliest denizens of the Bible. But with Lot’s uncle Abraham, as with Abraham’s son Isaac, Isaac’s son Jacob, and Jacob’s son Judah, Hong is entering specific family territory. For as it is written in the very first verses of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus himself is in the direct line of descent from these four, a line of descent that passes down from them through Jesse, David, and Solomon, to Joseph, the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus. As Jesus’ younger brother, and the father of the Young Monarch Tiangui, Hong has clear need to make his Old Testament ancestors moral exemplars. Abraham and Isaac do not present major problems to Hong Xiuquan, but in each case he is worried by the way that they lie to Abimelech, king of Gerar, by claiming that their beautiful wives—Sarah and Rebekah—are in fact their sisters. Both Abraham and Isaac fear that Abimelech will kill them if he wants to make their wives his own. But by lying, they not only place their wives in sexual jeopardy; they bring the wrath of God on Abimelech’s head. By rather elaborate sleight of hand, Hong recasts these stories so the patriarchs appear blameless and the burden of deceit falls either on the wives themselves or on other intermediaries.53
More difficult, for Hong, is knowing what to do about Jacob, whom God the Father himself rewarded with the name of Israel. The old Bible clearly delineates how Jacob first obtains his brother Esau’s birthright by use of ruthlessness, and then with his mother’s help deceives his dying father, Isaac, and receives the blessing that his father wished to give to Esau. In this case Hong gives up the text as too immoral to be fixed by minor changes, and rewrites all of Genesis 25:31–34, and most of chapter 27.
In Hong’s version the family values are preserved, and no central deceit is practiced. Jacob does not make Esau “sell” his birthright in exchange for the food to stay alive. Instead, speaking as a respectful younger brother, Jacob gives Esau a brief lecture on the need to respect his birthright, and then agrees to “divide” it with him in exchange for the pottage that Esau craves.54
As to Jacob’s betrayal of the wishes of his dying father, all is transformed by Hong into an exemplary story of filial piety. Drama is lost, but honor is saved. If there is deceit, it is the fault of Rebekah, Jacob’s mother: for it is she who urges Jacob to kill two fine kids from his herds, to make their dying father the meat dish that he loves. Jacob gently reproves her: “My elder brother Esau is the one beloved by my father, and besides that it is correct for the elder brother to be the one who should receive the father’s blessing.” To which Rebekah replies that what Jacob says is right, but that he in his turn must listen to her words. She makes Jacob wear one of his finest garments, which she scents with myrrh and the fragrance of fresh milk, and gives him the savory dish of goat kid to take to his father.
In the original text of Genesis, the dying Isaac asks, “Who art thou, my son?” and Jacob lies, “I am Esau thy firstborn,” completing the deception he has begun by donning Esau’s clothes, and placing the skins of the slain kids upon his arms and the soft skin of his neck, since Esau was “a hairy man” and Jacob a “smooth man.” In Hong’s version, the false hair is gone as well, and Jacob truthfully answers his father’s question with the words: “I am your second son Jacob, come to pay reverence to my father. Please sit up, and eat this savory food, and I beg my father to give me his blessing.” Touched by the fact that Jacob brought the savory meat of his own volition, whereas Esau had to be told to go out and hunt for it, moved by the sweet smell of his clothes, and equally moved by Jacob’s kneeling before him and asking his blessing, Isaac bestows the benediction on his younger son. For Hong, the blessing cannot be sealed with wine, so it is sealed with the broth of the savory meat. Similarly Isaac, in the blessing, no longer offers Jacob a lifetime of “corn and wine.” Instead he promises him “corn and wheat” forever.55
With Jacob’s worst duplicity expunged, Hong can tackle the challenges posed by Jacob’s fourth son with Leah—Judah, the fourth in the descent line of patriarchs listed at the start of Matthew’s Gospel. Lot’s drunken incest could be bluntly excised by Hong because it did not seem to affect the main Bible story. Judah’s incest with his daughter-in-law Tamar, even if unwitting, cannot be left standing by Hong, but neither can it be simply excised, since the story of Judah is central to the Bible and the fate of the twelve tribes of Israel. Furthermore, the fruit of Judah’s loins, Perez, the twin brother of Zerah, is sanctified by Matthew as the ancestor of Joseph, husband of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and Judah himself has been favored beyond all his eleven brothers in his father’s eyes, with a magnificent final blessing:
Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he crouched as a lion, and as an old lion. Who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. (Genesis 49:8–10)
The story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar is a harsh and lengthy one, which takes up all of the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis. It is also the second of Hong’s revisions to deal with three brothers—the first was the story of Noah’s sons and their naked father. Like Noah, Judah has three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er marries Tamar, but angers God in some unstated way, and is slain. Eager to perpetuate the line of his eldest son, Judah marries Tamar to Er’s brother Onan. Onan, unwilling to have the offspring of his seed return to his older brother’s line, “spills his seed upon the ground” and is also slain by God. Judah then betroths the twice-widowed Tamar to his third son, Shelah, who is still a boy. But while Tamar waits dutifully in Judah’s home till Shelah comes to manhood, Judah forgets his promise, and when his own wife dies he goes up to the mountains of Timnah to supervise the shearers with his sheep. Tamar is left bereft and still unmarried in the valley.
Even thus far, the story causes Hong moral misgivings. He feels the same distaste as he does for the passage in Matthew 22:24—26, where the Sadducees try to trick Jesus by invoking a similar law to suggest that seven brothers in a row marry the same woman after each one dies childless.56 Hong tidies that story by simply substituting the phrase “another man” each time the Bible mentions “brothers.” Similarly, with Tamar, Hong drops the words for brother and for sister-in-law, implying that Genesis thus fits with Chinese law, by which the firstborn of the younger son’s marriage will be posthumously adopted as the heir to Er, securing for him and Tamar the perpetuation of their line. Hong, after all, has done the same with his own sons, having one adopted out as Jesus’ son, and one as Yang Xiuqing’s. But what is Hong to do with this continuation of the story, as found in Genesis 38:13–26?
And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father-in-law goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him as his wife. When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Come, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee (for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law). And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. And she arose, and went away, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend, the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman’s hand: but he found her not. Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot that was openly by the wayside? And they said, There was no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said that there was no harlot in this place. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.
And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar, thy daughter-in-law, hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by harlotry. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burned. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in-law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah, my son. And he knew her again no more. (Genesis 38:13–26)
Hong can see no solution except to scrap the whole story. As with all his other retellings, Hong writes his new version to the same length as the excised passages, so most of the blocks can be reused, unchanged, with the same pagination. In Hong’s version, Judah sees a veiled “young woman” (not a harlot) sitting at the roadside. As he enquires after her, she identifies herself as his daughter-in-law Tamar. Startled, he asks what she is doing there, when she should be at his home, in mourning. Plaintively, she tells Judah that she came all this way to remind him of his promise to marry off Shelah, so Shelah’s firstborn could continue Er’s line. She was beginning to doubt if Judah would ever carry out his word. Judah apologizes—having lost two sons so young, he naturally, out of father’s fondness, had delayed the moment when he should make his third son marry too. But he promises redress at once. Tamar and Judah return home, he arranges Shelah’s marriage to a local woman, and soon the new bride announces she is pregnant. Joyfully, Tamar thanks the Lord her God. Hong can now return to the original text of Genesis 38, and continue the story with this new young daughter-in-law of Judah’s bearing—as it turns out—twins to Shelah:
And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? This breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Perez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zerah. (Genesis 38:27–30)
Hong just has space at the end to add a sentence of his own to the last verse: “And so Judah chose Perez to continue the elder brother’s line, and Zerah to be the son of Shelah.”57
When Hong gets to work on Exodus, he tries to tidy the present and the future by altering the law of Moses as it relates to these family matters. Hong finds that God’s words to Moses concerning physical passion are too broad-minded to act as moral guidelines for the Taiping. According to the original version of Exodus, what Moses recorded ran as follows:
(v. 16) And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.
(v. 17) If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins. (Exodus 22:16–17)
Hong rewrites artfully, starting with the same words in verse sixteen, but then switching the passage in a new direction, so that God’s words will fit Hong’s own definition of the seventh commandment, that against adultery, which he has promulgated as deserving of death for all his Taiping followers:
(v. 16) And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he is breaking the seventh commandment.
(v. 17) If her father knows of the matter, then he must hand over both the woman and her seducer to the officials, to be executed; on no account may he, knowing what has happened, attempt to conceal it.58
It is exhausting labor. The Bible is so long, and there are many other changes to be made. But the main story is now more cleanly told and, as much as it can be, the family honor is saved. Hong’s own children, his entourage of palace women, and all the future generations of Taiping followers will never know there once was disagreement between Hong and the Bible on these matters of sex and alcohol, nor now can there ever be. On these matters it has been made clear for all to see that Moses, God, and Hong Xiuquan think fruitfully as one.
* The effect of this small excision is strong: the brothers’ action in covering their father is still convincingly explained, but what the Taiping readers and Noah’s sons see in Chinese, in verse 22, is the stark word “nakedness,” luoti; whereas the Chinese phrase lushen, skillfully used to translate the true significance of “he was uncovered” by Gutzlaff in verse 21, which has the same force as the English phrase “exposed himself,” is gone forever.