While searching online catalogues of ancient books collections of several major universities in China, three rare Chinese Orthodox books have been discovered in the rare book collection of Beijing Normal University. These lithographed editions include:
Horologion 《時課經》 published in 1909
Psalter 《聖詠經》 published in 1910
Genesis 《創世紀第一書》 published in 1911.
The Orthodox Brotherhood Of Apostles Saints Peter and Paul (Moscow Patriarchate) in Hong Kong is leading a digitization initiative in making these invaluable texts available online to be freely distributable to be used among the Chinese Orthodox Faithful, transcribers, researchers and translators as a reference for a modern Chinese Orthodox translation.
The books were published by the Russian Mission (Beiguan) in Beijing during the decade immediately following the martyrdom of the Chinese Orthodox Martyrs at the turn of the 20th century. The blood of the martyrs spurred a missionary zeal in rebuilding the Mission. Bishop Innokenti, the Mission chief, blessed the reprinting of many classical Chinese Orthodox texts from the previous century with revisions in some terminology including changing the term for God from “Tianzhu” to “Shangdi”, and introducing a number of new translations in the venacular of the time.