According to the report in the China Daily, Wang Weifan walked alone on a stone road in Xuzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province. At the end of the road was a museum that few people have heard of. As he wandered into the gallery, he was stunned by what he saw. Was he standing, he asked himself, in front of the famous Gates of Paradise in Florence?

Wang Weifan said he saw images from Bible stories similar to those engraved in the doors of the Baptistry of St John. The engravings from an old tomb are from the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220), China's parallel to the Roman Empire, and almost a millennium older than the gilt-bronze gates of Florence.

"There was Christmas. There was Genesis. There was Paradise Lost. They were on display, one by one, on 10 stone base-reliefs excavated from an aristocrat's tomb in the Han Dynasty," said Wang, a professor of theology at the Jinling Theological Seminary in Nanjing, as he told his story to China Daily.

Before Wang's discovery tour to the Han Dynasty Stone Relief Museum in 2002, no one seriously believed that, merely 100 or so years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, his teachings could have reached as far as to China. There were myths, of course, and there was legend, but no evidence until now.

But now Wang says, "It really happened."

The reliefs which fascinated Wang were carved on stone tablets from two tombs, discovered in 1995 at a place called Jiunudun, or "Terrace of Nine Women," in suburban Xuzhou. "The Bible stories were told on the stones in a kind of time sequence," said Wang. One depicted "a woman taking fruit from 'the tree of knowledge of good and evil' and a snake biting her right sleeve. It also included the angel sent by God to guard the tree."

At first, the professor thought the owner of the tomb may have been a Jew, but what he saw in two of the other stones changed everything. "There were four fishermen in the picture," said Wang. "It reminded me of the story in the New Testament about Peter, Andrew, James and John, (four of Jesus' disciples) who were all fishermen." And in another stone, "A woman and man are sitting around what looks like a manger, with three men approaching from the left side, holding gifts, and other men queued up, kneeling, on the right." The first Christmas, says Wang.

Scholars reportedly agree that the date of the tomb is in the mid-to late Han Dynasty period, which could be anywhere from about AD 100 to 220. So, if Wang is right, the time of Christianity's arrival in China could be as early as the end of the 1st century, more than 500 years before the widely recognized date which is the middle of the 7th century, based on a stone "stele" dated 635 AD depicting a meeting between a Christian monk and the Chinese Emperor Taizong (599-649). This historic meeting approved the spread of Christianity in China. But by AD 845, Emperor Wu Zong abolished all religions except Taoism. Still, Christianity continued to flourish.

As far as legends go, one of them is that the Apostle Thomas left Jerusalem for Babylon and from there sailed to India. He landed in what is now called Kodungallur, on the southwestern coast of India. After setting up a "base of operations there" he headed for China. It was after he returned from China that he was reportedly killed in India in AD 72. Two influential medieval Jesuits claimed they had evidence from documents in Indian and Roman churches that Thomas had indeed made his way successfully to China.

Despite the objections of the other scholars, Wang's discovery will definitely arouse the interest of historians in the Chinese Christian community, who will take up the research, said Qi, of Yanjing Seminary. "They are not going to say no to Professor Wang without making investigations, because he is the 'flagship' historian in the Chinese Christian community," Qi said. "He is a master not only of the Christian history in China, but also of Chinese art and culture. There could be an earthquake in the world's Christian community and probably outside if Professor Wang is right. World history could be rewritten.