Abstract: After the West European and Chinese cultures met at the end of the 16th and during the two next centuries， there developed a conflict of cultures. For the first time in history， two religiously，philosophically，and linguistically very different worlds come into contact. The Chinese men of letters reached for the Bible as a source of inspiration or an object of creative and critical only in the time around the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Both Chinese writers who wrote on biblical subjects were influenced by Christianity may be divided into two groups：one is smaller group，consisting of the members which had had good experience with Christianity; and the second one where the impact of the last was chiefly negative. It is a pity that the New Testament lacks something comparable to the mythologem of Jacob’ s ladder，forming a bridge between the countries where the missionaries came from and the countries where they spread the biblical teaching. Mythological ladders were always constructed in a simple way. The“ladders”of international communication and understanding are necessarily much more complicated and should be constructed according to the different systems and structural entities coming into direct contact with each other.

Key words: Bible；Intercultural Communication, Matteo Ricci, Timothy Richard, Lu xun, Zhu zhixin, Bingxin, Xudishan