[2] He attended the local China Inland Mission boarding school for his primary education and graduated from the Nanjing Theological Seminary in 1927.
[3] He was as much of a nationalist as he was a devout Christian, and spent his college days studying both the Bible—particularly the Old Testament and its poetry—and ancient Chinese classics by the likes of Li Bai, Mozi, and Qu Yuan.
[4] At the age of 14, Zhu participated in the May Fourth Movement by rebelling in school and "banning and burning Japanese goods".
[5] In 1927, he joined the North Expedition army's General Political Department, during which time he was introduced to and greatly taken in by The Communist Manifesto.
[6] Roman Malek claims that he was "one of the most important scholars reintroducing the literary Bible into China";[13] his 1980 essay Xibolai wenxue jianjue is credited by Liu Ping with "(opening) a gap for Old Testament studies that had been suspended for nearly three decades.