The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia and How It Died – The Dominant Eastern Churches' Demise

When I first got this book, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How it Died, I was arrested by the cover. I, so far, was very familiar with early Christianity in Europe—that would be the Holy Roman Empire. I was somewhat familiar with Christianity in Northern Africa. Three really famous theologians of the early church were African:  Athanasius of Alexandria, Egypt (AD 293–373)  Augustine of Hippo, Algeria (AD 354–430)  Origen of Alexandria, Egypt (AD 185-254) But Christianity in the East? I mean, sure, the Middle East. But China? Really? Really, really. It was Christians—Nestorian, Jacobite, Orthodox, and others—who preserved and translated the cultural inheritance of the ancient world—the science, philosophy, and medicine—and who transmitted it to centers like Baghdad and Damascus. Much of what we call Arab scholarship was in real reality Syriac, Persian, and Coptic, and it was not necessarily Muslim. Syriac-speaking Christian scholars brought the works of Aristotle to the Muslim world … Syriac Christians even make the first reference to the efficient Indian numbering system that we know today as “Arabic,” and long before this technique gained currency among Muslim thinkers. Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity, p18 In fact, by the fifth century there were five Christian centers, called patriarchates, dotted throughout the known world. Only one was in Rome. The other four were in Africa (Alexandria) and the Middle East (Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem). As the papacy developed, six popes came from Syria, several of them Greek natives, between 640-740 CE. Ethiopia, Abyssinia, Armenia, Nubia, Syria, all deeply Christian nations from as early as the third century. By the sixth century, Christian missionaries were evangelizing and translating scripture in the heart of Asia—the Turks, Uygurs, and Soghdians, the Mongols, Huns, and Tatars.  Scripture was translated into the language of the Huns.  By 635 CE, missionaries were preaching in the Chinese imperial capital of Ch’ang-and, a mission that lasted over two hundred years.  In 170 CE, all four Gospels had been translated to Syriac, and combined into a single account.  By the second century, Christianity was growing in southern India. So what happened? In this amazing and often heart-wrenching account, I read about the early signs of division, beginning with nuances of meaning altered in the Latin translation of the originally Greek Apostle’s Creed (the oldest of all Christian creeds). This breach was further deepened by the west’s and the east’s separate understandings of the nature of God and Christ. A “Great Schism” formed, creating the Roman Catholic Church (with one See in Rome), and the Eastern Orthodox Church (all nine of the other Sees, or centers). On the Eastern side were the Nestorians and the Jacobites, now excommunicated from the western church for what was then branded as heresies. In a chapter marked The Great Tribulation, the rise of Islam is described. What a frightful decline! Read all and you shall greatly lament … Fifty-one metropolitanates, eighteen archbishoprics, and 478 bishoprics are desolate … And not only were those metropolitanates, archbishoprics, bishoprics, the monasteries and churches desolate, but also the provinces of the three patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Neither will you find a single metropolitan there, nor other Christian, layman, or clergy. But on the thrones of those patriarchates you will find barely a few priests, monks, and laymen. Because the churches of their provinces have been obliterated completely and Christ’s people, that is the Christians, have been utterly destroyed. —Anonymous Greek churchman, c. 1480 I learned about how the Crusaders coming from the West to “rescue” the churches of the East and to re-open the Holy Land after Turkey and Palestine came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. In truth, Western Crusaders often looted Eastern churches, and sent their ancient treasures back to Rome (and also Venice). I learned about the mysterious “crypto” Christians who kept their faith hidden for centuries in such surprising places as Japan. And I learned about how early Eastern Christianity and Islam were very similar at the start. Honestly, though I am not an historian by trade, I consider this book a must-read for every Christian. Oneness in Christ is a precious unity that is easily lost when current divisions are considered insurmountable. If only those early Christians had given each other more time to wrestle with Ephesians 4, and understand that crucial apostolic teaching. Let us learn from the tragedy and horror of our past.

Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia - and How it Died (New York, HarperCollins, 2008) Paperback Like so many other `Histories' with a twist, this book is not a true narrative, the kind we know so well dating all the way back to Herodotus and Thucydides. It does not start at a particular time and `narrate' the ideas, events, and people who acted from that time to some other, later time, with some insights or speculations added in along the way. It does not even stay within the boundaries of the thousand years mentioned in its subtitle. To make many of its points, it reaches forward, well into the 20th century. It is also certainly not a `theological' history. In fact, it uses several terms for borderline Christian heresies such as Docetists and Maronites, which Jenkins does not bother to explain. He does give a very perfunctory definition of his two main Mesopotamian players, the Nestorians and the Jacobites, but no more than what you would find in an inexpensive paperback theological dictionary. I say all this to warn those who are looking for a straight narrative story. This is not it. The book is more akin to works of `metahistory'. The best known works which deserve this title are Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee's A Study In History. The best news is that Jenkins' writing is far easier to read than what I have seen of either Spengler or Toynbee. What he shares with them is the objective of describing trends and providing explanations for those trends. Jenkins' subject is `lost' in at least two ways. First, the book describes religious communities which were at one time very large, but which have virtually disappeared from their original range. Second, these are very large Christian cultures of which very few non-specialists know anything about. And this ignorance even extends to professional scholars (at least up to 45 years ago) who should have known better. I can still remember asking my Ancient Philosophy / Early Christian Doctrines professor why Christianity spread through the Roman Empire rather than in any other direction. He said `Where else would it go?' (He was chronically fond of rhetorical questions.) The fact is, Christianity, as early as the events described in Acts, did spread to both the south and to the east. To the south, it followed the Nile and the African shores of the Red Sea down to Ethiopia, to the limits of the ancient Egyptian Coptic language, written using the Greek alphabet. To the east, it spread at least as far as the conquests of Alexander the Great, who made the Greek language familiar to south central Asia. And then it went a bit further, with tendrils reaching all the way to the Chinese coast of the Pacific. Even more importantly, it spread to the north of Mesopotamia, into Armenia and Georgia, up to the Caucasus, to the east of the Black Sea. For many centuries, at least up to the founding of Islam around 632, and actually at close to 400 years after that date. And, based on early growth, these Egyptian and Asiatic churches rivaled the success of the Latin church based in Rome or the Orthodox Church based in Constantinople. It is widely believed that after the rise of Islam, which overlaid Christianity in Africa, Asia, and even Spain, that the Islamic governments were very tolerant of Christianity. This era of `cooperation' is even held up as a model against which minority religions should be treated in Christian majorities. Jenkins does not go into detail on what those who state this opinion have said, but he says that it is certainly not the whole truth. The opposite picture, a situation where Islamic governments were constantly antagonistic towards Christian communities is also a misrepresentation. Jenkins' first great hypothesis on the decline and fall of Asian and African Christianities is patterned after a variation on Darwinian theory called punctuated equilibria, devised primarily by Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge. In social terms, it means that religious groups shrink and grow in irregular `fits and starts'. A population will grow and flourish if it becomes separated from the main population by some natural barrier, such as by being isolated on an island, like the many species which developed on the Galapagos Islands. Similarly, a population will wither if it is placed among especially hostile predators. Jenkins goes to great lengths to explain how the Coptic and Nestorian populations survived in the Islamic middle east, and how they started losing ground around 1200 with the advent of the Mongol invasions, especially the one lead by Timur (1336 - 1405) (Tamburlaine the Great) and the rise of the Ottoman empire, beginning in 1299. The apogee of Middle Eastern Christianity occurred around the patriarchate of Timothy (780 - 823) of the Church of the East, headquartered in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Seleucia (founded by one of Alexander's generals). The story of these churches in Africa and Asia from 1200 onwards is one of steady decline, following the `punctuated' rate of change. One major factor which contributes to a rapid decline is if the church has not grounded itself in the local community. For example, when the Muslims overran northern Africa, the site of a lively, vibrant Christian church, the Roman church virtually disappeared in a few hundred years, because they were an exclusively Latin church, which never took the time to bring Christianity to the local populations such as the Berbers and Moors. In contrast, the nearby Coptic church along the upper reaches of the Nile, has lasted into the modern age, since it was rooted in the local people and language. A modern example of this lesson is the success of the Roman church, which has aggressively pushed into Africa and South America, growing larger. At the same time, the Orthodox churches, which have not done similar missionary efforts, is growing smaller. There are several minor surprises, such as the fact that when the Mongols swept into Persia and Mesopotamia, it was Christians who helped do their bureaucracy once they settled down. While this seemed like a good thing at the time, it backfired when the Mongols turned against the Christians, and when the Mongols left, the Muslims stepped up oppression against the Christians, because they helped the Mongols. Another surprise is the similarities between early Islam and the Nestorian Christianity. The explanations of these historical movements are based primarily on anecdotes and statistics. One gets the feeling that there is much of the story Jenkins is leaving untold. Or, maybe there is a bit less substance there than he claims. There is nothing given, for example, on major writings coming out of these churches. The primary intellectual claim to fame may be that the Greek Nestorian churches preserved the great works of Greek culture, to pass on to the Arabs, through whom they were rediscovered by Renaissance Europe. There is not one intellectual figure to match Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, Origen, Tertullian, Jerome, Abelard, Anselm, Occam, or Aquinas. To be sure, there is much said of destroyed libraries, but not one trace of innovation. Perhaps these churches were not as vibrant as the author makes them out to be. This is a very good and easy read, with what seems like sound theorizing about the fate of these churches. I'm not convinced they were comparable in vigor to the western church.

This book is one of the most surprising and delightful things I have stumbled across in a decade. It almost instantly changed my understanding of some very important history. If I may cite a parallel, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin similarly demolished my old "idea" that Hitler rounded up all the Jews in Germany and gassed them, and that was it for 6 million people! It turns out this is completely wrong. In the first place, there weren't nearly enough Jews left in Germany, most of them having gotten out when the getting was good. What actually happened was that Hitler invaded Poland, and found most of his Jewish victims in Poland and the other parts of the Bloodlands, which is where the actual killing-camps were located. Similarly, I had an idea of Christianity arising in Israel, with St. Paul spreading it to Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, and then, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the religion spread into Europe with its beloved monasteries and cathedrals. Not quite so. The major expansion began in Israel and then went East and South: to Asia and Africa. There were hundreds of churches and bishoprics throughout Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tunisia and Algeria. Even after Islam burst forth from the sands of Saudi Arabia, they used the Christians as high-level civil servants and translators, mostly because the Arabs tended to be illiterate at the beginning of their imperial days. So, for a thousand years, the Christian center of gravity was in the East, and the main language of Christianity was Syriac, not Latin or Greek. In North Africa, Christianity vanished by 800 AD, but elsewhere it was a vitally important religious force until c. 1300 A.D. Here's something else very thought-provoking: "On occasion, the remnants of old religions transform their victors. No worthwhile history of Islam could omit the history of the Sufi orders, whose practices so often recall the bygone world of the Christian monks. It was the Christian monastics who had sought ecstasy and unity with the divine by the ceaseless repetition of prayers, a practice that would become central to the Sufi tradition. Once dead, Sufi adepts continued to attract devotees to their tombs, so that venerated sheikhs fulfilled exactly the same role for Muslims that the Christian saints had in their day. Christianity and Islam have far more in common than many rigorous believers of either faith would care to admit." This book cannot really be summarized, but it IS excellent and it will really open your eyes! Highest possible recommendation! ----- "Only by understanding the lost Eastern Christianities can we understand where Islam comes from, and how very close it is to Christianity."

The Lost History of Christianity I suffered the myopia of a short sighted history before reading “The Lost History of Christianity”. Philip Jenkins does a scholarly and masterful job of expanding the truth of the history of Christianity, and in doing so, reminds us of the way that the Church works in a murderous world. I took a recent trip to Turkey, exploring the conflict between Christians and Muslims and the genocide of Armenian Christians at the turn of the last century. I became aware that the church grows over centuries based on the blood of the martyrs, not on the edge go the sword. First Jenkins frames out a larger story, with a previous large footprint Christianity “But such questions are ironic when we realize how unnatural the Euro-American emphasis is when seen against the broader background of Christian history. The particular shape of Christianity with which we are familiar is a radical departure from what was for well over a millennium the historical norm: another, earlier global Christianity once existed. For most of its history, Christianity was a tricontinental religion, with powerful representation in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this was true into the fourteenth century. Christianity became predominantly European not because this continent had any obvious affinity for that faith, but by default: Europe was the continent where it was not destroyed. Matters could easily have developed very differently. (Jenkins, p 3) Jenkins explores the early Eastern Church; “For most nonexperts, Christian history after the earliest centuries usually conjures images of Europe. We think of the world of Charlemagne and the Venerable Bede, of Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi, a landscape of Gothic cathedrals and romantic abbeys. We think of a church thoroughly complicit in state power—popes excommunicating emperors, and inspiring Crusades. Of course, such a picture neglects the ancient Christianity of the Eastern empire, based in Constantinople, but it also ignores the critical story of the religion beyond the old Roman borders, in Africa and Asia. We suffer perhaps from using unfamiliar terms like Nestorian, so that the Eastern religious story seems to involve some obscure sect or alien religion rather than an extraordinarily vigorous branch of the Christian tradition. Only by stressing the fully Christian credentials of these Asian-based movements can we appreciate the abundant fullness and diversity of the global church during the millennium after the Council of Nicea—and the depth of the catastrophe when those movements fell into ruin. (Jenkins, pp 46-47) When the Eastern Church was vaporized, much of the loss was due to extermination. The word “genocide” was coined to describe what was happening to Christians. “Although the crimes were anything but new in their nature, the coming of modern media meant that, unlike on previous occasions, the events now reached the attention of a wider world, raising demands for Western intervention. So shocking were the anti-Christian purges that they demanded a new legal vocabulary. Some months afterward, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin used the cases of the Assyrians, and the Christian Armenians before them, to argue for a new legal category to be called crimes of barbarity, primarily “acts of extermination directed against the ethnic, religious or social collectivities whatever the motive (political, religious, etc.).” Lemkin developed this theme over the following years, and in 1943 he coined a new word for this atrocious behavior—namely, genocide. The modern concept of genocide as a uniquely horrible act demanding international sanctions has its roots in the thoroughly successful movements to eradicate Middle Eastern Christians. Lemkin recognized acutely that such acts might provide an awful precedent for later regimes: as Hitler asked in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?” (Jenkins, p140) In the “Ghosts of Faith” chapter, Jenkins explores the long term, residual effect of a post-Christian culture, and the elements of the church that persist past the decline. Jenkin’s work is well backed up with references, but I would like to see more story to underscore the ideas he presents.

I read this good book, here in Brazil. This book is about the collapse of Christianity in Asia and North of Africa. This book is very easy to understand and concise. Its size is small and has less than 270 pages of text. I read all of it, in less than three days. Some good things of this book: 1-It talks about a suject forgotten, even by the majority of the Christians. 2-This book remembers the genocides and massacres of defenseless Christians, mainly by Moslens, since the later foundation. 3-Shows how Islam became success in Asia, while Asiatic Christianism means failure. 4-Remembers the calamitous history of Nestorianism. Before Islam, Nestorianism was far bigger than Roman Catholic Church. Nestorian churches and monasteries spreaded by imense parts of Asia, the biggest continent of Earth. Today, Nestorianism is a small cult and its headquarter is in Chicago, United States. See the page 24 of this book. 5-This book remembers that not only Islam destroied Christianism in Asia. Some Chinese emperors did persecutions, against Nestorians and latter against Catholics. 6-On page 195, this book remembers that Middle Eastern Christian women were dressed in similar ways, as Islamic women then and today. This fact is very difficult to be written in any other book. The main failure of this book is the fact that it is very weak, about the foundation of Islam and early Islamic conquests. The second failure of this book is its weakness about the Roman Catholicism. I'll show some examples of the author's weakness about Roman Catholicism: 1-On page 3, we can read: "Christianity became predominantly European not because this continent had any obvious affinity for that faith, but by default:Europe was the continent where it was not destroyed." 2-Page 27, we can read: "European churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, became the mainstream of belief by dint of being, so to speak, the last men standing." 3-Pages 244 and 245: "In 1900, the Orthodox represented 21 percent of the world's Christian population, while Catholics made up 48 percent.Over time, thought, Catholics benefited enormously from their presence in growing sections of the global South, while Orthodox missions enjoyed limited success, and Catholics were much likely than Orthodox to carry their faith with them to new parts of the world. Catholics, in other words, invested in emerging markets, while the Orthodox did not. After 1917, Orthodox believers suffered enormously under Communist persecution. When Eurpean birthrates declined steeply in the late twenieth century, this trend hit the Orthodox world very severely while affecting only that portion of Catholic Christianity that lived in Europe. Today, Catholics account for 52 percent of Christians, but the Orthodox just 11 percent." About these thing writen in this book, about Roman Catholicism, I'll just copy some sentences writen by another reviewer of this same book:"If I had a question to ask the author I would challenge his acceptance of these Christianities as equivalent to those of the West. Is it possible that they died out because their theology and understanding of Christ's message was flawed? It is not for nothing that they were deemed heretical. Even an atheistic Darwinist might speculate that Catholicism has grown exponentially because it figured out the right way to do things." Yes, the Roman Catholicism was almost exterminated in Japan, during XVII century, but with far less percent of followers in the population than Jacobists or Nestorianists in Middle East, the Catholic Japaneses fought for their rights in Shimabara revolt, almost to the last man. Catholics in Spain fought against Islamics during more than 700 years, until their victory and survival of thier culture, language and religion. Asiatic and North African Christianism was defeated by a small group of Islamic armies in a few decades. In the other hand, Roman Catholics fought and won, not just some bands of Arabs, but from Islamic huge armies from three continents and this, since the first decades of VII century. There's no cross, without a sword. The Asiatic and North African Christianism didn't died because were good, but because they were bad. No Jacobist or Nestorianist patriarch ever thought, about fight against Islam, until it was decades or even centuries too late. They had thousands of churches and monasteries, many thousands of precious scrolls and thousands of scholars, but they hadn't the basic knowledge that Islamic rule means the end of their faiths. In fact they were against the despicable Bizanthine government, but never thought about having their own government and freedom. Nestorian patriarch Timothy was at the side of Islamic Califa, not in the side of Catholics or any other kind of Christians. They collaboreted with Islamics and were doomed to extinction some centuries later, while other Christians were enslaved and murdered by califa's amies. Yes, as another reviewer wrote:" if the Mongols had adopted Christianity instead of Islam, the world would be a different place". But even so, centuries before the Mongols, Asiatic Christianism was the looser's religion. In my opinion, the Mongols gave freedom of religion to the Asiatic Christians for decades. And they lost their real last chance for nothing. Then came the calamity, the 14th century, when Asiatic Christianism became the poweless and despicable thing that it is today. Islam isn't good, but old Asiatic Christianism was even worse than Islam. Of the five old Church's patriarch cities, four are now Islamic cities. Just Rome remains a Christian city, with a Pope. And this since 1453, when Constantinople, today called Istambul was conquested by the Turks.

I should of not have expected much since this is a popular history book meant for a casual readership. As a student of Iranian and Asian Studies I will give my review on how I see this book. I have mostly negative views on this work but first I'll start with the positive. It is a light but informative read. This book is decent for a general audience. The subject is a somewhat obscure topic and luckily, this book helps bring it to the casual reader. The book is also written in a clear and straightforward way which is nice. The author also makes connections with the present time to further understanding. Anyway, this is a perfect introductory and enlightening read for anyone interested. Now the negatives. There's some flaws so I will make a concise list. 1. Despite the book's subtitle, this book doesn't really cover the Oriental Orthodox church of Africa, Egypt and the Caucasus. It spends too much time on Syriac Christianity but even then it just focuses on one denomination, the Church of the East. 2. Despite being meant for a general audience, I don't see how a lay reader can comprehend half of what's being covered in the book. Without much of a background, the author suddenly throws names, places, religions, conflicts, and events at once without explanation. 3. The author, Philip Jenkins, does not have any academic background and expertise on Eastern Christianity. Because of this the book is basically incomplete, far from comprehensive, and very far from being reliable. This book is like if a casual science book was written by a science enthusiant (not a scientist). Sure it can informative but far from being reliable. 4. The book also manages to be unheplful for more educated readers. The book glosses over, condenses, or simply ignores historical events, empires, people, and religious movements that have shaped history in the regions that Chrsitianity exists or existed in Asia or Africa. As a student, I didn't learn anything new as this book just reuses what other scholarly books on the topic already cover. 5. The book jumps back and forth all the time. The book is not categorized by chronological order but from some point the author is trying to get across. It makes the book rather confusing and difficult to read. 6. This book isn't really a history book in the broadest sense. The author sprinkles historical facts with some lessons to be learned. (History is useful for that but I was expecting a scholarly analysis and overview of the history of Asian, Middle Eastern, and African Christianity. That's not to say the author doesn't makes some excellent points.) 7. Illustrations, pictures, a glossary of terms and more maps would have benefitted the book. To be honest, I believe having a basic grasp of the subject would be recommedable to fully enjoy this book. Admittedly, this work is the easiest the subject could get for the casual reader. However, this book is a illuminating read that opens up a forgotten and neglected world that is Christianity in Asia and Africa. Still a essential read no matter the real or imagined flaws.

Jenkins’ book is one of the best history works that I’ve read in a while. It is well-written, engaging, encouraging, disheartening, challenging and thought-provoking. Jenkins takes a rather broader view of Christianity than western (and especially Gospel- and bibliocentric) Christians would accept, viewing the eastern Monophysites as orthodox (in the literal sense) in their faith. The eastern Church’s commitment to spreading the Good News about Jesus Christ eastward and their success in it until the 13th century, while the western Orthodox (in the technical sense) and Roman Catholic churches turned inward, would suggest that God used them mightily for his purposes, making us shout for joy, for the numbers of worshippers from every tongue, tribe and nation (Rev. 7:9) will be even greater than we can imagine. The fall of those churches should cause us to lament and weep before the Lord, for a great witness has been lost to the ages. I believe Jenkins’ book should be read by every true Christian, as it, like the Old Testament, show the things that happened to the eastern Church “as examples, and they were written as a warning to us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.” (1Co. 10:1 – HCSB) Especially the analysis of the factors contributing to the collapse of the eastern Church in chapter 8 as well as the difficult questions in chapter 9 need to be considered by the Church as she plants new cells and copes with changes in society around her. After nearly 1000 years of ascendancy and tolerance, the pressures falling on the European and North American wings of the Church in particular sound much like the twilight years of the eastern Church. It’s time to learn from the past and not repeat the mistakes of our eastern brothers and sisters. Jenkins’ book also encourages us to ask the hard questions about why the fellowships of our eastern brothers and sisters were allowed to be destroyed. It encourages us to question our comfortable eschatology and pushes us to remember the urgency we should have in bringing the Good News about Jesus to everyone, even and especially those who are intolerant of and antagonistic towards us.

Undoubtedly, well versed theologists/historians are more than familiar with the threads of ancient Christian and Islamic history that Philip Jenkins draws together in THE LOST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, in which he weaves a thoroughly riveting and not infrequently ironic story. Stating early on that "much of what we today call the Islamic world was once Christian," he tells the tale of the Syriates of Edessa ca. the second century, the ancient metropolitan of Merv, the Jacobites and Nestorians and bishop Timothy the catholicos of Seleucia and those who spread Christianity as far as China, only for it to be eradicated between 1000 and 1400. Jenkins makes a great case that much of what was considered Islamic science and math actually originated elsewhere (e.g. India). Yes, Islam was tolerant early on, until influenced by the Mongols and Turks. But despite the conviction of many scholars that European crusades were at the root of mid-east hatred, he lays much of the blame to Christian alliances with the Mongols, for the sake of Christian survival. When Mongol rulers switched to being devout Islamists, the Christians were caught flat-footed. Overpopulation, then abrupt climate change in the middle ages, plus the plague, led to scapegoating of minorities on all sides, and it was downhill from there. Meanwhile, western Europeans knew little or nothing of this "other Christianity," and proceeded to develop their own quite slowly. Jenkins also has an interesting take on Lebanon, as originally a Christian refuge in the region, as well as Christian influence in modern Palestine, which he sees as an opportunity wasted. He sees the US-USSR rivalry of the '70s and '80s as instrumental in our backing the wrong horse (Saudi Arabia). Given current events, this 2008 text seems remarkably prescient. For the well educated, I doubt there is anything startlingly new in this book except the way in which it is organized and put together. New to me, however, is much of what was going on in early Christianity, east of the Mediterranean, prior to Constantine and Chalcedon. There are some 35 pages of notes (bibliography and footnotes combined).

Pensavo di conoscere piuttosto bene la storia della Chiesa, ma questo saggio mi ha convinto che devo/dobbiamo riconsiderare molte delle nostre convinzioni eurocentriche.

東方教会についての知識は多くはギリシャ正教、ロシア正教どまりだが、非カルケドン系の東方教会の長い歴史とその広がりを分かりやすく解説している。

Muito bom

This book is well researched and highly readable. It tells the tragic story of Christianity in the East that was destroyed by the jihadis of Timur e Lang. The book starts off with the little known facts of Jewish and Christian Yemen -- how Jewish Kings ruled over large parts of the land and how there were wars between these Jewish kings and with the Christian kingdom of Axum (present-day Ethiopia). A very poignant part of the book is when the Catholicos of Ctesiphon (the "Pope" of the Ancient Assyrian Church of the East) in the 8th century is thinking -- these are thoughts put in by the author but ring true -- in the 8th century the Assyrian Church of the East (which now is a pitiful number, massacred by the Islamic state in Iraq) was 1/3rd of Christianity and stretched from Iraq to India (the Syrian Christians in Kerala) to China and to Mongolia (the Naiman tribe to which Genghis Khan married later was Christian as were the Uighurs). the Catholicos looks at Europe which was then under seige by Saracens in the south, pagan Vikings in the north and pagan Magyars and Slavic groups in the East and it definitely did seem that Christianity would die out there -- after all the Church of the East had its liturgical language in the language of Christ - Aramaic and was the heartland of Christendom. From this high point, it goes down like a Greek tragedy -- massacres by Moslems, whether Arabs or Turkic peoples and persecutions, persecutions. The fact that any Assyrian Christians survive is a miracle.

I bought the audio book of this title and liked it so much I've ordered the print version. Jenkins' basic argument is that there was a thriving Christian presence, and major Christian churches like the Nestorian, Syriac and Jacobite, in the Middle East, a Christian community in India started by the Apostle Thomas, and large Christian communities in places like Sri Lanka, China, Ethiopia, Nubia and modern day Iraq, all dating from the earliest days of Christianity. The Nestorian, Jacobite, Orthodox and Syrian Christian churches once rivalled or surpassed the Roman Catholic Church in authority and influence. But virtually all of this has disappeared. Jenkins cites the major reason for the disappearance of Eastern Christianity as "organized violence" by Muslims against the Eastern Christian churches and their followers. He backs this up with persuasive evidence. Jenkins also refutes the claims of writers like Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels, who have repeatedly stated that Muslim ruled societies, like Moorish Spain (Andalusia or al-Andalus), were bastions of tolerance for Christians and Jews. Not so, says Jenkins, and provides convincing evidence to support his statements. The history Jenkins is covering here has been forgotten, ignored or overlooked by western academic historians, with a few notable exceptions like Bat Ye'or. But it's a fascinating - and tragic - history with many lessons for contemporary Western societies in dealing with many current issues, including Islamic immigration to western countries, and relations with Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern and Islamic countries. Jenkins makes a few statements I disagree with. He says, for example, that the Koran does not contain anything which incites violence against Christians, Jews or other religions. I've read the Koran and it certainly does contain some pretty obvious incitements to violence against non-Muslims. But, overall, this is a very interesting, informative and worthwhile book. The audiobook version is well done. The author writes well and his style adapts well to narration. The narrator has a good voice and good presentation. The only downside of the audio book is that some of the tracks seem to change in mid-sentence, so there are occasional delays in mid-sentence while the track changes. But that's a fairly minor technical issue which does not detract from the overall quality of the book. I have a 40 minute commute to and from work and I typically spend the commute time listening to audio books. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I liked the audio book so much that I've ordered the print version as a reference book.