Countries of the Sunrise

The view from the East

Western histories of Christianity have often told the story as a march from Jerusalem to Rome, and then to Europe and America. This is a distortion. Diarmaid MacCulloch insists on the importance of the churches that spread east and south. Shelley's most recent edition also adds a chapter on early Christianity in Asia and Africa. Its title, "Countries of the Sunrise," is borrowed for this page [check].

For much of the first thousand years, some of Christianity's liveliest centers lay in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and beyond. Their story reminds us that Christianity was an Asian and African religion before it was a European one.

How Christianity spread, AD 100–1500

AD 100AD 300AD 600AD 1000AD 1500

Edessa and the Syriac world

East of Antioch, across the Euphrates, lay the small kingdom of Osrhoene and its capital Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey). Here Christianity took root very early. A famous legend says that King Abgar V of Edessa V wrote to Jesus asking him to come and heal him, and Jesus promised to send a disciple. Later, the story goes, the apostle Thaddeus (Addai) came and converted the city. The legend is not history, but it shows how proud Edessa was of its ancient faith. There is solid evidence of a Christian community there by the late 100s, and a church building is recorded as damaged in a flood in 201.

The people of Edessa spoke Syriac, a form of Aramaic. Syriac became one of the great languages of Christianity, with its own Bible translation, the Peshitta ("simple" version), and a rich tradition of poetry and theology. Early Syriac Christianity had a distinctive flavor:

• It was often intensely ascetic, prizing celibacy. Some early Syriac churches may have baptized only those who renounced marriage.
• It produced the Diatessaron, a single harmonized Gospel compiled by the Syrian writer Tatian the Syrian around 170. It was the standard Gospel text in Syriac churches for centuries.
• Thinkers like Bardaisan (154–222), a poet and philosopher at the Edessan court, discussed fate and free will and wrote hymns.
• Its later great poet, Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373), wrote hymns of extraordinary beauty and is honored by all churches.

Armenia: the first Christian kingdom

North of Mesopotamia, the mountain kingdom of Armenia sat between the Roman and Persian empires. According to Armenian tradition, Gregory the Illuminator converted King Tiridates III III after miraculously surviving years in a pit. The king then made Christianity the state religion, traditionally in 301, though some historians prefer a date around 314. Either way, Armenia was the first kingdom to adopt Christianity officially, ahead of the Roman Empire.

Around 405 a monk named Mesrop Mashtots invented an Armenian alphabet so that the Bible and liturgy could be translated. Language, faith and national identity fused. The Armenian Apostolic Church has preserved Armenian identity through centuries of invasion, persecution and, in 1915, genocide.

Persia: Christians under the Shah

Further east lay the great rival of Rome: the Persian Empire, ruled from 224 by the Sasanian dynasty, whose official religion was Zoroastrianism. Christianity spread into Persian Mesopotamia early, perhaps through Jewish communities, merchants and deported prisoners of war. When the Persian king Shapur I captured Antioch in the 250s, he resettled thousands of its people, many of them Christians, deep in Persia.

Persia was also the birthplace of Mani (216–274), a prophet who founded Manichaeism. This religion blended Christian, Zoroastrian and Buddhist ideas into a dualist faith of Light versus Darkness. It spread from Roman North Africa to China. The young Augustine of Hippo was a Manichaean for nine years.

Persian Christians faced a cruel irony. When the Roman Empire became Christian under Constantine, Persian Christians suddenly looked like a fifth column for the enemy. In the 340s King Shapur II launched a long, brutal persecution, perhaps killing more Christians than all the Roman persecutions combined. Yet the Persian church survived and eventually organized itself as the Church of the East, independent of the Roman world. Its later astonishing expansion across Asia is told in Churches Beyond Chalcedon.

India and the apostle Thomas

The Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala in southern India trace their origins to the apostle Thomas the Apostle, who, they say, landed on the Malabar coast in AD 52 and was martyred near Chennai. A third-century Syriac text, the Acts of Thomas, tells of his mission in India. Historians cannot prove the tradition, but it is not impossible. Roman ships traded directly with southern India, and Jewish communities lived there. By the 300s there is good evidence of Christians in India connected to the Persian church. Indian Christianity, in any case, is far older than European colonialism.

Egypt and the Coptic church

In Egypt, Christianity first grew among Greek speakers in Alexandria, the city of Clement and Origen (see Apologists and Thinkers). Tradition names Mark the Gospel writer as its founder. By the 200s, the faith had spread among native Egyptians up the Nile. They spoke Coptic, the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language, written with Greek letters. The Bible was translated into Coptic, and the Egyptian church suffered terribly in Diocletian's persecution. The Coptic Church still dates its calendar from 284, the "Era of the Martyrs."

Egypt also gave the world Monasticism. Around 270, a young Coptic farmer named Antony of Egypt heard the Gospel saying "Go, sell all you have and give to the poor" and walked into the desert. Thousands would follow him (see The Desert and the Monastery).

Ethiopia: an African Christian kingdom

South of Egypt, in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea, lay the powerful trading kingdom of Aksum. Around 330 two young Syrian Christians, shipwrecked on the Red Sea coast, were taken as slaves to the royal court. One of them, Frumentius, rose to become tutor to the young prince Ezana of Aksum. When Ezana became king he converted. His coins changed from pagan symbols of the sun and moon to the cross. Frumentius was consecrated bishop by Athanasius of Alexandria. For the next sixteen centuries, the Ethiopian church looked to Alexandria for its head bishop.

Ethiopian Christianity developed a unique character. It has its own Ge'ez script and liturgy, a large biblical canon including 1 Enoch, Jewish-style practices such as observing the Sabbath and food laws, and the belief that the Ark of the Covenant rests in Aksum. Together with Armenia, Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest continuous Christian nations.