TURFAN AND THE CHRISTIANS OF THE SILK ROUTE
Some years ago, I published The Lost History of Christianity, which traced the early expansion of Christianity into Asia and Africa, as well as Europe. For perhaps a thousand years, Christianity...
View ArticleTHE EMPIRE IN THE MIRROR
Whether or not we like the fact, the fate of great religions is often shaped by political factors, by the rise and fall of empires and Great Powers. Just look for instance at the distribution of those...
View ArticleBy the Rivers of Babylon
In 1973, Geza Vermes reminded us, indelibly, that Jesus was a Jew, and subsequent generations of scholars have thoroughly absorbed that lesson. Less effective, though, have been statements that early...
View ArticleChristians in Babylon
In the early Christian era, Mesopotamia/Iraq was a thriving center of rabbinic Judaism, and throughout the first millennium it was the intellectual capital of that faith. Given the Jewish background,...
View ArticleMaking the Church of the East
Christianity spread in the Persian Empire during the second and third centuries, when it became a major force, especially in western regions. Looking today at some of those early centers is multiply...
View ArticleChristians in the Arab Gulf
I have been posting about Islamic apocalyptic mythologies that borrowed heavily from Christian precedents. That religious overlap is a lengthy and complex story. When Islam emerged in the seventh...
View ArticleTwo Sides of One Coin? Mapping Buddhist and Christian Decline
Although it’s a world religion, in a sense it is multiply cut off from its roots. While its key early figures used one language, its scriptures are translations of those early words. And although it...
View ArticleAlternative Scriptures: Finding the First Scrolls
I began this “Alternative Scriptures” series by noting the discovery of a “Dead Sea Scroll” type manuscript in the Genizah of a Cairo synagogue, in the 1890s. Tracing the probable history of that...
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