{"id":22853,"date":"2018-07-27T17:49:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/the-resurgence-of-the-gospel-part-one-the-medieval-prologue-and-the-remapping-of-the-world\/"},"modified":"2018-07-27T17:49:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:49:35","slug":"the-resurgence-of-the-gospel-part-one-the-medieval-prologue-and-the-remapping-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/the-resurgence-of-the-gospel-part-one-the-medieval-prologue-and-the-remapping-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Resurgence of the Gospel, Part One: The Medieval Prologue and the Remapping of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/WWalton-Resurgence-P1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"292\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Part One: The Medieval Prologue &amp; the Remapping of the World<\/strong> <strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"\/the-gospel-in-history-series\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/4Evangelists-BookOfKells-Fol027v.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"211\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This article is part of <a href=\"\/the-gospel-in-history-series\/\">The Gospel in History<\/a> series by <a href=\"\/author\/woodrowewalton\/\">Woodrow Walton<\/a>.<br \/> Image: <em>The Books of Kells<\/em> by way of Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>In Retrospect<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By looking backwards to the beginning of the spread of the Gospel that Jesus is both Lord and Christ and considering the results of both the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the message that Peter spoke at the Feast of the Pentecost, we are struck by the Power of the Holy Spirit to change lives and change the course of history and why, no matter the opposition and oppression, that gospel continued to spread. Other things factor in. The first factor is that of those who heard.<\/p>\n<p>Those who heard Jesus were the Jews of the circle of the Gentiles (Galilee), the Jews of Judaea, and a mixture of peoples, Jew, Greek, Syro-Phoenician, and Samaritans to begin with, and a centurion or two within the Roman military system and stationed within Galilee and Judaea. There was a mixture of peoples and a mixture of social classes ranging from shepherds, to high status people, including a rich young ruler. The Gospel reached from those at the bottom to those at the top and officials as tax-gatherers. The news spread horizontally and vertically from among those who heard.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"pullquote\"><strong><em>The visitors who were present when the Church began returned home and told of what they heard.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>Second is to notice the origin of those who heard Peter during the feast of the Pentecost. A large number of the hearers were diasporan Jews, meaning those Jews who lived outside the homeland traveled and whose homes were in what we now know as Libya, Egypt, Rome in Italy, Pontus, Asia, Cappadocia, Phrygia and Pamphylia (modern Turkey). There were also diasporan Jews from the Mediterranean island of Crete. There were also present visiting Jews who had for a long time lived along the edges of Arabia, Parthia, Medea, and Elam (now known as Iran). The significance of this listing as the hearers were from both the Mediterranean world and the countries east of Syria and bordering the Persian Gulf. After the feast of the First Fruits, also known as Pentecost, all went back to their places of origin.<\/p>\n<p>The visitors who were present when the Church began returned home and told of what they heard. When Peter, John, Philip the Deacon, and later Paul, started their missionary journeys, they were simply following up where these visitors came from: The Mediterranean world and its northern, southern, southeastern shorelines, up the Nile and the Gulf of Suez as well as northeast to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and following their courses toward the Arabian Sea. The significance of this spread west and east is in the mode of travel. The early Christians traveled the waterways more so than by way of roads which were few and dangerous to travel. Even the Roman-built roads were not all that good across Anatolia [Asia Minor\/modern Turkey], going from Antioch to Ephesus facing the Aegean Sea.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 140px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2ObfrDZ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RStark-CitiesOfGod.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"140\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodney Stark, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2ObfrDZ\">Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome<\/a><\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Most travelers went by ship, boat, or along the shores of rivers. As a result, most Christian communities were found in port cities such as Antioch, Caesarea, Troas, Ephesus, Corinth, Alexandria going west in the Mediterranean. The Roman military road from Capernaum and the upper shore line of the Sea of Galilee took one up to Damascus, Dura-Europos, and the towns along the Euphrates-Tigris waterways. Seldom were Christian churches found in the hinterlands. Most were found in shoreline cities. It was Wayne Meeks who first noticed that the earliest Christian churches were in urban areas; then it was Rodney Stark who wrote of how Christianity became an urban movement in his <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2ObfrDZ\">Cities of God<\/a> <\/em>(Harper San Francisco, 2006).<\/p>\n<p>This was the situation of the resurgence of the gospel throughout the following centuries when persecution or invasions occurred. The Christians took to the sea or the waterways to spread the gospel to more distant lands. When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, Acts 8: 25-49 tells of Philip the Deacon\u2019s ministry with a Treasurer of the Candace of Ethiopia (Roman name for modern Sudan). The roadway he traveled goes along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile river and then up the Nile to the city of Meroe, the capital of Ethiopia. The Angel of the Lord then turned Philip around and had him introduce the gospel along the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean from Azotus to Caesarea, a major port for ships from Rome and the Aegean Sea. Acts 11:19 to 30 informs the reader that Christians from the Island of Cyprus and from Cyrene, the main port city of what is now Modern Libya in Northern Africa, were among the forerunners of the church in Antioch (modern Antakya), another major port city. This is but the start of the story.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 214px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Caesarea_maritima-RomanTheater.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"143\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ruins of the Roman theater at Caesarea on the Sea.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The point is that when things got hard for the church, the church took to the coast lines and the islands of the Mediterranean. Chapter 13 of Acts names some of the Christians from the middle Mediterranean: Barnabas, Simeon the Black (translation of the word Niger), and Lucius of Cyrene (Libya). The Acts of the Apostles tells of the spread of the church across the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean going west, north, and into what is now Spain. It also records the movement of the Christians upon into the Aegean Sea, a northern extension of the Mediterranean as Ephesus, Troas, then along the eastern coat of Greece, as Thessalonica, Athens, and Corinth.<\/p>\n<p>The other factors were oppression, persecution, opposition, and invasions. Invasion had the overall effect of forcing Christians to leave for elsewhere unless they were able to absorb the invaders into the existing society and social structure. Such was the case for Italy and the surrounding countryside. Ostrogoths, Lombards, Visigoths, Franks, and others whom the Romans called <em>Germans <\/em>became part of the populace and in time fell under the influence of the Christians though longer in absorbing the implications of conversion and the Christian life. On the other hand, the invasions of the Alans and the Vandals, the latter the invaders of North Africa, had the impact of fostering a movement of Christians out of North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar into western Hispania and Lusitania (Spain and Portugal), and up the coastline of Europe and into Roman Britain. From them came the growth and spread of the Gospel into Northern Europe.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 202px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/NestorianStele.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The top portion of the Nestorian Stele.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The outcome was the eventual spread of the Gospel into the western extremities of the Mediterranean and up the Nile. The result was the eventual process of Christianization. Had this been the whole story of the spread of the Gospel, the spread of the Gospel would have ended at the coastlines of Europe. Such was not the case. The real story of the resurgence of the Gospel began at the western <em>termini of <\/em>what we now call Turkey and the northern reaches of the Tigris river. The line of progression was the spread of the Gospel north toward the Caucasian mountains and eastward toward Persia and eventually by A.D. 635 into China when Alopen, a missionary from the Church of the East, and most probably a Syriac-speaker arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang-an. Emperor Taizong welcomed Alopen to his court. We know of Alopen from the Nestorian Stele which stands across one of the Silk Roads which facilitated the movement of peoples across Eurasia east to west and west to east.<\/p>\n<p>This is an almost forgotten story of the movement of Christians into the steppes of far Eastern Europe, and into the areas of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples, north of present day Afghanistan, and beyond into China. The movement of missionaries from Syria and modern Iraq toward the western Malabar Coast of India is also a little known story. The Mar Thoma Christian Church of India traces their origin to a missionary journey of the apostle Thomas, who saw the Resurrected Jesus, and confessed, \u201cMy Lord and My God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is the purpose of this writer to open up this chapter which began in part within thirty-five years after the conversion of Constantine. The rulers of the Eastern Roman empire tried to use their power to influence the Bishops of the Church but the eminent preachers of the Gospel were not men who could be intimidated. John Chrysostom was not to be silenced and even when he was exiled for criticizing the wife of one ruler, his influence was still felt. Gregory Thaumaturgus (\u201cthe wonderworker\u201d), who studied under Origen in Alexandria, Egypt, spread the gospel into the Caucasus mountains which spread northward into Armenia and Georgia.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Vasco_da_Gama.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"210\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira and Viceroy of Portuguese India, was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>From there the story of the resurgence of the Gospel out of Edesssa in Capadocia, out of Nisibis close to the Caspian Sea into what is now Iran, and out of Antioch on the Orontes and into the Arabian Peninsula and across the Arabian Sea to India and then to Sri Lanka. In the story about to be told, we will deal with the impact of the Moslem advance and meet with Timothy II, the bishop of the church in the new city of Baghdad, before the Moslem caliph. We will meet up with Marco Polo, the merchant of Venice, who in the 1200\u2019s, found his way to China. We will begin to end with the Fall of Constantinople before the Ottoman Turks, which set into motion the creation of ocean-going ships able to navigate the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and facilitate the spread of the Gospel into Southeast Asia and across the Atlantic to the Americas. The first were the Portuguese and then the Italians. Among the first of these was Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, whose ship rounded Africa to then sail on toward what is now Mumbai, India. The other was John Caboto, better known as John Cabot, and Cristobal Colombo, better known as Christopher Columbus, both of whom reached North America, Cabot in Canada, and Columbus in what is now known as the Dominican Republic. The resurgence and globalization of the gospel began with the eastward movement.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Medieval Prologue<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"pullquote\"><strong><em>The resurgence and globalization of the gospel began with the eastward movement.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>In reality, the eastward spread of the Gospel began long before the onset of the \u201cMedieval\u201d era, if ever there was a period of history. The truth of the matter is that the French and the Italians of the late 15<sup>th<\/sup> century invented the word \u201cMedieval\u201d to describe the years before the discoveries of the 13<sup>th<\/sup>, 14<sup>th<\/sup>, and 15<sup>th<\/sup> centuries. Even as early as A.D. 379\/80 when the Battle of Adrianople took place at which invaders from the steppes of Eastern Europe and western Asia defeated the armies of Rome, the stage was set for a mixture of peoples over the next two hundred some years: Goths (whom the Romans called \u201cGerman\u201d), Alans, Vandals, and Lombards, along with the Latin (Italian tribes), Hellenic (Greek), and Celtic. The eventual mixture of ethnic groups through intermarriage made for a newer Europe and northern Africa and renamed geographic areas accordingly: Romania, France (Roman Gaul), Spain, Portugal (Roman Lusitania), Italy, Belgium, Austria, Bavaria, Palatine (region of modern Germany), Lombardy, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>This gradual replacement of the Roman Empire which stretched from the northern flow of the Euphrates river to the Atlantic with a formative group of nascent \u201cstates\u201d called for a new style of evangelism which emanated principally from Ireland back into Europe. What is not as well-known is the response of the eastern side of the Roman Empire composed of the Balkans, the city of Constantinople, Armenia, and the Near East. In the latter-half of the 200\u2019s, Gregory Thaumaturgus, a former student of Origen brought the gospel into the lands facing the eastern shore of the Black Sea. This included northern Cappadocia, Armenia, and Georgia and the Caucasus mountains. Gregory the Illuminator is credited with the conversion of the Armenian king Tiridates (A.D. 261-317).<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 514px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Periplous_of_the_Erythraean_Sea.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"514\" height=\"362\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of the Periplus (trading port log) of the Erythreaen (Eritrean) Sea.<br \/><small>Image: George Tsiagalakis \/ CC-BY-SA-4 licence<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>For a long-time Antioch was the launching pad of evangelists who traveled south along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. By the Early 300\u2019s new Christian outposts existed at Edessa in eastern Cappadocia and at Nisibis near the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. By the late 300\u2019s Christians also entered eastern Arabia and established themselves on Arabia\u2019s southwestern shorelines where Yemen and Aden are today. By the 400\u2019s, the Christian Himyarite kingdom existed there. This extension of the Christian mission but followed the old route through the Red Sea which was used for almost four hundred- some years by Hellenistic and Roman navigators involved in trade in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. An ancient manuscript <em>Periplus Maris Erythraii <\/em>tells of extensive trade of Rome with the west coast of India. Both Seneca, a contemporary of Paul the Apostle, and later Pliny the Elder, both referred to the trade with southern Asia. The port of Charax Spasinu (fortress capital of the Sassanid province of Characene) on the Persian Gulf was a Roman port-of-call as was also Myos Hormos on the Red Sea. This gives credence to a story about Thomas, an apostle of Jesus, who boarded ship for India and spread the gospel on India\u2019s western shore.<\/p>\n<p>This provides the setting for what would take place soon after the inroads of the invasions of outsiders from the steppes of Eurasia, the onset of the Sassanian Persians, and the rise of the armies of Islam in the wake of Mohammed. When \u201cMedieval Europe\u201d was in the making in the disruption of the Roman imperial world and the rise of invaders and the westward expansion of the Sassanid dynasty of Persia under Mithridata II and the Arabian armies of al-Mansur, one of the most incredible stories of the expansion of the Gospel across the face of Asia unfolded.<\/p>\n<p>Out of the fastness of the monasteries at Nisibis, Arbela, northwestern Arabia, Damascus, Antioch, and the fastness of the Nile river in Egypt, emerged one of the most untold stories of evangelism across the vastness of Central and Eastern Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Mithridata II founded the capital of Sassanid Persia on the east bank of the Euphrates river right across from the Roman Syrian city of Seleucia. Close to Seleucia, on the west bank was the town of Dura-Europos which had in its midst the oldest known Christian house church. With the Sassanid regime all contact with Christians in the East was practically cut. The same effect occurred in Palestine when al-Mansur captured Jerusalem. There was no outright persecution of Christians under al-Mansur but they were considered of <em>dhimmi<\/em> status (second-rate) and yet admired for their architectural skills. Jews were also <em>dhimmi<\/em> but honored for their medical expertise. Christians were sporadically persecuted and their gathering places destroyed. The result was that the Christians who remained turned especially to the trades and thereby became less conspicuous in their faith. This was in their favor as they became the foremost evangelists who traveled the overland trade routes. Nisibis, Kirkuk, Mosel, and Arbela, retained strong Christian enclaves, with leadership coming from the Monasteries. In contrast to the Patriarch in Constantinople and to the Pope in Rome, each prime leader was designated as Catholicos over a given geographical area. In this regard, decisions regarding mission and policy centered in a council much as was the case for the church in the eastern half of the Roman Empire and unlike the western half where a <em>curia <\/em>and papacy came to exist.<\/p>\n<p>One other situation arose which helped to distinguish the Church in the East to a greater degree from the Church in the Latin West and the more polyglot church in the Eastern Roman world. Beginning in the 300\u2019s the Christian world found it necessary to more closely define its faith in Jesus as to who Jesus is and the essentials of the Christian faith. Three major statements arose. In their order of appearance over time was what became known as The Apostles\u2019 Creed, the Nicene Creed, and finally the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed enunciated in A.D. 325. This creedal affirmation was agreed upon by Christian leaders of east and west and north and south. The real stickler of the whole confession was the statement of what came to be known in Christian experience as the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How they affirmed the nature of Jesus and what is to be emphasized both in preaching and teaching varied. The variance was basically between stressing Christ\u2019s divinity and Christ\u2019s humanity. Theodore of Mopsuestia and then Nestorius stressed Jesus\u2019 humanity more so than his divine nature. Cyril of Alexandria stressed the doctrine of redemption through Christ\u2019 divine nature. The Council of Ephesus in 431 looked at this issue and came down in favor of Cyril and the Egyptian Christians. They were characterized as Monophysites.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius of Antioch in Syria came into disfavor and were labeled Dyophysites. That solved nothing but split the council and caused divisions. In A.D. 449, the larger Council of Christians at Chalcedon labeled the Ephesian Council as a \u201cRobber Council\u201d for encouraging the split that occurred.<\/p>\n<p>Chalcedon\u2019s decision was a partial victory for Nestorius but neither faction was completely satisfied. The end effect was to swing a vast majority of the churches of the East as distinctive \u201cNestorian\u201d in character though evangelists from Alexandria, Egypt, and Antioch, founded Monophysite Churches in greater Asia.<\/p>\n<p>After nearly a thousand years, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, Nestorius\u2019 memoir was discovered. Martin Luther read <em>The Bazaar of Heracleides. <\/em>He felt that Nestorius was no heretic but was very much Trinitarian even when he maintained that Mary was no <em>theotokos<\/em> (God-bearer) but instead the mother of Jesus, the son of God.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 230px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/ArabicDiatessaron.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"230\" height=\"161\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Arabic <em>Diatessaron<\/em>, translated by Abul Faraj Al Tayyib from Syriac to Arabic in the 11th century.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>With the <em>Peshitta<\/em> (The Syriac translation of the Bible), Tatian\u2019s <em>Diatessaron<\/em> [The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Parallel Columns), and Nestorius\u2019 understanding of the Trinity, The Catholic Church of the East was equipped to begin the evangelization of greater Asia to the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ of God. Moving out from Antioch, Damascus, Edessa, Nisibis, Arbela, these Christian tradesmen and monastics took the Gospel into northwestern India, into what is now Afghanistan, northward and eastward to Kashgar, Balk, Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand, and into the Mongolian heartlands and eastward to China before A.D. 700 when the Nestorian evangelist Alopen arrived at the Chinese Court.<\/p>\n<p>By the time Gregory of Tours (<em>circa<\/em> A.D. 538-594) was describing the conversion of the Franks in his time, Christian tradesmen as Elijah and Theodore, natives of Amida in eastern Syria were somewhere along the Afghanistan-Persian borderlands giving witness of their faith in Christ Jesus beside their testimony according to the great missionary preacher John of Ephesus (A.D. 507-588) who chronicled the advance of the gospel across the silk roads of Asia.<\/p>\n<p>The story of that advance which eventually reached the court of Toi-tsung at Chang\u2019an in what is now known as China about A.D. 635 constitutes the next stage of the gospel\u2019s resurgence, a resurgence which went first went east toward the Pacific, the Bay of Bengal, and the South China Sea before crossing the Atlantic in 1492.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Re-Mapping the Christian World<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his record of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke records Peter\u2019s message under the power of the Holy Spirit. It happened on the day of the celebration of the harvest of the First Fruits, known as Pentecost. Luke commented \u201cthere were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven\u201d (Acts 2:5). Notice two adjectives. These were <em>devout<\/em> men, not just any group of men. Second, they were devout men from every nation \u201cunder heaven.\u201d These two words \u201cunder heaven\u201d are significant. He is not describing men from every nation on earth under the atmosphere and tropo-sphere of space. These were the <em>diasporan<\/em> Jews, those who lived outside of the homeland of Judaea and were the descendants of those who did not return to the homeland after the liberation from Babylonian captivity and the end of the persecutions described by the writer of the book of Esther. These were those whose forefathers initiated the synagogue where the Book of the Law, the Torah, was read every Sabbath The synagogue initially began soon after the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. Synagogues sprang up everywhere even after the Temple was rebuilt. This was an important occasion. Verses 9-11 describes countries stretching from Lybia in northern Africa, and some islands in the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea and a little beyond. He mentioned Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, whose lands included what is modern Iran, northern Iraq, eastern Syria, and the whole of the Persian Gulf areas and the whole Arabian peninsula.<\/p>\n<p>These devout Jews were also descendants of those who experienced the second dispersion first initiated by Alexander the Great and broadened by Pompey the Roman general when Rome replaced the Hellenistic rulers of Western Asia and Northern Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us are familiar with the Babylonian exile and the return to the homeland under Nehemiah and Ezra and the rebuilding of the Temple. We have read the story of Esther and of the plot against the Jews during the Persian period initiated by Haman during the reign of Ahasuerus at which time the Persian Empire was at its greatest extent from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Indus river. A few years later the Persian rulers sought to extend their borders to the west coast of what is now known as Turkey. The end came in the 300\u2019s when Darius III sought to extend Persian power into southeastern Europe and take control of the Balkans. A young ambitious general, the son of the Macedonian general Philip, started pushing the invaders back. His name was Alexander the Great. He chased the Persian general Darius III back into the area of what is now Azerbaijan and defeated the Persians at the battle of Issus in 334 B.C. Darius\u2019 armies fled eastward. Alexander pursued the combined armies of Darius toward Hecatompylus southeast of the Caspian Sea where Darius was killed by his own troops. Alexander swooped south toward the Persian Gulf, destroyed the city of Persepolis, and then turned northward toward what is now Kabul, Afghanistan, then toward Balkh, before turning back south to face an Indian army along the Indus river. The combined Macedonian-Greek armies were exhausted by this time and urged Alexander to turn back by following the Indus to where it flows into the Arabian sea and returning along the northern shoreline of the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Tigris river. Alexander followed the Tigris-Euphrates valley to Babylon. There he rested and died in 323 at the age of 33. He left the lands he and his troops conquered into the hands of his general: Northeast Africa to Ptolemy, Syria and Persia to Seleucus, Bactria (now Sogdiana and Afghanistan), to Demetrios, and the whole of what is now Turkey to his general Antigonus, and the homelands of Macedonia and Greece, to his own son by his Persian wife. Until his maturity, Alexander\u2019s son was under the tutelage of the general Lysimachus. The point of all this information is Alexander, for all his faults, showed favor to all the peoples enslaved or under bondage to their former rulers. As a result, the Jews were favored, even those who lived in Judaea. Met earlier outside the gates of Jerusalem by the High Priest, the Jews had freedom to move anywhere they chose and were not to be bothered.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Septuagint-Zech8.18-9.7-NahalHever2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"207\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This column of the Septuagint is part of the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, copied sometime between 50 B.C.E and A.D. 50. The text is Zechariah 8:18 &#8211; 9:7.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Such a favor allowed the Jews outside of the homeland to institute the synagogue in lands outside of Asia, the lands and islands whose shores bordered the Mediterranean as Egypt, Crete, Syria, Libya, and Asia Minor. Being afar from the temple in Jerusalem, synagogues spread from Libya into Egypt, into Corinth in Greece, north from there to Thessalonica, and eastward to Ephesus and to various locations in Asia Minor now known as Turkey. These synagogues came to be known a synagogues of the Freedmen. Keep this in mind when reading Acts of the Apostles as in Acts 6:9, Luke reports that \u201csome men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, including Cyrenians and Alexandria, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.\u201d These dominant western synagogues of the second dispersion were far more argumentative and protective of the Temple in Jerusalem. Most likely they were recent immigrants into Libya, Egypt, Cilicia, and Ephesus during Pompey\u2019s and Rome\u2019s takeover.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, according to tradition, seventy rabbis in Egypt (during the Ptolemaic period) finished in seventy days the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is important, as it was the translation of the Old Testament that Paul the Apostle quoted from when he converted and spread the gospel throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world.<\/p>\n<p>In the Mesopotamian countries of Syria and Iraq and what is Azerbaijan today, Syriac and Aramaic became the prevailing languages of both trade and the propagation of the gospel. Portions of the Old Testament are written in Aramaic, as is Ezra, parts of Chronicles, and Daniel. During the years of Jesus\u2019 ministry, Aramaic was the common language of Judaea and in Antioch, Damascus, and all points eastward.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 185px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Peshitta-SyriacBible.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"296\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Peshitta, the Syrian-Aramaic translation of the Bible, on display at the National Library at Givat Ram, Jerusalem.<br \/><small>Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>All those who heard Peter preach at Pentecost heard the Gospel in the language of their own countries, including Aramaic, a form of Syriac spoken throughout the Near East, and Koine Greek understood throughout the Mediterranean world. Those who heard the gospel and came to Jerusalem for Pentecost and believed and were baptized were the forerunners of the gospel message before the incursions of the apostles and the later evangelists who were to take the gospel to places like Cyrene, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Thessalonica, Corinth, Antioch, Damascus, Elam, Medea, Philippi, and to Rome. Both Alexander the Great and Pompey unwittingly prepared the way, opening and remapping a large part of the known world and much of what was only vaguely known on the frontiers. Without them, how much more difficult would it have been for Stephen, Paul, Peter, John, Andrew, and Nathanael to spread the gospel?<\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to note that the three earliest known languages of the complete Bible which were used to transmit the Old and New Testaments, were Aramaic\/Syriac, <em>koin\u0113 <\/em>Greek, and Old Latin. Across Northern Africa, Old Latin was the means of transmitting the Gospel over the first three and a quarter centuries. Koine Greek was the medium of transmission across the Eastern Mediterranean and from Galilee northward to Antioch and toward the Caucasus and the Black Sea. In Damascus, Aleppo, and Palmyra, there were a mixture of Latin, Greek, and Aramaic, speaking peoples but Syriac came to dominate: first the Old Syriac, then the Syriac of the complete <em>Peshitta, <\/em>the oldest known translation of the complete Bible comprising both the Old and New Testaments. The latter named was the translation used by the evangelists and missionaries who crossed the face of much of Asia west of the Indus river and by those who traversed the Mesopotamian valley toward where Baghdad would later be built.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"pullquote\"><strong><em>From the day the Church began during a celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem, followers of the Jesus Way represented Asia, Africa, and Europe.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>The Feast of First Fruits, or Pentecost re-mapped the Christian world as those who were present in Jerusalem represented Asia, Africa, and Europe. A Jewish treasurer for the Candace of Ethiopia who heard the gospel from Philip represents, the continent of Africa. Mark, the associate of Paul and Barnabas, the writer of the gospel which bears his name, represents the Latin World of the Western Mediterranean. Tradition and historical data associate the Syrian coastal city of Antioch and Damascus of inland Syria both of which share in the life and ministry of Paul, and later the Syrian Christian Tatian with the prominence of the Peshitta across the face of Asia north of the Persian Gulf to the headwaters of the Indus River and down to its mouth at the Arabian Sea and along the northwestern coast of India which came to have a significant number of Syriac speaking Chris-tian believers who attribute their origin to the ministry of the apostle Thomas. There is no reason to doubt this tradition on the basis of northwestern India\u2019s connection with the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the second century\u2019s apocryphal book of Thomas. With this begins the rest of the story of the resurgence of the Gospel across the trade routes and waterways connecting the Turkic-Mongol Steppe lands and Mongol China with Asia Minor, the Euxine (Black) Sea, and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The story begins with the role of the Caucasian, Kurdistan, and Caspian Christians and the Christians in that swath of mountain country in charting the way East and North. It will also define the relation of the Christians of Mesopotamia with the Umayyad and Abbasid Moslems and how Baghdad became the prominent Christian \u201cpatriarchate\u201d from which all evangelism flowed toward the Mongol-Turkic domains.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, when Luke writes of devout men from every country under heaven, he is also explaining how they return to the lands from whence they came. These diverse listeners would become the carriers of the Gospel into the far reaches of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Then came the armies of Rome and the entry of Pompey into Syria and what would become known as Palestine. Rome followed much the same policies of the Macedonians and Greeks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>PR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coming next in Fall 2018: Recharting the Christian World Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message Part One: The Medieval Prologue &amp; the Remapping of the World \u00a0 In Retrospect By looking backwards to the beginning of the spread of the Gospel that Jesus is both Lord and Christ and considering the results of both the life, death&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2903,"featured_media":22854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6447],"tags":[3897,6473,2748,4315,2935,2936,6474,6475,6476,6477,4188,6478,2823],"ppma_author":[4776],"class_list":["post-22853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history-2","category-summer-2018","tag-creed","tag-dhimmi","tag-featured","tag-good-news","tag-gospel","tag-medieval","tag-nestorians","tag-peshitta","tag-prologue","tag-remapping","tag-resurgence","tag-rodney-stark","tag-world","author-woodrowewalton"],"authors":[{"term_id":4776,"user_id":2903,"is_guest":0,"slug":"woodrowewalton","display_name":"Woodrow Walton","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/WoodrowWalton2015_264x264-150x150.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/WoodrowWalton2015_264x264-150x150.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22853"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=22853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}