# 8 - “The History of Christianity in Asia, Part 2”

hello Heroes we are concluding series two today with the fourth lecture of that series the history of Christianity in Asia I was thinking about what to share for a devotional for this lecture where in the Bible do you have a Believer making a difference in a pagan Court then it came to me how about Esther Christians took Christianity to China before the Mongol takeover which we will look at the history of Christianity in Asia part 3 maybe I'll look at Daniel then but today we will look at the first Christian Mission in China along with

the interaction between Islamic rulers and Christianity what Esther's relative said to her challenges us as well in Esther 4:14 he says to her for if you remain silent at this time time relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place but you and your father's family will perish and who knows but that you have come to your Royal position for such a time as this and Esther did follow through with obedience she went before the king she risked her life by doing so ultimately she shared the threat against all the Jews in the

Kingdom and the chw Jews were triumphant this verse spoke to me when many years ago I worked for a short time for a newly elected congresswoman a book came out at that time asking the same question for such a time as this what is God calling you to do what is your such a time as this in part one of the history of Christianity we saw how Thomas took the good news to Southwestern India we traced the development of nestorian Christians in Persia and learned that with the discovery of a writing by nestorius many centuries

later he turned out to not be a heretic in this lecture we will look at Christianity in South Asia and reaching the ends of the Earth we will start by looking at the interaction between Indian Christianity in Persia we will move to the pre-islamic Christian kingdoms among the Arabs and then we will behold the first Christian Mission to China followed by a consideration of Christianity and early Islam ultimately we will come to understand the struggle for survival by Christianity under medieval Islam first we come to Christian ity in South Asia here is how mfet begins

his chapter on Indian Christianity and its relation to Persia even in the island of tapani which is then was salon now Sri Lanka in inner India where also the Indian Sea is there is a church of Christians clergy and Believers I do not know whether there are Christian even Beyond tabra ban the same is true in the place called Mal where the pepper grows that is by a man named Cosmos and here is what Wikipedia says about him his full name means kmos who sailed to India also known as kmos the monk Cosmos was a

merchant and later hermit from Alexandria to Egypt he was a sixth Century traveler who made several voyages to India during the reign of Emperor Justinian his work Christian topography contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps Cosmos was a pupil of the E syak patriarch ABA I first and was himself a follower of the Church of the East close quote he belied believe that the Earth was flat though that was already a minority view you might recall that persecution Rose in the East after it decreased in the west or the Roman Empire after

Constantine pers persecution declined in the west then Christianity came to be viewed as being in Alliance with the West against the Persian rulers mfet continues the story by reporting that a persistent tradition I'm quoting now from India relates that in 345 an historian Merchant Thomas of Kaa remember John Chapter 2 reached cranganore on the Malabar Coast in Southwest India bringing with him a group of Christian families perhaps as many as 400 people including deacons priests and a bishop they were welcomed by the Christian Community they found there but were dismayed to find that these Indian

Christians who traced their Origins back to the Apostle Thomas were without local leadership had become badly divided by false teachings and were dwindling in numbers the new arrivals reinvigorated the church and secured for it recognition and high cast status from the local Indian king in Malabar close quote Moffet also introduces the quote arrival of a less Orthodox Christian visitor to India a few years later about 354 he is better known in Christian circles as in western church histories he was Theophilus the Indian a native of islands in the Arabian or Indian Ocean who was held

in r Rome as a hostage converted to Christianity and sent by Emperor constantius on an embassy that included visits to Arabia to his homeland in the islands and to other parts of India which may or may not have been India proper there he found Christians whose lurgical practices graded on his sensibilities the Indians he said listen to the reading of the Gospel in a sitting posture and did other things which were repugnant to the Divine Law he did approve of their Doctrine however that is somewhat hard to believe for Theophilus was an Aryan heretic as

was the historian who recorded the visit his contemporary philoso orius who lived from approximately 368 through 439 close quote one scholar has pointed out that the value of the report of Theophilus is its evidence by the middle of the 4th Century India or its adjacent territories had indigenous worshiping congregations ministered to by a local clergy with Customs such as sitting for the gospel that were well adapted to the Indian culture though Divergent from accepted Western church practice the Indian Christians as Theophilus described them did not know they were disobeying the apost apostolic constitutions that required

standing for the gospels while people stood in perfect Stillness close quote Moffet writes that their quote was as yet in the 4th Century no evidence of an independent Indian ecclesiastical structure above the congregational level though at least one version mentions a bishop but early in the fth century the ecclesiastical ties between Persian and the Christians of India were regularized and strengthened and at least from that time on India's Christian communities were hierarchically dependent on the Persian Church the channel of Persian ecclesiastical Authority and India was through the bishopi of rard daser which was strategically located

on the direct sea route to India near the head of the Persian Gulf on its eastern side about 410 or 420 this bishoprick was elevated to a metropolitanate or Archbishop Rick maybe I'll just say Archbishop Rick cuz that's a hard word for me to say and was given jurisdiction over relations with the churches of the Indian subcontinent Moffet says it is quote from the early 6th Century in the famous Christian Topography of Cosmos indap Des that historians find the first completely satisfying documentary evidence of an early church in Indian South Asia his book about his

travels though apparently he never actually reached India almost incidentally mentions some extremely interesting bits of information about Christians on this Indian subcontinent here is what he writes about the church on the island of T proban it quote has a church of Persian Christians who are resident in that country and a priest from Persia and a deacon and all that is requisite for the conduct of the worship of the church but the natives and their kings are heathens close quote mfit explains the significance of this quotation quote here at last is brief but specific historical confirmation

of three important facts partially suggested by the train of traditions and fragments we have been piecing together in search of the foundations of the Indian church first by the middle of the 6th Century the Indian church was organized and well established with Bishops clergy and Believers second it was strongly related to and dependent on the Persian Church which by then was historian third it was only a tiny minority Community a separated distinctive cultural Island in a vast Christian sea close quote Moffet makes further distinctions quote but two other important facts must be recognized as modifying

that General picture for one thing it was not a daughter Church of the Persian hierarchy it already had a long history of its own ever since the ancient 3r Century acts of Thomas Persians and CHR syrians had been unanimous in Rec recognizing the apostolic independent origins of Indian Christianity moreover however dependent the Indian Church structure later became on Syria and Persia the fourth Century report of theodosius the Indian is evidenced that at least 200 years before Cosmos it had already begun the indispensable process of accommodating Christian practice to Indian ways in its three-fold balance of

adaptation to NA national culture of persistent identification with its own traditional Christian Roots and of connectional relations with the wider International Christian Network of authority May well lie the secret of the survival of so small a Christian family against such great odds for so many silent countries I turn now to the Christian kingdom of the Arabs mfet opens with a quotation from JS trimingham Christianity among the Arabs and pre-islamic times it chose ambivalence at best between Christian monks and among pre-islamic Arabian Nomads quote the gospel remained marginal to Arab Nomad Society the community loved the

Holy One the monk or priest provided he served it in Conformity with its own rules and left it undisturbed by any challenge to change in this respect the Christianity of the nomads contrasts with the quality and depth of the Christianity of settled Arabs in Syria and the Fertile Crescent here is how mfet opens the chapter quote south and west of Persia and separating the Iranian Empire from Africa lay the huge peninsula of Arabia in size a third as large as the continental United States but in population only sparsely inhabited by fiercely independent beduan tribes the

Roman World in general ignored it as containing nothing but sand and a few Palms the very word Arab means desert close quote Wikipedia says it can also mean Merchant and Nomad with Nomad being the most likely meaning that makes sense because Nomads in that part of the world often move over Desert from Oasis to oases mfet continues quote one thing alone made Southern Arabia important to Rome it flanked the West's only reliable trade route to Asia down the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean as I prepare this lecture the hooes are threatening water transport

in that area by attacking ships the northern stretches of the peninsula mfet says also possessed a strategic importance but for another reason Arab tribes there along the desert side of the Fertile Crescent developed into semi-independent kingdoms useful as buer states to both Rome and Persia on their desert borders first the naans and the poer Rines in the west then the lmid of hirta on the Persian Border West of the Euphrates and finally the gasan on the Roman border south and east of the Jordan for to the South separated from Africa by the narrow Waters of

the Red Sea was ancient Yemen of the himyarites both Gans and lmeds traced their ancestry to a common origin in the older hurite Yan as did some of the smaller Clan principalities like the Western tanukes though now the peninsula is one of the least Christian areas on the surface of the globe for a time before the Islamic conquest three of the largest Arab kingdoms were Christian little is known of any Christian communities in Arabia before the 4th Century but it must be remembered that the Apostle Paul was converted in Arab territory and wrestled his way

through the spiritual and religious consequences of his conversion not by seeking out by the apostles in Jerusalem but going into Arabia probably naatia and presumably staying with Christians there Galatians 1 5-1 17 and here's a map of that part of the Arabian Peninsula Moffet says Christianity naturally spread earliest and fastest among the Arab tribes in contact with Rome the first specific report of a Christian Community in Arab territory beyond the area of Roman influence comes from the history of the Persian Church in ad which mentions a Bishop Rick Persian not Arabic at beet katria on

the Persian Gulf and what is now Qatar near Bahrain Nomads however pay little attention to political borders and it probably made little difference except to their leaders whether the beduan encampments were in Persia or in Rome here is a map and on the bottom part uh the the Adia Ben tribe is below the kingdom of Armenia it was the UN in the unmarked desert that Nomad Arabs met Christian Aesthetics and were impressed on or near the Persian side of the shifting border the first first known Bishop of nomad Arabs pilos of the tanay was an

atic from the Syrian desert in Mesopotamia and as such attended the Council of NAA here is what mfet says about how one of the Arabic tribes came to be Christians maah Wikipedia says mavia whom JS trimmingham calls the first Christian Arab Queen became the leader of the western tanuk tribe where her husband the Sheik died about 373 the dark colored part of this map shows the tanuk tribe area the whole tribe along with the neighboring tribe from the same desert area between the Euphrates and the helenistic Roman towns north of Damascus had become Christian according

to zoso men about 10 years earlier through contact with priests and with monks who dwelt in the neighboring deserts and who were distinguished by their purity of life and by their miraculous gifts these Western tanuk were considered Roman tributaries but their independent-minded Queen maah broke the relationship and rebelled she fought so successfully against volins the Roman Emperor pictured here of the East that when volins who favored the Aryan heresy tried to make peace she refused until he agreed to send her an orthodox aesthetic man of the desert as Bishop for her people the man she

chose named Moses was probably from the Sinai Peninsula and here is a stylized image of the queen here is what Wikipedia relates from church historians they record Mia's exploits focusing in particular on the condition she set for the truce she procured from the Romans which is considered to be important to early Christian Evangelical efforts in the Levant for example rufinus writes mavia Queen of the sarasin had begun to convulse The Villages and towns on the border of Palestine and Arabia with a violent war and to ravage the neighboring provinces after she had worn down the

Roman army in several battles had failed a great many and put the remainder to flight she was asked by the Romans to make peace the vaed Roman Empire military which he did on the condition already declared that a certain Monk Moses be ordained Bishop for her people Socrates of Constantinople writes of these same events and notes that Moses a sarason by birth who led a monastic life in the desert had become exceedingly eminent for his piety faith and miracles he suggested that mavia was therefore desirous that this person should be cons constituted Bishop over her

Nation and promised on this condition to terminate the war maia's firm commitment to the truth truce as exemplified in her marrying her daughter to Victor the commanderin-chief of the Roman army is also noted by Socrates sooman provides even more detail on mavia referred to in this text as Mania describing her Rule and the history of her people whom he calls sarasin he writes that they are ishmaelites descended from the son of Hagar Abraham's concubine and that they named their children after Sarah so as not to be regarded as sons of Hagar and therefore as slaves

of battle with Mania who commanded her own troops in person so Som writes that it was considered arduous and perilous and that the general of the entire Cavalry and infantry of the East had to be rescued with difficulty from battle against her and her troops by the general of the troops of Palestine and Phoenicia there was a course history before and after these events there was of course history before and after these events you may read up on it at the brief Wikipedia article but mfet indicates that the first documented Christian Mission to Southern Arabia

must be credited to a date earlier in that same period of Aryan heresy in Constantinople about 354 the Roman Emperor constantius the son of Constantine the Great sent Theophilus the Indian and Aryan Deacon to lead an embassy into southern Asia as Moffet discusses elsewhere on its way to India the embassy visited the southwest corner of Arabia in what is now yen in the time of Christ this area was ruled by the kings of the hites whose power lasted until about 525 these Phoenicians of the Southern Sea as the hites have been described had grown rich

on their Monopoly of the trade route by sea to India and this image shows the hurite kingdom in green and you can note the similarity to the area of yan today but when in the first century the Romans discovered the secret of the monsoon winds across the Indian Ocean Romans broke the Monopoly of the Arabs and Roman power began to spread across the peninsula a little later Moffet notes that beginning about 339 or 340 the great pers Persian persecutions of shaur II sent waves of Christian refugees out of Persia many of them undoubtedly found Haven

in Arabia and bore a Christian witness there but with what results we do not know these were the same persecutions that may have driven Thomas of Kaa to India Persian Gulf preaching the faith and establishing missionary monastery to do that the earliest known by name is AB diso who perhaps about 390 built a monastery on the island of Bahrain the first documented nestorian Senate in uh 441 included Bishop delegates from Qatar and Bahrain interestingly mafa tells us that it was quote about the same time 410 and it was uh 410 when that meeting took place

that the faith was first systematically propagated in lower Arabia not by a Persian missionary but through the efforts of a native Arab in the reign of the Persian sha yaser the first 399 to 420 according to the chronicle of seir SE e r t Wikipedia says it is an ecclesiastical history written in Arabic by an anonymous nestorian writer at an unknown date between the 9th and 11th century there are grounds for believing that it is the work of the nestorian author isoda of bazra Who flourished in the second half of the 9th century beginning with

members of his own family but carrying the go gospel also across the border into other Arab regions HTA or Hira where hayan is said to have been converted was a natural stopping place for him it had been settled by tanuk Arabs migrating North from his homeland in Yan in the 3 Century in the confused period following the fall of the parthan Persian Dynasty in 225 they found unoccupied fertile land west of the Euphrates not far from ancient Babylon and there one group of them settled among what appears to have been a largely Christian native population

belonging to the Church of the east east Syrian later called nistoran another section of the clan the Western tanuk who were later to be ruled by Queen Maia continued north and east to the fringes of Roman Syria by 328 the tanukes who remained east of the desert had made of HTA a semi autonomous border Kingdom sometimes called the lme kingdom after its tribal founder it was so closely Allied to Persia that sha yasur the first sent his son there perhaps at the very time of hayon's visit to benefit from the dry and healthy Desert Air

as early as 410 it became the seat of a Astorian Bishop Hosea and remained the head of a Christian dicese perhaps intermittently for 700 years Moffet points out the te Von gaban makes the important point that unlike the Jacobite manop isites of Arabia who remain Nomads the nestorian Christians of HTA formed a close community calling themselves Servants of God whose inner Unity transcended a traditional Arabic tradition tribal differences mfet goes further to suggest or excuse me grun bomb goes further to suggest that this was not only the first known example of Arabic speakers grouped by

a common ideology but may well have been a model for the later political religious community of the Muslims the um here is how mfet concludes this chapter it is worth noting as a significant weakness in the early Christian missions in Arabia that the major areas of Christian strength on the eve of the rise of Islam were all foreign dominated the gas anid Kingdom in the northwest of the peninsula had for four centuries been tributary to Rome the lme Kingdom on the northeast was absorbed by Persia and in the southwest the hites independent for centuries came

first under the sway of Christian Ethiopia and then fell to Persia the Christian faith retained a foreign tinge in the Arabian Peninsula nor nowhere was it able to establish an authentic Arabic base it had not yet had even translated the scriptures into Arabic these realities caused holes that Muhammad and Islam would fill but before looking at Christianity and the rise of early Islam we will look at the first Christian Mission to China Moffett calls part two of the book Outreach the ends of the Earth from alopen to the Crusades and the first chapter is the

first Christian Mission to China Moffet opens this chapter with multiple questions far across the Eastern edges of Persia and Beyond the lands of the Turkish and Mongol Nomads of Central Asia lay the great Empire of China from Early Times Western Christians have handed down tales and traditions of how the gospel had been preached even to the Chinese who live at the end of the world where the sun rises from the sea some went so far as to claim that before his martyrdom St Thomas left India and set sail into China on board Chinese ships and

landed at a town named Cal which is unknown to us Moffet cites multiple authors in the Ed note for that quotation mfet continues but were the tales true had Christian missionaries ever actually broken through the barrier Seas or the Ring of fierce Warrior tribes that separated China proper from the West had they ever crossed the deserts and high mountains that isolated Central Asia from the world Moffet Begins the chapter with another question how old is Chinese Christianity and he writes when the Jesuits reached China in the 16th century they found a colony of Jews in

Kai Fang but no Christians perhaps the reports of ancient missions to China were nothing but wishful thinking though some remembered the vanished Franciscan missions to the Mongols in the 13th century others believed Marco Polo's reports of Christians in kubl KH China and a few even accepted the unlikely references to a mission of St Thomas from India to China but if Christians had indeed been in China before the Jesuits there was nothing left to show for it then came a dramatic Discovery in 1623 workmen digging not far from what is now hision or Gian the ancient

Tang Dynasty called the capital was called Chan uncovered a great Stone Chong on is Center North of the colored area of this image that you see but they uncovered a great Stone and this really excited me when I learned this from Moffet more than 9 feet high and three and A3 feet wide of black granular Limestone beautifully inscribed in Chinese characters beneath a design at the top centering around a cross rising from a Lotus Blossom here is the image of part of that stone and at this point I want to thank so much my videographer

Nick for the great job he's been doing with with every lecture and now as I've been including more images the wonderful work he does with them as well so there were beautifully inscribed Chinese characters beneath a design at the top centering around a cross rising from a Lotus Blossom large characters under the cross proclaimed it to be a monument commemorating in the propagation of the tachin or Syrian language luminous religion in China close quote it was a monument erected in 781 telling of the arrival of an historian missionary excuse me I felt it coming didn't

have time to tell you the cut so I got to okay just don't okay you don't want me blowing my nose um uh oh nestorian missionary in the Chinese capital in 635 this is amazing it is a combination of accidental archaeology and history Moffet puts the nestorian mission into the context of mission work to some European people groups quote with the discovery of the stone Western knowledge of history of Christianity in China proper as distinct from Mongolia outside the wall so this was inside the Great Wall of China was expanded by almost 700 years it

described how a Persian reached the capital of taang China with the gospel as early as idan's Mission from Iona into England 55 years before will abro pioneering mission to the Frisian tribes of Northern Europe and 150 years before charan's militant conversion of the sax Saxons Moffet focuses in on the man talked about on the monument it was along the quote old Silk Road in the Golden Age of the Tang that history produced the first recorded notice of the missionary entry of the Christian faith into the Chinese Empire it is an historian monument and remember that

ultimately in the 19th century a scroll found written by noorus proved that he was Orthodox and not a heretic and that Luther had found Martin Luther had found nothing heretical in his writings mfet provides a translation by a Japanese scholar of the monument I quote what mfet provides because of its incredible Christian Church History significance and that of the Gospel it's his story Jesus's story when the accomplished Emperor to a 627 to 649 and that last name is similar actually to ma seong perhaps began his magnificent career in glory and Splendor behold there was a

highly virtuous man named alopen uh footnote that's the Chinese transliteration of the name in the Kingdom of taen auguring from the Azure Sky he decided to carry the true sutras sutras are an Indian uh Sanskrit word for writings or scriptures with him and obser OB ering the course of the Winds he made his way through difficulties and perils thus in the ninth year of the period named Chen Kuan 635 he arrived at changan the emperor dispatched his Minister Duke Fong huan Ling with the guard of honor to the Western suburb to meet the visitor and

conduct him to the Palace the sutras were translated in the Imperial Library his majesty investigated the way similar to Acts 2 91 and 2 in his own forg forbidden apartments and forbidden to others and being deeply convinced of its correctness and Truth he gave special orders for its propagation and for this you can perhaps see Nebuchadnezzar's proclamation in Daniel 4: 34-37 [Music] and at this point I want to apologize for my APO for my pronunciation of Chinese words of Persian words of Arabic words I know a little bit about Arabic pronunciation but I know that

Chinese words are tonal and the church that I have the privilege to belong to now has wonderful Mandarin speaking members as well as Spanish speaking and english- speaking but Moffet returns to providing information about the monument and the historical context of missionaries to China quote the long inscription on the monument which contains more than 1,756 Chinese characters and about 70 syak words together with a long list of names of Persian or Syrian missionaries is dated 781 that is the second year of the Chien Chung period in Chinese the year0 192 of the Greeks and that's

in quotations in syak on the monument and the end note says the first year of the Greeks is usually 311 BC but it pinpoints the arrival of elen's mission at what we would call the year ad 635 in the ninth year of the emperor taai Tung alopen was probably not the first Christian in China saned Persia had open trade connections with China in the fifth century and historians were numerous in the merchant class of those times but the earliest recorded though somewhat ambiguous reference to a nestorian Christian and China proper is the mention of Omar

sergus as head of an important immigrant family from the Western lands who settled in 578 in Lin toao about 300 miles west of changan in kanu along the old Silk Road close quote mafit notes that the quote warm welcome by a Tang Emperor was an unanticipated ated Providence had alopen arrived 10 years earlier in the reign of the first taang emperor cotu he might well have been expelled kotu rejected M Buddhism as Western if you can believe it and un Chinese so he probably would have done the same with Christianity jumping ahead in moffett's text

we learn that the persecution of Christians in China began between 656 through 712 the church in China recovered somewhat the last Persian king during the Muslim attacks was called by the Chinese the King of Persia it is not known if he met M nestorian missionaries but he died in Exile in the Tang Dynasty Capital changan better attested mfet writes is the fact that not much more than 100 years later the great Timothy I nestorian patriarch in Baghdad 778 through 820 referred to Christians in Tibet in one of his letters and indicated that he intended to

consecrate a missionary Metropolitan or Archbishop for them better attested mfet writes is the fact that not much more than that was what I just shared with you and as Muslims moved into China Moffett writes it is clear that Muslim areas were not averse to making use of a hundred years of nestorian experience in China by employing the Persian missionaries as interpreters and advisers so hopefully they shared their Christian faith with the Muslims but for perspective the same year the Muslim Arabs started using Persian missionaries was the seveny year same year 792 that Charlemagne's grandfather Charles

Martell defeated Muslims and tours which is in what is now France between 781 and 790 The nestorians disappeared from China Moffet concludes this chapter chapter by noting that quote the first ways of days of Christian advance to the Far East came in with one change of the political tide and was washed away by the next but it was not to be the last of Christianity in China close quote now we have reached the point of Christianity and early Islam between AD 622 and 1,000 Moffet shares the following about the Indian Church's relationship with the Persian

church just before and during the early centuries of Islamic domination and Rule quote the last Glimpse history gives us of Persian Indian relations before the Islamic Title Wave in Gulf Persia does not change the picture but gives ground for Hope of precisely such a survival apparently the churches in India were increasing in such numbers in the early 7th Century that sometime in the patriarch of yeshu yuab II 628 to 643 or yuab the 3 650 to 660 jurisdiction over Indian Affairs was taken from The Metropolitan of rard dashir and given to an Archbishop brick newly

created for India itself where it was located and how many Indian Bishop Ricks were created under it are not known M quotes a later canonist of the Arab period is saying that between six and 12 Bishops were consecrated for India that the Metropolitan of India outranked that of China and that China outranked central Asia meaning sarand salua Tesson see the previous lecture the Persian capital and Seed of the patriarch fell to the Muslim Invaders In 637 and the letter of the patriarch yuab III 650 until I believe about 687 written in the first years of

the occupation confirms that the nestorian connection with India had barely survived the Muslim conquest and was in danger of Disappearing altogether so yeshu yab III was either through 660 or 687 I think you might be interested in the Ming quoting from yeshu III's letter writing in the third year of Islamic occupation I am always interested in direct historical documents primary sources as they're called and mfet has many of them Moffet notes that the letter confirms that the nooran connection with India had barely survived the Muslim conquest and was in danger of Disappearing altogether mingana quotes

from his letter to the rebellious Archbishop of redard deser in Persia remember that as you close the door of the Episcopal ordination in the face of many people of India so also did our predecessors close in the face of your spiritual Necessities the door of the gift of God that is Episcopal ordination the Episcopal succession has been interrupted in India and the country has s sat in darkness far from the light of the Divine teaching by means of rightful Bishops Moffet says this seems to blame a failure of communication between the patriarch and India on

the jealousy of the Archbishop of rasher over the creation of independent Archbishop rcks of India close quote of mfet now let's look more closely at Christianity and early Islam in a previous lecture I shared about Islam's founder its book its teaching and its conquests including of Christian areas mfet Begins the chapter on Christianity and early is Islam 622 to 1,000 talking about two men Muhammad in Asia and Charlemagne and the West who may well have changed the history of the world more decisively and dramatically than anyone else in the second 500 years of the Christian

age 500 to 1,000 Muhammad is a symbol of Christianity's near defeat in Asia Charlemagne of its near Triumph in the West in the history of the church defeat is never final and Triumph is never comp quite complete but for Asian Christianity the loss of the Middle East to Islam was more than the loss of its home and birthplace it marked the first permanent check to Christian expansion and all the previous 600 years of the history of the church close quote mfet writes about Muhammad and the Christians Christianity and the Quran Christianity under the patriarchal cffs

mfet combines all of those subjects on page 325 quote the Muslim conquest of the mid 7th Century which so abruptly terminated the Persian era of Asian church history was not the end of persan Chris Christianity it was a time of upheaval of Empires but it did not bring down upon the church the immediate Havoc of religious persecution and Massacre with which it is popularly associated on the contrary there is considerable evidence that the nestorians in Persia welcome the Arabs as liberators from zoroastrian oppression and that the Arab conquerors in turn found it more to their

advantage to segregate and use the Christians than to exterminate them gibbons's unforg forgettable metaphor of Christians facing a Muhammad with the sword in one hand the Quran and the other is doubly misleading to Muhammad the holy book was the Bible the Quran appeared only after his death and a better metaphor than the sword as far as Muslim Christian relation ships were concerned would be a net for after the conquest Christians found themselves caught in the web of Islam but not usually under its sword the net if not always comfortable was at least safer than the

sword and I need to be wrapping up this lecture I encourage you to read all of it on the Moodle PDF Moffet talks about the survival of Christianity under medieval Islam in 1 to 1258 I have images for you of Baldwin III who was the first Asian board Latin king of Jerusalem I have an image of the great Saladin few have more nearly accomplished The Impossible than this remarkable man he was a kurd not not an Arab and I also talk about the Children's Crusade led by Frederick II and I have an image of him

as well so with this lecture we conclude series two and now turn to series three which has to do primarily with the Renaissance and the morning stars of the Reformation as well as was the third and final lecture in this class on the history of Christianity in Asia so and until next time go forth and be heroes for Christ and remember that you are called for such a time is this