Customer Reviews

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died

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My view of the history of Christianity always had been one that began in the Middle East, then quickly spread west, roughly following the outline of the Roman Empire until the Middle East and Africa were lost to Islam. We'd always heard that Thomas the Apostle had gone to India, but it seemed as though that was an anomalous dead end. In the mid- to late-Middle Ages, the "center" of Christianity involved the trials and tribulations of the eventual rival Greek and Latin Churches, with a few tiny sects (Nestorians, Coptics, Maronites) eking out an existence in isolated pockets on the outskirts.

(I do hesitate to use the word "sect," as it so often seems to connote "wayward minority." History is written by the winners - one can imagine a time when the number of Muslims in the world dwarfs the number of Catholics, with the latter being thought of as a heretical version of the True Faith.)

This book lifts Christianity's first-millennium center of mass and moves it a thousand miles to the ESE. It opened my eyes to the fact that Christianity was thriving in Central Asia and further east, including even a major presence in Japan, and for a very long time. Also, importantly, it makes obvious the overriding role that luck plays in the success or failure of the spread of religion. If the Mongols had adopted Christianity instead of Islam, the world would be a different place. (Rather, was it the Almighty's wish that the Mongols adopted Islam and not Christianity!?)

I must say that the author seemed to be awfully repetitive in the first fourth of the book, and I felt as though I was being hit over the head with a hammer. On the other hand, maybe that's not a bad thing, given the nature of the material.

Over all, this was a fairly well written and an absolutely fascinating read.

"The best reason for the serious study of history," writes Philip Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity, "is that virtually everyone uses the past in everyday discourse. But the historical record on which they draw is abundantly littered with...half-truths...Historians can, or should, provide a corrective for this" (43). For Jenkins, the history of Christianity is especially susceptible to half-truths which highlight the connection of Christianity to Europe, and its role in promoting colonialism and intolerance. Besides oversimplifying its European sojourn, such presentations ignore the long history of the faith in Africa and Asia. Recovering the one-time splendor and eventual destruction of this ancient non-western Christianity is the "corrective" task Jenkins sets for himself in this timely study.

For most of its history, "Christianity has been a tricontinental religion, with powerful representation in Europe, Africa and Asia." (3). Well into the 14th century, eastern Christian groups like the Nestorians and Jacobites spread deep into the Middle East and Central Asia, as far as China and India, where they produced a richness of Christian scholarship, mysticism and culture which was not widespread in Europe until much later. Today, we tend to think that of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia as inevitably Muslim. But a thousand years ago, despite the political success of Islam, Christianity appeared poised to continue as the dominant faith of these regions. This raises the question: what happened? It is here that Jenkins is most insightful. Politically, he points out how the coming of the Muslims probably appeared more as an "Arab conquest": one more in a string of empires under which the Christians could live. After all was not "the Church an anvil that has worn out many a hammer?" (207). It was several factors which produced a "new Muslim hostility" (134) through which these regions were decisively Islamized (and Dechristianized). Jenkins notes, for instance, the Mongol invasions, and also to the economic effects of "The Little Age" of the 12th and 13th centuries. Facing such threats, Muslims began to more actively persecute their Christian subjects and neighbors.

This was the "first stage" of decline. Here, Christians lost majority status and struggled against increasing discrimination. In the ongoing "second stage," things deteriorated further, to the extent that these churches "have ceased to exist altogether" (141). Facing the rise of Europe, Muslim regimes (like the Ottomans), and Muslim societies in general, engaged in persecution of Christians throughout the now increasingly "Muslim world." In fact, the word "genocide" was coined with reference to the anti-Christian purges against the Armenians and Syrians in the 20th century. Jenkins summarizes: "For all the reasons we can suggest for the...[Christian] decline...the largest single factor...was organized violence, whether in the form of massacre, expulsion, or forced migration" (141).

These are the main lines of Jenkins' study, but there are four areas that deserve further comment. First, Jenkins helpfully draws implications from his study for the work of scholars like Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrmann, who have sought to rehabilitate early Gnostic writings as containing legitimate "alternative Christianities;" Christianities which were supposedly suppressed by the church. Jenkins, however, remains unconvinced: "The... conservatism of these [eastern] churches, so far removed from papal or imperial control, makes nonsense of claims that the church...allied with empire to suppress unpleasant truths about Christian origins" (88).

Second, recognizing the delicacy of the subject, Jenkins is generally successful in striking the balance between the violence and tolerance Islamic history. On one hand, he takes to task thinkers like Karen Armstrong who selectively accentuate the benevolent side of Islam. He writes, "It is astonishing...how readily the myth of Muslim tolerance has been accepted...the story...involves far more active persecution...than would be suggested by...believers in Islamic tolerance" (33, 99). On the other hand, he makes clear that the violence perpetrated by Muslims is similar to that perpetrated by other groups, including the church. Moreover, he makes clear that the many historical examples of Islamic tolerance, especially the "benevolent nature of Muslim rule during its first 6 centuries" (33), should not be overlooked. In this connection, Jenkins is also to be commended for showing how often there were non-religious factors that led to violence.

However, it is one thing to note such factors, but quite another to virtually exclude religious factors. Jenkins writes, "Nothing in Muslim scriptures makes...Islam more or less likely to engage in persecution...The scriptures of Islam include...fewer calls to blood-curdling violence than do their Christian and Jewish counterparts...Violence [derives] not from anything inherent in Islam..." (31, 242). In response, it must be pointed out that these undocumented assertions are not empirical findings as much as personal opinions. In fact, a good case can be made that the canonical texts of Islam have also done their part to contribute to Muslim violence (for example, see David Cook's Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)). As for the "calls to blood-curdling violence" in the Hebrew Bible, the broad consensus among Christians is that these calls have been superseded by the non-violence of New Testament. In contrast, as Cook points out, there does not yet seem to be a comparable Muslim consensus.

Third, with tantalizing brevity, Jenkins deals with the impact of eastern churches on Islam (36-39, 173-206). The architecture of mosques, the "Muslim" style of prayer, the practice of Sufism, and many elements in the Qur'an itself may preserve "ghosts" of these churches. In fact, it was not initially Muslims, but largely eastern Christians (under eventual Muslim patronage) who preserved the intellectual heritage of the ancient world by translating it into Arabic: "Such were the Christian roots of the Arabic golden age" (19). Jenkins' study is quite helpful at this point since this is an under-explored field today. While Syrian and Arab Christians at the time of Islam's birth certainly saw the parallels, and while scholars from a century ago (largely ignored by Jenkins), wrote of the Christian influence on Islam, there seem to be fewer today exploring this nexus (though Jenkins mentions Christoph Luxenberg - p. 186). In light of this, Jenkins study usefully suggests that by studying Islamic origins, we can recover something of these ancient churches; and by studying these churches, we can recover something of Islam.

From this, however, Jenkins perhaps too-predictably calls for "a closer dialogue between the sister faiths," (39) along with the suggestion that Christians should see Islam as "another form of divine revelation, one that complements but does not replace the Christian message" (258). While it is true that Jenkins' study uncovers "deep historical linkages" between the two faiths, it must be remembered that genuine dialogue will not emphasize these linkages alone. Genuine dialogue must also note (with irenic spirit) the central points at which the two faiths are quite un-complementary.

Finally, in his last chapter, Jenkins tiptoes into a theological consideration of the extermination of the eastern churches. If we can overlook his too-facile rejection of the biblical idea that the suffering of God's people may be due in part to God's judgment (252), we will find here much fertile ground for reflection. He is right to point out that, in contrast to unbiblical visions of a politically dominant Christianity, or a prosperity gospel, the New Testament teaches Christians to expect suffering. Jenkins' work is thus a call for the recovery of a cross-centered theology. As well, since the Bible harbors a "deep suspicion about the secular order" and underlines the "transience of human affairs" ("Even the Roman Empire was not to last forever," 260), Christians should see "the foolishness of associating faith with any particular state or social order" (262). Finally, Jenkins reminds us that in spite of everything, Christianity "is today the world's most numerous religion." Indeed, taking both the Bible and history as paradigms, Jenkins' study is a reminder that a theology of suffering must be held as preliminary to a theology of survival, and ultimately to a theology of resurrection.

I was very excited when I started reading this book. It's topic is very interesting; namely, that, though the Western model of Christianity is currently dominant, for a thousand years after the flowering of Christianity, the Christian churches of Asia and Africa were as powerful and influential (and in some cases, more so) as the Western church, and it is only through the chances of history that these churches have been sidelined or, in some cases, completely wiped out. And certainly, though it may serve our (that is, Western Christians') vanity to think that our success was pre-ordained, very small historical changes could have made the modern world look very different.

To his credit, throughout the book, Jenkins does manage to make a number of interesting points. Early on, his descriptions of the spread of Eastern Christianity all the way to China and Japan, and his extensive quotations from now forgotten patriarchs of churches often considered heretical today (Nestorians, Jacobites) give vivid credence to his arguments. I was also very taken with his argument of how churches have to make there way "into the villages" in order to survive oppression. For example, the great St. Augustine once led a vibrant North African church from Carthage, yet his urban-oriented church could not survive the spread of Islam whereas the penetrating Coptic churches of Egypt still manage to hang on after over 1000 years of Islamic rule.

On the other hand, Jenkins' book suffers from nearly debilitating weaknesses. First, his prose is surprisingly dull for the story he is telling. His prose could also use some tightening, in the sense that he wanders around the world and among now forgotten religions and leaders with a casualness that can be difficult for those not already familiar with these rather obscure topics and people. Finally, his focus on the relationship between Christianity and Islam in the latter chapters is somewhat of a disappointment when he hints and more interesting thing in India, China and the Far East, which doesn't get equal treatment. Certainly, his focus on the controversial idea that Islam is nothing more than a perverted Christianity seems to serve no real purpose here, other than to try to give energy to a flagging story.

Ultimately, I liked very much the story Jenkins was trying to tell. The history of the lost Christian churches of Africa and Asia is one that deserves to be told, if for no other reason that to modify the Euro-centric ideas of Christianity we have now. I just wish he could have told it much better. Perhaps someone in the future will write a more focused, comprehensible version of this book. That is a book I'd be anxious to read.

This is an astounding book. I suspect that the majority of potential buyers who find their way to this book on Amazon are going to be either Roman Catholic or Protestant Christians of European-American descent, they are the ones who really need to read this book. The lucky few Christians who manage to leave the reservation and think outside the box of their own tradition sooner or later come to realize that Yahshua (Isa) and his followers were all Semites who spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. Not Greek and not "King James" English. Jenkins tells the story of an entire segment of Christian history that has been lost. A thousand year tradition of Syriac, Coptic, and Aramaic speaking Christian churches of the East, some of which have survived to this day, and many that did not, who were the dominant cultural and religious force in places like North Africa and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Iran). Most revealing, and astounding to many, I am sure, are the common roots of Islam and Eastern Christian beliefs and practices. I highly recommend this book, and be prepared for a wonderful educational and consciousness expanding experience.

The Lost History of Christianity turns the common view of history portrayed by Tertullian's famous quote about "the blood of martyrs being the seed of the church" onto its head. For it was Tertullian's own church tradition that all but vanished before the Muslim invaders (p 34). I enjoyed this book for several reasons:
1) I was surprised to learn that, in relative terms, the Middle East is only recently "Muslim" (less than 100 years). This was accomplished in very recent history "by carnage on a massive scale."
2) Alliance with political powers of the day came back to bite Christians by hastening the extinction of their churches.
3) Where the church failed was in not sinking roots into the world of the native peoples (p. 229). They made next to no progress in taking the faith to the villages and the neighboring tribes, nor did they try to evangelize in local languages.... they utterly neglected the countryside. The "African churches were destroyed not because they were corrupt but because they failed to reach the hearts of the true natives of the province... they were the churches of a party and not of a people." (230)
4) The Eastern Church died because it failed to adapt: "Churches that remained wedded to the old social order found themselves in growing difficulty, while more flexible or adaptable organizations succeeded" (p. 234).
Having spoken to some of the aspects of the book I appreciated, I was disappointed on several fronts:
1) I had hoped to read more about the early church in China. There's a little of that here, but not much.
2) Similarly, I had hoped for a well-told story: a narrative relating the sadness of a tragedy which gradually transpired over time. But I found Jenkins' account - interesting in many places--often coming across as dull, uninspiring, repetitive dry history, and with little direct bearing to the human condition (there was some application, philosophical reflection and theologizing near the end, however).
3) How did the traditions and rituals these early Christians practice impart richness and meaning to their daily lives? I had hoped to understand how these extinct branches of Christianity might inform my faith with fresh vitality. Unfortunately, what was expressed here mostly fails to express the fervency and vibrancy which many early believers must have experienced in their lives. The perspective throughout is that of an outsider-- never able to penetrate beyond exterior forms and structures (buildings, etc). Or is that why their version of Christianity is now lost to history?
4) To Jenkins, who is a Christian? Who is a Muslim? Or are these just labels? Jenkins seems to sometimes confuse religious and political entities regardless with how they stack up with the claims the New Testament makes for itself about what a person of faith looks like. For example, "the sensational Palestinian terrorism across the globe in the 1970s was planned and orchestrated by Christian commanders..." (167). There's a difference between faith in name and reality.
5) From start to finish, the author goes way overboard in trying to be politically correct. Time and again he goes out of his way to stress the gentleness of Muslims. The most irritating example of this is on page 242 where we learn that the "scriptures of Islam include considerably fewer calls to blood-curdling violence than do their Christian and Jewish counterparts." I'm not going so far to say here that Islam is necessarily a violent faith by nature, but Jenkins' interpretation not only conveniently ignores the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus, but also ignores the diametrically opposite paths down which these two faiths travelled in their earliest years of development.
6) Finally, Jenkins writes from a thoroughly secular, pluralistic perspective--which assumes religions belong to the private sphere, must make no claims to exclusivity, and must be subjugated beneath the claims of secularism (which, by the way, is itself nothing but a religion making its own claim to exclusivity). For example, see page 175, "Assuming for the sake of argument that all religions are equally true, or equally untrue..." Or page 257: "If we assume for the sake of argument that Christianity's claims are genuine..." Or if Islam is not to be understood, as Muslims believe, to be "the only true faith"... And finally, Jenkins applauds certain "progressive" Christians because they believe that "Christian evangelism of Jesus is unnecessary and unacceptable... [it is] an equally valid path to God." (259).
In conclusion, I would have enjoyed reading about this topic more from an unapologetically and unashamedly Christian perspective (and thankfully, I did google some good historical material online). I bought this book because of its highly acclaimed review on the Christianity Today website. Having now finished it, I'm glad I read it, but will think twice before buying the next book that CT whole-heartedly recommends!

Success has many parents and failure is an orphan. Jenkins shows how this saying is as true for the world's religions as it is for most anything else. The wide acceptance of Christianity and its growth in influence obscures the history of its losses. I like, many others, have not given much thought about how in the birthplace of Christianity it happens that Islam is the dominant religion.

The book begins with a description of how much of the world was Christian in the first millennium. Jenkins amplifies the strikingly illustrative map on pp. 12-13, (showing a heavy Nestorian Christian presence in the Middle East, India and even a presence in Beijing) with a description of how many churches were associated with each central unit, how they were staffed and their operations in general. They were clearly substantial institutions for their times. While the Nestorian branch of Christianity still exists, large areas of its former territories are now predominantly Buddhist or Islamic.

The next part of the book deals with the co-existence of religions in the first millennium, how they met, converged, adapted and fought. Interestingly, where the religions adapted to their communities and each other there was peace and permanence. The last part, all too short, covers why Christianity lost the ground it did.

It's been a few days since I finished the book and the ideas presented have been turning in my mind. Jenkins shows how religions, once they achieved dominance, could and did control and persecute non-adherents. If persecution could and most likely would follow dominance, the bigger issue becomes how dominance is achieved. The most thought provoking factor, for me, was language. Once you know which religion had its texts, prayers and liturgy fully in Arabic and which in Latin it takes no mental energy to project which one would take hold in the Middle East and which in Europe. Similarly, Jenkins writes about how the religions' abilities to integrate local customs and marriage and death rituals, and to build visible structures and momuments were also factors in their implantation and growth (or lack thereof) in new locations.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this topic. Its clarity makes it excellent for the layman. I presume the content and its documentation also make it an important contribution for scholars who know these issues.

Philip Jenkins has written an interesting account of the loss of Christianity in portions of the world. He emphasizes the political, geographical and social aspects of this loss. He draws on Buddhism in India, Judaism in Palestine, Zoroastrianism in Persia, Islam in Spain to provide additional support for his theories of why religions persevere or die. In the final chapter he discusses the theological consequences of acknowledging the extinction or of possible viewpoints broader than the presumed extinction.

The book has such a broad sweep that it is weak on the details and theological aspects. I had anticipated a bit more history of the Church of the East as a thriving theology - more on the "golden age" of the subtitle compared to the subtitle's "and how it died". I had also expected less didactic attempts to correct inaccurate popular understandings of Christian and Jewish minority treatment under Muslim political regimes. I was intrigued by Jenkins' interpretation of the influence of Christianity on the Tibetan adibuddha concept, on Chan Buddhism, on Sufism. In no case did I consider him "wrong" - rather the breadth of the book and its intended audience led to over simplification. For example, Jenkins attributes the adibuddha to Christian influences; it is often attributed to Islamic influences. Jenkins attribute Sufism to Christian influences; I've also seen it attributed to Zoroastrian influences.

While I am not enthusiastic about the book, it does provide a solid introduction to an often forgotten aspect of church history in a very readable style. I have no better book to recommend, so I recommend this. To supplement it, I'd recommend The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity and The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity

Throughout the Near East and Africa - the heartland of early Christianity - the rise of Islam has dictated the fall of Christianity. Unlike most books, Philip Jenkins' study takes the political history of Islamic conquest as a given, and focuses instead on the actual process by which Islam replaced Christianity in the conquered territories. There is much food for thought here. For example, the Christian decline was a long, slow fall. Initially a vibrant presence under their new Muslim overlords, the decline accelerated as more "hard core" Islamic regimes developed in the Middle Ages, and completed only with the rise of true nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many other factors are considered in the book: persecution, discrimination, conversion, language replacement (e.g. Coptic and Greek by Arabic), geography (when pressured, Christians literally "took to the hills"), population transfer, plague, war, crop failures, and other natural and man-made disasters of all kinds (earthquakes, to add an example of my own, like the ones that decimated ancient Petra). The point is that Islamic communities in the affected areas were assisted in "disaster recovery" by their co-religionist rulers, while Christian communities were just allowed to die out.

As mentioned earlier, the book is light on political history. It is also avoids doctrinal discussions, so for example if you want to know what the Nestorians believed, there is only a sentence or two about that in the book. There are promising, but abbreviated, discussions of early Christian influence on Islam that included the transfer of ancient Greek learning, innumerable religious influences, and even the basic forms of religious architecture. I would have liked more information on all of this, and the book's exposition is spotty and repetitious in places. However, the author's abundance of ideas and examples, many of which will be unfamiliar yet interesting and useful to the reader, is more than enough reason to recommend it.

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).

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.