1. Many accounts of Christianity gloss over the fact that the life of Jesus in Palestine makes Christianity an Asiatic religion, one that spread west through the Roman Empire but also east, beyond the borders of the Roman world. It is in the east, for instance, at Antioch, where the name “Christian” was used for the fi rst time (Acts 11:26), and the eastern city of Edessa claimed to have been Christianized during the apostolic era, on the initiative of Christ himself. The legend of the evangelization of Edessa gave it a prestige above the usual stories about apostolic foundations and very quickly earned it a reputation as far away as Europe. In the Syriac churches, the memory of their Christian origins centers on oral and written traditions of the Christianization of Edessa, Mesopotamia, and India, which imagine Christianity coming to the region very early, sometimes even before the episode of sending the disciples that appears in the book of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. In reality, this fi rst Christianization happened when the Edessan kingdom oscillated between the Parthian and Roman Empires, during the Roman-Persian wars that marked the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. The Syriac legends about the evangelization of the East are centered on the apostle Thomas, both his own mission to India and those of two of his disciples, named Addai and Mari, who were chosen from among the seventy-two disciples who were sent out by Christ (Luke 10:1) and who were later sent beyond the Euphrates to spread the good news. Additionally, especially in the Church of the East, there is a parallel tradition that credits the magi from the story of Jesus’s birth with the first Christianization of Persia.
2. Addai, the Letter, and the Potrait of Jesus

1. The most well known of the apostles of the East, Addai in Syriac, Thaddeus in Greek, is credited with evangelizing both the Syriac people and the Armenians. Traditions linked to Addai passed beyond the borders of Osrhoene and became part of the heritage of Christianity as a whole. The earliest version of the legend is said to have been translated from a Syriac version preserved in the archives of Edessa and served as the foundation for the story in the Ecclesiastical History written in Greek by Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, at the end of the 4th century. It was also the foundation for a more developed apocryphal tale, the Teaching of Addai, or the History of Jesus and King Abgar, which was written in Syriac at the beginning of the 5th century. According to these stories, the messengers of the king of Edessa, Abgar, traveling to Palestine, hear rumors of a magician who preaches and performs miraculous cures. Upon their return to Edessa, they tell King Abgar, who is affl icted with a mysterious sickness, about this man who can perform healing miracles without medicines, some of which they heard about and some of which they saw themselves. Abgar immediately sends a letter to Jesus through his secretary, H. anan, asking him to come to Edessa in order to heal him and in return offering to share his small kingdom and guaranteeing his protection from the Jews who want to do him harm. Jesus, who is in Jerusalem on the eve of his passion when he receives the letter, declines Abgar’s invitation but promises Abgar that he will send a disciple after his ascension into heaven to heal him and convert both him and his kingdom.
2. After the ascension, the apostle Thomas sends Addai to Edessa. Addai takes up residence at the house of a Jew named Tobit. Upon his arrival at the court, Abgar, dazzled by the glory of Addai’s face, prostrates himself at his feet. Addai lays his hands on Abgar, heals him, and preaches faith in Christ, to which the king converts along with his entourage (the names of the nobles of the court who convert are given). The king gives license to Addai to preach, baptize, and build churches, both in Edessa and in all of Osrhoene. Addai also organizes worship, creates the community of the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant (see chapter 3), and, before his death, secures the leadership of the church of Edessa by naming his successor. The story of all these events was supposedly deposited in the Edessan archives (see chapter 1). Several elements that are part of the story of the Abgar legend were developed in later versions, such as the protection that Jesus promises to the city of Edessa against its enemies and the transformation of the letter in the oldest version to a portrait of Jesus on a linen cloth, or as an icon in later ones. The main point that was kept in the Syriac tradition was Jesus’s promise, added in certain versions to his response to Abgar, that enemies will not prevail against Edessa; this was particularly important to a community located on the frontier and prey to constant war. This protection, all the more powerful as it was supposedly given by Jesus himself, gave Edessa the nickname of “The Blessed City.”
3. This name reappears in episodes of war, especially during the sieges by the Persians. The answer of Jesus, which in some versions became a letter that was written by his own hand, and which was thus particularly holy, was declared apocryphal in the 5th century as part of the Decretum Gelasianum, which determined canonical and apocryphal books. Its words were nevertheless copied as far away as Eastern Europe and were used as a talisman to protect both individuals and cities, either in the form of amulets worn around the neck or as inscriptions or copies inserted into the niches of walls and above the gates of cities. The story of the portrait of Jesus would appear only later, but it, too, became famous well beyond Mesopotamia. Neither Eusebius, who visited Edessa around 300, nor the pilgrim Egeria, who visited around 380, makes reference to an image of Jesus. Around 400, the Teaching of Addai mentions that H. anan, the scribe of the king, was also a painter and made a portrait of Jesus. Jacob of Serugh, in the 6th century, mentions that Daniel of Glosh, who lived at the beginning of the 5th century, went to Edessa to see the image. It is in the middle of the 6th century, however, that the story of the portrait takes on its importance, a little after the unsuccessful Persian siege of Edessa in 544. Evagrius the Scholastic, in his Ecclesiastical History, written in Greek, relates that the defenders of the city carried the image through the tunnels that had been dug to undermine the Persian siege equipment.
4. According to some of these versions, the image was produced by Jesus himself, who had imparted the image of his face by rubbing it on a linen cloth. This story contributed to the tradition that developed in the 6th century of “acheiropoieta” icons, or icons made not by hands but instead by divine power. This story is the source of the legend of the mandylion, or square cloth, of Edessa. Stories of the image as a wooden icon and as a cloth both circulated. According to Syriac sources, in the early days of Islam in the 7th century, the rivalry between Syriac Orthodox Christians and Chalcedonians led the Syriac Orthodox to paint a copy of the image that was so similar to the original that they were able to substitute it andleave the Chalcedonians unaware. In this case, the image is an icon and not a piece of cloth. The debates in Byzantium around iconoclasm only heightened the image’s prestige, which spread beyond its local origins and became one of the most precious possessions of eastern Christianity in the 8th and 9th centuries. A cloth image of the Holy Face was acquired by the Byzantine emperor Romanus I Lekapenos from the Muslims who held Edessa, and was transferred to Constantinople in 944, to be placed in the Pharos chapel in the royal palace, next to the crown of thorns, the lance, and the tunic of Christ. This cloth was placed between two pieces of baked earth in order to protect it and produced another miraculous impression on the two tiles.
5. One icon, held at Sinai and made in the 10th or 11th century, depicts a cloth, showing that the iconography that had become traditional by that point represented the image of the holy face on the cloth mandylion rather than a wooden icon. The mandylion was pillaged in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade and disappeared. Speculations on its fate have identifi ed it with icons in the West and even with the Shroud of Turin and the cloth of Veronica, which became popular in the Western tradition. A similar relic appeared in Rome in 1208, and Pope Innocent III established a procession and liturgical celebration in its honor. Eighty years later, Rabban S.auma, the Ilkhanid ambassador to the West (see chapter 5), claimed to have seen in St. Peter’s in Rome “the piece of pure linen on which our Savior imprinted his holy face and sent to King Abgar in Edessa.” From a painting to an image of the holy face on a piece of linen, the story evolved and spread through all of ancient Christendom, making the image one of its most precious relics, even if lost.

1. Mari
2. Sent by Addai from Edessa, Mari carried out his work in the East. In fact, his Acts, the text of which dates only to the 6th century, presents itself as the continuation of the story of Addai, part of which it retells in the beginning. The Acts of Mar Mari is among the first texts to mention the image of Jesus on a sindon, or linen cloth. The journey of Mari extended along the length of the Tigris valley, where he founded communities and erected churches and monasteries from Nisibis to the Arab-Persian Gulf and Elam. The text attributes to him the symbolic number of 365 churches and monasteries to the north of the capital, Seleucia- Ctesiphon. The story also attributes to Mari the foundation of the church of Kokhe, near Ctesiphon, thus creating an apostolic foundation legend for the patriarchal see of the Church of the East, even though the church was actually built in the 5th century. The Acts was perhaps written in the monastery of Deir d-Qunni, where Mari would die, a monastery that would become famous in the Islamic period.

Thomas

1. The mission of the apostle Thomas, traditionally said to have taken place in AD 52, represents the height of apostolic preaching. It is narrated in the Acts of Thomas, a text that belongs to the beginning of the 3rd century and that is among our oldest extant Syriac texts. Two older Syriac texts, The Hymn of the Soul and The Hymn of the Pearl, are woven into the text of the Acts. They represent two of the oldest witnesses to Syriac poetry, formed from Gnostic, Iranian, and Semitic infl uences but reused as part of the story of the apostle who evangelized India. The narrative combines these older elements with liturgical passages in which one can recognize very early forms of the sacraments of Christian initiation (baptism and the Eucharist). Certain parts have a deeply encratic tone, advocating a radical asceticism and the complete renunciation of all sexual life for all Christians. The story itself begins with the division of missionary zones among the apostles in Jerusalem. India is assigned to Judas Thomas, presented here as the twin (Didymus in Greek) of Jesus. At fi rst he refuses out of fear but then accepts his mission following a vision of the Lord. Sold by Jesus to an Indian merchant, he sails to the kingdom of the king Gondophares, from whom he asks money supposedly to build a palace but in reality to give to the poor, reasoning that the palace is in heaven, the place where the righteous will dwell in the beyond. After having performed a number of miracles, Thomas is martyred by the king Mazdai. His relics, gathered together by his disciples, are brought back west to Edessa. These Acts provide the earliest connection between Thomas and the Christians of India who defi ne themselves even today as “Christians of St. Thomas” (see chapter 5). But the India of the Acts of Thomas is very abstract and lacking in the geographical details that one fi nds in the Teaching of Addai or the Acts of Mar Mari, which attribute apostolic origins to actual places.
2. Hymn of the Pearl (Acts of Thomas):

1. The Magi
2. The Gospels speak of the “magi who came from the East” (Matt. 2:1). The East Syrian tradition latched onto this story to prove the absolute preeminence of Iranian Christianity over all other communities, claiming that the visit of the magi shows that it was members of the Parthian Empire who were the first worshipers of Christ, thirty years before he even called the first apostles. These twelve wise men—according to the number given in the Syriac tradition—are the forerunners of the apostles and are considered the true apostles in the East. Their story became extremely widespread, even in the Far East, as shown by their inclusion on the Xi’an stele in China and on a Sogdian fragment in the Turfan oasis. Many aspects of this story reflect Iranian beliefs: the wise men are Parthian priests, and the “Mountain of Victory” where the Syriac tradition places them is identified with a location in Sistan where the Saoshyant, or Zoroastrian savior, is supposed to come. Like the child Mithra, they find Christ in a cave, not in a manger, and each wise man sees him as a different age, as though he were Zurvan (the high Zoroastrian god of time). For the Church of the East, this story establishes the wise men as central to the economy of salvation, even though they were considered to be marginal and (after the 5th century) heretical by the Christians of the Roman Empire. The Syriac Orthodox Chronicle of Zuqnin, in the 8th century, reconciled the apostolic tradition and the story of the magi by showing the wise men coming to be baptized by Thomas.
3. The Letter of Patriarch Timothy I (late 7th / 8th century)

1. Initial Spread of Christianity in the Roman World The material evidence for Christianity in the fi rst centuries creates a blurry picture. It is only with the peace of the 4th century, when the emperor Constantine (ca. 272 –337) legalized Christianity by the Edict of Milan of 313, that the contours of what is known as the Great Church took form. The local communities, led by their bishops, developed institutional ties with each other. Time and space were progressively Christianized, churches and martyria constructed, with their halls, porticoes, baptistries, and, for the most important, hostels and hospices. The oldest witness of the eastward spread of Christianity is the funerary inscription of Abercius, found in Phrygia and dated to before 216. Written in the fi rst person under the name of the deceased, it describes his travels and hints at the spread of Christianity eastward: “I saw Nisibis as I was going beyond the Euphrates. Everywhere I went, I met brothers.” The oldest witness of a Christian presence of the community in Edessa, however, comes from the philosopher Bardaisan of Edessa (154 –212).
2. Bardaisan of Edessa:

The Odes of Solomon:

Tentatively dated between the 1st and 3rd centuries, the collection of the Odes of Solomon is one of the oldest and most extraordinary Syriac texts. These forty-two Christian poems, deeply imbued with Gnosticism, were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century in two Syriac manuscripts and contain passages of great imaginative power that still touch modern readers. The Odes have been translated many times, but translations struggle to do justice to the Semitic voice, inspired by the Bible, as expressed in the originals. The Odes show the literary vitality of these fi rst Christian environments.

1. Abgar
2. The conversion of King Abgar of Edessa supposedly belongs to these first centuries. The story is inextricably linked to the tradition of the evangelization of Edessa by the apostle Addai in the 1st century, and the discussion has often turned on who is the Abgar who converted, but this conversion in itself is not a solid historical fact. Considered to be a saint in the Armenian Church, which produced icons that treat the king as an Armenian himself, the first Christian Abgar remains evasive. The Teaching of Addai identifi es him with Abgar V Ukkama, “The Black” (r. 4 BC–AD 7, then AD 13 –50), because he lived contemporaneously with Jesus. Historians have thought that the correct Abgar is Abgar VIII, or Abgar the Great (r. 177–212), a contemporary of Bardaisan, in the period when Christianity is fi rst attested in Edessa. This period was then retrojected into the era of Abgar the Black. Even so, nothing shows that this Abgar was Christian either. It is thus uncertain whether a king Abgar converted to Christianity, especially since much of the Syriac tradition holds that Constantine was the first Christian king. The stories intend to suggest that Edessa was converted through its ruling dynasty and its aristocracy. The only solid evidence is that Christianity existed in Edessa during the beginning of the 3rd century and thus during the time of Abgar VIII and Bardaisan, and was offi cially tolerated. Only a blurred memory of the origins of Edessan Christianity is refl ected in these apocryphal texts, in order to establish a direct link between Jesus and the aristocratic society of Edessa, but the story of how this Christianization actually happened largely remains clouded.
3. The Context of Christianization
4. Christianization took place in a multireligious world, marked by Mesopotamian and pagan Roman cults and temples (see chapter 1), along with a strong Jewish presence. Around AD 150, the Jews of Edessa wrote on their tombstones in an Edessan dialect with Jewish Aramaic letters and were also most likely those who translated the Bible into the local Aramaic dialect, whether Edessan or Syriac. Christians from a pagan background would not have known enough Hebrew to be able to complete such a work, which implies that either Jews themselves or converts to Christianity from Judaism were the ones who did the translation. It is impossible to say without further evidence whether this Jewish environment had already produced a partial translation into Edessan Aramaic, in square letters, for their own use. The choice of Edessan Aramaic demonstrates a piece of local identity, though doubtless also religious if it were really the Christian context that produced this scripture. The oldest Syriac manuscripts of the Bible, dating to the 5th century, are all Christian, and it is impossible to trace their earlier evolution. Next to the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, the Syriac version represents the only ancient tradition of the Old Testament taken directly from Hebrew versions similar to the Masoretic texts (the fi xing of the massorah, or canonical Hebrew reading, dates to the 8th century AD). The Syriac version is known as the Peshit.ta, or “simple,” and holds great interest for the ancient Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions. This Jewish tradition, which was not yet under the control of the rabbis until the 4th century AD, transmitted a number of original interpretations into Syriac. For instance, in the Peshit.ta, the landing place of Noah’s Ark is Mount Qardu in Iraq, where other Jewish targums place it as well, rather than Mount Ararat as is common in other Christian traditions.
5. The Spread of Christianity in the Persian Empire We know little about how the Persian Empire was first Christianized. The later histories of Karka d-Beth Slok (modern-day Kirkuk in Iraq) and Arbela (modern-day Erbil), composed in the 6th century, as well as the Syro-Arabic Chronicle of Seert, dated to the 11th century, are our main sources for this early period. The mention of travelers from Parthia, Media, and Elam (modern-day Khuzestan) at Pentecost in Acts 2:9 suggests that there was a Jewish community in Persia that formed the first core of converts. Judaism was widespread in Mesopotamia: ever since the deportation of the Jewish community to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC, there had been a strong Jewish community on the banks of the Tigris. As far away as Adiabene, a region in northeastern Iraq between the Great and Lesser Zab Rivers where the goddess Ishtar was worshiped, Flavius Josephus mentions the conversion of the royal family to Judaism around 40 BC, one member of which, Helen, was buried in Jerusalem. It was among these fl ourishing Jewish communities that the fi rst conversions to Christianity took place. The Book of the Laws of Countries, written in the 2nd century by Bardaisan, mentions Christians already among the Gelae and the Kushans in Bactria (north of modern-day Afghanistan), in Parthia, in Media, at Kashan, and in Fars. If the Syriac history of Arbela can be believed, the fi rst bishop of Arbela was appointed in AD 100. Christians were also able to take refuge in the Parthian Empire during episodes of Roman persecution. The spread of the gospel took place along commercial routes, and early missionaries were often merchants, as attested in the Acts of Thomas, which shows the apostle sold as a slave by a merchant.

1. A major change took place in the region with the rise of the Sasanian dynasty in Iran after the revolt of Ardashir I (r. 224 –240) against the Arsacids. The end of Parthian power and the foundation of Sasanian power in 224 also had repercussions on Roman-Persian relations. The new empire defi ned itself as “Eranshahr,” also known as “the land of the Iranians” or “the empire of the Iranians,” encompassing E¯ra¯n and Anera¯n (non-Iran). It consisted of a religio-political system where the Shahanshah, the king of kings, also had a religious function, while members of the warrior and administrative class also served as Zoroastrian (also known as Mazdean) priests, known as mobeds. A dualist religion, Zoroastrianism set the good creation of the god Ohrmazd, also known as Ahura Mazda, who was the head of the Mazdean pantheon, which also included Mithra and Verethragna, against the chaos introduced by the evil spirit Ahriman. Consequently, political and religious networks were intertwined, with the kings supported by Parthian and Sasanian nobility both militarily and religiously. During the 3rd and 4th centuries, Syriac Christians predominantly lived in the borderlands between the Roman and Persian Empires, especially Mesopotamia, Syria, Cilicia, Armenia, and Cappadocia. These territories were constantly shifting between the two powers, especially in the many campaigns that the Persian kings launched against the Roman Empire. The fi rst Sasanian sovereign, Ardashir, threatened Mesopotamia and Syria and tried to control trade with India via the Persian Gulf and eastern Arabia. In 235 –236 he took Nisibis and Carrhae/ H. arran, along with H. atra in 240, an important caravan stop on the road to Nisibis. Consequently, Romans resumed hostilities during the time of his successor, Shapur I (r. 239 –270).
2. Religion in Persian Society:
3. The growing influence of the head priest of Zoroastrianism, Kirdir, resulted in the political repression of all non-Zoroastrian religions by Bahram I (r. 271–274) and Bahram II (r. 274 –291). Kirdir’s inscriptions have left an indelible testimony of the diversity in the Sasanian Empire. It mentions a number of different religions that were persecuted by the state and shows that the Sasanians did not perceive Christianity to be a united faith, since it is listed twice under different names. Despite these sporadic persecutions, Christianity grew rapidly in the Persian Empire, both coexisting and competing with other religions. Although Zoroastrians did not try to win converts, both Manichaeans and Christians did, with considerable success.(edited)
4. Kirdir’s Inscription:

1. The First Ecumenical Councils
2. The Council of Nicaea in 325 affirmed, against the doubts raised by the Alexandrian priest Arius, that the Son was fully God, existing from all eternity and consubstantial with the Father. Building on this defi nition, the Council of Constantinople, convened in 381 at the initiative of the Roman emperor Theodosius, proclaimed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. Although Arianism would stay alive for some time after—for example, among certain Germanic tribes—these councils were generally accepted. The “Symbol of the Faith” defined by these two councils, or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, is still recited by all Christians today. One representative from the East, John the Persian, was present in Nicaea, showing the integration of the Church of Persia into the universal or ecumenical church. Legend has it that Jacob of Nisibis and St. Ephrem, two of the best-known saints of the Syriac churches, also assisted at the council. Two especially notable Syriac writers lived during the official establishment of the church in the 4th century—Aphrahat, known as “The Persian Sage,” and St. Ephrem, known as “The Syrian.”
3. Aphrahat:

Ephrem:

1. During these wars, religion became a matter of intense interest to the state, and the persecution of Christians in the Persian Empire coincided with confl ict with Rome. A letter that, according to tradition, would have been sent by Constantine to Shapur II, in which he demanded that he stop persecuting Christians and named himself as their protector, put the Christians in Persia in a delicate position. Because they were considered the religious subjects of the Roman emperor, they were objects of suspicion in the eyes of the Persian state. Later, the Persian emperor would assume the same role as the Byzantine emperor, protecting church councils and the Church of the East, who prayed for him and the empire of which they were a part, but at this time, the martyr stories written in Syriac attest to massive persecutions launched by Shapur II and constitute an irreplaceable source for Sasanian history. The famous Syriac doctor Marutha of Maipherqat/Martyropolis (d. ca. 420) won the favor of the Persian emperor Yazdegerd I (r. 399 – 420), after successfully treating him twice after being sent as an ambassador by the Roman emperor Arcadius. He adopted a role as a defender of the Christians and convinced Yazdegerd to convene a council of the Church of the East in 410. He also brought back the relics of Persian martyrs in the West as well as the Acts that told the stories of their martyrdoms.
2. During this council, the Church of the East adopted the canons of the Council of Nicaea, in full communion with the church in the Roman Empire, as well as the same calendar of liturgical feasts. But it also mentioned for the fi rst time the preeminence of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sasanian Empire, as having authority over all other bishops in the empire. The Synod of Dadisho, in 424, asserted even more strongly that the Church of the East was independent from the church of the Roman Empire. It highlighted that the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, later called the catholicos, was the head of the Church of the East, holding the same title as Peter held over the apostles: there was no authority greater than him, and the church of the Roman Empire had no power to interfere in his decisions. It would not be accurate to describe this as a “separation,” especially not a theological one; rather, it was an affi rmation of ecclesiastical independence that made the Apostolic Church of the East—as it styled itself—an autocephalous church, which already existed in reality as a result of geopolitical circumstances that had separated it from the western part of the Christian world.