Publisher Description
The Lost History of Christianity will change how we understand Christian and world history. Leading religion scholar Philip Jenkins reveals a vast Christian world to the east of the Roman Empire and how the earliest, most influential churches of the East—those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church—died. In this paradigm-shifting book, Jenkins recovers a lost history, showing how the center of Christianity for centuries used to be the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, extending as far as China.
Without this lost history, we can’t understand Islam or the Middle East, especially Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Complete with maps, statistics, and fascinating stories and characters that no one in the media or the general public has ever heard of, The Lost History of Christianity will immerse the listener in a lost world that was once the heart of Christianity.
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“Brilliant book about the “lost history” of Christianity; one of my year’s top ten best. Once, Christians were the majority from North Africa all the way to India–and had sizable communities beyond, even to China. By the 8th century, Nestorian Christians had established settlements in China, and Christianity was the majority religion in the Middle East until the coming of Islam, and for centuries afterward. Jenkins pieces together how many Islamic traditions were borrowed from Christianity and Judaism. As late as 1900, the Ottoman Empire, (ruled by a Muslim sultan from Constantinople) was only 50% Muslim and 46% Christian; in subsequent years a terrible ethnic cleansing of Christians created a Turkey that is over 97% Muslim. Certain groups of Christians disappeared, others lingered on as “lost groups.” Early explorers like Marco Polo in the 13th century and the Portuguese in the 16th century encountered weird groups of enigmatic “Lost Christians” in places like China and India that had lost touch with their origins. This is an amazing book, and doesn’t lament the fact that Christianity was supplanted by Islam but simply explains how it happened and why. It again proved to me how complex the first millenium was and how little it is understood in contemporary times. A very, very fine read. Interesting chapters on the Christian churches in Japan, Arabia and Egypt.”
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David (5 out of 5 stars)
