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

by Philip Jenkins

Book Overview

"Jenkins is one of America's top religious scholars."
--Forbes magazine

The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins offers a revolutionary view of the history of the Christian church. Subtitled "The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died," it explores the extinction of the earliest, most influential Christian churches of China, India, and the Middle East, which held...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061472816
• ISBN13: 9780061472817
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Lacking insight with polemics -

Occasionally, one comes across a book that is so badly written that it may only take a few minutes for the author to lose credibility (and the trust of the reader). Imagine, for example, one were to buy a 300 page book described as an academic level paleontology book, and within the first paragraph, the author mentions the "fact" that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. A person well versed in geology would immediately be suspicious of the author, but read on to figure out why the author would make such a mistake. If the author then went on to describe within the first few pages he has actual film footage of a Tyrannosaurus Rex fighting with a Stegosaurus from the 1940's, and the "fact" that prehistoric birds were mammals, and trilobites never really existed, etc., the reader would not have to pour through all 300 pages before making a conclusion about the trustworthiness or utility of reading further. And so I found it with Philip Jenkins' 300 page book "The Lost History of Christianity." Within the first paragraph, Dr. Philips describes the ancient Jacobite and Nestorian Churches as "denominations," in spite of the fact that "denominations" are exclusively Protestant sects, and the identification of "denominations" didn't even arise until about 1529. By page 3, the author tells us that we should "mourn the passing of Muslim Spain," without explaining why "we" should mourn the passing of a brutal series of oppressive tyrants (unless of course Dr. Philips is one of the "modern" thinkers who believes in the myth of the Andalusian Paradise). Within just a few pages, Dr. Philips makes very clear his anti-Roman Catholic biases in a continuing polemic of what "we" know about the arrogant Catholic Church and what "we" believe and how "we" are wrong about this or that. This monolithic "we" is presumably code for "today's Political Left Wing Liberal." After just page11, it becomes clear that the author lacks even a superficial grasp of insight in the subject matter and there were simply so many misleading or disingenuous statements that I could no longer trust the author, and in my opinion, he lost credibility. In my opinion, if one needs a credible reference book on theological or ecclesiological history, this isn't it.

A Very Informative Read

I had been aware of the Nestorian Church and other churches outside of Europe in the Medieval Period, but Philip Jenkin's book was insightful as well as a good read. The cultural importance and widespread nature of Chrsitianity outside of Europe prior to the tragedies of the 1200s-1400s went far beyond what I had assumed. Jenkins skillfully weaves a story of Nestorians, Jacobites, and other Christians in Africa, China, India, and especially the Middle East (while Egypt is technically in Africa and Armenia is often not culturally associated with the region, I counting them with the Middle East here). "The Lost History of Christianity" briefly tells the story of the expansion of Christianity into Sassanian Persia before focusing more on the Islamic Period. Jenkins is not a fear-mongering anti-Muslim (if anything many Christians including myself would be a little uncomfortable at best with some of his philisophical opinions)and presents the story with both more positive sides of caliphal rule (compared to Byzantines) and the negatives. The rise of Islamic intolerance across vast swathes of the Middle East after the 1200s helps explain the fall of Middle Eastern Christian populations which until then still made up considerable proportions of the population in many areas. Jenkins also carries the story into the modern world with the Armenian/Assyrian/Greek/ genocide and more recent persecution. Also of interest is discussion regarding the Christians of T'ang Dynasty China though the author says relatively little about the fall of Japanese Christianity except a few generally broad details. Jenkins looks at survival strategies and ultimate reasons why churches outside of Europe often declined in the Middle Ages. The author also speculates on why God might allow His churches to experience drastic defeats on times (some of this is interesting while other aspects of his thought I would very much disagree with). Overall while I don't share all the author's thoughts, I must give Jenkins credit for a very interesting, informative, and eye-opening work of history. It is a generally well-written and structured work as well. I heartilly recommend it though with a disclaimer that I don't share some of the author's possible opinions regarding the cosmic relationships of various faiths.

The end of the Church in the East

When the author states that most people only view the history of the Church through a European prism, I plead guilty. Learning Church history in high school, I was never taught anything else, and when Nestorians were mentioned it was always in the context of heresy. Now I realize what a rich history I have been missing all of these years! I should mention, though, that when I was in my first (and only) year in the seminary we had a Mass conducted in Aramaic by a Maronite priest. I don't remember much about it now (after all, we're talking 1960), but I seem to remember a group of women singing in a very strange language and loads of incense. Even after that, we weren't really given any information about this particular Church, or any of the others that flourished in the Middle East and Asia. Now this book, for me, has opened my eyes and I see the majesty and wonder of thriving Churches that were eventually ground under by persecution and other forces. This book is definitely a "must read" for anyone interested in Church history. It will "fill in the gaps" of your historic knowledge, and allow you to learn something very new. That is one of the most important aspects of a good book, and this is an excellent one!

A Clearly Presented Thought Provoking Analysis

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.

absolutely fascinating

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.