Christianity in Mesopotamia Before ad 410[1]

The Jesus Connection

 

Mesopotamian Christianity - as expressed in the Assyro-Chaldean Church of the East - is a form of Eastern Christianity whose marks belong to the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church the Lord established. This venerable tradition is probably the closest expression of faith and practice to the religious and cultural milieu Jesus of Nazareth was born and raised in. 

 

To explain what the title of this paper entails we will need to sketch out the characteristics and the development of the institutional Christianity in the eastern empires of Parthia and, later, Persia in the post-apostolic age until the turn of the 5^th century. The resources for such an undertaking are meager, usually coming from later recollections of earlier events and reflections on the meaning of those events by Church authors. Unlike resources available to us regarding such developments in the western empire of the Romans during the apostolic age, there are no letters of St. Paul or others, or histories such as St. Luke’s “Acts” of the Apostles, which we may draw upon for the development of Christianity in Mesopotamia.

 

As Mesopotamia became increasingly populated with exiled Jews, specifically after the Assyrian exile of Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 bc and the Babylonian exile of Judah in 587 bc, the number of Jewish people in Mesopotamia increased tremendously. After the fall of Babylon in 538 bc, Cyrus permitted large numbers of Babylonian Jewry to return to Palestine.  But the majority of them preferred to stay, as over the centuries Mesopotamia had become a home for them. Also, they enjoyed a stable political climate and a prosperous economic environment. Josephus tells us that after the fall of Babylonia, the world Jewish population was composed of “two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while there have been ten tribes beyond the Euphrates [in Mesopotamia], with a countless myriad whose number cannot be ascertained.”[2]

 

Such a state of being allowed the Jews of Mesopotamia for centuries to maintain their Jewish faith, along with its Messianic expectations, and many of them went up to Jerusalem on pilgrimage on that fateful Feast of Pentecost when the apostolic witness to Christ first became a public proclamation.[3] In obedience to the command of Christ,[4] these communities would be among the earliest to which the Apostles and their successors would go by the end of 1^st century with the “good news” of the Gospel. 

 

This was the first significant introduction of the apostolic witness into the eastern empire. Although Mesopotamia and Palestine were located in different, and sometimes warring, empires, they had had the same language.  Aramaic had become the lingua Franca which the peoples from Egypt to Asia Minor and Pakistan used, due to the great political and military prominence of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires by the eighth century bc. We know that Jesus, along with his disciples and contemporaries, spoke and wrote in Aramaic. The Lord, who used the Galilean dialect of Aramaic, preached his parables and spread his teachings using its idioms to communicate his message.[5] In this way the Apostles took from Jesus the same message, which they in turn conveyed to their fellow Jews everywhere, including in Mesopotamia, in a language that was immediate to our ancestors in Mesopotamia.

 

Another unique and corresponding cultural factor between the Jews and Mesopotamians is based on the figure of Abraham of UR of the Chaldeans. For the Jews Abraham is their father both physically and religiously. He holds a paramount position in their thought because it is due to his faith in God that his descendants would be saved. But Abraham, the forefather of the Jewish people, came from Mesopotamia, which meant that somehow Mesopotamia was a “home” for them, as well (see Genesis 11:31). And after the numerous exiles which brought the Jews to Mesopotamia, they found a home there and were plentiful and better circumstanced than their fellow Jews in Palestine or elsewhere. The strength of the Mesopotamian Jewry was multifold: intellectual (there were many Rabbis with renowned teaching powers), economic (famous in commerce) and religious (the development of the Babylonia Talmud and several Rabbinic Academies).

 

No matter how these events are told or were taking place, there was in the 1^st century readiness for a the establishment of a stable and durable apostolic Christian tradition in the East of Euphrates.

 

The Foundational Years

 

Yet, the situation of Christians and the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire was met with differing responses. Whereas in Parthian territories there was, on the whole, a relative indifference to those who preached and believed in Jesus Christ, in Rome there was, very early on, hostility and repression of Christians. And so, after the destruction of the Temple in ad 70 energetic Judaeo-Christian missionaries came from Jerusalem not into territories of the Romans but to Mesopotamia and began there to form an evangelization network everywhere in the land between the two rivers. By the year ad 120, Christianity was rapidly growing because it had reached from the Euphrates to as far as India.[6] Moreover, by the year ad 224, there were twenty-four Church of the East Episcopal Sees in Mesopotamia and in Western Iran.[7]

 

              And then, of course, there was St. Thomas the Apostle, the “Disciple of the East” whose name and founding role are central to the Church of the East’s understanding of its apostolic roots. The legends concerning his missionary endeavors tell of his journeys throughout the ancient world from Egypt to India, but they include, significantly, his contribution to the Church’s beginnings in the regions of the Parthian Empire. An important gateway through which Christianity entered into the East was the small city-state of Edessa (today’s Urfa in Turkey) where its King had been miraculously healed of a disease through the prayers of one of Christ’s disciples, Addai the Apostle.[8] From there a certain Aggai is said to have spread the Gospel message throughout northern Mesopotamia. The vibrant community of Edessa continued to have a significant effect upon the development of the Church in the East for centuries to come.

 

Another factor which contributed to the growth of the Church in the East, was the periodic migrations of large numbers of Christians from the Roman Empire into the East in the middle of the third century and the early fourth century. These migrations of populations were due to the severe persecutions of believers in the West during the reigns of the emperors Decius ad 249 and Diocletian in ad 303-304.

 

The Organization

 

              Wherever communities of believers gathered and were baptized into the faith of Jesus Christ, “mdabrane”[9] (“leaders,” or “governors”) were ordained to lead the local churches, to be assisted by qashyshe (presbyters) and mshamshane (deacons). The worship of these communities was organized, as elsewhere in the Church, around the “raza” (sacrament) of the Body and Blood of Christ. The liturgy that gained general use was that of “the Holy Apostles Addai and Mari”. The consecrating prayers attributed to them are used in the Church of the East to the present day.

 

              The more energetic bishops and presbyters of these local churches also became at times touring evangelists, often taking the faith of the Church to nearby villages and rural areas.[10] The spread of the Christian faith from the cities outward was greatly affected by such zealous “missionaries to the countryside”. The growth of the Church became ever more a result of local effort rather than being dependent on evangelistic representatives from Palestine and elsewhere.  By the turn of the third century the churches of the East spread from Northern Beth Nahrain to the Persian Gulf in addition to the southern region of India.[11]

 

The Movement Toward Unity

 

              The churches in Mesopotamia were simply a loose collection of independent congregations and preaching outposts, related by fellowship with one another and by the spirit of loyalty and martyrdom to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.[12] As happens in the course of time, disputes took place over the proper understanding of doctrine, or scandals arose in morals or in the administration of Church life, and leaders of some of the chief congregations began to seek some means of bringing the various local churches into a rational regional structure, which could adjudicate such matters. The practice had developed among some to take disputes among the eastern churches to the West for resolution, to the bishops of such cities as Antioch, Aleppo, Edessa, Tella, and Amida.[13] This was unwieldy, and even dangerous at times, especially during periods of unrest or outright hostility between the political empires. Some rational organizational principles had to be agreed upon so that disputes could be resolved without resort to the outside, and that coordinated action could be taken to restore order when needed.

 

To meet this challenge the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital city of the Persian Empire, whose name was Papa bar Gaggai,[14] sought to bring the churches of the East under the central leadership of the metropolitan see of Seleucia. This met with some resistance since many of the bishops valued their independence and strove to maintain it. A Synod was convened in Selucia in ad 315 to counter Papa’s attempt. But due to Papa’s forceful personality and the powerful influence of his successor to the see of Seleucia, Mar Shimun bar Sabbai, the ascendancy of Seleucia became a reality, and those who afterwards occupied the see also served as “catholicos”[15] over the Church of the East, even when the see migrated, due to changes of condition, to other cities.

 

But it would seem that the rise of Papa’s to primacy was, to a large extent, due to his own genius of ecclesiastical polity. The same can be said for the reply of the “Western Bishops” concerning the non-acceptable juridical punitive action taken by the Council of ad 315 against Papa. Furthermore, and more importantly, this East-West communication was effectively the seal of approval for the enhancement of Papa’s authority over the bishops of his neighboring churches (dioceses) at the time of his elevation to the Catholicosate. One may imagine that had it not been for the Western intervention, the primacy of Papa would have had a very short life.

 

              The subsequent history of Persian Christianity in the fourth century was marked by growing hostility on the part of the government, increasing isolation from the churches in the West, and outright persecution against the faithful by the Persian state. Beginning in 339, tens of thousands of believers were slaughtered, church buildings and shrines were destroyed, and no effort was spared by those in power who were seeking the utter destruction of the Church of the East. The number of those who are known by name amount to 16,000, but there were countless numbers of others whose names are not recorded. Beginning with the catholicos, Mar Shimun bar Sabbai, who had been commanded to worship the sun but refused to do so, the carnage spread until it became one of the worst periods of persecution in the history of the Christian Church, whether East or West. There was, of course, nothing in the way of synodal gatherings during this dark period, which continued until AD 383, when the death of the emperor, Ardashir II, brought a period of peace.[16]

 

The Pendulum between Stability and Persecution:

A Prelude to the Synod of Mar Isaac 410

 

It was not until ad 311, after the conversion of Constantine and the issuance of his “Edict of Tolerance” at Milan in ad 313, that persecution came to a halt for Christians in the West where now the Church was able to preach and teach the Gospel with complete freedom. Emperor Constantine was viewed to have helped everyone recognize the true God and promote his plan for human redemption, thus becoming God’s vicar on earth because he made Christianity the only religion of the empire.[17] He was called the “Shepherd, the bringer of peace, teacher, physician of souls, Lord of the Church” and a “friend and beloved of God”.[18]

 

But, with the subsequent adoption of Christianity as the state religion in Byzantium, more frequent and severe persecution began for Christians of the Persian Empire in the East. The more the “Western” Constantine protected and promoted the cause of the Christian Church in the West, the more the Church of the East in Mesopotamia endured sufferings through consecutive Parthian and Persian Emperors.

 

After Rome had officially become Christian, Christians of the Persian Empire became suspected of divided loyalty between their country, Persia, and Christianity, the enemy’s religion in the Roman Empire. After the death of Constantine in ad 337, during the latter years of the Persian King Shapor II’s reign, the Sassanians felt strong enough to challenge Rome in the five eastern buffer provinces. They instituted a policy that treated Christians as potential traitors and viewed them with suspicion and rejection. Accordingly, a violent persecution against Christians broke out in Persia and many Christians became martyrs.[19] The martyrdom of Catholicos Shimun Bar Sabba’e, the bishop of the Persian Capitol Seleucia–Ctesiphon (along with a large number of his clergy, monks, nuns and faithful), on Good Friday ad 341 started several decades of great human suffering among members of the Church of the East. This history was to become one of the truly great eras of martyrdom in which Christians, in untold numbers, bore the ultimate “witness” to the faith.[20] This campaign of destruction was so severe and prolonged that the two successors of Bar Sabba’ae -- Shahdust and Bar Bashemin -- also suffered martyrdom.[21] The martyrdom of bishops, clergy, religious and faithful only strengthened the Church of the East in a land where its rulers were committed to the end of Christianity there. But the bishops of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, through their martyrdom, clearly did much more to firmly establish the roots of the patriarchate in the East than the administrative tactics by Papa had ever achieved through internal maneuvers and his appeal to the West.[22]

Chorbishop Samuel Dinkha

2010; San Jose, CA

 

 

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