Christianity affected and transformed other faiths, and was in turn reshaped by them. In China particularly, Christianity in Timothy’s age was being transformed by local religious traditions. The Church of the East was anything but a newcomer in China, and Christianity first established itself in that land about 600, roughly at the same time that Tibet first welcomed Buddhism. About 780, a Nestorian community erected a monument that recounted the Christian message in Buddhist and Taoist terms, just as European Christians were trying to make the faith acceptable to peoples of western and
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