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

From Jerusalem to Athens is eight hundred miles as the crow flies: it is fourteen hundred miles to Rome, fifteen hundred to Carthage, and over two thousand to Paris or London. But just imagine traveling similar distances in the opposite direction, by land rather than sea. Going east from Jerusalem, the distance to Baghdad is just six hundred miles. From Jerusalem to Tehran is less than a thousand miles, while it is fourteen hundred to Merv and eighteen hundred fifty to Samarkand. Just in terms of mileage, Jerusalem is equidistant from Merv and Rome. Jerusalem is actually closer to the seemingly exotic territories of central Asia than it is to France. And if going west meant relying on Roman stability, eastward travelers depended on Persian power. As in Europe, early followers of Jesus spread into a world already extensively colonized by Jews, who had made Mesopotamia an intellectual center of their faith. Between the fourth and sixth centuries, thriving Jewish academies created the Babylonian Talmud.13