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

Syrian and Mesopotamian Christians were influenced by Persian dualist ideas that were so commonplace in local culture. This promoted “a religion of intense moral seriousness, of spiritual athleticism, that spoke to a community marked by the eternal conflict of the principles of Light and Darkness and by the realities of death and judgment.”