From Antioch To Babylon: The First Two Centuries Of Christianity In The Middle East, by Jon Davies

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by the author in exchange for an honest review.]

On its face, the idea of this book is an obvious one. A great many books seek to discuss the difference between the obviously Jewish Christian church of the first century and the Hellenistic church that one sees in the third century and beyond, and most of these books focus on the West and Alexandria, because there are a lot of sources that one can show about how figures like Origen, early Popes, and even Augustine were heavily involved in bringing Hellenistic thought into “mainstream” Christianity and sidelining the Jewish Christian elements that were increasingly hard to maintain with the growing hostility between Jews and Christians. Admittedly, though, and the author is certainly aware of the problem, there is simply not a lot of information available to us when we look at the East, and though the author seeks to uncover the truth about Christianity in the Near East ranging from Antioch to Mesopotamia, there are not enough sources to allow the author to make the firm conclusions he (and the reader) would wish.

This book is a bit more than 300 pages and is divided into two parts. The first part of the book, consisting of roughly 2/3 of the book’s materials (after a list of illustrations and a short introduction), is the section on early Christianity in Antioch. Here the author deals with such matter as: the primacy of Peter, the geography and culture of the city of Antioch, Barnabas, Paul, and the emergence of “Christins,” the missionary journeys of Paul and Barnabas and the issue of non-Jewish converts, the loss of history and fragmentation that followed the destruction of the second temple, the Gospel of Matthew, the Didache, the letters of Ignatius, Roman tensions with the Jewish people in the 2nd century, Theophilus of Antioch, and Serapion, the last two were supposed bishops of Antioch in the latter second century AD. The second part of the book discusses early Christianity in Mesopotamia and covers the following subjects: the primacy of Peter, the Jewish diaspora and other apostles in the East, the question of whether early Christianity spread through Edessa or Arbel (both of which have sources), the travels of the Apostle Thomas, Babylonian, Persian, and Jewish religious traditions, Roman power and the spread of Pharisaical Judaism, the continuing influence of Jewish Christianity in the East, Marcion, Bardesanes, Tatian, and the fall of Parthia and its consequences for the Church in the East. The book ends with a conclusion, index to full citations, index to scriptures, and a general index.

Despite the fact that there is not as much information as one would want about this subject and this time period as one would hope, the author is still able to point out some important truths that the apostles were, in the East (as well as in the West) pointed to as models by a variety of groups with very different doctrines and practices that selected from among traditions that were heavily redacted after the fact in many cases. The author also encouraged me to think more seriously about the idea of multiple recensions of the letters of Ignatius, which would clear both him and Polycarp from any sort of implications of having abandoned Jewish Christianity during their time as leaders of the early church. Over and over again, the author (and the reader) of this book are faced with the difficulty that the few sources we have are often contradictory, contain later editing that seeks to slant the writing in particular directions that does not reflect the doctrines or history of early Christianity, and also are often used for particular motives in presenting a non-historical past to support later goals and ambitions of people in different areas. The only other minor quibble I have about the book, and this is mostly jokingly, is that while the author sites plenty of contemporary Jewish Christian sources, as the author terms them, he does not cite any of my own writings. More seriously, while this book would be better with better sources, the author makes the best he can with the information that is available about the early centuries of Christianity in the Near East.