Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. I thought I’d start with Nestorian Christianity today.
In the early centuries of Christianity, Nestorius was the Bishop of Constantinople. He upset some Christians because he rejected the concept of Mary as “Mother of God,” and emphasized the human nature of Christ. While his teachings were suppressed in the Roman Empire (he died in 451), his religion survived in Asia where it was known as the Church of the East or the Persian Church.
Nestorian Christianity spread in two directions: towards India and across East Central Asia via the Metropolitan of Samarkand to China. In Tarim in western China, the writings of the Nestorian Christian missionaries have survived in documents written in Syriac, Sogdian, Middle Persian, and Turkish. The new religion had arrived in Sogdiana by the 5th century and it spread from here through the Sogdian trade routes. Sogdian became the primary language of Nestorian Christianity as it spread into Asia.
During the 6th and 7th centuries, the religion spread through Central Asia and China. In the 7th century a stela bearing a Nestorian inscription in Chinese and Syriac was raised in the Chinese capital of Chang’an.
Nestorian Christianity also spread to the northeast and Nestorian Christians were established in the court of the Mongol Khan.
Nestorian Christianity today has about 170,000 adherents, primarily in Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
This is an open thread. Feel free to share what you've been working on, thinking about, wanting to do, and having for dinner.