Philip Jenkins The Lost History Of Christianity Pdf

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The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-and How It Died, (HarperOne, 2008) 336 pages. 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, 2008, HarperOne. This book could easily have been several things it is not: an academic treatise, an intemperate diatribe against Islamic violence, or an uncritical glamorization of Nestorian. Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor, and serves as Co-Director for the Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion, ISR. Philip Jenkins was educated at Cambridge University, where he received his Ph.

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In this groundbreaking book, renowned religion scholar Philip Jenkins offers a lost history, revealing that, for centuries, Christianity's center was actually in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with significant communities extending as far as China. The Lost History of Christianity unveils a vast and forgotten network of the world's largest and most influential Christia..more
Published October 28th 2008 by HarperOne (first published October 1st 2008)
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Out Louder is an album produced as a collaboration between Medeski Martin & Wood and John Scofield. It is the first album released under the name 'Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood,' since 1998's A Go Go was released under Scofield's name alone. 'A Go Go was John's record and we were essentially sidemen, where.Recorded‎: ‎January 2006, Shacklyn Studios, ‎Br.Label‎: ‎Indirecto RecordsGenre‎: ‎Jazz‎, ‎jazz funk‎, ‎jazz fusion‎, ‎jam bandMissing. Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood - Out Louder - Amazon.com Music. Here, in the role of guest artist, he revives his partnership with organist John Medeski--and bassist Chris Wood and drummer Billy Martin, all of whom backed him on his smartly grooving 1998 effort, A Go Go. As the crunching 'Miles Beyond'. John scofield out louder rarity movie. Contributors: John Scofield, John Medeski, Chris Wood, Billy Martin Label: Indirecto Records US Release Date: 2006-09-26. Over the years, the pair have introduced thousands of curious dance music fans to rare and long forgotten cuts through their website feelmybicep.com.

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Aug 11, 2011[Name Redacted] rated it

Philip Jenkins Article

liked it
Shelves: war, academia, politics, religion, society, summer2012class, history
I have a complicated relationship with Philip Jenkins. I was incredibly impressed by his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, but his books on pre-Reformation history contain some difficult and distressing errors. Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way contains a few out-of-left-field examples of his antipathy towards Mormons, Shakers & other non-Protestant, non-Catholic Christian groups. This book, 'The Lost History', is likewise plagued by some odd i..more
Jul 23, 2011David Sarkies rated it really liked it
Recommends it for: People Interested in the history
Recommended to David by: I saw it in a Christian Bookshop
The Story of the Middle Eastern Church
19 December 2015
Well, here I am sitting on the Overland, one of the very few interstate trains that exist in Australia - when it comes to travelling interstate, or even to regional centres, most Australians rely upon the humble aeroplane, which is not surprising considering the train journey from Sydney to Perth takes something like four days to complete, and even travelling from Melbourne to Sydney takes something akin to 12 hours. The train I'm on happens..more
I've never read a history that so thoroughly convinced me that everything I thought I knew about a topic was wrong. The history of Christianity I was taught ran through Europe. Yet much of the populations Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa were Christian for a hundreds of years, if not a millennium. And then they died out. Jenkins discusses the growth and death of these church communities in broad strokes with fairly detailed examples to help make his point. While Islam was Christianity'..more
Aug 21, 2010Justin Evans rated it liked it
Not really what I was hoping for, nor what it's advertized as. Most of the book, I would say, is taken up with a) complaints that Europeans and their descendants know too little about the churches of the East and b) attempts to make the history of those churches 'relevant.' You know what? I would much rather have an actual history of them than an argument that we don't have a history of them - which is self-evident, and ignorance of these churches must be the reason most people would read this b..more
Dec 15, 2008Terence rated it liked it
Recommended to Terence by: New shelf at the library
Shelves: history-general, religion-general, religion-christianity
This is an interesting look at the eastern arm of the Christian church, which survived for a thousand years under non-Christian polities (largely Muslim) and, arguably, flourished up through the 14th century AD. Only because of the vagaries of history (or the inscrutable machinations of God, depending upon one's point of view) did Western and Orthodox Christianity survive, that survival feeding the myths that the heterodox sects were suppressed by the Romans and that there were no Christians of..more
Nov 09, 2017Fredösphere rated it it was amazing
Highly recommended for readers of religious history. Your understanding of the advance (and retreat) of Christianity will be incomplete without this book.
Jenkins tells the story of the Nestorians, Jacobites, and other Asian-based churches which were the first to be split off from the Orthodox and Catholics. Because they are deemed heretical and not merely schismatic, those branches of Christianity are ignored. That they were almost wiped out only makes them all the more invisible.
The startling r..more
Mar 07, 2015Louise rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Success has many parents and failure is an orphan. Jenkins shows how this saying is as true for the world's religions as it is for most anything else. The wide acceptance of Christianity and its growth in influence obscures the history of its losses. I like, many others, have not given much thought about how in the birthplace of Christianity it happens that Islam is the dominant religion.
The book begins with a description of how much of the world was Christian in the first millennium. Jenkins am..more
Jan 19, 2019Roxana Chirilă rated it liked it · review of another edition
Did you know that, during the first millennium A.D., Christianity used to spread all the way from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the very ends of China, all along the silk road? That Ethiopia became Christian before most European countries ever did? That early Eastern Christianity and early Islam have a lot in common?
Philip Jenkins brings all of this to light in 'The Lost History of Christianity'. With a cry of outrage that so much of our history has been forgotten, he launches into an explanation of..more
Aug 11, 2011Sincerae rated it really liked it
I really enjoyed this history and learned so much. The Lost History of Christianity is an excellent introduction to an obscure subject which the church in America never touches on. The author Philip Jenkins says that much of the information presented in this work is little known except by a few scholars.
This book eradicates the often held belief that Christianity is a Western religion. In fact Christianity was well matured in the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa (Nubia and Ethiopia) b..more
Oct 13, 2011Libby rated it really liked it
Back in the Dark Ages, when Sister Mary Floretta taught Church History at St. Joan of Arc School, I never heard about the Eastern, Asian or African churches that are the subject of this book. What is worse, they were never mentioned in my college courses on the history of the early church. How could all this history have happened and nobody saw fit to tell us about it? Well, that is one of the topics discussed in this well written, highly informative history. Not only does Jenkins give us the wh..more
This was a very interesting and arresting book. Jenkins identifies a blind spot in most accounts of church history. Most church history book focus on where Christianity has spread and ignore where it has died out. But Jenkins demonstrates that at least a portion of 'Christendom' once thrived in
the Middle East, Africa and Asia before dying out. (I say 'Christendom' because many of these groups were not 'othodox' Trinitarians and thus there is debate as to whether many of these groups were legiti..more
A must-read for Christians who want to learn about a relatively unknown segment of Christian history. This book is particularly helpful in establishing many of the core beliefs of western Christianity in the broader and ancient roots of the church. For example, many liberal scholars say that the canon and the theology of Christ was changed as a result of Constantine's meddling, but the church east of Constantinople, all of the way to Japan, recognized a similar list of biblical books and general..more
Sep 19, 2018Michael Butler rated it liked it
5 stars for the content. 2 stars for the organization.
For a book like this, a chronological timeline of the history of the church in the east seems like it would be most suitable, yet there was little structure to this book. There was no hint of chronology, but instead the chapters focused on near- indistinguishable themes, making the reading quite dry and repetitive. Yet this is a very important area of Christianity history that's often neglected, and for that reason alone I would recommend re..more
Jun 08, 2012Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
A remarkable study of history that was largely unknown to me--like most people I associated the History of Christianity predominantly with Europe. It was amazing to learn the the Persian Empire of the first 500 years of the CE was just as amenable to the spread of Christianity as the Roman Empire. The book also includes thoughtful analysis of the decline and 'extinction' of faiths and their survival and resurgence. Highly recommended.
Jun 15, 2018Joseph Hazboun rated it it was amazing

History Of Christianity Religion

An eyeopener on a flourishing Christian community that mainstream history ignores. The contributions of the Christians in forming the 'Islamic Civilisation' are enormous and should be acknowledged. More importantly, Christians in the East -in the Arab World - survived for 1000 years under the various caliphates. It was mostly under 'non-Arab muslims' that Christianity diminished and almost disappeared in the East, i.e., under the mongols, the mamelukes and the turks. This should be highlighted e..more
Nov 20, 2009David Bales rated it it was amazing
Brilliant book about the 'lost history' of Christianity; one of my year's top ten best. Once, Christians were the majority from North Africa all the way to India--and had sizable communities beyond, even to China. By the 8th century, Nestorian Christians had established settlements in China, and Christianity was the majority religion in the Middle East until the coming of Islam, and for centuries afterward. Jenkins pieces together how many Islamic traditions were borrowed from Christianity and J..more
Dec 13, 2014Lisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Much more information on the Eastern Churches and insights into the history of failure than my students usually get. Jenkins argues we need to read about and understand the history of churches in places where they didn't flourish otherwise we are too seduced by the connections between the church and power.
May 11, 2019Tony Cavicchi rated it really liked it
Shelves: read-2019, international-relations, world-history, theology-christian-living
This is a fascinating book which shatters the myth of Christianity as simply a product of 'Western Civilization.' Jenkins shows how for 1400 years the locus of global Christianity was northern Mesopotamia. The Pope in Rome presided over a Christian backwater compared to thousands of bishoprics across Asia and Africa who looked to the Bishop of Babylon. Who were these Christians, what did they believe, and what happened to them? Jenkins covers all these fascinating questions and more.
The Asia of..more
Dec 22, 2018Andy Zach rated it liked it
Detailed history of Christianity in the Middle East and Asia
I learned many new facts about the growth of Christianity in Asia and the Middle East and its demise. I knew about the spectacular growth of the Nestorian branch of the Church and the Monophysites, but I was not aware of the details of their organizational structure, their learning, and libraries, nor their evangelization methods.
Also, I just assumed they were wiped out quickly and completely by the spread of Islam. Not so! It was a slo..more
Mar 06, 2019Carlos rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This is my favorite type of history book. The kind that shows how hidden biases lead us to overlook was is sitting right in front of our eyes. In this case, the Eurocentric biases of the mainstream history of Christianity completely ignore the flourishing of vast number of Christians in Asia and Africa from the 5th to the 13th century, right across the history of Muslim Caliphate. Jenkins ably explains how by labelling these Christians heretics, Nestorians, Jacobites, etc., most historians ignor..more
Didn't Christianity go somewhere besides Europe? Being completely ignorant on the Church of the East, I picked up this book. Very interesting story of a church that thrived through the middle ages, from Africa to China. The gospel had reached much of the world within just a few centuries after Christ.
This book helped me gain perspective through history. I'm forced to come away with humility - we don't know why the Reformation happened in Europe. We don't know why Islam completely took over churc..more
Oct 26, 2015Stephen rated it really liked it
Shelves: asia, history, islam, religion, middle-east, christianity, egypt, eastern-rome-byzantine, persia-iran
For the first millennium of the church's history, Europe was less Christendom than a dismissed backwater. The heart of the faith was its fount in the middle east, where it saturated the landscape and spread through two empires across the vast expanse of Eurasia. Within five hundred years of Christianity's millennial birthday, however, its reach had vanished, lost in political upheaval and newly arrived competition. Though advertising itself as a history of the global church, Lost History is prin..more
I'm writing a paper on this book so I'll be giving more thoughts in it but generally this book will humble you, just read through the details of unfamiliar locations though you'll learning a lot of good world history, particularly the 13th and 14th century, but not everyone likes that stuff. The last three chapters are worth reading carefully.
'Driving a religion to extinction means never having to say you're sorry.' I would argue that this holds true of relationships, too. While dry, academic and textbook in nature, I was able to parse some relevant facts about the history of Christianity in Turkey. An informative read for tourists/travelers to Turkey.
The author gives a unique perspective on what happened to the Christian Church in Africa and the Middle East. He also gave his perspectives on how religious movements start and die out. I enjoyed the book but it was a little slow to me in some places.
Dec 29, 2013Reed rated it it was amazing
I thoroughly enjoyed this book about the forgotten history of the Christian church from Palestine to China. Because most of the churches throughout Asia were eventually extinguished, many modern Christians do not realize that nearly half of Christendom in the year 1000 AD existed outside of Europe. Places like Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Persia (Iran), Turkmenistan, Armenia, India, China and more had a strong Christian presence and thriving intellectual tradition.
After outlining..more
This was a good and useful book to read. As the author points out (more than once), the knowledge we have of church history largely ignores everything outside of the west, and certainly ignores those labelled as non-Orthodox who shone in the East for a millennium and more. These Eastern Christians: Syriac and Coptic speaking Nestorians and Jacobites were the focus of the book. I am very happy that their history is in print in English, even in this abbreviated form. While I am very happy that I r..more
Jul 27, 2012Bill rated it liked it · review of another edition
Filled a massive hole in my church history -- the early church spread to the east as well as the west and thrived there for 1000 years. Because that part of the world is so different now, and because the book of Acts focuses on Christianity's spread west, we have an overly Euro-centric view of church history. Some helpful thoughts also on how Christianity takes root in some cultures and why/how it died in others. Jenkins is often referenced by Christian authors, but this is a history work not a..more
Nov 06, 2008Kathy rated it it was amazing
Very different view of the history Christianity than is commonly learned in the US and Europe. As Roman/Latin Christianity followed the contours of the old Roman empire, so Nestorian and Jacobite (and other types) followed the contours of the old Persian empire all the way along the Silk road into India, China, and even Japan, and also down the Nile into Ethiopia. For the 1300 years after Christ, Christians were more numerous, more organized, more scholarly, and even more successful missionaries..more
As with other books he has written, Jenkins writes this book with flair. Yet apart from style, the actual content of the book is nothing new. It's value lies in reminding us of the ancient Christian movements in Asia and Africa, but the value is mitigated by Jenkins bias toward relativism. Reminiscent of Bart Ehrman, Jenkins treats orthodox Christianity as a mere historical accident, while treating Nestorianism as a fully legitimate expression of the faith. There are certainly things to be learn..more
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John Philip Jenkins was born in Wales in 1952. He was educated at Clare College, in the University of Cambridge, where he took a prestigious “Double First” degree—that is, Double First Class Honors. In 1978, he obtained his doctorate in history, also from Cambridge. Since 1980, he has taught at Penn State University, and currently holds the rank of Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities. He..more
“When they think about Christian history, most modern Westerners follow the book of Acts in concentrating on the church’s expansion west, through Greece and the Mediterranean world, and on to Rome. But while some early Christians were indeed moving west, many other believers—probably in greater numbers—journeyed east along the land routes, through what we today call Iraq and Iran, where they built great and enduring churches. Because of its location—close to the Roman frontier, but just far enough beyond it to avoid heavy-handed interference—Mesopotamia or Iraq retained a powerful Christian culture at least through the thirteenth century.” — 0 likes
“In their scholarship, their access to classical learning and science, the Eastern churches in 800 were at a level that Latin Europe would not reach at least until the thirteenth century.” — 0 likes
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