The Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel, and the Clementine Recognitions: Early Witnesses for Christianity in Central Asia?

Summary

Abstract:In a key passage of the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, Christians are described as residing among the Medes, Persians, Parthians, and Kushans. This statement has sometimes encouraged scholars to accept that Christianity had penetrated the Iranian plateau and central Asia by the early third century CE. But this testimony does not necessarily reflect the actual state of contemporary Christianity in such regions. Instead, it is based on a text that had been circulating in the eastern Mediterranean and upper Mesopotamia during the late second and early third centuries CE. This text, now lost, had ascribed the evangelization of such regions to the apostle Thomas.

Key words:Book of the Laws of the Countries, Eusebius, Clementine Recognitions, the apostle Thomas, central Asia, the Parthian empire, Christianity.

According to a certain passage from the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, otherwise known as On Fate, contemporary Christians resided in the Iranian plateau and central Asia. Since the Syriac Book (as it is hereafter called) is intimately associated with the school of Bardaisan and is generally deemed to have been composed in its surviving form c. 225 CE, scholars have sometimes treated the passage as testimony for the movement of Christianity to these regions by the early third century. But whether the text is referring to the actual state of Christianity is in fact unclear, and the sources for the Book's information have yet to be thoroughly explored.

This article accordingly examines the nature of the source material informing how the key passage of the Syriac Book represents the state of Christianity in central Asia. As it maintains, the key passage does not reflect actual knowledge that Edessenes or Upper Mesopotamians possessed regarding Christian communities that dwelled in the region. Instead, it is based on the fiction of a text that had been circulating in the eastern Mediterranean and upper Mesopotamia during the late second and early third centuries CE: the lost Parthian Acts of Thomas. While eclipsed by the surviving Acts of Thomas, which celebrated the putative ministry of Judas Thomas in India, the tradition regarding Judas Thomas’ evangelization of Parthia clearly preceded it, and it generated the belief among contemporary Christians that coreligionists inhabited the Iranian plateau and central Asia.