From Antioch to Babylon

From Antioch to Babylon traces the spread of Christianity in its first two centuries between two major centers of the Jewish diaspora. Antioch of Syria has long been known as the city where non-Jewish adherents to Christianity first emerged in substantial numbers, but it was also the gateway between two empires-that of Rome and that of its eastern counterpart Parthia, located on terrain once occupied by the ancient Babylonian Kingdom that had exiled the Jewish people from their homeland centuries earlier and from which many never returned. As such, Antioch served as a center from which differing versions of Christianity spread not only to the west but to the east. Although the importance of the city in its Western religious context has been frequently examined, its importance in its Eastern context has been less frequently explored.

Christianity's tale in the West is in some ways the reverse of that in the East insofar as while the Roman Empire became increasingly tolerant of Christianity but less so of the Jewish faith, the territories controlled by the Parthian Empire began as tolerant of both but with that empire's fall became increasingly intolerant. The result was an early Eastern faith that was in many ways just as diverse as that in the West, as local cultures transformed it, but that also maintained a more heavily Jewish tinge. The story of Christianity, then, involves not just such luminaries in Antioch as Peter, Paul, and Ignatius but also such influential easterners as Addai, Aggai, and Palut.