Fr. David ROYEL

The origins of the Church of the East, variously known as the ‘Assyrian Church,’ ‘Church of Persia,’ ‘Nestorian Church’ etc. may be news to other Christians at large. The history of the expansion of Christianity from the Holy City (Jerusalem) westward is commonly known and well-chronicled. However, it is the spread of the Gospel eastward and particularly to the other parts of the Near East that is not so well-acquainted with. It is the humble aim of this brief outline to expose the history of the apostolic foundation of this once-glorious Church, and to whet the appetite of church historians, and especially that of the children of this once-glorious and most missionary-minded of all the Churches of Asia.

Apostolic Origins in Light of the New Testament

The evangelist Matthew mentions at the very beginning of his Gospel an event which marked the marvelous event of the birth of Christ, namely the coming of the Magi – the Wise Men of the East. The Gospel-writer narrates: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying: ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him’” (Mt 2:1-2). The evangelist continues that once having reached Judea, and having encountered Herod the tetrarch, these wise men had finally reached the Christ-child: “When they had heard the king, they departed; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was” (Mt 2:9).

According to St. John Chrysostom (d. 407): “The Incarnate Word on coming to the world gave to Persia, in the persons of the Magi, the first manifestations of His mercy and light… so that the Jews themselves might learn from the mouths of Persians of the birth of their Messiah.” According to tradition, the Persians had learned of the coming of the Messiah from the prophecies of Zoroaster, who was said to have been a disciple of the prophet Jeremiah during the captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. Thus, we see that the prophecy concerning the coming of the promised Messiah was known in the land of the Persians as well. In fact, the great patriarch of the Church of the East, Timothy I (780-823) asserted that it was exactly these magi who preached the coming of the Messiah in the land of the Persians.



The second major New Testament event which we cite with regard to the apostolic origins of the Church of the East is the fulfillment of the prophetic event of the Pentecost which took place in the Upper Room 50 days after the Resurrection. Being one of the three ‘pilgrim feasts,’ many Jews were to be found in Jerusalem coming from different parts of the Roman Empire, and also from beyond the limes of the Roman Empire. St. Luke, the evangelist and historian of the Primitive Church, narrates in the Acts of the Apostles:

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another. Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappodocia, in Pontus, and Asia…(Acts 2:5-9).

Thus, we see that there were Jews present in the Holy City for the feast of the Pentecost (Feast of Weeks) who heard the preaching of the apostles, and especially the discourse by Peter, and received the Gospel of Jesus Christ “…then they that gladly received his word were baptized; and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41). It is highly likely that these Persian Jews took back with them to their homeland the Gospel of Jesus Christ, thus sowing the seeds of the Gospel among their fellow Jews in the Diaspora as well as among the non-Jewish inhabitants within the Persian Empire, which was at that time the second superpower after the Romans.

Although the Book of Acts follows the journey of St. Paul westward to Antioch and beyond, where the believers were first called ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:26), the expansion of the faith beyond the limits of the Roman Empire is not chronicled in Luke’s chronology. There are, however, a number of secondary sources that chronicle the spread of the Gospel to the Aramaic-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia who identify themselves as being the descendents of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians who later adopted the language of the Aramean nomads, i.e. Aramaic, that settled in their lands sometime in the ninth century B.C.