The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity
The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity
How did Christianity make its remarkable voyage from the Roman Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent? By examining the social networks that connected the ancient and late antique Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, central Asia, and Iran, this book contemplates the social relations that made such movement possible. It also analyzes how the narrative tradition regarding the apostle Judas Thomas, which originated in Upper Mesopotamia and accredited him with evangelizing India, traveled among the social networks of an interconnected late antique world. In this way, the book probes how the Thomas narrative shaped Mediterranean Christian beliefs regarding co-religionists in central Asia and India, impacted local Christian cultures, took shape in a variety of languages, and experienced transformation as it traveled from the Mediterranean to India, and back again.
- Proposes a new understanding of Christianity traveled from the Roman Mediterranean to India and central Asia
- Suggests new ways of conceiving how the various societies of the Mediterranean, East Africa, Indian Ocean, and Asian hinterland were connected in antiquity
- Interrogates the significance of both literary evidence and the evidence of material culture for the question
Product details
October 2021Paperback
9781108409551
314 pages
229 × 152 × 17 mm
0.425kg
3 maps
Not yet published - available from May 2025
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Acts of Thomas:
- 1. The Acts of Thomas and its impact
- Part II. Christianity, Networks, and the Red Sea:
- 2. Early Christianity and its many Indias: complexities of the sources
- 3. The Roman Egyptian network, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean
- Part III. Christianity, Networks, and the Middle East:
- 4. The movement of Christianity into Sasanian Persia: perspectives and sources
- 5. Social connectivity between the Roman Levant, Persian Gulf, and Central Asia
- 6. The Late Antique impact of the Acts of Thomas and Christian communities in India
- Conclusion.
