Denise Klein

Das Nestorianische Christentum an den Handelswegen Durch Kyrgystan Bis Zum 14. Jh. (Silk Road Studies) Denise Klein

The missionary enterprise of the socalled Nestorian christianity in Asia is an amazing chapter of the religious history. Without any support by rulers or states and independent from the important western church centers Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, the Assyrian Church did not only survive so many centuries but it spread by the Silk Road through many parts of the Asian continent. The present book focuses for the first time on a limited region, the northern branch of the Silk Road in the modern state Kyrghyzstan. This concentration makes it possible to understand the conditions of expansion, survive and eclipse of Christianity there. The reader is introduced in the political and religious environment which its competition of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Shamanism and Islam. Archaeological and literal sources and especially many tombstone inscriptions are not only introduced and discussed, but raised to live. The reader gets an intime impression of the society in the Kyrghyzstan of the 7th to the 14th century with its important Christian minority. This society was more similar to our's today than to that of the Middle Ages in Europe because in Europe Christianity was a state religion. Therefore the experiences of Christianity at the Silk Road can help us to understand the evolution of our own modern world.