All: please don't post religious flamewar comments to Hacker News. That includes proselytizing in any direction, pro or anti. Such threads are as tedious as they are flamey, and those are the two qualities we can most do without here.
Intellectually curious conversation is an entirely different thing and is of course welcome on this or any topic.
It is not fully correct because St Thomas, who was one of the twelve disciples landed in India and martyred here in India and that's why we have A large autonomous branch, known as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church), tracing its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle and has its headquarters in Kottayam, Kerala. We in India just call it Syrian Orthodox church.
That part is not shown in the video.
What you mentioned about the denomination is not exactly accurate. The st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis in kerala or the malabar region, were part of church of east that follows east syriac liturgy. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church) that follows west syriac liturgy is a new church started out of a court case in the 19th century.
So, in short, it's like: was unified st thomas christians from st thomas arrival in the 1st century and under church of east since 4th century when it was organised as independent from church of rome till 15th century portuguese arrival and forced latinisations by them leading to coonan cross oath protest, splitting the community into two: one new catholic faction(84 church out of then 116 churches) using the modified east syriac liturgy and the other faction(32 church out of then 116 churches) under patriarch of antioch, adopting the west syriac liturgy locally called the jacobites. The catholic faction mentioned grew into the current syro malabar catholic church. The orthodox jacobite faction underwent another split when british came in the 18th-19th century and tried to create protestant influence, leading to the creation of the marthoma church, which is a protestant church using a protestantised west syriac. In the 18th-19th century times, if I am not wrong, a small faction from the syro malabar catholic church joined the chaldean syrian church, creating a small archdiocese of assyrian church of the east in kerala. Now in the 19th century, a small faction in this jacobite came into communion with vatican keeping the west syriac litury, forming the syro malankara catholic church. At this time in the 19th century the internal conflict regarding whether to be directly under patriarch of antioch came in the jacobites leading to Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church) faction that was mentioned in the comment above.
They show dots eventually, but those Indian dots should be there by 100AD, same with Ethiopia. Some of the dates they use the official kingdom conversion dates, and not the presence of a church.
Syrian christians in Kerala are not related to St.Thomas.
Syrian chritians landed in kerala while fleeing arabic invasion of Syria. (7th century)
Also 'martyrdom' of St.Thomas is debated.
The earliest mention of martyrdom of St.Thomas originate from 16th century portugese missionaries who operated in india at that time. not backed by any evidence.
I’m sure a book has been written with this thesis, but I often think that a system like Christianity was somewhat inevitable, sociopolitically.
By this I don’t really mean the specifics of the religion; but rather 1) the idea of universalizing the value all human life and not only certain subsets and 2) a synthesis of ideology and politics with the explicit goal of expanding its domain by means of assimilation, not just conquest.
Now of course the reality didn’t actually play out exactly along those lines, but I think a similar sort of movement probably would have occurred across the Roman Empire, had Christianity not specifically grown.
In other words I have a hard time imagining that the world would have continued with Roman values indefinitely. The world was changing and Christianity was as much a consequence as a cause.
It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns.
Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergence and development of Christianity, including Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, late antiquity, medieval religious forms and also how it interacted with other traditions. I think it complements quite nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts.
There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology lecture series [2].
What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?
Also because the region was conquered by Muslims so it did not last. It was the majority religion of the Asian parts of the Byzantine Empire.
North Africa played a very important part in the development of Christianity. Augustine, Tertullian, Jerome and Origen were North Africans. Monasticism evolved in Egypt.
Way back when I heard someone state that the reason Christianity spread so wildly was because it was foundational to proselytize and convert non-Christians to the faith. That makes complete sense to me.
It's not like it was this passive meme that spread because people who encountered it loved it so much they wanted to join.
No, it's because your education is western-centric and Islamic invasions took over the east. Eastern Christians have been subjected to genocide at the hands of Muslims for 1300 years.
Edit - really, someone is asking for a citation that the Islamic conquests happened? Next should ask for a citation that the sky is blue...
This is basic world history, like the discovery of the new world, Alexander the Great's conquests or the Roman empire...
How can “genocide” apply to a voluntary religious group? And even if it could, the linked wikipedia article doesn’t seem to support your claim, either. Do you have anything else we could review?
while tribal hunters simply killed for access to the best hunting grounds? Mongols killed why? IMO you can reconstruct this line of thought easily -- humans killed other humans brutally and without fail; some humans interpreted the world in divine terms and guarded fertility; Religion combines many strands with intention, while the killing for other reasons does not cease.
It would be cool to see this expanded to include other prominent religious systems.. in particular Islam, Budhism, Hindu, etc... as it is, there's no context at all in terms of contraction events.
Interesting that in the last two years of the video, central Europe seems to turn gray. The decline has been going on for several decades (and the official numbers of Christian people are artificially inflated due to weird exceptions the church has by law).
I wish it was an actual interactive map instead of a video, as it raises so many questions.
Where did Christianity come from in Tibet? If I'm reading it correctly, around 1100AD there seems to be a large number of Christians near Lhasa. And then around 1266 a majority Christian region around (I think) Mongolia suddenly gets wiped out.
If they made it interactive, it would be nice to be able to toggle various layers. For example, I was watching it thinking "It's odd that nestorianism is drifting away from the rest" until I realized that empty void in the middle was Islam. It'd be nice if they also had other religions like Islam mapped, and let us toggle which ones we want to see so it doesn't become too noisy.
Yes it was, as since it was never part of Roman empire it developed from missionary activity, and even started its own monastic missionary activity back to North Umbria, Faeroes and apparently even Iceland.
But was it doctrinally different from Chalcedonian Christianity to justify its own colour on the map. Wikipedia suggests no, which chimes with my understanding: some local minor differences in practice, but nothing like the Christological disputes that caused the rift with the Church of the East, nor like the row over papal supremacy etc. that led to the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
That is correct afaik, though there were serious disputes in Anglo Saxon Britain about these and other issues (mostly about 'leadership' of the church as in any human organization). I'm not sure if it warrants another color, etc though per this video.
Yes, it seems to be promoting the idea, popular in New Age writings, that Celtic Christianity was a separate denomination (or what Rome would have considered a heresy); and that just doesn’t seem to have been the case.
Ah I see thanks, wasn't familiar with that. That sounds like a stretch, as it wasn't that long a period from St Patrick until the reunification back into the Latin church
after non-trivial inquiry from far-away California, my best understanding is that the Celts did gracefully embrace the Christian faith among the monks and those serious about religious life. Since there were vivid and lived religious traditions alive at all times through history, this transition was not uneventful. However the kind of "top down" and by-the-sword conversion that did occur e.g. the Baltic tribes, was not the case with the equally fierce Celts
But the graphic suggests that Celtic Christianity was in some sense theologically distinct from Chalcedonian Christianity, and that doesn't seem to have been the case. The main ways that the Christians of Ireland and Britain differed from those of continental western Europe seem to have been in the shape of the monastic tonsure and the calculation of the date of Easter; and in the latter, at least, British and Irish Christians were in conformity with Rome by the end of the eighth century. (There was also an emphasis on penance and absolution as a private rather than public rite, but this was ultimately adopted by the wider church.)
There doesn't seem to have been any doctrinal disputes, nor any suggestion that British and Irish Christianity was in any way separate from the Church of Rome.
During the last few years, I’ve been exploring Svealand, the central part of Sweden that contains Stockholm and some other provinces. The region contains many historical places, but I walk the countryside, away from the main tourist attractions. What has impressed me the most is the amount of ancient piles of ruble with vigilant, almost hostile churches next to them. There are rock paintings from prehistoric times still around, and many, many mounds and graves from the bronze and iron age, the region is literally littered with them. But I’ve never found a single extant statue nor statuette nor depiction of the old Norse gods.
the reason you do not find them is that they were purposefully destroyed in "iconoclasm" -- the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered but also destroyed all traces of their cultural practices.
Just south of there is the famous tree of Boniface ?
You’re pattern matching something like the Saxon Wars under Charlemagne. In this case missing idols probably owe more to wood not surviving a millennium in Swedish soil + converts destroying their own former cult objects.
First of all, you're confusing different events: iconoclasm was the destruction of Christian icons, by Christians who thought that practice was idolatrous.
> the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered
Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.
When western politicians and media lectures the world on human rights, I can't help but wonder how funny it is that because westerners front loaded their genocidal violence, they now get to feel superior to others that didn't completely wipe out the conquered.
All: please don't post religious flamewar comments to Hacker News. That includes proselytizing in any direction, pro or anti. Such threads are as tedious as they are flamey, and those are the two qualities we can most do without here.
Intellectually curious conversation is an entirely different thing and is of course welcome on this or any topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It is not fully correct because St Thomas, who was one of the twelve disciples landed in India and martyred here in India and that's why we have A large autonomous branch, known as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church), tracing its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle and has its headquarters in Kottayam, Kerala. We in India just call it Syrian Orthodox church. That part is not shown in the video.
What you mentioned about the denomination is not exactly accurate. The st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis in kerala or the malabar region, were part of church of east that follows east syriac liturgy. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church) that follows west syriac liturgy is a new church started out of a court case in the 19th century.
So, in short, it's like: was unified st thomas christians from st thomas arrival in the 1st century and under church of east since 4th century when it was organised as independent from church of rome till 15th century portuguese arrival and forced latinisations by them leading to coonan cross oath protest, splitting the community into two: one new catholic faction(84 church out of then 116 churches) using the modified east syriac liturgy and the other faction(32 church out of then 116 churches) under patriarch of antioch, adopting the west syriac liturgy locally called the jacobites. The catholic faction mentioned grew into the current syro malabar catholic church. The orthodox jacobite faction underwent another split when british came in the 18th-19th century and tried to create protestant influence, leading to the creation of the marthoma church, which is a protestant church using a protestantised west syriac. In the 18th-19th century times, if I am not wrong, a small faction from the syro malabar catholic church joined the chaldean syrian church, creating a small archdiocese of assyrian church of the east in kerala. Now in the 19th century, a small faction in this jacobite came into communion with vatican keeping the west syriac litury, forming the syro malankara catholic church. At this time in the 19th century the internal conflict regarding whether to be directly under patriarch of antioch came in the jacobites leading to Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church) faction that was mentioned in the comment above.
They show dots eventually, but those Indian dots should be there by 100AD, same with Ethiopia. Some of the dates they use the official kingdom conversion dates, and not the presence of a church.
It looks to me that it is shown: there are three red dots along South west coast of India?
It is shown though.
This does show St. Thomas and Kerala on map though.
Syrian christians in Kerala are not related to St.Thomas. Syrian chritians landed in kerala while fleeing arabic invasion of Syria. (7th century)
Also 'martyrdom' of St.Thomas is debated. The earliest mention of martyrdom of St.Thomas originate from 16th century portugese missionaries who operated in india at that time. not backed by any evidence.
I’m sure a book has been written with this thesis, but I often think that a system like Christianity was somewhat inevitable, sociopolitically.
By this I don’t really mean the specifics of the religion; but rather 1) the idea of universalizing the value all human life and not only certain subsets and 2) a synthesis of ideology and politics with the explicit goal of expanding its domain by means of assimilation, not just conquest.
Now of course the reality didn’t actually play out exactly along those lines, but I think a similar sort of movement probably would have occurred across the Roman Empire, had Christianity not specifically grown.
In other words I have a hard time imagining that the world would have continued with Roman values indefinitely. The world was changing and Christianity was as much a consequence as a cause.
Very interesting to consider in any case!
It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns.
Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergence and development of Christianity, including Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, late antiquity, medieval religious forms and also how it interacted with other traditions. I think it complements quite nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts.
There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology lecture series [2].
[0] A History of Religious Ideas - Mircea Eliade
[1] Darwin's Cathedral - David Sloan Wilson
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA
Also spent the whole middle ages rewriting history and erasing the knowledge they did not like, so I am not that enthusiastic about it
What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?
Also because the region was conquered by Muslims so it did not last. It was the majority religion of the Asian parts of the Byzantine Empire.
North Africa played a very important part in the development of Christianity. Augustine, Tertullian, Jerome and Origen were North Africans. Monasticism evolved in Egypt.
Way back when I heard someone state that the reason Christianity spread so wildly was because it was foundational to proselytize and convert non-Christians to the faith. That makes complete sense to me.
It's not like it was this passive meme that spread because people who encountered it loved it so much they wanted to join.
This is called being a “universalizing” religion.
The big three universalizing religions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.
You can understand a lot of religious history as just those three religions expanding and displacing other belief systems.
Contrast with non-universalizing religions like Judaism, Hinduism, and Shinto.
No, it's because your education is western-centric and Islamic invasions took over the east. Eastern Christians have been subjected to genocide at the hands of Muslims for 1300 years.
Edit - really, someone is asking for a citation that the Islamic conquests happened? Next should ask for a citation that the sky is blue...
This is basic world history, like the discovery of the new world, Alexander the Great's conquests or the Roman empire...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
And yes, it happened over 1300 years ago, the first decisive battle was the Battle of Yarmuk, year 636 CE.
How can “genocide” apply to a voluntary religious group? And even if it could, the linked wikipedia article doesn’t seem to support your claim, either. Do you have anything else we could review?
Citation needed. Since year 1300 or for 1300 years? The former is closer to the truth than the latter, AFAIK.
Not a lot different from what the Christians did to non believers in the West, really.
Or the soviets did to believers, for that matter
while tribal hunters simply killed for access to the best hunting grounds? Mongols killed why? IMO you can reconstruct this line of thought easily -- humans killed other humans brutally and without fail; some humans interpreted the world in divine terms and guarded fertility; Religion combines many strands with intention, while the killing for other reasons does not cease.
Don't forget the crusades.
Those interested may find Dominion[0] an excellent read.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christian-Revolution-Remade-...
Seconded! Great read though maybe a bit reductive in places
It would be cool to see this expanded to include other prominent religious systems.. in particular Islam, Budhism, Hindu, etc... as it is, there's no context at all in terms of contraction events.
Interesting that in the last two years of the video, central Europe seems to turn gray. The decline has been going on for several decades (and the official numbers of Christian people are artificially inflated due to weird exceptions the church has by law).
I wish it was an actual interactive map instead of a video, as it raises so many questions.
Where did Christianity come from in Tibet? If I'm reading it correctly, around 1100AD there seems to be a large number of Christians near Lhasa. And then around 1266 a majority Christian region around (I think) Mongolia suddenly gets wiped out.
If they made it interactive, it would be nice to be able to toggle various layers. For example, I was watching it thinking "It's odd that nestorianism is drifting away from the rest" until I realized that empty void in the middle was Islam. It'd be nice if they also had other religions like Islam mapped, and let us toggle which ones we want to see so it doesn't become too noisy.
What is going on with Celtic Christianity? Was it really as distinct from Roman Catholicism (and for as long) as the graphic suggests?
Also, why no Cathars/Albigensians in the south of France during the 12th & 13th centuries?
Yes it was, as since it was never part of Roman empire it developed from missionary activity, and even started its own monastic missionary activity back to North Umbria, Faeroes and apparently even Iceland.
But was it doctrinally different from Chalcedonian Christianity to justify its own colour on the map. Wikipedia suggests no, which chimes with my understanding: some local minor differences in practice, but nothing like the Christological disputes that caused the rift with the Church of the East, nor like the row over papal supremacy etc. that led to the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
That is correct afaik, though there were serious disputes in Anglo Saxon Britain about these and other issues (mostly about 'leadership' of the church as in any human organization). I'm not sure if it warrants another color, etc though per this video.
Yes, it seems to be promoting the idea, popular in New Age writings, that Celtic Christianity was a separate denomination (or what Rome would have considered a heresy); and that just doesn’t seem to have been the case.
Ah I see thanks, wasn't familiar with that. That sounds like a stretch, as it wasn't that long a period from St Patrick until the reunification back into the Latin church
after non-trivial inquiry from far-away California, my best understanding is that the Celts did gracefully embrace the Christian faith among the monks and those serious about religious life. Since there were vivid and lived religious traditions alive at all times through history, this transition was not uneventful. However the kind of "top down" and by-the-sword conversion that did occur e.g. the Baltic tribes, was not the case with the equally fierce Celts
But the graphic suggests that Celtic Christianity was in some sense theologically distinct from Chalcedonian Christianity, and that doesn't seem to have been the case. The main ways that the Christians of Ireland and Britain differed from those of continental western Europe seem to have been in the shape of the monastic tonsure and the calculation of the date of Easter; and in the latter, at least, British and Irish Christians were in conformity with Rome by the end of the eighth century. (There was also an emphasis on penance and absolution as a private rather than public rite, but this was ultimately adopted by the wider church.)
There doesn't seem to have been any doctrinal disputes, nor any suggestion that British and Irish Christianity was in any way separate from the Church of Rome.
Thanks for sharing. Funny enough, I was just asking GPT to chart this for me a few days ago. And people say postmillennialism is a pipe dream...
To put it into perspective, a long time ago a friend made this https://williame.github.io/map_of_worlds_religions/
what's up with the red isolated somewhere around Bhutan in 700AD? Is that Prester John[0]? :D
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John
Short answer: No Long answer: prester john was probably inspired by a mixture of rumors of various asian churches.
Also how I lose most Sid Meir Civilization[1] games.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)
This would be more historically accurate if it included the body counts.
The low point of Christianity after the council of Nicaea was the "Dark Ages" (early middle ages) and the high point is circa 2000.
The exact opposite of what we tend to think.
"For the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."
During the last few years, I’ve been exploring Svealand, the central part of Sweden that contains Stockholm and some other provinces. The region contains many historical places, but I walk the countryside, away from the main tourist attractions. What has impressed me the most is the amount of ancient piles of ruble with vigilant, almost hostile churches next to them. There are rock paintings from prehistoric times still around, and many, many mounds and graves from the bronze and iron age, the region is literally littered with them. But I’ve never found a single extant statue nor statuette nor depiction of the old Norse gods.
the reason you do not find them is that they were purposefully destroyed in "iconoclasm" -- the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered but also destroyed all traces of their cultural practices.
Just south of there is the famous tree of Boniface ?
You’re pattern matching something like the Saxon Wars under Charlemagne. In this case missing idols probably owe more to wood not surviving a millennium in Swedish soil + converts destroying their own former cult objects.
First of all, you're confusing different events: iconoclasm was the destruction of Christian icons, by Christians who thought that practice was idolatrous.
> the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered
Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.
When western politicians and media lectures the world on human rights, I can't help but wonder how funny it is that because westerners front loaded their genocidal violence, they now get to feel superior to others that didn't completely wipe out the conquered.