Jonah's library

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Named after the first priory, this archive is dedicated to knowledge both biblical and educational content.

The Assyrian Church of the East: A Panoramic View of a Glorious History

Rev. David Royel, S.T.L.

Apostolic Origins and Beginnings

The beginnings of the Assyrian Church are to be found in the very first decades of the apostolic era. With

the revelation of the Son of God in the flesh, the salvific message of the Gospel was open to all peoples of

diverse tongues and cultures. The Gospel-writer St. Luke records in the book of Acts the events of the

growth and spread of the Christian Gospel in the Holy City and abroad, to the outer limits of the Roman

Empire.

We read in the Acts 2 the wondrous happenings surrounding the Pentecost feast celebrated at Jerusalem

by our Lord‘s disciples. The promise of the Holy Spirit given to disciples before Jesus was taken up to the

Father gave hope to the fledgling Christian community at Jerusalem (cf. John 16:13; Acts 1:4). This

promise was fulfilled on the day of the Jewish feast of the Pentecost, which took place at Jerusalem 50

days after the Lord‘s Resurrection. Luke records:

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)

Among those who had gone up to Jerusalem in order to be present in the Holy City for the Pentecost

feast, there were Jews from Mesopotamia. Those who received the Gospel on the day of Pentecost early

on spread it among the Assyrians who were dwelling in Mesopotamia: ―…then they that gladly received

his word were baptized; and the same day they were added unto them about three thousand souls‖(Acts

2:41).

Another ancient tradition recorded in the Gospel of Matthew tells of the wise men who had come from

the East—certain Magi who had followed the star which led them to the Holy Child in Bethlehem. The

evangelist Matthew tells us: ―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,‖Matthew 2:1-2. According

to the tradition of the Fathers of the Church, such as St. John Chrysostom (died 407) these wise-men were

Persians who had come from the East searching for the Child born under the star, thus following the

ancient tradition of their prophet Zoroaster.

Missionaries from the Holy City of Jerusalem came to preach the Gospel among the Jews in the Diaspora

present in Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire. The Acts of the Apostles only records the first Christian

missions within the limits of the Roman Empire. Therefore, it is the holy tradition of the Assyrian

Church, couples with historical evidences, that records the spread of the Gospel outside of the limits of

the Roman Empire, namely within the Persian Empire—the second superpower of its day.  Since of the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 612 B.C.,

the inhabitants spread far and wide across

Mesopotamia. The fact that the remnants of the

ancient Assyrians spoke the Aramaic language in the

day of Christ—which was the very language of

Christ himself and the lingua franca of the East—the

Gospel found fertile ground. So it was that in the first

decades of the Christian era the Apostle Mar Addai

(St. Addai), who is equated sometimes with the

‗Thaddeus‘of the Twelve, was sent by St. Thomas

the Apostle to the city of Edessa (Osrhoene), which

was dependent upon the Roman Caesar and acted as

a buffer-zone between Rome and Persia.

The missionary work of Addai came about through a promise given by our Lord to its vassal king Abgar

the Black. According to the annals of Church history recorded by the great historian Eusebius the bishop

of Caesarea, Abgar had sent emissaries to Jerusalem asking that Jesus—the good healer whom he had

heard about—would come and cure him from his illness.

Abgar‘s Letter to Jesus reads:

―Abgar Ukkama [the Black], the Toparch, to Jesus the good Savior who has appeared in the district of

Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard concerning you and your cures, how they are accomplished by you

without drugs and herbs. For, as the story goes, you make the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, and

you cleanse lepers, and cast out unclean spirits and demons, and you cure those who are tortured by long

disease and you raise dead men. And when I heard all these things concerning you and I decided that it is

one of the two, either that you are God, and came down from heaven to do these things, or are the Son of

God for doing these things. For this reason I write to beg you to listen to me and to heal the suffering

which I have…‖