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{"id":18419,"date":"2016-10-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=170"},"modified":"2016-10-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T00:00:00","slug":"christianitys-lost-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/10\/christianitys-lost-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity\u2019s Lost World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>riting in Christianity Today<\/a>, Timothy C. Morgan reports on an archeological discovery in Kazakhstan, a few dozen miles from the border with China: \u201cA team of archaeologists uncovered seven Christian gravestones late this summer in the ancient Silk Road city of Ilyn Balik near the Kazakhstan-China border. The historic find is rare archaeological evidence that eastern Christianity was established along East-West trading routes hundreds of years ago, not brought in by the Russian Orthodox Church as many had believed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dig started \u201cwhen a local man seeking building material picked up a stone inscribed with a Nestorian cross. The stone made its way into the hands of Karl Baipakov, the top archaeologist in the nation and an expert on the Silk Road, the ancient overland trading route from the Mediterranean Sea to China.\u201d Before long, the team had found eight headstones, seven \u201cinscribed with distinctive Nestorian crosses. The stones were clustered together outside the main settlement area. One stone included an inscription, indicating a date of A.D. 1162.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark quotes Baylor\u2019s Philip Jenkins, author of the fascinating Lost History of Christianity<\/em><\/a>: \u201c[It] reinforces so much of what we already knew about the church of the East in central and eastern Asia. . . . It is strange to think that at the time those places flourished, they might have been on the same scale as the famous Christian cities of Europe. . . . There is nothing new in the world except the history we have forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

The find has a more than historical interest. Thomas Davis, a member of the team, put it this way: \u201cIf Christianity is present in Kazakh history before it is imperially imposed, then it is something that is part of the identity of being a Kazakh.\u201d Becoming a Christian doesn\u2019t mean adopting the religion of the imperialist Russians.<\/p>\n

(Correction: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that Richard Clark reported on the find. My apologies to CT<\/em> and Mr Morgan.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"