Jenkins on a Zoroastrian inscription

ALEITIA: The Forgotten First Eastern Christians. History has neglected these early Christians outside Europe and the Mediterranean. Philip Jenkins turns to a third-century Zoroastrian inscription for a snapshot of early Eastern Christianity. Excerpt:

The leading figure in Persia’s Zoroastrian priesthood was one Kartir (or Kerdir), a revolutionary figure who departed from the standard imperial model of wide-ranging cultural tolerance. In the 270s, at Naqsh-e Rajab near Persepolis, Kartir commissioned some immodest inscriptions that vaunted his services to this faith and his empire. Among these very informative words, we find a boast of his intolerant and persecuting activities, and how he had “smitten” various minority religions:

“The heresy of Ahriman [the Devil] and the demons departed and was routed from the empire. And Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Nazarenes and Christians and Baptists and Manicheans were smitten in the empire, and idols were destroyed, and the abodes of the demons disrupted and made into thrones and seats of the gods.”

Interesting commentary follows. Professor Jenkins has been discussing early Eastern (mostly Syriac) Christianity and related matters quite a bit over at The Anxious Bench.