Theology in the Raw - Early Christianity in Africa: Dr. Vince Bantu

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Dr. Vince Bantu (B.A. Wheaton, M.Div. Gordon-Conwell, Th.M. Princeton Theological Seminary, M.A. and Ph.D. in Semitic and Egyptian Languages from The Catholic University) is Assistant Professor of Church History and Black Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books including Multitude of All Peoples: Exploring the Multiethnic Roots of Christianity. Dr. Bantu is an expert in the early growth of Christianity into Africa, which is the topic of our conversation. There are so many vibrant Christian leaders in Africa that the western church has simply denounced or ignored. This was a fascinating conversation!  -- Seminary Now has become one of the go-to resources for pastors, church leaders, and lay Christians who are serious about ongoing learning in an increasingly complex world. Seminary Now’s 80+ streaming courses and 10+ live online classes allow learners to have access to world-class scholarship and cutting-edge ministry training anywhere, anytime. Visit seminarynow.com. And, for a limited time, use discount code TITR to save 30%. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is absolutely fascinating, Dr. Vince Bantu. This dude has a extremely long CV, curriculum vitae. He has a BA in theology from Wheaton College, MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, THM from Church History from Princeton Theological Seminary, an MA in Semitic and Egyptian languages from the Catholic University, and a PhD in Semitic and Egyptian languages from also the Catholic University. He currently serves as

assistant professor of church history and black church studies at fuller seminary. Now it sounds like this dude is just nothing, but just a hyper academic. But as he explains at the beginning, he pursued all of these academic credentials out of a passion for evangelism, apologetics, and mission. I was blown away with this conversation. This dude, Dr. Bantu is an absolute master when it comes to the, the, the growth of Christianity, especially in the early, like the early, the first few centuries of the church, how there is massive growth of the church, of the gospel in Africa, both kind of, um, Northern Africa and sub Sahara Africa. And he is a expert at all of this. And I was just, you know, one of the, one of those conversations where your learning curve is just like a hockey stick because you have just no knowledge of anything anybody's

talking about. I was blown away at how much I learned in this conversation. And I'm sure you will too. So I I'm stoked. I'm super excited for you to gauge this conversation. So please welcome to the show. The one and only Dr. Vince Bantu. All right. I'm here with a Dr. Vince Bantu. Dude, your, your scholarly interests are pretty unique. So I, my first question is, you know, you did a PhD in Semitic and Egyptian languages. What, where did that come from? I mean, Semitic languages I get, okay. Like, okay. Old Testament ancient areas, you know, Bible stuff, but Egyptian languages. Like, is that always been an interest of yours or where did that come from?

You know, it's really interesting. I could even like answer that by way of recent anecdote because we were just chatting and I mentioned that I'm actually in Harlem right now. I'm in the area visiting my wife's family. And right before this podcast, our recording, I actually visited a museum here in Harlem. That's called the Genesis Museum of Black Culture and History. The whole thing was all Egyptian themed. It was like they created it to be like an Egyptian temple. The whole point of the museum was helping

African-Americans right here in historic, you know, Harlem understand the pride of their roots, their Egyptian roots. And this particular museum was part of a religious community that is really big here in New York City called the Kemetik or the Conscious Community. And these are African Americans and other people of African descent who reject Christianity and say that it's the white man's religion. And they teach people, especially of African descent, to reject Christianity and say, no, that's a European imposition. And we need to return back to our original religion, which they would say is Egyptian because that's the oldest religion in Africa. Africa. And so, yeah, so that's actually what, you know, so I would say first and foremost, like I'm an evangelist and apologist, and, you know, and really, you know, really a missiologist,

and with a heart for spreading the gospel, especially in my community, in the urban African American context. And in that context, this idea that Christianity is the white man's religion is, you know, really without without rival, the biggest, you know, challenge to the spread of the gospel among among non Christians are among people who reject Christianity. And so that's really what got me interested in learning about the African roots of Christianity and really wanting to teach on that. And so I ended up going to this program that actually, where I focused on the Egyptian language, which was Coptic. But that was actually a Christian language,

but not also like Ethiopian, Nubian, and just in general. That's what got me into learning about ancient African Christianity, because there's so many people who are interested in ancient African history in my community. So I think it's really cool to say, well, if you're interested in ancient African history in my community. So I think it's really cool to say, well, if you're interested in that, it's really cool to see that actually most ancient Africans from the first century on were actually Christians. So yeah, that's fascinating. So you're, cause when I, when I look at your CV, I mean, you're,

you got some academic credentials, like crazy. What do you have three master's degrees, a PhD. credentials, like crazy. What do you have three master's degrees, a PhD. So your academic interests were driven more by your missiological and evangelistic interest. That's that's fascinating. Can you, let's test, can you go, let's just go back where you just left off. Give us a one-on-one history of the spread of Christianity into Africa, especially, I mean, you said like some of the earliest forms of Christianity hit Northern Africa to take us to that world. And what was that like? You know, yeah. So I would, you know, I always love to point out that, you know, when we're talking about the continent that we now call Africa, you know, which again, like in the

ancient times, Africa would have just been like part of what we now call Tunisia, so like a real small region. And if you went to like ancient Nubia or ancient Ethiopia, and you said, hey, I'm in Africa, they'd be like, no, you're not. Africa, like I don't even know where Africa is. But now in the modern times, we call it the whole continent. We have, if we're talking about the whole continent,

I always love to point out that, in the time of the beginning of Christianity, that there was really four major kingdoms or regions in North Africa. There was what we call Roman North Africa, which were, you know, which is like Tunisia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. And all of that was kind of the colonies

of the Roman Empire. And they themselves actually used to be other kingdoms, but by the time of Christianity, they were all, you know, kind of brought under the Roman Empire. And that's where Latin was the main language. So people just collectively call it North Africa, like Roman North Africa. So there's that. Then there's Egypt, which also was its own country with a long history, but also by the time of Christianity was also colonized by the Roman Empire. So you got North Africa, Egypt, then south of Egypt,

you have now you're getting outside the Roman Empire. And that's when you have Kush at the time of the New Testament, which later became known as Nubia, and you know, she's now Sudan. Then further south of that, you have what's now called Ethiopia, which at that time was called Agazi or Habesha and the capital city was Axum, so sometimes they call it the Axumite Empire. So you have these four major regions in Africa and other large kind of urbanized kingdoms in the continent didn't develop too much later. You know, like Great Zimbabwe or the Congo or the Mali Songhai Empire,

or even in like Chad, you have like the Khan Em Empire. Those didn't come so much later. And so in the time of beginning Christianity, you have four major kingdoms. And the interesting thing is that within the first few centuries of the church, Christianity was present in all of these regions. And not only was it present,

but it was actually the dominant religion. It was actually the majority religion in all of these regions. So again, that goes back to what I was saying is that if people are interested in studying Africa, you can't study African ancient history without studying Christianity and vice versa. You can't study Christianity without studying Africa because many of the most influential theologians were from Africa. You know, like in Egypt, you had Origen and Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius who was really integral in the fourth century around Trinitarian doctrine, and you also had Cyril of Alexandria. Then in North Africa, you had some of the first women Christians mentioned in history,

Perpetual and Felicity, and Carthage who are martyrs. You got Tertullian who lived around the same time and was actually the first Christian to use the word Trinity. You got Augustine who would later become the most influential theologian in all of Western Christian history.

And then, but then again, you have also in those of the names that might be a little bit more familiar to people because they wrote in the imperial languages, in Greek, in Greek and Egypt or in Latin in North Africa. But also Christianity became written in the Coptic language in the native Egyptian language. And that was with people like Pacomius or Shenuta the Great or Benjamin of Alexandria. You know, and then also Christians from Egypt wrote in Arabic. Some of the first Christians to write in Arabic were like Severus Ibn Amuqafla.

And so these are names that we might not be as familiar with, which is actually in and of itself kind of proving the point or at least showing the understandability of people's idea that Christianity is a Western religion because we're more familiar with Christians who wrote in Western languages. But then Nubia also had a whole Christian culture. They became a Christian kingdom because again, they weren't part of the Roman Empire. And so in

the in the 500s, Nubia became a Christian, the king became a Christian, and Nubia became a Christian empire for a thousand years from the 500s until about the 1500s. You know, the ancient church of Nubia that thrived for a thousand years is no longer around today even though the Nubian people still are around today but they're mostly Muslim now. But for a thousand years they were a Christian kingdom and developed churches and monasteries

and texts and translations of the scriptures and liturgy that we can still see today. And then again, and lastly, further south from there Ethiopia also became a Christian nation in the 300s, even before Nubian. And they are still a predominantly Christian nation to this day. Actually, back then, what's now Ethiopia and Eritrea were one empire. Now they're two nations, and both of

them are predominantly Christian, and have a Christian tradition that stretches back to the 300s that also produce indigenous literature and liturgy and architecture that and produce authors like Giorgis of Sagla, the first documented sub-Saharan prose author in human history, was also a Christian systematic theologian and a monk. And some of the first biographies of women from sub-Saharan Africa were also from Ethiopia. People like Crystal Samra or Walahta Petros. And actually one of the first documented philosophers from Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps probably the first,

was named Zarayako who lived in the 1600s and wrote entire philosophical treatise, which actually was just recently translated into English that just came out this year. And people can now finally read Africa's first philosopher or at least subsequent Africa. So I mean, these are just a few examples I could go on and on, but yeah, that's just like you said, the one-on-one that I have so blown away right now. So yeah, the going back, the first several names you listed serial of Alexandria Clement and all the, I'm like, okay, I'm tracking, I'm tracking. And then you completely lost me

with all the other, what, why, why is that? So is, is it that once Christianity left the regions of Northern Africa under the Roman empire, did it just get, take on its own life form that was separated from the, I guess, both the Western and Eastern churches, it spread and all of the names and church history that we're familiar with. Did it just become detached from that brand of Christianity or why is all this? Why is this completely unfamiliar to me? A part of it might be an education thing too. No, that's, that's a great question. Yes. I would say that question has a really sad answer. And I kind of go into, into that in the first chapter of my book, multiple

of all peoples, because, you know, we're, many of us today are familiar with the sad history of how Christianity has been weaponized by the Western world as a tool of domination, colonialism, slavery, how the Europeans who came to the Americas and spread diseases and genocide and even missionaries used Christianity to try to convert Indigenous peoples, not only theologically but also culturally. There was this idea that we have to kill the Indian and save the man. And there's this idea that we have to make you European, that your indigenous languages are evil and demonic. And then same thing, it was used to justify transatlantic slavery and the colonization of Africa, colonization of parts of Asia as well. Most of us are familiar with this history. And sadly, a lot of us think or are told that Christianity actually first encountered people of the Americas,

indigenous peoples or African people or, or, you know, South or East Asia, that it was in the middle of this colonial project, that that was when Christianity was first introduced. So you know, it's a little understandable why people would want to reject Christianity. If they're like, well, that's if it came with colonizers and, and enslavers, you know, it's a little understandable why people would want to reject Christianity. If they're like, well, if it came with colonizers and enslavers, then yeah, I wouldn't want to reject it. And so, but again, the good news is, you know, historically is that that's not the case, that Christianity was in India, it was in China, it was in Central Asia along the Silk

Road among the Mongols. It was in, as we just talked about, it was all over Africa, you know, long before Europeans came. And so, but you know, the question came up for me was, you know, how did we get to that place? How did, you know, if that's not all of what Christian history is, and biblically, we know that's not what Christianity is supposed to be, that the Bible is very clear that, you know, slavery and colonies, these are evil things. These are not things that followers of Jesus can do. So and we see in the Bible also that Christianity was was involving everybody, right? That it went out from the Jews to the Gentiles.

And we see in Acts two is all all peoples, all cultures, all tribes. There was no nobody had a majority culture in the church, that it was everywhere. In fact, if anybody may have had kind of some kind of cultural dominance, it would have been the Jews. But Jesus and the apostles made it very clear, like, no, there's no Jewish dominance and no non-Jew needs to assimilate culturally

to Jewish culture. And that was the big issue in Acts 15. So the New Testament goes out of its way to forbid any kind of cultural dominance in Christianity. And yet, that's exactly what happened eventually. And so, yeah, like, how did that happen? And I think the how of how that happened is the answer to your question of why we don't hear about some of these other names and some of these other Christians. You know, what I explained in the first chapter of the book is that I would say it really started with the conversion of Constantine, or at least the alleged conversion of Roman

Emperor Constantine in the early 300s, that he stopped the persecution of Christians and started tolerating Christians. And many Christians even claimed that he was a Christian. You know, we don't know if he himself said that, but Christians certainly said it about him. And then Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, especially after We don't know if he himself said that, but Christians certainly said it about him. And then Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, especially after the time of Theodosius in the late 300s.

And so as Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, it started to take on a lot of Roman culture, that even the way that church structure and leadership and even architecture was made was mirroring the Roman political government systems. And even theology and framing of orthodoxy was taking on Greco-Roman Platonic Stoic language. Now, that wasn't new in the 300s, because Christians in the Roman Empire had always tried to articulate Christian theology according to Greco-Roman thought. I mean, even John does that in the Gospel of John when he calls Jesus the Logos, and Justin Martyr and other

folks, they do that. But at that point, though, there was no sense that that expression of Christianity was like the dominant, you know, framed way. But in the fourth century and going forward, that became the case. And it really came to a head at the Council of Chalcedon. So this is a, I know this is in church history class, I would just say if there's one date or one event to answer that question, that would be helpful to know. I would say it would be the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451. Because at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the dominant Roman church of the Roman Empire, which was centered in Roman Constantinople,

and the bishops and with the support of the Roman emperor, they made an articulation of the humanity and divinity of Jesus, right? Which is ultimately a mystery that no human can fully explain how Jesus was fully God and fully human. But there was the Pope of Rome at the time, Leo, he made a way of articulating that, that there was the Pope of Rome at the time, Leo, he made a way of articulating that, that again was really kind of rooted in Greco-Roman

thought where he said Jesus has one, he's one person, but he has two natures. He's one who apostasis, but he has two physicists, right, two different natures. And you know, that made sense to him, that made sense to people rooted in Greco-Roman Hellenistic thought, but to people in other parts of the world, that didn't make sense. And especially when you think about the fact that in Greek, you can say that one person has two natures and there's a difference, but other people in other languages don't even have two different words for the word person and nature.

And so they have different words. So the Christians in the Persian Empire or the Christians in Ethiopia, the Christians in Nubia, the Christians in Syria and Arabia, they did not accept that. That didn't make sense to them. Now, to be fair, it wasn't like the dominant Macedonian or dominant Roman position was heretical, but they thought it was. And what happened was the dominant church of the Roman Empire began to enforce that doctrine in North Africa and in Syria. And they didn't have jurisdiction in Persia, but the Persian Church rejected that doctrine. And that was the first major schism in the Church.

So we might know about the Protestant Reformation and kind of how that was a break between Catholics and Protestants. Or maybe we even know about the East-West schism in Europe between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics in the 10 hundreds in the 11th century. But the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th century, that was the first major schism in the church. And it's a lasting schism. It has lasting effects because the churches of Egypt and Ethiopia and Eritrea and Syria and Arabia and the former Persian Empire, which is now Iran and Afghanistan and actually

that spread all the way to China and India. Those churches, which are now we could say in the continents of Asia and Africa, those churches were split from the dominant Roman church, which later became the dominant influence in what would become Europe and Protestantism and which would go out to the rest of the world. So that is why most of us have heard of those first names I said, but those later names I was saying, we're not familiar with them because those Christian traditions were rejected as heretics and have been largely kept from many of us in the rest of the world. This episode is brought to you by Seminary Now. Seminary Now is a subscription-based streaming video platform that delivers exclusive biblical,

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That's seminarynow.com. And for a limited time, you can use the discount code TITR and save 30%. Okay. Save 30%. The discount code is TITR to say 30%. Go check it out. Going back prior to Cal Sedon for 51, let's go to Nicea with the churches that were rejected by the Cal Sedonian creed. Would they have still embraced the Nicene creed or yes, absolutely. Cause the Nicene was more about like more Trinitarian articulation, right? But even like you have, you have Clement of Alexandria, right? Who are a Tertullian who's kind of an earlier, earlier Trinitarian kind of thought leader

codified and Nicene would the, all the church of the newbie in the Ethiopian churches had, would they be under Nicaea and kind of quote unquote orthodoxy, but not Cal Sedonian. That's exactly right. Yeah. And so all of the, you know, because these churches are still alive and well today, the Ethiopian orthodox, Eretrie Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, the Syrian Orthodox, all of these communities. Well, not all of them. Unfortunately, some of these communities did die out. As I mentioned earlier, the Nubia was a Christian kingdom for a thousand years.

But the Nubian people are still around today in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. But they're not Christian anymore. There are no more Christians. And then also at least that trace their church back to that time period. And then also there was a thriving church church back to that time period. And then also there was a thriving church in China from the 600s. There was a missionary from Persia who came to China and brought the gospel, and the church thrived in China for several hundred years.

But it died out and it was persecuted. And so Christianity didn't come back to China until the arrival of Europeans. So there are a couple of examples of extinct churches. But for the most part, most of these Christians still are around today in Armenia. Armenia is still a Christian nation, like 100%. And it has been since the 300s. And it was a Christian kingdom before Constantine, actually. The king of Armenia embraced Christianity before, a decade before Constantine allegedly did. And Ethiopia is still a predominant Christian nation. Egypt, the Christian community is smaller than it used to be, but it's still the competent churches thriving. And so, and

all of these churches still embrace Nicaea, they still embrace the doctrine of the Trinity. And again, even the issue of Chalcedon was, you know, everybody involved in that debate was an Orthodox Christian. They just had different ways and different words and concepts for how to articulate the humanity of Jesus. And so even, you know, and see, this is my problem, because a lot of evangelical or Protestant or Western church history textbooks will often leave out these histories out of their textbooks. You won't read, you won't hear about a lot of these people and names in most church history textbooks.

Now, that's starting to change a little bit, and there's some modern church history textbooks that are doing that, but it's still very little. And the majority will still dismiss these Christians and say, well, there was these heretics called Monophysites. Now, first of all, Monophysite, it means one nature, and that's a pejorative term. That's not a term that they used to call themselves.

So that's already being offensive to call them that. But also they will tell the history of these Christians through the lens of their Western opponents back from the fifth century. So they will say what the Romans were saying about them at that time, which is that you all don't really believe Jesus was actually human. You only think he was divine.

Because they were saying, the Armenian church, Ethiopian, Syrian, Egyptian, all of them were saying, no, Jesus does not have two natures, Jesus has one nature. And then the dominant church of Roman Constantinople said, oh, well, when you say he only has one nature, you must mean that his nature is only divine and he's not really a human. And you guys are like dosages,

like you think he just appeared human but he wasn't really human that's not what they said though at no point did they say that but all of these christians from the beginning said no we believe in the trinity father son holy spirit and we affirm nicaea and we fully believe that jesus is fully god and fully human that was not that was never what people were debating nobody was debating if jesus is fully god and fully human in one in one savior but what people were debating. Nobody was debating if Jesus is fully God and fully human in one savior. But what they were debating was,

can we speak of him as having two natures? That was the problem that they said, because to them, that seemed like they were saying, there's two different Jesuses. And again, that's not what they were saying. That's not what Leo and subsequent Calzone Christians were saying, but that's how people took it in these communities.

And so they said, no, Jesus has one nature, but they said, one nature is fully God and fully human and so neither side is heretical But they both saw each other's heretical but the Roman Church had the power So they had the ability to enforce their doctrine and impose it and ostracize these Christians And then when Islam rose in this part of the world that just was the final nail in the coffin and that really Limited these Christians from being able to spread Christianity as they may have would have. But that didn't stop it. And we can talk about that maybe later, but Christianity still actually spread in further regions of Asia and Africa, even despite

the fact that the Roman church really largely oppressed the churches of Africa and Asia for many centuries. The, the, the kinds of churches, Nubian, Coptic, Ethiopian that were labeled non, let's just say non-Calcidian. Are you saying they, they didn't, they, they embraced both the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus. That was not the issue. It was the categories that the Western church used to explain that tension that they just didn't resonate with, but they never, they embrace the full divinity, humanity, Jesus. Like that's not the debate. That's exactly right. That the, the Christians and we, you know, many of them will call themselves me after sites as in one nature, but the Christians of Armenia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nubia,

they all fully embrace the full humanity and full divinity of Jesus. One of the first Christians to respond to Chalcedon was actually the Pope of Egypt. His name was Timothy Elorist, and he wrote a long treatise called Against Chalcedon. And in that treatise, he goes point by point against Leo's tone, In that treatise, he goes point by point against Leo's tome, Leo of Rome, his tome or his argument. And in it, you can see clearly that he never denied any fully affirmed that Jesus is fully God and fully human. But again, Timothy Elarus is not a name that shows up in most Western church history textbooks.

And so it's really irresponsible for so many Western Christians to dismiss these Christians as heretical when we've never actually even read their writings and their doctrine in their own words. And a lot of that is because they wrote those in languages like Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Ge'ez, and those are languages that most historians are not familiar with. And I think going back to your former question, I think that there's no other way to say it than another reason for that is Eurocentrism and racism and white supremacy.

That historians have always been more interested in European history, in Western history, in Western languages like Greek and Latin and later European languages, but people are just not as interested in ancient African or Near Eastern history. And so that's why most historians don't even know how to read the theology that was written in many of these other languages and haven't directly...

I mean, right now, I'm in the middle of translating the first documented Ethiopian author in human history, right? Which is another way of saying the first sub-Saharan African author, because even before Nubia there was an identified author, or even before Timbuktu or the Mali Empire or other parts of Africa, Ethiopia produced the first documented named author, and his name was Giorgis of Sagla, who lived in the early 1400s and wrote a 700 plus page treatise, and I'm translating it for the first time ever into English. It's not available in English.

And this is crazy. This is insane. Like this person's name should be known and their text should be available, but it's not. And there's an Italian translation, but I'm making the first English one. And it's just imagine if like nobody could read Calvin's Institutes or Luther's 95 Theses or Augustine's, I mean Aquinas' Summa, right? Nobody could read a Calvin's institutes or Luther's 95 feces or, you know, or Augustine's, I mean, Aquinas is summa, right? Like those things are, you can find those on your phone right now, like in reading them in English. But, but again, you know, so much of these

texts are not available, but you know, again, that's slowly starting to change a little bit, but, but yeah, Speaker 0.(1h 10m 48s): So, okay. So the, the, so you have different strand, you know, Christianity gets deeper into Africa. You said the Nubian church thousand years, and then it kind of died out. What caused the dying out? Was it just ongoing persecution until there's no more Nubian Christians left? Is that, yeah, that's a great question. I, I go into that a little bit in my, in Multitwalled Peoples, and I would say, it wasn't like one event, it wasn't persecution, because Nubia was ruled by Christian kings from the 500s

up until around the 1100s, and in the 1100s, that was actually a time when there was conflict between Christians and Muslims. In fact, interesting little kind of, I guess, factoid is the Muslims, the followers of Muhammad, when they conquered much of the ancient world in the six hundreds after the death of Muhammad, the only place in the seventh century that Muslims tried to conquer and failed was actually Nubia. The invading Arab Muslim armies came in and they conquered Egypt, they conquered North Africa, destroyed Carthage, and they came and tried to invade Nubian, failed actually.

And the Nubians defeated them. And so again, this is Nubian Christians fighting against Arab Muslims invading in Africa, and the Nubians won, and they created a peace treaty. And that peace treaty lasted for, I think, over 700 years, and it's actually the longest recognized peace treaty in human history. But because Nubia is right across the Red Sea, many Arabs were migrating over into Nubia over the centuries.

In fact, even the peace treaty they made stipulated that Muslims and mosques in Nubia would be protected. And the sad reality actually was that part of it also was that Nubia would send slaves to Egypt, to the Muslim rulers of Egypt. So this was actually the beginning of sub-Saharan African slavery en masse. And that began the trans-Saharan slave trade, which lasted much longer than the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Trans-Atlantic slave trade started

in the 15th century, but trans-Saharan slave trade, and then later spread along the Swahili coast in modern Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi. That actually resulted in the transporting of African people into India and China and Middle East. And that actually is another thing we don't talk about, but in Arabia as well, it lasted for even earlier. But unfortunately, the sad truth is that that actually started with Nubian Christians truth is that that actually started with Nubian Christians in participating in slavery with Muslim rulers of Egypt. But yeah, anyway, as I mentioned, Arabs were moving over into Nubia for hundreds of years and even intermarrying with Nubians. And so that was... And then so you had, really through intermarriage, you had a gradual increase of Islamic population in Nubia. And then it got to the point where,

when, you know, there was even a point in the 12th century where you had the first Muslim ruler in Nubia. And then Christian, and then also as Christians in Egypt, were beginning to decline in prominence and in population, because the Nubian church was under the Egyptian church, theologically and ecumenically. So they relied on Egypt to get their bishops and to have ordinations and all of that. But as the Egyptian church was becoming more and more persecuted, especially as a result of the crusade

that Western Europeans were fighting, that, and again, remember, we talked about how the Christians of Egypt and Nubia were not cool with the Christians of Europe, the Chalcedonian Christians. And yet, nonetheless, the Muslim crusaders who were fighting the crusaders, they associated their own Christians in Egypt, their Christian subjects with these Western crusaders. And the Egyptian Christians, the Copts, they're like, no, we don't have anything to do with that. We're not even the same kind of Christians as them. But they were still persecuted because of the Crusades in the 11th and 12th century. So that greatly diminished the ability of the Egyptian church

to communicate with the Nubian church. And so it just was a steady decline. And then by about the 14th century, that was the last time that there was a Nubian Christian king, and there was no more correspondence with Egypt. And then it just gradually became Islamic. And I think the last mention of a newbie in Christians was around the late 15th century. And then it just eventually died out. Unfortunately. Wow. I was actually going back to your point about the slave trade. I was in Zanzibar in Tanzania a few years ago and Zanzibar was a major like a port city. I think it was a stone city. What's it called? The major city in Zanzibar. And yeah, I learned, I had no clue about this, but that was a major

trade route where slaves were shipped up to, up the coast and then to India. And yeah, that's a whole part of the world. It's just, it's like so much going on that I just have no clue about the history. It's fascinating. So the, the Coptic church though, that's been in existence since the beginning. Right? Is that, is that had an uninterrupted history? And he said it's still very much, I mean, still a minority religion in Egypt, but it's decent size. Right? Oh, absolutely. In fact, I've heard that the Coptic Orthodox Church is actually the largest Christian denomination

of any branch of Christianity, Catholic Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal. It's the largest Christian community in the Muslim world. And so yeah, it's still very much thriving. And their tradition is that the Apostle Mark came to Egypt and grew the church and passed on the church. He was the first Pope. In fact, the word Pope was first used in Egypt in reference to the Patriarch of Alexandria. And they hold that Mark was the first Patriarch. And even to today, there's been an uninterrupted line of Patriarchs, and

even to today's current Pope Tawadris. And so the church continued to grow., there's been an uninterrupted line of patriarchs, and even to today's current Pope Tawadris. And so there, and the church continued to grow. And you know, there's people debate whether or not Mark actually went to Egypt. But one thing that's clear is that Christians were in Egypt from the very beginning of the church. I mean, you know, we see the Bible mentions Egyptians at Pentecost. And then, you know, the first, actually the oldest Bible fragment, a piece of the Gospel of John was from Egypt.

And the first seminary that was known, it came out of Egypt, Clement of Alexandria origin. And so there was a strong Christian tradition. And as you mentioned, you know, the Christians became the majority in Egypt. And then even when the Muslims conquered at first in the seventh century, Christians were still the numerical majority. And actually, Christians and Muslims got along pretty well from the seventh up until about the tenth century. Again, as I mentioned, the Crusades really largely messed that up for Christians in Egypt. And then you started to have persecution of Christians by Muslims. In fact, the last known

text, Coptic text, was actually a martyrdom story about a person named John of Fahni-Jewate who was martyred by the Islamic rulers in the 13th century because of his refusal to convert to Islam. And so you started to have, that was the period where Coptic as a language really died out and Arabic rose. So even today, most Coptic Christians speak Arabic and they don't speak Coptic. It's a dead language in that sense of being a living language, unfortunately. But one thing I think is really cool is that even today, the Coptic Christians, which are somewhere around 15% of the Egyptian population, and there's a large community in the diaspora, especially in the US and Southern

California and New Jersey and also in Australia and other places. But yeah, that community still uses the Coptic language in their liturgy, which I think is really cool. That if you go in any Coptic church, you'll see Coptic icons with the writing in it, and they'll sing liturgy and use it, read the scriptures in the Coptic language. And I just think that's really cool

because the Coptic language is the last phase of the Egyptian language, which is like, one of Earth's oldest languages, right? Like one of the oldest languages in the world. And you can still hear it being uttered and you can still see it being written in its final phase. And I just think it's really cool to think about the fact that the only people who are keeping one of Earth's oldest languages alive, Egyptian, are Christians, right?

It's actually Coptic Christians who are still, you know, the cultivators. And I just think going back to the earlier thing about people seeing Christianity as a white man's religion or as a Western religion or as a threat to African identity, I think it's really cool to think about the fact that Africa's oldest language is actually still being preserved today by Christians. Christians are the only ones doing it. And that are at least the ones that are the ones that are doing it at the highest level. And so is it, isn't Coptic similar to Syriac and Syriac is akin to Aramaic, right? Which is a cousin to Hebrew or what's the relationship between those? I'm reaching back like 20 years in my early PhD days when I took a class on Arabic and

they explained it all, but no, no, they're not really at all. In fact, that's, that's probably why my, my department that you mentioned, I got my degree from is called the department of submitting and Egyptian languages, you know, because actually the copy was the, was the only one that we really focused on. I think now they've added Armenian as well, which is also not a Semitic language, but most of the languages that we focused on in our department were Semitic. You know, even Ge'ez, which is the classical language of Ethiopia, is actually a Semitic language. As you mentioned, Syriac is also a Semitic language. It's a dialect of Aramaic,

Syriac is also a Semitic language. It's a dialect of Aramaic, and that was spoken around an area named Asrahini, and the capital city was Edessa. But the cool thing about Syriac is that that language can really rightly be considered as the foundational language of the Asian church. And we can literally use that word Asian in all the encompassing way, because that church, that language and theological tradition started in what's now Northern Syria and Southeastern Turkey, Western Asia, but it literally spread all over the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. It was the language, East Syria was the language

of the Persian Church of the Persian Empire, which is modern Iran and Afghanistan. And then from there, missionaries, as I said earlier, went along the Silk Road in modern Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and then all the way to China and all the way down in India. And they were still using Syriac, even in all these different languages and cultures that the church was spreading, they were still using Syriac. And there's even interesting evidence that that church spread into southeastern Asia before the arrival of Europeans, that the first Europeans that came and traveled to southeastern Asia

Thailand and Indonesia and Singapore actually said that there were Christians, Syriac speaking Christians in those places that were connected to the Persian church long before Europeans got there. But yeah, so Syriac is a really important language for church history. Yeah, it's a Semitic language, so yeah, there's no relationship to Egyptian. Coptic is the last phase of the Egyptian language. So it went from hieroglyphics to hieratic to Demotic, and then Coptic was the final phase, and that was when it was the Egyptian language, but being written with Greek letters. Mostly Greek letters,

but there actually were a few Egyptian letters that were retained because they made sounds that the Greek alphabet couldn't make. And that was the final phase from around the first century up until the 13th century that the Egyptian language's final phase was that 1,300 years when it was known as Coptic, which is just another word for Egyptian, right? Like Iguptos comes into Coptic. And that's one of those what they would call the Nilo-Saharan language, which is just another word for Egyptian, right? Like, Iguptos comes into Coptic. And that's one of those, what they would call the Nilo-Saharan language, which the linguists kind of use that term. But yeah.

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Talk to us about the tenets of the Coptic Christian Church. If I, if I went and I, I've been to Egypt just once long time ago. And I remember, and at that time I was like, what? 21 years old. I remember being shocked meeting somebody who was Coptic Christian. Like, wait, I thought you're all Muslim down here. You know, so ignorant, you know? But I never actually got to go to a Coptic church. I was only there for a week. What would be, other than them not being Cal Sedonian in their particular expression of the divinity humanity of Jesus, like what would be some of their features that would be maybe most different from a more Western form of Christianity?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I would say in many ways, as you mentioned, like the Chalcedonian issue, that's really the only doctrinal issue between the Coptic Church and other, you know, and these other churches. In fact, all these communities we're talking about that go back to antiquity, the Ethiopian, Armenian, Eritrean, Egyptian Coptic Church, even the Indian Orthodox communities today that are still around. The main issue is Chalcedon. Other than that, they're on the same page with the rest of the Christian world, and especially with the rest of the Eastern Orthodox world. So that community of churches that I mentioned,

they're often called today Oriental Orthodox, or the Miaphysite churches, and they're all, the main thing that differentiates Oriental, so-called Oriental Orthodox, from Eastern Orthodox is the Chalcedonian issue. That's really the only issue. Other than that, they're actually very similar to Greek Orthodox from Eastern Orthodox is the Chalcedonian issue. That's really the only issue. Other than that, they're actually very similar to Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox. But as you mentioned, they all still have cultural differences. And so Egyptian Christianity, for example,

is very similar, not entirely even in terms of liturgy. But there's differences. As I said, you'll see the Coptic language on the walls everywhere. And you'll see Egyptian saints who are being celebrated that might not show up, you know, in a Greek Orthodox or in a Russian Orthodox, and again, certainly not using the Coptic language in other Orthodox churches. And I would say probably one of the, you know, I mean, this is something that's in all Orthodox and Catholic Christian communities, and even Protestants, I would argue, try to do their own version of this. But monasticism, Christian monasticism is something that is huge in Coptic Christianity because they are really seen as the inventors of it, which isn't really true because there were Christian monks in Syria and in the Near East and in the Levant

even before. But we think of people like Anthony the Great and Pecomius and the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers and Macarius and many of these people, they were certainly more famous. And even the monasticism that grew in Europe, in Western Europe, like in Ireland and you think of St. Patrick in Scotland and France and Central Europe and Germania, they actually imitated the monastic practices of Egypt and in their formulation. And so monasticism is still in the Coptic Church a very huge part of Christian identity. And I would also say that even the theology of persecution and the theme of persecution and martyrdom is really big in Coptic Christianity that is very different, right? Because in the history

of the West, you know, Western superpowers have always likened themselves as these Christian kingdoms or Christian nations and that, you know, have Christianity largely influencing them. So in that world, in that framework, Christianity is the religion of the winners, right? And it's the religion that is in line and lead with the state, with the presidents or with the empires or whatever. But, you know, Coptic Christians have always been in a situation of persecution, always, from the very beginning, because, you know, under the Roman Empire, they were persecuted and martyred

and produced some of the early Christian martyrs. And then they were persecuted by Roman Christians because of the Chalcedonian issue. And then they were persecuted by Muslims and have been ever since the 600s and even still are to this day. Even just a few years ago, there was a group of Coptic Christians in Libya

who were assassinated, who were killed on a beach and were beheaded. And they are, you will find in many Coptic Christians icons of those Christians who were just killed like a few years ago for their faith next to Christians who were killed for the faith like 1500 years ago or almost 2000 years ago. And so there's this continuing theme of persecution

and it engenders in the Coptic Church, I think a boldness for the gospel. It's a very common, but it's just maybe a smaller kind of example, but it speaks to a deeper issue is that in Egypt today, where Christians are still marginalized in many ways, it's very common to have Coptic Christians will tattoo the cross on their wrist.

And that's just another way of their boldness for the faith. And oftentimes those Coptic crosses will have the Coptic language written around the cross. And that's just a way of boldly declaring their faith in a context in an environment where their faith and their identity is often You know is threatened and so I think that's that's another I think unique and really I think all really also the aspect of the Christian culture I like that would that be cultural appropriation if I got one of those

Coptic crosses on my on my on my wrist Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I will say, uh, my, my family and I, we just took a trip up to new Hampshire, uh, and actually really enjoyed it. Um, but it was really weird. I kept seeing all these like people in new Hampshire, these white people with, with, with locks. Uh, and I was kind of like, Hmm, that's kind of weird. Uh, but like, yes, I don't know if it'd be, I don't know if it'd be something like that, but maybe we should ask what's the difference between the two. I mean, I think it's, I think it's a little don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I

don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I saw the cross. I'm like, wait, cross, you know? And I, you know, had a brief dialogue with them, but yeah, it was, it was that cross on the wrist that showed he was Coptic. What about the ecclesiological structure? Is there like a central authority? Is there a role of Mary? Like, is there anything like within our more familiar, you know, Roman Catholic Eastern Orthodox ecclesiological structures that are similar in the Coptic church?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that in that, you know, in that area, there's a lot more similarities because, you know, mentioned role of Mary, I mean, Mary is venerated in a way that's very similar to, you know, Eastern Orthodox and even Roman Catholics in the Coptic and in many other, you know, again, so-called Oriental Orthodox churches. Roman Catholics in the Coptic and in many other, again, so-called Oriental Orthodox churches. In Ethiopia in particular, Mary has a very high... I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say because I think Catholic Orthodox, they all have a very high view of Mary, but Ethiopia Orthodox in particular, especially under the reforms

of King Zarayako in the 15th century, where he actually had a, he wrote a whole series of texts that are called Dersan, which is actually a unique genre of literature to Ethiopia about Mary and in honor of Mary and just the veneration of Mary. Interesting little fact also is that even before the Protestant Reformation in Europe took place, there was actually a reform movement in Ethiopia

that took place a century before Martin Luther. And it was started by an Ethiopian monk named Estiphanos, which is just kind of another version of Stephen. And he actually was protesting many of the same things that Martin Luther protested, like the state or the empire involving itself in ordinations and placing scripture as a higher authority than church teaching, church hierarchy. And, but also one of the things that he protested was the veneration of Mary that King Zarayako

was strongly promoting in Ethiopia during that time. And in fact, one of the first painters, one of the, I think probably the first documented or named artists in the history of sub-Saharan Africa was in Ethiopia at this time. His name was Frey Sion and he painted many really beautiful paintings of Mary and Mary was huge. And he would make these similar,

and other artists in Ethiopia imitated his style of these Marian icons and they were, Mary was very central in that. But across the tradition as well. But Stephen was actually resisted praying or bowing to icons of Mary during that time in the 15th century before Luther in the 16th century. So, yeah, the veneration of Mary is very, very big. And in Ethiopian theology, Mary's womb being the bearer of Christ

and the salvation of the world is, is like, you know, theologically and typologically associated with like the Ark of the Covenant of the world is like, you know, theologically and typologically associated with like the Ark of the Covenant, which is seen as, you know, is believed to be held in Ethiopia. And just like the Ark is the holder of the law, which, you know, Moses gave forth to the Israelites, that Mary's womb is the producer and the keeper of Christ, who is the fulfillment of the law. And so even in every church which celebrates Jesus, there's always a Holy of Holies and a replica of the Ark. And so even in every church which celebrates Jesus, there's always a holy of holies and a replica of the art. And so a lot of that is associated with Mary as the church, the art, Mary's womb and the church and the Ark of the Covenant are all kind of seen as mirror images of each other. And so yeah, Mary is a high role. And then

similarly to Catholic church, there's a line of, you know, you mentioned like church authority, there's a idea of apostolic succession. So the idea is that Peter is the throne of Peter is in Rome. And so, you know, there's the papal succession. And then same way, the Coptic Church goes back to Mark and the Ethiopian Church, also an Eritrean, consider themselves under Mark as well under the Coptic Church. And then, you know, the Church of India sees Thomas as their apostolic throne and the Syrian Orthodox Church sees Vadius as the apostle who brought the gospel there as well. So there's a similar structure of having a...

Now in most of these communities, they instead of using the word Pope, they usually will use the word Patriarch, and who's the head of the church under which there's bishops and cardinals and priests that are ordained in a similar way as Catholics. And in the Church of the East, which was the dominant church in the Persian empire, that later spread all throughout Asia, as I mentioned earlier, they call their head of their church, the Catholicos, but it functions in similar ways as like a patriarch, which is also a Greek Orthodox, usually refer to their head and then, or as a Pope in the Western tradition.

What about the Canon? Do they follow a Western Eastern or a different kind of Canon? What books do they have in their Bible? Is it similar to the Protestant church or Catholic church or something different? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. You, uh, in many of these church traditions, uh, they would be more similar to Catholic in the sense of including, uh, the Deutero Canon in their, uh, in their, in their Canon and in their, you canon and it's in their church canons and liturgies and is seen as authoritative, whereas in most Protestant circles, those books are usually not included, the Deutero canon. But for the most part, Syrian Coptic, other Orthodox views, their canon is

going to be similar to Roman Catholic. But the Ethiopian church actually has even more books. It actually has the largest canon in the history, in the entire Christian world, because they, I think, have 81, I think, I think it's 81 books in their canon. And it includes not only the Dudo canon, but it even includes a few books that only survive in the Giz language,

which Giz is the classical language of Ethiopia. It's not spoken anymore today, but the modern languages of Ethiopia descend from that language. Many of them do, and their alphabet that's used today comes from that alphabet. And those books like Book of Jubilees or the Book of Enoch, those only survive actually, even though they were likely written in Hebrew, they only survive in the G his language. And so the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Eritrean Orthodox Church embrace those in part of their canon. And so that's a unique example as well. And the Book of Enoch first talks a lot about like the Watchers and kind of those, the Nephilim and the mentioned in Genesis and these different categories and classes of angels.

And so because of that, you'll see them in church icons and they feature a lot more prominently in the theology and worship and literature of the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches. That's fact. So my degree was largely in early Judaism. And so yeah, very familiar with those texts. And I remember when I did research on them, a lot of the original that's been preserved are like Ethiopic and Coptic and all these Syriac. And I'm like, holy, like I can't learn all these languages. So I was relying on English translations, but so, so one Enoch is canonical in the Coptic Coptic church. Is that in the, in the Ethiopian church and the end he retreat in the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches. It

is Ethiopian. Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. Oh man. Vince, I've taken, I know you got a meeting and I've already made you late for every time to squeeze in this. It was hard to schedule this. And we had to squeeze in some time, but man, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for the whirlwind tour of a branch of Christianity that to my shame and to the shame of, I know a lot of people listening, we're just either completely unaware of, or just, you know, largely unaware of. So thanks so much, man, for the history lesson. This has been super, super helpful. I'm working. People find your work. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, this, it was a pleasure.

And thank you. I'd love to be back again. Yeah, I would say, you know, I have a few books out and, you know, folks are interested. They can check that out, Multitude of All Peoples with University Press and then also I have a book with the University of California Press, Those for Whom the Lamp Shines, which really just focuses on Egypt.

And then also, you know, done a lot of work as well in the area of, you know, of of African American theology with Urban Ministries International. So a book called Gospel Heimanote. And then also we have a Heimanote Journal. And then also you can just check out things I'm doing with the Meacham School of Heimanote, H-A-Y-M-A-N-O-T, which is a word for theology. And yeah, the Meacham School of Heimando, M-E-A-C-H-U-M, you know, Meacham.org. You can find out stuff we're doing. And we have a theology conference coming up in the fall

that we'd love to see, you know, have people out at. And we'll get into a lot of this history, as well as just other, you know, other matters of biblical theological research for scholars of African descent, but all are welcome and to be part of it. And so yeah, that's a, you know, checking out the website and just, that's a good way to see, you know,

some of the stuff I'm up to. But then I also have videos on YouTube and that people put up and then also, you know, I'm on Facebook and I'm on Twitter and Instagram, but I'm old, so I just look at Facebook. My kids sell me Facebook for old people. So I'm living into that stereotype. Thanks a lot, Vance. Really appreciate the conversation, man. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.