Much of my historical work in recent years has been concerned with the often forgotten realms of Christianity outside Europe, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. Christianity began in Palestine, but while it was spreading west into Europe, it also moved east and south, and remnants of that movement still exist today – very substantial traces, in the case of Egypt’s Coptic Church, or the mighty church of Ethiopia. The critical eastward expansion followed well-trodden routes, which we can understand if we observe three personal names and the places named after them. If we track the names Alexander, Seleucus, and Antiochus across the world map, we are effectively writing the early history of Christianity, not to mention Judaism and Islam.
Many educated people have a great interest in the ancient Greece of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and they trace that story up to the campaigns of Alexander the Great, who ruled from 336 to 323 BC. Thereafter, ancient history tends to glide over the intervening years until the Romans appear on the scene a couple of centuries later. Actually, a great deal happened in that missing period.
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