Posted on 11/15/2025 9:36:15 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Jesus, of course, was born and raised in Palestine. Like his apostles and earliest disciples, he was a Middle Eastern Jew. Christianity emerged from a Hebrew matrix, drawing on stories of prophets and patriarchs firmly set in the Middle East.
All Christians know this, as does anybody even slightly acquainted with the Christian story.
Yet we sometimes fail to understand the historical implications of Christianity’s Middle Eastern origins.
An Egyptian friend relates an anecdote that illustrates our point. He once surprised a European visitor to his country by identifying himself as a Christian. “Who converted your family?” the European tourist asked. “Was it the British, or the French?”
“It was St. Mark,” he replied. “Who converted your family?”
Our European ancestors waited centuries, sometimes even a full millennium, to hear the message of Christianity. But Mark the Evangelist brought Christianity to Alexandria by about A.D. 49 — in other words, within two decades of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ — and his message took root among the huge Jewish community there and soon spread beyond it.
Saul, or Paul, grew up in Tarsus, in modern south-central Turkey, and eventually made Ephesus, nowadays a major tourist destination in western Turkey, his missionary headquarters for about three years. Later, Ephesus reputedly became the residence of the apostle John. Some traditions even say that John brought the Virgin Mary with him, in order to fulfill his pledge at the foot of the cross to care for the Savior’s mother. Eventually, John was exiled to Patmos, a small island just off the Turkish coast.
In the first centuries after the establishment of the Christian church, its most prominent leaders, saints and thinkers were overwhelmingly eastern, not western. Ignatius of Antioch served as a bishop in what is today Turkey…
(Excerpt) Read more at deseret.com ...
Where it originated is irrelevant to anything.
Matthew 28:19
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
Secondly: social Marxists want to dismiss Christianity as a dead white man’s religion. But…it’s not.
Of the roughly 318 delegates who participated in the first Nicene Council —which was convened by Constantine, the “Roman” emperor who had just announced his intention to found a new capital city that, today, lies in Turkey and bears the name “Istanbul” — only a small handful came from the Latin West. The vast majority of the attendees, including St. Nicholas, the original “Santa Claus,” represented northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and such distant places as Georgia, Armenia, Persia, even India. This was the famous council that, for most traditional Christians, defined the relationship of the Father and the Son (the fundamental issue of the Trinity), established a uniform procedure for setting the date of Easter, and promulgated some of the earliest canon law designed to regulate church government.
Christianity is sometimes dismissed as a Western faith, the religious legacy of dead, white, European males. Such dismissals are, to be charitable, historically uninformed.
Jesus, of course, was born and raised in Palestine …Lie. Jesus was born and raised in Judaea. There is no “Palestine”.
Fair. Judea.
It’s still the Middle East.
Nowhere does it say “universal” in the Bible.
And the fact that it originated in the Land of Israel is of utmost importance, since it highlights God’s promises being fulfilled to not just Israel but to all mankind.
"Christianity is sometimes dismissed as a Western faith, the religious legacy of dead, white, European males. Such dismissals are, to be charitable, historically uninformed."
Also, it's impossible to fully understand and appreciate the Sacred Scriptures without understanding the surrounding culture in which it was lived and written.
No. The term “Middle East” degrades it, as if all of what we call the “Middle East” were the Biblical Promised Land.
Not to mention, the person who coined the term, Alfred Thayer Mahan, was not referring to anywhere near the land of Israel but “the area between Arabia and India”.
In modern usage, this may be confusing. The (historic) Palestine of Christ's day was the entire REGION, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the modern "Palestine" we read about in the news, except insofar as the modern "Palestine" is a small part of the larger REGION of (historic) Palestine.
From Wikipedia, for example:
The region of Palestine, also known as historic Palestine or land of Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes the modern states of Israel and Palestine, and some definitions include parts of northwestern Jordan. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, and Judea.
Um. God saw it fit for the apostles to evangelize that exact geographical pocket you speak of before what is now called “the West” is the point.
And Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire.
WTF.
1 Cor 1:10-12. We were each baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; not of St. Mark, or Paul, or Pastor Fred.
Yes; this.
Olog, does that promise offend you? The (historic) Palestine of Christ's day was the entire REGION, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the modern "Palestine" we read about in the news
Yes understood. 🙏 But apparently even the term “Middle East” offends some people’s sensibilities. 🙄
Which is why this reminder is needed. 🙂
“Jesus, of course, was born and raised in Palestine”
Didn’t red another word after that nonsense
Either way, the terms are inapplicable, whether “Western” or “Middle Eastern” as if using one or the other is going to spark legitimacy in the eyes of the atheistic left or the Mohametans.
Yes but you wouldn’t know that if Middle Easterners weren’t doing so in the Jordan River first and Paul of TARSUS wrote that verse to the Corinthians.
The region was never “Palestine”. The pagan Romans imposed the name “Syria-Palaestina” after the 70 AD revolt, in an attempt to erase “Judaea” (Judah). The later Ottomans didn’t even use the “Palaestina” name, just calling the area “Southern Syria”, another misnomer.
The fastest growing Christian movement in the world right now is in Iran. Mostly young people.
Jesus was indeed born in Judea so please stop adapting current and inaccurate information, thus pushing the PLO/HAMAS agenda.
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