Bishop Solomon: The Book of the Bee

Context

The Nestorian Church, also called the Church of the East, has its origins in the first century after the Crucifixion of Jesus. After the visitation of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’s apostles on Pentecost, several of the apostles, including Thomas, Bartholomew, and Andrew—along with perhaps many of the Persian Jews converted at the event—are believed to have spread the gospel not just to the Roman Empire but as far as the Persian Empire to the east and beyond to India and Central Asia.

Nestorius, a monk from Antioch, was elected patriarch of Constantinople in 428. Nestorius’s beliefs were influenced by previous fathers of Antiochene theology, who believed that Christ had two natures, human and divine, and that human nature was the subject of Jesus’s suffering on earth, thus keeping the divine nature (Logos) from being diminished. Thus, Jesus, perfect and complete as human, is consubstantial with God, perfect and complete in divinity; the two are united as one person. Accordingly, the Nestorian formula for the nature of Christ held that there are two real natures united in a single person without confusion or change. In the ensuing theological and political rivalries of the time, Nestorius’s beliefs were deemed heretical, and he was exiled to Egypt. The Church of the East, however, eventually adopted his theology, setting it at odds with the Catholic Church in Rome.

The Nestorian Church, with its home originally in Syria, used the Syriac language—the Christian name for Aramaic—throughout its history. Unlike the Catholic Church in Rome, it was never to become the state religion of any particular empire. Under a variety of rulers to include Persians (who favored Zoroastrianism) and Muslims, the Nestorian Church, while usually occupying a respected position because of its learning and tax revenues, was often viewed with suspicion, particularly after Rome adopted Christianity as its state religion. This resulted in periods of persecution, sometimes entailing hundreds of thousands of deaths. In India, where the apostle Thomas established churches in both the northern and southern parts of the subcontinent, Christianity became a permanent, though minority, feature of the overwhelmingly Hindu urban areas. In the millennium after the fall of Rome in the West, the Nestorian missionary effort would take the church south to the Arabian Peninsula and east to China, where thriving Nestorian communities remained well into the thirteenth century.

For much of its history, the Nestorian Church was more highly organized and had a much greater membership than either the Roman or Greek Orthodox churches of the West. The Nestorian Church was noted for its theological and medicinal studies. Nestorians worked with Muslim scholars to translate Greek and Roman learning into Arabic and were often found in positions of power, including as court officials and physicians to the caliphs. The church spread farther eastward through the efforts of monks, traders, and artisans, and monasteries were established in episcopal sees along with schools, libraries, and hospitals.

With the Mongol conquest of the Islamic Persian Empire in the thirteenth century, the Church of the East found itself in a favorable situation. The Nestorians flourished among the religiously tolerant Mongols, whose empire reached from China to Persia. During the Mongols’ reign, as with the caliphs, Nestorians found themselves installed in positions of administration and as physicians to the various khans. At perhaps its height in the late thirteenth century, the Church of the East boasted metropolitan sees throughout Asia, including the Middle East, India, Turkestan, and China, and had churches as far away as Siberia and possibly Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. It was around this time that Bishop Solomon wrote The Book of the Bee.