Book of the Cave of Treasures

Audience

The Book of the Cave of Treasures was targeted at the Syriac-speaking peoples—Christian and non-Christian—living in Mesopotamia from the sixth century onward. The Near East in the first millennium was a region with a wide variety of competing religious worldviews. By presenting a unified narrative of Christian history, the text would have strengthened the case of Christians attempting to proselytize their non-Christian neighbors. Seen through the lens of the Book of the Cave of Treasures, the Christian faith was not new but rather was a belief system with roots stretching back to the dawn of time, making it equivalent, in terms of longevity, to other religious faiths prominent in the Near East at the time. For modern readers and students, the Book of the Cave of Treasures provides a valuable glimpse into a Christian world that has faded into the mists of time. While history books focus on the rise of Christianity in the West—centered on Rome and the expansion of the faith into Europe—this book and others from the Near East provide a broader perspective on the faith’s history in the first millennium.