Reviews

The Church of the East by John Holzmann, John Stewart

vhp's review

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2.0

Each chapter covers the Catholic church missionary work and persecution in different areas of the east.

The version I have was edited by John Holzmann and the entire book, read as a whole, doesn't flow well. Each chapter starts from the beginning of time for that area and so you may read about 655 AD in numerous chapters. I see why he did it this way, but a timeline would have been helpful, even beneficial.

Some chapters were far more interesting to me than others, such as chapters 9 and 10 regarding Buddhism and Mongols, respectively.

I'm not Catholic and so a lot of their church history is unfamiliar to me. I did however enjoy the appendices more than the actual book. I still wouldn't recommend the book though, unless you're Catholic and have a yearning to learn about Nastorius; the missionary and persecutions.

There were two errors that bothered me about the book. pg 84 and the mention of muslims (AD 522) before muhammad was born and pg. 89 I Corinthians1:18 seems to be loosely translated, because I couldn't find any version online worded the way it was online, and the so called devil is in the details and how it was worded makes a big difference.
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