This weeks readings discuss Jewish activity along the silk roads. In the short article Jews on the Silk Roads by Lena Cansdale, it is stated that the first discovery of archaeological evidence of Jewish presence was made in 1896 by Solomon Schechter, it was a collection of letters. In 1902 by Sir Aurel Stein at Dandan Uiliq. A Judeo Persian letter written in Hebrew characters but in the Persian language was found. It has come to attention that the letter was possibly written by a Jewish merchant from Tabaristan and dated by two different scholars to be from the very beginning of the 8^th century or to the end of the 8^th century. Another noted discovery was made by Paul Pelliot in 1908, at Tun-huang in the hidden library; there he discovered a copy of a prayer text that was written in Hebrew square letters. Other then letters the article states that the most convincing evidence of a Jewish settlement along the Silk Road is the discovery of tombstones and memorial tablets at Ghur which are dated to be from the 11^th to 13^th centuries. Documentation of their participation in the trades along the Silk Road was also found, for example in Marco Polo’s writings.

The article neatly presents the evidence of Jewish presence along the Silk Road, what can we gather from this to provide new questions and material on our study of religions along the Silk Roads? The obvious questions to think about are how the Jewish travelers assimilated and or co-habitated with the earlier or simultaneous travelers in the region. Did new religions or ‘cults’ arise? Do the descendants still have a strong connection to Israel? Or have they assimilated in similar ways as the Hui which we discussed in our last class?

Mani originates from a Jewish-Christian Baptist group, he then left and intended to create, a new universal religion, and not gather a select group of individuals that would be deemed ‘worthy’, or as ‘the chosen people’. In one of our readings it states that “his teachings have nothing esoteric about it, not to penetrate the secret aspects of a given revelation but to supply a new revelation himself, a new body of scripture and lay the foundation for a new church that was meant to supersede any existing one.” With this as his ideal he set up a church, which has been commented on to be based on the model of the Catholic Church. And it rivalled the Christian church first in the West and then in the East, even thought it was expelled from the Roman Empire by the sixth century, it continued to thrive in the East, apparently notably in china for another thousand years. This provides important information about the diversity of Christianity that thrived in the East. In another part of our reading it was stated that Mani deliberately fussed Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian elements with his own teaching, so that he could declare himself as the fourth prophet. Some texts that were found in Tun huang on the surface look Buddhist but instead the Buddhist terms used were in fact new labels for Manichaean concepts. Although it seems like a syncretic religion, of those that I previously listed, Manichaeanism believes in the second coming of Christ and which Jonas deems it as the most important product of Gnosticism.

So is it really a syncretic religion? In answering the group topic question, does the term 'syncretic' help us or hurt us I'm... not sure, I think it does a bit of both but most it confuses me because it is a difficult question and line to divide.

(From Wikipedia, no copy right intended)