RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

Road to Emmaus Vol. V, No. 4 (#19)he was in central Asia, but they don’t speak of any adventures in thoseplaces, so this means that either the texts were destroyed or nothing of notehappened. Usually we only write down the difficult or the very miraculous,so if his visits were peaceful, perhaps the accounts didn’t survive.RTE: Is Sogdiana anywhere near the Chinese region where they recentlyfound first-century Christian inscriptions and tombs?GEORGE: No, those tombs are at the other end of China, but there was possiblya Chinese disciple of St. Thaddeus of the Seventy, whose name is St.Aggai in the Syriac tradition. This Aggai is said to have preached in Parthia,in Sogdiana, and in central Asia: Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iranand India. He found the tomb of St. Thomas in southern India, and aftervenerating the fragrant relics of St. Thomas, he died. His name in theChinese sources may have been Wang-Hai – the important thing here isthat according to the sources he was a silk producer and we know that noone could be a silk producer at that time unless he was Chinese. So, perhapsSt. Aggai was the first Chinese disciple of an apostle of Christ. These newlydiscoveredChristian tombs and monuments date from about 75 A.D., sothese really were apostolic times.There are also traditions from the Yellow Sea, near Shanghai, of St.Thomas having been in China. This is not physically impossible because thearea where modern-day Kazakhstan borders Mongolia and China was thecradle of the Huns, the eastern Scythians, and the Sacas. Gundophorus, theking of India who met St. Thomas, was a Sacan king, and the Sacan empirewas vast, stretching from Siberia to China and India. People knew theseroutes, they were well-traveled.The Proto-Bulgarians who followed the Huns even had a church dedicatedto St. Andrew, although after later invasions they had to be re-Christianized. Also we have the Hephtalit Huns, a barbaric Turcik tribe whowere the first Christian nation in central Asia (third-fourth century).It is very important to understand that there are three separate traditionsof St. Andrew’s missionary journeys to western China, eastern-central Asia,and Kalbin (Khalbinski Hrebet, a mountainous area on the borders of present-dayKazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia.) One of these traditions is fromKazakhstan, another is Syriac, and the third is from the Bulgars of theRussian steppes, who migrated through Greece and eventually settled inItaly, filling their villages with churches dedicated to St. Andrew.26Synaxis of All Saints of Karelia, St. Andrew in front.