Historyof Christianity in the lands of My Toil

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HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE LANDS OF MY TOIL: PROF. M. M. NINAN Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastic History states that Saint Mark first came to Egypt between the first and third year of the reign of Emperor Claudius, which would make it sometime between AD 41 and 44. The traditional date is 42 AD which is within 10 years of the Pentecost and the great commission by Jesus to the Apostles. St. Mark healing Anianus the shoe maker. Saint Mark's first convert in Alexandria was Anianus, a shoemaker who later was consecrated a bishop and became the Patriarch of Alexandria after Saint Mark's martyrdom. He moved westward to Lybia, passing through the countries of Marmarcia, Pentapolis, and others adjacent, and established the churches there before returning to Alexandria some twenty years later. The Coptic Church developed separately from other Eastern Churches. A patriarch, referred to as the pope, heads the church, and is traditionally based in Alexandria. A synod or council of senior priests is responsible for electing or removing popes. This succession of Patriarchs has remained unbroken down to the present day, making the Egyptian Christian, or Coptic, Church one of the oldest Christian churches in existence. Evidence for this age comes in the form of the oldest Biblical papyri discovered in remote regions of Upper Egypt. These papyri are written in the Coptic script and are older than even the oldest Greek copies of the Bible ordered by Constantine in AD 312. The Egyptians before Christianity had always been a deeply religious people, and many readily embraced the young religion, having had their old beliefs effectively destroyed by the coming of the Roman Empire and the final dethroning of the god-king Pharaohs. Many of the concepts of Christianity were already familiar to the Egyptians from their ancient religion, such as the death and resurrection of a god, the idea of the judgement of souls and a paradisiacal afterlife for the faithful, and The ankh as the symbol of eternal life 30
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE LANDS OF MY TOIL: PROF. M. M. NINAN The ankh too, the Egyptian symbol for eternal life, is very similar to that of the cross revered by Christians (especially in the form of the Coptic cross, seen at right), itself also a symbol for eternal life.The Ankh was one of the earliest forms of the Christian cross called the "Crux Ansata" or 'cross with a handle'. It was adopted by early Coptic Christians." Furthermore, the belief that God had chosen Egypt as a safe place for His infant son to hide him from Herod was a great source of pride to the Egyptian Christians. It was through Christianity that the Egyptian culture survived the Roman Dominion. For a large variations in crosses see http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/crosses/coptic.html 31
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