ABSTRACT
The spiritual roots of the Christian Tradition reach deeply into the life of a first-century Galilean named Jesus. In the East, the oriental streams of Christianity formed much differently. They continued to carry many of the elements of the Jewish Torah-observant world of early Christianity, even to non-Jewish Aramaic speakers. To many in the East the Christian mission was thought of as the "Religion of Light" since its focus was upon inner revelation, realization, and enlightenment. The Oriental streams of Christianity are perfectly aligned to the topography, not as an abstraction or set of dogmatic beliefs, but as a specific region or realm composed of non-local and non-temporal coordinates stretching between Ultimate Reality and temporality. Clues to the visionary topography are found in a careful examination of the various forms of traditional wisdom that come from the ancient Middle East.
