ABSTRACT
The Assyrian Church of the East, though one of the oldest and most globally expansive of the Oriental Christian churches, may now be the smallest. Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History made no references to the Christian church beyond the pale of Roman territory and until recent years the Church of the East has been left off the map of mainline histories of Christianity (Jenkins 2008). Linked erroneously with Nestorius, the controversial central character for both councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), the Church of the East has long been labeled as the heterodox, if not heretical, “Nestorian Church” despite the reality that it never had much to do with Nestorius in the first place – “a lamentable misnomer,” as Sebastian Brock (1996) describes its historical legacy.
