ABSTRACT
The main centre of Christianity in Syria was Antioch on the Orontes, the former Seleucid capital, where the first Gentiles converted to the new belief. There the name Christians (christianoi)came into use for the first time, and from there the mission to the Gentiles started (Acts 11:19-26). Antioch, therefore, was the first place where the Christians (= 'Christus-people') stood out from Judaism as a distinct sect (Meeks and Wilken 1978: 13-36; Downey 1961: 272-8). We can assume that the new belief spread eastwards from Antioch along the main trade routes to northern Mesopotamia. So it came to Edessa, capital of the small kingdom of Osrhoene in northern Mesopotamia, through Cyrrhus, Doliche, Zeugma on the Euphrates, and Harran (Dillemann 1982: 147-55; Drijvers 1977: 864). From there the road, as part of the famous silk road, continued through Nisibis to Iran and northern India. Although the Euphrates was considered the frontier between the Roman Empire and first the Parthians and later the Sassanians, northern Mesopotamia like adjacent Armenia was usually under strong Roman influence, because it was of vital interest for every military expedition to the Persian area which always started from Antioch. Rome's power in the trans-Euphrates area was essential to the protection of the flanks of the Roman army, in particular when it retreated from Parthian territory. Many battles between Rome and Parthia were therefore fought in northern Mesopotamia beginning with the well-known and fatal battle of Carrhae-Harran in 53 BC (Oates 1968: 69; Drijvers 1977: 869-72). In other words, northern Mesopotamia and the little kingdom of Osrhoene with its capital Edessa were not isolated from the rest of Syria; there was on the contrary a continuous exchange of goods and ideas along the busy highroads from Antioch to the east and vice versa.
