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Availability:
22 days left to watch (or download at BBC iPlayer).
Last broadcast on Sun, 8 Nov 2009, 19:00 on BBC Four (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
When he was a small boy, Diarmaid MacCulloch's parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life's work.
In the first of a six-part series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity's forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.
The headquarters of Christianity may well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then western Christianity would have been very different.
Photo: Diarmaid MacCulloch and the head of the Syriac Orthodox church
Searching for the origins of Christianity, Diamaid MacCulloch visits the head of the Syriac Orthodox church, His Holiness Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East.
Credits
- Presenter
- Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Director
- Gillian Bancroft
- Producer
- Gillian Bancroft
- Executive Producer
- Jean Claude Bragard
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