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The First Nation To Officially Adopt Christianity
The legend of Edessa and the start of state sponsored Christianity
Rome was the first major empire to adopt Christianity as its primary religion but it was not the first. While Constantine gets the lion’s share of the credit for bringing Christianity from a pariah faith to global mainstay he was not the first king to do so. Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 CE which decriminalized Christianity in Rome. A decade later in 323 Christianity was raised as the official religion of the emperor and the state.
However, the earliest kingdom to adopt Christianity did so in 190 CE and there are myths that hint that the conversion could have been even earlier than that. A lot earlier in fact.
The tiny kingdom of Edessa is credited as the first Christian kingdom. There are some sources that link Edessa to the 72 apostles that Jesus sends out in the Bible and perhaps even to the 12 apostles themselves. But few people remember Edessa or the myths that surround the kingdom’s relationship with Jesus.
How did Edessa become the first Christian nation? Was the king of Edessa really converted by one of Jesus’s own apostles?
Where Was Edessa?
Edessa was a small kingdom occupying an area of land in what is now northern Syria and southern Turkey. The kingdom maintained its independence for a couple of centuries around the time of Jesus as the Kingdom of Osroene. Edessa was the capital of Osroene and many people simply referred to the land as Edessa.
Eventually, the Roman Empire, Edessa’s much larger neighbor, absorbed Osroene and made it an imperial province. However, before that happened Edessa was known as a center for early Christianity since the young religion was still banned in Rome proper.
Earliest Clear Evidence of Christianity in Edessa
Eusebius mentions a Christian council taking place in Edessa in 197 CE in his work Historia Ecclesiastical. For there to have been a council of…
