Rating: 
Summary: Great service but flawed introduction
Review: This volume provides a much needed service - source material on early Chinese Christianity. The translations are supported by history of the discovery of the texts, the identification of a site of an early Christian community ... This material has previously been available only in obscure academic sources or more popular literature's hints that such material exist.This volume is written to appeal to the more general reader and, unfortunately, to readers with a "new age" bent. Palmer attempts to build parallels between "Celtic Christianity" and the "Church of the East". His "Church of the East" is an amalgam of the Nestorians, the Syriac rite Churches (Orthodox, Catholic or Independent), and the Copts (Orthodox, Catholic, or Independent). In short, his Church history is so simplified as to be false - appealing to an inaccurate (but popular) understanding of the relationship of the Celt's Christianity to that of the broader world. Similarly, he quickly establishes a Tibetian Christian influence on the doctrine of Boddhisattva's without recognition of a competing theory that attributed the changes to Islamic influence. He also strongly stresses the Taoist adaptations of the Christian texts while minimizing the better documented interchange between Buddhism and Christianity within the Chinese silk route context. I am delighted to finally have the texts available, to see pictures of the artifacts, to have more historical names and dates. For that I highly recommend the book. Unfortunately, I can not say the same for his interpretation. Two times, his support for his view had me laughing. The number of pages devoted to the Eastern Church in the Penguin History of the Church tells me only the level of interest by Penguin editors not the knowledge of the West of the Eastern Church. Or, after using the Orthodox iconographic tradition to establish that the finger position of a painting was a mudra of teaching, he jumps to the conclusion that worship in the Chinese Church included mudras. Does that mean that the Orthodox must also use mudras in worship? Yes, I am being harsh but reading this book uncritically could seriously mislead one. I have no interest in seeing a "Chinese Nestorian Christian" new-age movement to parallel the Celtic movement.
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