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Steve Cochrane

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Steve Cochrane has spent over 35 years working in South Asia, studying Islam and Hinduism and early Christian history in India. He has his PhD in the history of Christian-Muslim relations from the University of Middlesex in the U.K. He was formerly the Director of Graduate Studies with the University of the Nations.

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Universiteit Utrecht

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Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

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Austrian Academy of Sciences

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Papers by Steve Cochrane

Many Monks across the Sea: Church of the East Monastic Mission in Ninth Century Asia

Review of From Jerusalem to Timbuktu

A Passionate Patriarch at a Turning Point: Isho-yahbh II and His Letters of Rebuke and Ambiguity

Transformation, Jul 1, 2019

Three decades after Prophet Muhammed's death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Ish... more Three decades after Prophet Muhammed's death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III, was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were converting to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw "so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy," many not as the result of compulsion but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future. This article explores some of Isho-yahbh's letters, interacting with the context of Islam spreading further into the areas of Mesopotamia and Persia, yet with a vibrant and widespread Church of the East also spreading to India and China from its homelands in West Asia.

A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity

Glocal Conversations, May 14, 2021

Merchants and Mission in the First Fifteen Hundred Years of the Church in Asia

Glocal Conversations, May 14, 2021

Business in Mission or BAM is a growing trend in global missions today. Not a new concept, the bl... more Business in Mission or BAM is a growing trend in global missions today. Not a new concept, the blending of mercantile activity and spreading of Christian faith has been going on since the earliest decades of the Church. This article explores BAM as a key component in Asian Christian witness over the 1500 years before Western colonial powers appeared on the scene, relating it to similar expressions in Manichaeism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. The spreading of faith and commerce together was not seen as strange, perhaps because the originating context of these faiths was crisscrossed with trade routes from the earliest empires. Besides substantiating this integrated approach to business and mission with abundant reference to significant primary and secondary sources, this article also considers the nature of trade pursued, the routes used, and products traded.

Many Monks across the Sea

Asia's Forgotten Christian Story: Church of the East Monastic Mission in Ninth-Century Asia

East Syrian Monasteries in the Ninth Century in Asia: A Force for Mission and Renewal

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

East Syrian Monasteries in the Ninth Century in Asia: A Force for Mission and Renewal

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Such a Great Salvation: Response to Paul Miller's Article

has worked with YWAM in South Asia for over 30 years, holding a variety of leadership and ministr... more has worked with YWAM in South Asia for over 30 years, holding a variety of leadership and ministry roles. He recently received his Ph.D. in the History of Christian-Muslim relations from the University of Middlesex/Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. Such a Great Salvation On January 23, 1999, in a small village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, an Australian missionary named Graham Staines was burned to death with his two sons by an angry Hindu mob. Though known for his work among lepers, Staines also engaged in activities of evangelism that created controversy in the local context. 1 The deaths shocked many in India and around the world, happening at the end of a century that had seen perhaps 45.4 million Christians martyred, more than all previous centuries together. 2

A Re-orientation of Perspective for the 21 st century: Was the Church of the East Involved in Mission Activities among Muslims in Ninth Century Asia?

Using the title of Nestorians' for the Church of the East, Western scholarship has at times ignor... more Using the title of Nestorians' for the Church of the East, Western scholarship has at times ignored or dismissed their history in Asia as the story of a heretical Church even though that history predated the Christological struggles of the fifth century. 1 In the beginning of the twentieth century there began to be a reassessment in Western circles as to whether Nestorius was indeed a heretic, driven by the discovery in Persia of a Syriac manuscript of one of his writings in 1897, the Bazaar of Heracleides. 2 Yet the theological roots of the Church of the East extend before Nestorius to Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) considered one of their most important Church Fathers. 3 Indeed the Church could easily be called 'Theodoran' rather than 'Nestorian'. The Church of the East grew from Edessa with its Christological position consistent with the stance of Antioch believing in both the divinity and humanity of Christ but attempting to articulate that mystery in their own linguistic and theological terms.

Asia's Forgotten Christian Story

From Beit Abhe to Angamali : connections, functions and roles of the Church of the East's monasteries in ninth century Christian-Muslim relations

An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the c... more An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the connections, functions and roles of Church of the East monasteries in the early Abbasid period of the ninth century. These monasteries had already existed in pre-Islam Arabia and were written about by Muslims in the following centuries. The thesis argues that monastic mission activities took place in the early and middle ninth century under Muslim rule with a similarity to prior centuries. It also argues that these activities focused on the Muslim context around them in Mesopotamia, differing from other scholarly work on the subject. One of these works is by William G Young, who describes his perception of the lack of witness to Muslims as a ‘puzzle’ that still needs more evidence. Contributing four more pieces to the 'puzzle' in this thesis, a more nuanced and comprehensive picture emerges.An original contribution of the thesis is in its investigation from primary sources of both...

Equipping for Mission in the 21st Century

Reflecting on and Equipping for Christian Mission

Such a Great Salvation

In response to Paul Miller's article earlier in this journal, this “great salvation” will be ... more In response to Paul Miller's article earlier in this journal, this “great salvation” will be examined from the reality of martyrdom, which is perhaps in itself a gift of the Spirit. Those who die for the faith attest through their death to its worthiness and value. Miller is rightly concerned of the danger of broadening salvation to a “wider hope”, writing that a growing inclusivism “guts Evangelicalism of its very heart, strips it of its central contribution to the world, badly distorts Scripture, and misunderstands the Catholicism to which it looks for support."

Review of From Jerusalem to Timbuktu

A Re-orientation of Perspective for the 21st century: Was the Church of the East Involved in Mission Activities among Muslims in Ninth Century Asia?

An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the c... more An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the connections, functions and roles of Church of the East monasteries in the early Abbasid period of the ninth century. This article describes monastic mission activities that took place in the early and middle ninth century under Muslim rule with a similarity to prior centuries. These activities were also focused on the Muslims around them in Mesopotamia and were able to be sustained in the early ninth century even under Muslim rule. This is important because it offers the story of a period when the Church in Asia lived without political power yet had a history of involvement in witness. The role of a Church subject to Muslim rule yet engaged in mission and learning activities within and beyond the regions of that rule provides a different historical paradigm than usually envisioned. A similar context is still relevant in several ‘contact zones’ of the world today, where Christians struggle...

An Early Christian Reaction to Islam: Isu'yahb III and the Muslim Arabs. By Iskandar Beheiry. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 57. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2019. xiii + 191 pp. $80.67 cloth

Church History

of the fourth century, just before the dramatic date of the text and the original composition of ... more of the fourth century, just before the dramatic date of the text and the original composition of the text. The first bishop of Philae, Macedonius, was a government official who, when assigned to the far south of Egypt, found other Christians on Philae but no bishop. On a visit to Alexandria, he asked Athanasius to provide one. Athanasius appoints Macedonius himself. Aaron had heard about this from Macedonius, which is chronologically possible (pace the editors, 178), and Isaac heard it from Aaron and here tells Paphnutius and Pseleusius about it. This chain could reach back from the early fifth century to the early years of Athanasius’s episcopate. Macedonius attended the Council of Serdica in 343 (see 179) and was succeeded as bishop of Philae by Mark, who was exiled to the Siwa Oasis in 356 (198). Mark was himself succeeded by Isaiah in 368 (198). After Isaiah died, a monk, Psoulousia, became bishop of Philae. He paid a visit to Theophilus (shortly?) after he became bishop of Alexandria (r. 385–412). That gives us ca. 385 as the floruit of Psoulousia. If he died, say, toward the end of the fourth century, he was succeeded by another bishop, who is not named, presumably because he was still alive when the text was originally composed. Bibliography and full indices follow the commentary. The index of biblical references and of other literary references occupies six and a half pages. Not all of these are explicit or even implicit references in the text; often, they are merely adduced by the editors in their commentary, who discuss the intertextuality of the text (46–56). It would have been more interesting if they had provided a second apparatus below their text separately listing the more obvious echoes. There is a two-page index of papyrological and epigraphical sources adduced by the editors in their commentary as well. At the end of the volume there are two figures, one with a graphic representation of the various narrators and narrative levels in the text, which illustrates part of the introduction (37–41), and a map of the First Nile Cataract area. The editors deserve praise for their authoritative edition, their appreciation of the text as a serious work of literature, and especially for their detailed commentary. The last mentioned should challenge future editors of Coptic hagiographical texts to provide the same for their texts.

Book Review: The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and beyond (1602–1747)The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602–1747). By FlanneryJohn M., Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xi, 286. £112 /$156

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

A Passionate Patriarch at a Turning Point: Isho-yahbh II and His Letters of Rebuke and Ambiguity

Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies

Three decades after Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Ish... more Three decades after Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III, was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were converting to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw “so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy,” many not as the result of compulsion but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future. This article explores some of Isho-yahbh’s letters, interacting with the context of Islam spreading further into the areas of Mesopotamia and Persia, yet with a vibrant and widespread Church of the East also spreading to India and China from its homelands in West Asia.

Many Monks across the Sea: Church of the East Monastic Mission in Ninth Century Asia

Review of From Jerusalem to Timbuktu

A Passionate Patriarch at a Turning Point: Isho-yahbh II and His Letters of Rebuke and Ambiguity

Transformation, Jul 1, 2019

Three decades after Prophet Muhammed's death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Ish... more Three decades after Prophet Muhammed's death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III, was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were converting to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw "so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy," many not as the result of compulsion but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future. This article explores some of Isho-yahbh's letters, interacting with the context of Islam spreading further into the areas of Mesopotamia and Persia, yet with a vibrant and widespread Church of the East also spreading to India and China from its homelands in West Asia.

A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity

Glocal Conversations, May 14, 2021

Merchants and Mission in the First Fifteen Hundred Years of the Church in Asia

Glocal Conversations, May 14, 2021

Business in Mission or BAM is a growing trend in global missions today. Not a new concept, the bl... more Business in Mission or BAM is a growing trend in global missions today. Not a new concept, the blending of mercantile activity and spreading of Christian faith has been going on since the earliest decades of the Church. This article explores BAM as a key component in Asian Christian witness over the 1500 years before Western colonial powers appeared on the scene, relating it to similar expressions in Manichaeism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. The spreading of faith and commerce together was not seen as strange, perhaps because the originating context of these faiths was crisscrossed with trade routes from the earliest empires. Besides substantiating this integrated approach to business and mission with abundant reference to significant primary and secondary sources, this article also considers the nature of trade pursued, the routes used, and products traded.

Many Monks across the Sea

Asia's Forgotten Christian Story: Church of the East Monastic Mission in Ninth-Century Asia

East Syrian Monasteries in the Ninth Century in Asia: A Force for Mission and Renewal

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

East Syrian Monasteries in the Ninth Century in Asia: A Force for Mission and Renewal

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Such a Great Salvation: Response to Paul Miller's Article

has worked with YWAM in South Asia for over 30 years, holding a variety of leadership and ministr... more has worked with YWAM in South Asia for over 30 years, holding a variety of leadership and ministry roles. He recently received his Ph.D. in the History of Christian-Muslim relations from the University of Middlesex/Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. Such a Great Salvation On January 23, 1999, in a small village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, an Australian missionary named Graham Staines was burned to death with his two sons by an angry Hindu mob. Though known for his work among lepers, Staines also engaged in activities of evangelism that created controversy in the local context. 1 The deaths shocked many in India and around the world, happening at the end of a century that had seen perhaps 45.4 million Christians martyred, more than all previous centuries together. 2

A Re-orientation of Perspective for the 21 st century: Was the Church of the East Involved in Mission Activities among Muslims in Ninth Century Asia?

Using the title of Nestorians' for the Church of the East, Western scholarship has at times ignor... more Using the title of Nestorians' for the Church of the East, Western scholarship has at times ignored or dismissed their history in Asia as the story of a heretical Church even though that history predated the Christological struggles of the fifth century. 1 In the beginning of the twentieth century there began to be a reassessment in Western circles as to whether Nestorius was indeed a heretic, driven by the discovery in Persia of a Syriac manuscript of one of his writings in 1897, the Bazaar of Heracleides. 2 Yet the theological roots of the Church of the East extend before Nestorius to Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) considered one of their most important Church Fathers. 3 Indeed the Church could easily be called 'Theodoran' rather than 'Nestorian'. The Church of the East grew from Edessa with its Christological position consistent with the stance of Antioch believing in both the divinity and humanity of Christ but attempting to articulate that mystery in their own linguistic and theological terms.

Asia's Forgotten Christian Story

From Beit Abhe to Angamali : connections, functions and roles of the Church of the East's monasteries in ninth century Christian-Muslim relations

An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the c... more An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the connections, functions and roles of Church of the East monasteries in the early Abbasid period of the ninth century. These monasteries had already existed in pre-Islam Arabia and were written about by Muslims in the following centuries. The thesis argues that monastic mission activities took place in the early and middle ninth century under Muslim rule with a similarity to prior centuries. It also argues that these activities focused on the Muslim context around them in Mesopotamia, differing from other scholarly work on the subject. One of these works is by William G Young, who describes his perception of the lack of witness to Muslims as a ‘puzzle’ that still needs more evidence. Contributing four more pieces to the 'puzzle' in this thesis, a more nuanced and comprehensive picture emerges.An original contribution of the thesis is in its investigation from primary sources of both...

Equipping for Mission in the 21st Century

Reflecting on and Equipping for Christian Mission

Such a Great Salvation

In response to Paul Miller's article earlier in this journal, this “great salvation” will be ... more In response to Paul Miller's article earlier in this journal, this “great salvation” will be examined from the reality of martyrdom, which is perhaps in itself a gift of the Spirit. Those who die for the faith attest through their death to its worthiness and value. Miller is rightly concerned of the danger of broadening salvation to a “wider hope”, writing that a growing inclusivism “guts Evangelicalism of its very heart, strips it of its central contribution to the world, badly distorts Scripture, and misunderstands the Catholicism to which it looks for support."

Review of From Jerusalem to Timbuktu

A Re-orientation of Perspective for the 21st century: Was the Church of the East Involved in Mission Activities among Muslims in Ninth Century Asia?

An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the c... more An important yet often neglected and largely unknown story in Christian-Muslim relations is the connections, functions and roles of Church of the East monasteries in the early Abbasid period of the ninth century. This article describes monastic mission activities that took place in the early and middle ninth century under Muslim rule with a similarity to prior centuries. These activities were also focused on the Muslims around them in Mesopotamia and were able to be sustained in the early ninth century even under Muslim rule. This is important because it offers the story of a period when the Church in Asia lived without political power yet had a history of involvement in witness. The role of a Church subject to Muslim rule yet engaged in mission and learning activities within and beyond the regions of that rule provides a different historical paradigm than usually envisioned. A similar context is still relevant in several ‘contact zones’ of the world today, where Christians struggle...

An Early Christian Reaction to Islam: Isu'yahb III and the Muslim Arabs. By Iskandar Beheiry. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 57. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2019. xiii + 191 pp. $80.67 cloth

Church History

of the fourth century, just before the dramatic date of the text and the original composition of ... more of the fourth century, just before the dramatic date of the text and the original composition of the text. The first bishop of Philae, Macedonius, was a government official who, when assigned to the far south of Egypt, found other Christians on Philae but no bishop. On a visit to Alexandria, he asked Athanasius to provide one. Athanasius appoints Macedonius himself. Aaron had heard about this from Macedonius, which is chronologically possible (pace the editors, 178), and Isaac heard it from Aaron and here tells Paphnutius and Pseleusius about it. This chain could reach back from the early fifth century to the early years of Athanasius’s episcopate. Macedonius attended the Council of Serdica in 343 (see 179) and was succeeded as bishop of Philae by Mark, who was exiled to the Siwa Oasis in 356 (198). Mark was himself succeeded by Isaiah in 368 (198). After Isaiah died, a monk, Psoulousia, became bishop of Philae. He paid a visit to Theophilus (shortly?) after he became bishop of Alexandria (r. 385–412). That gives us ca. 385 as the floruit of Psoulousia. If he died, say, toward the end of the fourth century, he was succeeded by another bishop, who is not named, presumably because he was still alive when the text was originally composed. Bibliography and full indices follow the commentary. The index of biblical references and of other literary references occupies six and a half pages. Not all of these are explicit or even implicit references in the text; often, they are merely adduced by the editors in their commentary, who discuss the intertextuality of the text (46–56). It would have been more interesting if they had provided a second apparatus below their text separately listing the more obvious echoes. There is a two-page index of papyrological and epigraphical sources adduced by the editors in their commentary as well. At the end of the volume there are two figures, one with a graphic representation of the various narrators and narrative levels in the text, which illustrates part of the introduction (37–41), and a map of the First Nile Cataract area. The editors deserve praise for their authoritative edition, their appreciation of the text as a serious work of literature, and especially for their detailed commentary. The last mentioned should challenge future editors of Coptic hagiographical texts to provide the same for their texts.

Book Review: The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and beyond (1602–1747)The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602–1747). By FlanneryJohn M., Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xi, 286. £112 /$156

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

A Passionate Patriarch at a Turning Point: Isho-yahbh II and His Letters of Rebuke and Ambiguity

Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies

Three decades after Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Ish... more Three decades after Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III, was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were converting to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw “so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy,” many not as the result of compulsion but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future. This article explores some of Isho-yahbh’s letters, interacting with the context of Islam spreading further into the areas of Mesopotamia and Persia, yet with a vibrant and widespread Church of the East also spreading to India and China from its homelands in West Asia.