Early Eastern Christianity contains six lectures on the Syriac-speaking church, delivered in 1904 by F. C. Burkitt, then lecturer in paleography at the University of Cambridge. The lectures are an attempt to sketch the leading characteristics of the ancient Church of Edessa and the Euphrates Valley from the earliest times to the Council of Chalcedon. It is the unique distinction of the Church of the Euphrates Valley that alone among the developments of Christianity in the ante-Nicene age it had some of its roots in a realm outside the Roman Empire, and that the language of its learning and its aspiration was a tongue akin to the Aramaic of Palestine.
The lectures cover the early bishops of Edessa, the Bible in Syriac, early Syriac theology, marriage and the sacraments, Bardaisan and his disciples, the Acts of Judas Thomas and the Hymn of the Soul.
Francis Crawford Burkitt (1864-1935) began his academic career as a student of mathematics. While at Cambridge University he eventually moved to Divinity, becoming the Norrisian Professor. His interest in the text of the New Testament led him to study Syriac manuscripts and to publish widely in the field
