Читать книгу A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Joseph Cullen Ayer - Страница 57

Under the head of Extension of Christianity are to be placed only such texts as may be regarded as evidence for the presence of the Church in a well-defined locality. It is apparent that the evidence must be incomplete, for many places must have received the Christian faith which were unknown to the writers whose works we have or which they had no occasion to mention. Rhetorical overstatement of the extension of the Church was a natural temptation in view of the rapid spread of Christianity. Each text needs to be scrutinized and its merits assessed. It should, however, be borne in mind that the existence of a well-established church in any locality is in most cases sufficient reason for believing that Christianity had already been there for some time. In this way valid historical reasoning carries the date of the extension of the Church to a locality somewhat further back than does the date of the appearance of a document which testifies to the existence of Christianity in a definite place at a definite time.