Stages in the Spiritual Life According to Isaac the Syrian and Syriac Tradition
Stages in the Spiritual Life According to Isaac the Syrian and Syriac Tradition

Summary/Abstract: Finally, by way of conclusion, let me mention the existence of a fragmentary monastic text of the Church of the East that comes from Turfan, in western China; this survives in the Iranian language known as Sogdian, and it describes the ‘three periods’ of the monastic life ‘in quietude’.37 All that survives is a few paragraphs about the second period of quietude. No doubt the original Syriac term behind ‘quietude’ will have been shelya, corresponding to Greek hesychia. One might hope that, with the remarkable contemporary growth of Christianity in China, an awareness might be discovered of this much earlier Christian tradition, of the Church of the East which had already reached western China by the end of the seventh century.

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