Elijah of Nisibis

Thank heavens for people in the past who took the time to write down what they knew—although, to be fair, we have very few means to independently verify the truth of what they wrote. The best we can hope for is to compare what they wrote to the records of others, examine as best we can at this remove what political or religious or personal motives they might have had, and then make a case for their truthfulness.Elijah of Nisibis was a member of the Church of the East, which is also known as the Assyrian Church, or the Nestorian Church, or even the Babylonian Church. It was different from the Chalcedonian Church, from which modern Roman Catholicism (and therefore Protestantism) and Eastern Orthodoxy descend.He was originally known as Elijah Bar Shinajah, meaning "Elijah, son of Šena." Šena was not his father, but a reference to a town near what is present-day Al-Zab, Iraq. Born in 975, he was ordained a priest in 994, made a bishop in 1002, and became archbishop of Nisibis in 1008.A…