Christ, Goths and Ossetians

Scythia and Parthia about 100 before the birth of Christ

(wikimedia)

Jesus Christ, the King of the Kings, wants that His Kingdom will reach all the people upon the Earth. This is the task He kind of trusted to His own after being crowned Rex Regum - but to be sure that this Mission Impossible would succeed, He said "I will be with you every day to the end of the world".

And so He does.

"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."  
Matthew 28:16-20 KJV

South Ossetia War 2008
The world is so busy with news that we who live a bit further from the Caspian Sea may already have forgotten the South Ossetian War in 7–16 August 2008. Ethnic Georgians had occupied more than half of Ossetia in the 1991-92 war and Abkhazia in the 1992-93 war.

"During the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia, in an attempt to reclaim the territory. ... Georgia successfully captured most of Tskhinvali within hours. Russia reacted by deploying units of the Russian 58th Army and Russian Airborne Troops in South Ossetia, and launching airstrikes against Georgian forces in South Ossetia and military and logistical targets in Georgia proper. .... Through mediation by the French presidency of the European Union, the parties reached a preliminary ceasefire agreement on 12 August, signed by Georgia on 15 August in Tbilisi and by Russia on 16 August in Moscow."
(wikipedia)


Ossetians? 

 Ossetians of modern times

(wikimedia)

The Ossetian people living today in the regions behind the Caspian Sea are a rare survival of the Sarmatians through Alans. They still speak their ancient East Iranian language called Ossetic. During 1920'ies Russians introduced their Cyrillic writing system to Ossetic which does not have its own system. An Early Medieval inscription looks like this in transliteration:

Saxiri Furt Xovs
Istori Furt Bæqætar
Bæqætari Furt Æmbalan
Æmbalani Furt Lak
Ani čirtī

 

After centuries of life under Russian rule they are today mostly Eastern Orthodox with a Moslem minority. But originally Christ reached them through the missionary work of the Goths.

Accordingly, the Ossetians are an old branch in the Kingdom of Heaven. For Christ reached them about the same time as He won the heart of king Clovis I  (466–511). To put this in perspective, let us remember that Christ reached the Germans some three hundred years after the Franks and that the Gospel crossed to Americas when New World was found by Christopher Columbus about one thousand year after Goth missionaries preached behind the Caspian Sea.

So now we know! The Ossetians are a respectable ancient Christian people in the Kingdom of God. One of those the King of King asked His own to reach, to baptise and teach.

And they did.


Saints are marching on!
Ossetians' ancestors learned to know Jesus Christ through the Goths who had such an impact on their life during the Migration Period in addition to the Huns. They are descendants of Sarmatians who lived in the Caspian region north of Parthia (modern Iran).

As in so many other ancient churches also among the Ossetians old tribal religion found its way into the new world of Christianity through many saints.

Ossetian holy ones included already in Antiquity, of course, Biblical characters and holy martyrs of the Roman period venerated everywhere in the Church of Christ as well as their own holy people. But among these there are also "baptised pagan gods" and mythological heroic characters.


Nart sagas

Sosruko bringing fire to mankind

(wikimedia)

Jesus Christ loves all people and Ossetians are not an exception. They are a treasure to Him and also a treasure to the humanity. Look at, for example, their version of ancient Nart sagas (Hero sagas).  These very old Iranian traditions are shared by the people of Caucasus including, besides the Alans, ancestors of modern Ossetians, also Chechenians and Circassians and others.

"Based especially on the Ossetian versions, the sagas have long been valued as a window towards the world of the Iranian-speaking cultures of Antiquity. For example, the philologist Georges Dumézil used the Ossetian division of the Narts into three clans to support his Trifunctional Hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were similarly divided into three castes—warriors, priests, and commoners. ... Some motifs in the Nart sagas are shared by Greek mythology.

The story of Prometheus chained to Mount Kazbek or to Mount Elbrus in particular is similar to an element in the Nart sagas. These shared motifs are seen by some as indicative of an earlier proximity of the Caucasian peoples to the ancient Greeks, also shown in the myth of the Golden Fleece, in which Colchis is generally accepted to have been part of modern-day Georgia. ...

In the book From Scythia to Camelot, authors C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor speculate that many aspects of the Arthurian legends are derived from the Nart sagas. The proposed vector of transmission is the Alans, some of whom migrated into northern France at around the time the Arthurian legends were forming. As expected, these parallels are most evident in the Ossetian versions, according to researcher John Colarusso.
(wikipedia)


So - we clearly have here an Ossetian cultural treasure that is today shared by the civilizations of the world!