How Far Did Early Missionaries Travel?

 Part  One - Voyages to the Western Mediterranean and China

At Colossians 1:23 the Apostle Paul wrote about 60 C.E. that, "the good news was preached in all creation that is under heaven."

What exactly did he mean by that? Exactly how far had Christian missionaries traveled by his day? Some have suggested that he meant just the Mediterranean world his readers would have been familiar with.

 But this known world would have included lands far beyond  the Eastern end of the Mediterranean. Long before Paul's day Phoenician and other mariners  had traveled across the entire Mediterranean to the Atlantic.  There are reports of the Phoencians sailing regularly to both to Gadir ( the modern port city of Cadiz)  and to Tarshish by the ninth century B.C.E.   Still others had sailed down the Red Sea  --  as far as India and  even China by the  second  century B.C.E.

So the "known world"   could have referred to other areas beyond the Eastern end of Mediterranean  or The Great Sea as it was called then.

In Part Two we'll take a quick look  at a Phoenician voyage around Africa organized by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt in the seventh century B.C.E.