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• As a result, the whole northern region of Edessa, under King Abgar, converted to Christianity. This fascinating history is largely forgotten in the West, because the West is more interested in Paul’s missionary journeys into Europe. But the early conversion of the northern regions, using Estrangela as their writing system, meant that the Holy Scriptures were divinely preserved, unhindered by all later ravages of the Roman army through Israel, and the subsequent destruction of the Jewish commonwealth in A.D. 70 under Titus and Vespasian, the persecutions of tyrannical emperors such as Nero and Domitian, and the destruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian in A.D. 135 and the Bar Kochba revolt.