One, the area where Christianity developed is basically in the realm of the western world. Mesopotamia (Iraq, Iran, Israel) is where western "civilization" began way back with the Sumerians. And the whole area was part of the Roman Empire at the time Paul started his merry religion. Eastern civilization refers to the area of China and Japan, not Persia etc.
Good point, Jazzo. "The Fertile Crescent" has always been regarded as the "Birthplace of Western Civilization," that's Western Civ 101. And it was the Far East that was shut out of our texts and studies so many years...India, China, Japan, Indonesia. Not to say that there doesn't exist a gulf and alienation of culture between the societies of the Middle East and European/American (continental sense) societies (and what about tropical Africa, where do they rate in all of this?). But, yes, the Middle East was always regarded as the Cradle of Civilization, Western Civilization. But, something to consider, is that back when these nomenclatures were developed most folks from a religiously Christian eye regarded the world split into two parts...the Christianized civilization of the West, and the heathens and savages of the "uncivilized" world. So perhaps any vestige of historically known civilization, even BC, was lumped into the category of "Western" by the earliest chroniclers, to discredit the presumption that any non-Christian heathens could be civilized. Was Nebuchadnezzar really Western in his thought and action? I dunno...I just know that's what the books say and support. And what's more, the ancient Sumerians were literate. To accrue other than Western creedence to heathens capable of a written language may have been deemed too drastic a violation of the unfortunate tunnel vision of the time. You should see some of the passages in an 1849 geography textbook that came to me in my one-room schoolhouse...the arrogant and dismissive views of other cultures in Africa, in Asia, and the native peoples of all the Americas from one of the most educated and intellectual minds of that time is nothing short of appalling...it's actually so ridiculous that all you can do is react with a smirk of incredulity at some of the remarks. And this was the 19th century. Imagine the viewpoints at the beginning of the first millennium when the first historical texts were being transcribed during the initial rise of Christianity. Relativism?
BTW, Westerners didn't really know that the distant east had a real history until they began to trade regularly in the Middle Ages (the story, or myth, of Marco Polo). So, while ancient historians knew that India, China, Japan, and Indonesia were there from the tales of infrequent trading forays (and lost sailing ships that occasionally returned, no doubt), the "Mysterious East" was simply dismissed as one big heathen culture with an abundance of riches (spice, gems, carpets) to be exploited...by then an earnest research into the ancient dynasties of China would have seriously sidetracked from the already-imbedded Biblical vision of the world.
