Church Architecture in Mesopotamia

Is there such a thing as Syrian Orthodox church architecture? Is there such a thing for any Christian tradition? If so, are such traditions stable across time, or if they change what does that tell us? These are other questions are up for review in a forthcoming book that looks at ecclesial buildings in antique Mesopotamia: Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia by Elif Keser Kayaalp (Oxford UP, November 2021), 304pp. + 96 b/w + 16 colour illustrations. About this book the publisher tells us this:

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia examines the church architecture of Northern Mesopotamia between the fourth and eighth centuries. Keser Kayaalp draws attention to several aspects ranging from the small scale to the large, focusing on settlements, the variety of plan types, the remarkable continuity of the classical tradition in the architectural decoration, the heterogeneity of the building techniques, patrons, imperial motivations, and stories that claim and make spaces. Employing archaeological and epigraphical material and hagiographical and historical sources, a holistic picture of the church architecture of this frontier region emerges, encompassing the cities of Nisibis (Nusaybin), Edessa (Şanlıurfa), Amida (Diyarbakır), Anastasiopolis (Dara/ Oğuz), Martyropolis (Silvan), Constantia (Viranşehir), and the rural Ṭur'Abdin region. The period covered spans the last centuries of Byzantine and the first century and a half of Arab rule, when the region was, on the one hand, a stage of war and riven by religious controversies, and on the other, a dynamic space of cultural interaction. Keser Kayaalp provides a regional contribution to the study of the transformation that the Byzantine civilisation underwent in the late antique period, and assesses the continuities and changes after the Arab conquest in pursuit of discovering whether one can talk about a church architecture in this period that is specific to the Syrian Orthodox.

Sacerdotal Ministry in the Early Syriac Tradition

I have a special love for the so-called Oriental Orthodox--the Copts, Armenians, and Syriac Christians especially--and so always keep an eye out for works that highlight these venerable traditions, almost all of which have suffered more for their witness than any other Christiana in the world have or will. So I commend to you a recent hefty publication by Tanios Bou Mansour, Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive: Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacques de Saroug et Narsaï (Brill, December 2019), 622pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this in les deux langues officielles: 

Dans Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive, Tanios Bou Mansour présente une analyse du sacerdoce chrétien chez quatre auteurs syriaques, Aphraate, Éphrem, Jacques et Narsaï, en l’éclairant par le sacerdoce du Christ et en le plaçant dans la continuité du sacerdoce de l’Ancien Testament. L’originalité et l’actualité de nos auteurs résident dans leur conception de l’élection, de la succession apostolique, de traits “sacerdotaux” attribués aux femmes dans la Bible, et surtout du prêtre qui, mandaté par l’Eglise, exécute l’action du Christ et de l’Esprit. 

In Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive, Tanios Bou Mansour analyzes the Christian priesthood in four Syriac writers: Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacob of Sarug and Narsaï. Their conception of priesthood is illuminated by the Priesthood of Christ and contextualized within the continuity of the priesthood of the Old Testament. These authors’ originality and actuality lies in their conception of election, of apostolic succession, of “sacerdotal” traits attributed to women in the Bible, and especially of the priest who, commissioned by the Church, executes the action of the Christ and the Spirit.

Syria in the Crusades

If you have any interest in the history and rise of Islam, and of its encounters with Eastern Christians, and especially of the Crusades, then the name of Carole Hillenbrand needs to be on your bibliography. Her previous works, including her very large earlier book, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, are rich in detail.

She has a new book out, an impressive and diverse scholarly collection: Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Co-Existence, ed. Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 400pp.
,
About this collection the publisher tells us this:

Presenting numerous interconnected insights into life in Greater Syria in the twelfth century, this book covers a wide range of themes relating to Crusader-Muslim relations. Some chapters deal with various literary sources, including little-known Crusader chronicles, a jihad treatise, a lost Muslim history of the Franks, biographies, letters and poems. Other chapters look at material culture, from coins to urban development, internal relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and between Crusader and Oriental Christians, and the role of the Turkmen. New insights into the career of Saladin are revealed, for example through the work of a little-known propagandist at his court, and Saladin's use of gift-giving for political purposes, as well as neglected aspects of the rule of his family dynasty, the Ayyubids, which succeeded him. Special attention is paid to the Christians residing in the Middle East, from Italians to Melkites and Armenians.

St Thomas Christians in India

In my time working for the World Council of Churches in the 1990s, I often encountered so-called Thomas Christians from India. As I was very new to the bewildering world of Eastern Christianity, it was hard to sort everyone out, but I learned that Syrian Orthodox clerics and hierarchs from India were often easy to sort out from the rest of a crowd by distinctive cassocks that were often a riot of wonderful colours--oranges, pinks, and so on--that most other traditions soberly scorned, to their loss.

Since that time, we have continued to learn more about the various so-called Oriental Orthodox Churches. In June of this year we will have a new book deepening our understanding further: St. Thomas and India: Recent Research is authored by K. S. Mathew, Joseph Chacko Chennattuserry, and Antony Bungalowparambil (Augsburg Press, 2020), 200pp.

About this book we are told this by the publisher:

In St. Thomas and India, renowned scholars trace the historical, religious, and cultural connections link India's Syrian Christian community with St. Thomas the Apostle. They use modern historiographical methods seek to corroborate the ancient tradition that tells of St. Thomas's missionary journey to India in the middle of the first century, in which he established seven churches in some of the major commercial centers of Malabar. From this first churches, Christianity spread throughout the region. St. Thomas in India also examines the legacy of the ancient Christianity on the Syrian community in India today, as well as exploring the various cultural and religious connections between the Syrian church in Indian and other ancient churches in the east.

Between Christ and Caliph

As I have often noted on here over the years, the legal status of minority Christians under Islam is both governed by certain well-known codes in most places, but also subject to a great deal of local interpretation, application, and general variation, leading some Ottomanists to say that this entire legal history is one of endless "local exceptions."

A new book examines this complicated status by focusing on the particular and often difficult question of marriage, especially for Syriac Christians: Lev. E. Weitz, Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) Lev E. Weitz 328 pages

About this book the publisher tells us:

In the conventional historical narrative, the medieval Middle East was composed of autonomous religious traditions, each with distinct doctrines, rituals, and institutions. Outside the world of theology, however, and beyond the walls of the mosque or the church, the multireligious social order of the medieval Islamic empire was complex and dynamic. Peoples of different faiths—Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Jews, and others—interacted with each other in city streets, marketplaces, and even shared households, all under the rule of the Islamic caliphate. Laypeople of different confessions marked their religious belonging through fluctuating, sometimes overlapping, social norms and practices.

In Between Christ and Caliph, Lev E. Weitz examines the multiconfessional society of early Islam through the lens of shifting marital practices of Syriac Christian communities. In response to the growth of Islamic law and governance in the seventh through tenth centuries, Syriac Christian bishops created new laws to regulate marriage, inheritance, and family life. The bishops banned polygamy, required that Christian marriages be blessed by priests, and restricted marriage between cousins, seeking ultimately to distinguish Christian social patterns from those of Muslims and Jews. Through meticulous research into rarely consulted Syriac and Arabic sources, Weitz traces the ways in which Syriac Christians strove to identify themselves as a community apart while still maintaining a place in the Islamic social order. By binding household life to religious identity, Syriac Christians developed the social distinctions between religious communities that came to define the medieval Islamic Middle East. Ultimately, Between Christ and Caliph argues that interreligious negotiations such as these lie at the heart of the history of the medieval Islamic empire.

Syriac and Ethiopian Christianity

One of the happy benefits of living in the last two decades is that the venerable traditions of first Syriac, and more recently Ethiopian, Christianity have started to become better known. One publisher responsible for much of this is Peeters of Belgium, which has recently brought out Ralph Lee's Symbolic Interpretations in Ethiopic and Early Syriac Literature (2017), 312pp.

About this new book (whose table of contents is here) the publisher tells us the following:

The palimpsest of Ethiopian Christianity reveals the possible impact and influence of several hands: Judaic, Egyptian, and Syrian. This book investigates the influence of Syrian Christianity upon the trajectory of Ethiopian Christianity, proposing that many of the so-called 'Judaic' practices may have arisen through interaction with Judaeo-Christian Syriac Christianity, rather than from an Old Testament context, exploring Ethiopic and Syrian literary links using Ge'ez, Amharic and Syriac sources to show how Syrian and Ethiopic traditions relate. The symbolic motifs of the Ark and the Cross, as well as the perception of Paradise are explored in Ethiopic hymnody or Deggwa of St Yared, the andemta Bible commentaries, and the national epic, the Kebrä Nägäst, compared with Syriac works of the fourth century Syriac theologian-poet Ephrem, his later devotee Jacob of Serugh, and the earlier Syriac Odes to Solomon. The material common to Ethiopic and Syriac literature demonstrates the complexity of the Judaeo-Christian thought-worlds from which they derived, implying more nuanced influences than have previously been postulated.

Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period

Several times in the past I have on here sung the praises of Gorgias Press in their wide-ranging treatment of many aspects of Eastern Christian history, tradition, and theology, including most especially the interactions between various Eastern Christian and Islamic groups. In their newest catalogue, sent to me just yesterday, we see at long last a study that has been promised for some time newly released: Khalid S. Dinno, Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period and Beyond: Crisis Then Revival (Gorgias Press, 2017), 526pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Despite the protection afforded to the minorities of the Ottoman Empire through the millet system, Syrian Orthodoxy witnessed weakness and depletion throughout the nineteenth century, caused by significant conversion to Western Christianity, particularly in Syria and in Iraq.

The events following the 1895 violence in southeastern Anatolia became precursors to the genocidal Safyo of 1915, which resulted in the annihilation of nearly half the Syrian Orthodox in Anatolia and brought Syrian Orthodoxy to the verge of extinction. The apathy of the victors of World War I towards the beleaguered survivors contrasted with the welcome the exiled survivors found in the Arab lands to the south, where historical affinity was rekindled.

From the safety of this new environment, Syrian Orthodoxy, led by enlightened individuals, was revitalized, drawing on a venerable Syriac cultural tradition and a patriarchal standing that was characteristically free from social elitism and tribal sectarianism. Utilizing the quest for learning that was widespread in the emerging new nation states, this new leadership, despite meager resources, launched Syrian Orthodoxy on a course of revival and renaissance not witnessed since the days of Bar Hebraeus in the late thirteenth century.

No study, in any language, has covered the history of the Syrian Orthodox Church over the designated period as fully as this current work, which it is hoped will fill a dire gap and break ground in new research. The basis for this study, in addition to published sources, has been approximately 6,000 relevant images that were filtered from a collection of over 24,000 uncatalogued, unedited and unpublished archival documents that were made available to the author.

Syrian Antioch's Churches

Somewhere in the vast Churchill canon I read the late prime minister despairing in a letter to a confidante during the dark days of World War II. He wrote to the effect, "You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing....after they've exhausted every wrong-headed option." Today, however, that is too optimistic by half and one is therefore left alternating between rage and despair that the US, Britain, and others seem determined to pick only the stupidly wrong-headed option in Syria, as they did in Egypt. As a result we will see one more country's indigenous Eastern Christian population destroyed (as the Assyrians and others have been in Iraq since 2003, and as the Copts continue to be in Egypt), and for what? For the sanctimonious frisson of feeling "we have done something"? There are no "national interests" at stake; there is no realistic hope of a real "democracy" being put into place, and even if, as in Egypt, there are relatively "free" democratic elections, one runs the risk of electing tyrants all over again. To change Churchill's observation, then, one today sadly realizes "You can always count on the Americans to back the anti-Christian side anywhere in the Middle East and much of the world besides." My only (mild) consolation in all this is that current American public opinion is very strongly against intervening but this will have little or no effect on the imperial masters who make these decisions. As Churchill knew only too well, everyone from Roosevelt onwards was happy to fatuously condemn Britain for her supposed "imperialism" but none of these sanctimonious Yanks acknowledges that the American imperium in the last decade alone bears direct responsibility for destroying hundreds of thousands of Christians in the Middle East and their ancient communities, some dating back 2000 years.

The continuing violence in Syria, and the threatened escalation of the same by the Obama regime and the revoltingly oleaginous David Cameron in the U.K., will put at further risk not only the Christian populations living there today, but also the remaining evidence of Christian history in that country as uncovered and documented by two important historians, Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen: The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300-638) (Peeters, 2012), xviii+372pp. 

About this book we are told:

In The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300-638 CE) Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen for the first time draw together all of the existing evidence concerning the Christian worship sites of this influential late-antique city, with significantly new results in a number of cases. In addition to providing a catalogue of the worship sites, in which each entry critiques and summarizes the available data, supplemented by photographs from the excavations, the authors analyze the data from a number of perspectives. These include the political, economic and natural forces that influenced the construction, alteration and reconstruction of churches and martyria, and the political, liturgical and social use and function of these buildings. Among the results is an emerging awareness of the extent of the lacunae and biases in the sources, and of the influence of these on interpretation of the city’s churches in the past. What also rises to the fore is the significant role played by the schisms within the Christian community that dominated the city’s landscape for much of these centuries. 

The Bema in Syrian Churches

Studies in Eastern liturgics continue to emerge not only for the Byzantine tradition, but for the so-called third lung of apostolic Christianity (Sebastian Brock's metaphor for the Syriac tradition), including this one from
Emma Loosley, The Architecture and Liturgy of the Bema in Fourth- To-Sixth-Century Syrian Churches (Brill, 2012), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

First published in 2003 this is a new edition of a work that remains the only study of the nave platform known as the Syrian Bema to utilise an interdisciplinary approach. By combining archaeological and architectural research with a study of the Syriac Liturgy to explore how worship evolved on the Syrian Limestone Massif in Late Antiquity, this volume proposes a solution to the long debated question of why only approximately 50 of these bemata have been discovered amongst many thousands of late antique churches in Syria. It charts the evolution of the early liturgy in Syria and seeks to explain how the location of the Limestone Massif in the hinterland of Antioch may have affected the development of worship in the region.

Syriac Heritage

Released last year under the editorship of some of the leading Syriacists of our time is a collection that no serious student of Syriac Christianity and no serious research library will want to be without: Sebastian Brock et al., eds., Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (Gorgias Press, 2012), 612pp.

About this hefty tome we are told:

The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (GEDSH) is the first major encyclopedia-type reference work devoted exclusively to Syriac Christianity, both as a field of scholarly inquiry and as the inheritance of Syriac Christians today. In more than 600 entries it covers the Syriac heritage from its beginnings in the first centuries of the Common Era up to the present day. Special attention is given to authors, literary works, scholars, and locations that are associated with the Classical Syriac tradition. Within this tradition, the diversity of Syriac Christianity is highlighted as well as Syriac Christianity s broader literary and historical contexts, with major entries devoted to Greek and Arabic authors and more general themes, such as Syriac Christianity s contacts with Judaism and Islam, and with Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Georgian Christianities. In addition to the literary tradition, inscriptions and objects of art are given due consideration. The entries are accompanied by 131 illustrations, twenty of which are in color. The volume closes with maps, lists of patriarchs of the main Syriac Churches of the Middle East, and elaborate indices.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus

Happily today we are seeing an expanding interest in Christianity in Syria in the first millennium. A recent publication continues this development: Adam M. Schor, Theodoret's People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria (Transformation of the Classical Heritage) (University of California Press, 2011), 360pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Theodoret's People sheds new light on religious clashes of the mid-fifth century regarding the nature (or natures) of Christ. Adam M. Schor focuses on Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, his Syrian allies, and his opponents, led by Alexandrian bishops Cyril and Dioscorus. Although both sets of clerics adhered to the Nicene creed, their contrasting theological statements led to hostilities, violence, and the permanent fracturing of the Christian community. Schor closely examines council transcripts, correspondence, and other records of communication. Using social network theory, he argues that Theodoret's doctrinal coalition was actually a meaningful community, bound by symbolic words and traditions, riven with internal rivalries, and embedded in a wider world of elite friendship and patronage.

One of the world's leading scholars of Syriac Christianity, Susan Ashbrook Harvey of Brown University, says of this book:

Adam Schor has written a lively and incisive study of a notoriously difficult era. Mining the substantial (but greatly understudied) letter collections of the times, applying the insights of network theory, and boldly taking on the entire corpus of Theodoret's writings--an ambitious project in itself--Schor has produced strikingly fresh material throughout. With rich insight and rigorous attention to detail, Schor opens new vistas on the late antique landscape. Thought-provoking at every turn!

Eastern Christian Doctrine and Debate

Earlier I drew attention to the advent of an exciting new series from Ashgate. I have just this week received the first volume: Averil Cameron and Robert Hoyland, eds., Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World, 300-1500 (The Worlds of Eastern Christianity, 300-1500) (Ashgate, 2011), liv + 415pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

The reign of Constantine (306-37), the starting point for the series in which this volume appears, saw Christianity begin its journey from being just one of a number of competing cults to being the official religion of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. The involvement of emperors had the, perhaps inevitable, result of a preoccupation with producing, promoting and enforcing a single agreed version of the Christian creed. Under this pressure Christianity in the East fragmented into different sects, disagreeing over the nature of Christ, but also, in some measure, seeking to resist imperial interference and to elaborate Christianities more reflective of and sensitive to local concerns and cultures. This volume presents an introduction to, and a selection of the key studies on, the ways in which and means by which these Eastern Christianities debated with one another and with their competitors: pagans, Jews, Muslims and Latin Christians. It also includes the iconoclast controversy, which divided parts of the East Christian world in the seventh to ninth centuries, and devotes space both to the methodological tools that evolved in the process of debate and the promulgation of doctrine, and to the literary genres through which the debates were expressed.

In their preface, the editors tell us that the rationale for this series centres on the fact that "Eastern Christianity is much less known and studied than its Western counterpart...and it is the principal aim of this series to redress this deficiency and to provide a foundation for new research.....This series seeks to...mak[e] available some of the most influential research published to date....The series as a whole will, it is hoped, serve as a starting point for a more holistic approach to Eastern Christianity."

This solid, handsome volume brings together articles by some of the world's leading scholars including Sebastian Brock, Sidney Griffith, Peter Brown, Averil Cameron, and others. It is divided into five sections:

I) The Formative Period: with articles on Origen, the Manichaeans, the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (Brock's article), and anti-Jewish polemics.
II) The Encounter with Islam: with four articles, including the first of two by Griffith.
III) Iconoclasm: with two articles including Brown's article.
IV) Anti-Latin Texts: with one article by Tia M. Kolbaba, author of a book favourably reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies several years ago: Inventing Latin Heretics: Byzantines and the Filioque in the Ninth Century.
V) Tools of Argument: with five articles, including a second one by Griffith on a "summa theologiae" in 9th-century Christian Arabic.
 
This is a very impressive start to a series that belongs in every serious library.