Syriac Christianity

History

Christianity began in the Near East, in Jerusalem among Aramaic-speaking Christians (Assyrians). It soon spread to other Aramaic-speaking Semitic peoples like Aramaic pagan peoples along the Eastern Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire, including Mesopotamia, which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires. Like its Greek and Latin counterparts, the Syriac traditions includes non-ethnic members who wrote in Syriac and were members of the tradition at large, such as Aphraat the Persian.

The ruins of the Dura-Europos church, dating from the first half of the 3rd century are concrete evidence of the presence of organized Christian communities in the Aramaic-speaking area, far from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast, and there are traditions of the preaching of Christianity in the region as early as the time of the Apostles.

However, "virtually every aspect of Syriac Christianity prior to the fourth century remains obscure, and it is only then that one can feel oneself on firmer ground". The fourth century is marked by the many writings in Syriac of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, the Demonstrations of the slightly older Aphrahat and the anonymous ascetical Book of Steps. Ephrem lived in the Roman Empire, close to the border with the Sasanian Empire, to which the other two writers belonged. However, another source claims there is a significant amount of evidence from the fourth century and before about liturgical practices.

Early Syriac Christian communities, especially around such as Edessa and Nisibis, retained a strong Judeo-Christian character influenced in part by the Jewish presence in nearby Adiabene. Early Syriac authors like Ephrem and Aphrahat drew upon Jewish exegetical methods and sectarian traditions in their writings, and the Syriac churches remained spiritually close to Jewish practices in their early centuries. They also resisted successive attempts at Hellenization and integration into the Byzantine Empire's forced ecclesiastical and theological framework. This resistance manifested after the Council of Ephesus (431), when the Church of the East asserted its independence from Byzantine authority and reorganised around Nisibis. A similar development occurred after the Council of Chalcedon (451) when the Syriac Orthodox Church established its own hierarchy distinct from that of the imperial church.

Other items of early literature of Syriac Christianity are the Diatessaron of Tatian, the Curetonian Gospels and the Syriac Sinaiticus, the Peshitta Bible and the Doctrine of Addai.

The bishops who took part in the First Council of Nicea (325), the first of the ecumenical councils, included twenty from Syria and one from Persia, outside the Roman Empire. Two councils held in the following century divided Syriac Christianity into two opposing parties.

East-West theological contrast

Syriac Christianity is divided on several theological issues, both Christological and Pneumatological.

In 431, the Council of Ephesus, which is reckoned as the third ecumenical council, condemned Nestorius and Nestorianism. That condemnation was consequently ignored by the East Syriac Church of the East, which had been previously established in the Sasanian Empire as a distinct Church at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410, and which at the Synod of Dadisho in 424 had declared the independence of its head, the Catholicos, in relation to "Western" (Roman Empire) Church authorities. Even in its modern form of Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East, it honours Nestorius and his mentors (e.g. Theodore of Mopsuestia) & students (e.g. Ibas of Edessa) as teachers and saints.

In 451, the Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council as accepted by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, condemned Monophysitism, and also rejected Dyoprosopism. This council was rejected by the Oriental Orthodox Churches (among which is the Syriac Orthodox Church) that use the West Syriac Rite. The Patriarchate of Antioch was consequently divided between two communities: pro-Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian. The Chalcedonians were often referred to as "Melkites" by their opponents, derived from the Syriac word "Melka," meaning "royal." This term implied their loyalty to the Byzantine emperor and was used by non-Chalcedonians to suggest that the Melkites prioritized allegiance to the empire over adherence to true teachings. The non-Chalcedonians were dubbed "Monophysites" which means they believed in Christ having a sole, divine nature, despite that not being the actual doctrine of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which espouse Miaphysitism, the teaching that Christ has one composite nature, fully human and fully divine; they were also called Jacobites (especially, but not exclusively, the Syriac Orthodox Church, particularly in the late Ottoman era) after Jacob Baradaeus.

In 553, the Council of Constantinople, the fifth ecumenical council, anathematized Theodore of Mopsuestia, and also condemned several writings of Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa (see Three-Chapter Controversy). Since those three theologians were highly regarded among Eastern Syriac Christians, further rifts were created, culminating in 612, when a major council of the Church of the East was held in Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Presided by Babai the Great (d. 628), the council officially adopted specific Christological formulations, using Syriac term qnoma (ܩܢܘܡܐ) as designation for dual (divine and human) properties within one prosopon (person) of Christ.

Theological estrangement between East Syriac and West Syriac branches was manifested as a prolonged rivalry, that was particularly intensive between the Church of the East and the Maphrianate of the East (of the Syriac Orthodox Church), with each branch claiming that its doctrines were not heretical while also accusing the other of teaching heresy. Their theological estrangement has persisted through the medieval and early modern periods and into the present era. In 1999, the Coptic Orthodox Church, a sister-church of the Syriac Orthodox Church, blocked admittance of the Assyrian Church of the East to the Middle East Council of Churches, which has among its members the Chaldean Catholic Church, and demanded that it remove from its liturgy the mention of Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, whom it venerates as "the Greek doctors".

East-West liturgical contrast

While not always being the case, the liturgies of the East and West Syriacs are quite distinct nowadays. The East Syriac Rite is noted especially for its eucharistic Qurbana of Addai and Mari, in which the Words of Institution are absent. West Syriacs use the Syro-Antiochian or West Syriac Rite, which belongs to the family of liturgies known as the Antiochene Rite.

The Syriac Orthodox Church adds to the Trisagion ("Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us") the phrase "who were crucified for us". The Church of the East interpreted this as heretical. Patriarch Timothy I of the Church of the East declared: "And also in all the countries of Babylon, of Persia, and of Assyria, and in all the countries of the sunrise, that is to say, among the Indians, the Chinese, the Tibetans, the Turks, and in all the provinces under the jurisdiction of this Patriarchal See, there is no addition of Crucifixus es pro nobis".

Among the Saint Thomas Christians of India, the East Syriac Rite was the one originally used, but those who in the 17th century accepted union with the Syriac Orthodox Church adopted the West Syriac Rite of that church.

Further divisions

A schism in 1552 in the Church of the East gave rise to a separate patriarchate, which at first entered into union with the Catholic Church but later formed the nucleus of the present-day Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East, while at the end of the 18th century most followers of the earlier patriarchate chose union with Rome and, with some others, now form the Chaldean Catholic Church.

In India, all of the Saint Thomas Christians are still collectively called "Syrian Christians". The majority of the Saint Thomas Christians, who initially depended on the Church of the East, maintained union with Rome in spite of discomforts felt at Latinization by their Portuguese rulers and clergy, against which they protested. They now form the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. A small group, which split from these in the early 19th century, united at the beginning of the 20th century, under the name of Chaldean Syrian Church, with the Assyrian Church of the East.

Those who in 1653 broke with the Catholic Church as dominated by the Portuguese in India and soon chose union with the Syriac Orthodox Church later split into various groups. The first separation was that of the Malabar Independent Syrian Church in 1772. At the end of the 19th century, the Malankara Marthoma Syrian Church separated, after which they adopted a Reformed variant of the Liturgy of St. James and later in the course of the 20th century, a division arose among those who remained united with the Syriac Orthodox Church who insisted on full autocephaly and are now called the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and those, the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, who remain faithful to the patriarch.

A reunion movement led in 1930 to the establishment of full communion between some of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox and the Catholic Church. They now form the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

In the Middle East, the newly enthroned patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Ignatius Michael III Jarweh, declared himself a Catholic and, having received confirmation from Rome in 1783, became the head of the Syriac Catholic Church.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, as persecution peaked especially after the Assyrian genocide, many Syriac Christians, both East and West, left the Middle East for other lands, creating a substantial diaspora.

In modern times, several Churches of Syriac tradition are actively participating in ecumenical dialogue.

Terms for Syriac Christians

Indigenous Aramaic-speaking communities of the Near East (Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܝܐ) adopted Christianity very early, perhaps already from the first century, and began to abandon their three-millennia-old traditional ancient Mesopotamian religion, although this religion did not fully die out until as late as the tenth century. The kingdom of Osroene, with the capital city of Edessa, was absorbed into the Roman Empire in 114 as a semi-autonomous vassal state and then, after a period under the supremacy of the Parthian Empire, was incorporated as a Roman province, first in 214, and finally in 242.

In 431 the Council of Ephesus declared Nestorianism a heresy. Nestorians, persecuted in the Byzantine Empire, sought refuge in the parts of Mesopotamia that were part of the Sasanian Empire. This encouraged acceptance of Nestorian doctrine by the Persian Church of the East, which spread Christianity outside Persia, to India, China, Tibet and Mongolia, expanding the range of this eastern branch of Syriac Christianity. Most of the remaining Syriac Christians within the Byzantine Empire formally accepted Miaphysitism having rejected the Council of Chalcedon, and also spread their faith eastwards Persia, India, and China.

Churches of Syriac traditions

West Syriac Rite

• Oriental Orthodox
  • Syriac Orthodox Church (Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, based in Damascus, Syria)
    • Jacobite Syrian Christian Church (Syriac Orthodox Church in India, Catholicosate, based in Kochi, Kerala, India)
  • Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (Indian Orthodox Church, Catholicosate, based in Kottayam, Kerala, India)
  • Malabar Independent Syrian Church (Independent Oriental Orthodox Church, based in Thozhiyur, Kerala, India, not part of the Oriental Orthodox Communion)
• Eastern Catholic Churches of the West Syriac Rite
  • Maronite Catholic Church (Syriac Maronite Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, based in Bkerké, Lebanon)
  • Syriac Catholic Church (Syriac Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, based in Beirut, Lebanon)
  • Syro-Malankara Catholic Church (Malankara Syrian Catholic Church, Catholicosate, based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India)
• Eastern Protestant Churches
  • Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church (in full communion with the Anglican Communion, based in Thiruvalla, Kerala, India)
  • St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India (based in Thiruvalla, Kerala, India)

East Syriac Rite

• Church of the East
  • The Assyrian Church of the East, traditionalist continuation that emerged from the Shimun line of patriarchs of the Church of the East that took this name in 1976
    • The Chaldean Syrian Church, an archbishopric in India of the Assyrian Church of the East
  • The Ancient Church of the East, split from the Assyrian Church of the East in the 1960s.
• Eastern Catholic Churches of the East Syriac Rite
  • The Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church that emerged from the Elia line of patriarchs of the Church of the East following splits in 1552, 1667/1668 and 1779
  • The Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church based in Kerala that is independent from the Chaldean Catholic hierarchy since the Synod of Diamper in 1599.

East Syriac Christians were involved in the mission to India, and many of the present Churches in India are in communion with either East or West Syriac Churches. These Indian Christians are known as Saint Thomas Christians.

In modern times, even apart from the Eastern Protestant denominations like Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar and St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India, which originated from Churches of the West Syriac Rite, various Evangelical denominations continue to send representatives among Syriac Christians. As a result, several Evangelical groups have been established, particularly the Assyrian Pentecostal Church (mostly in America, Iran, and Iraq) from East Syriac Christians, and the Aramean Free Church (mostly in Germany, Sweden, America and Syria) from West Syriac Christians. Because of their new (Protestant) theology these are oftentimes not classified as traditional churches of Syriac Christianity.