The ignorance, it burns. The Romans did not apply the term Palestine to Judea, or any part of the Holy Land, until about 135 AD, around the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, the last great Jewish rev…
the-american-catholic.com
Indeed, they renamed Judea to Syria Palestina.
Interestingly, perhaps due to the spread of the Aramaic language, Judea and Galilee, which we see frequently used as regional identifiers in the New Testament, seemed to have been thought of as part of a greater Syrian region, on the basis of Matthew 4:24, which describes our Lord becoming famous “in all Syria,” and this makes sense, since Syria and Mesopotamia can be thought of as representing the two habitable regions, the former Levantine and in the Roman Empire and the latter on the Persian gulf and in the Persian and later Sassanian sphere of influence.
One would assume this is the reason why the largely ethnically Jewish Syriac-speaking Christians were known as Syrians, for example, St. Ephraim the Syrian, and Popes Sergius I and Sissinius I, among many other Syrian fathers of the Church who spoke the Classical Syriac language. Of course now we tend to call them Syriacs, to avoid confusion with Syrian nationals, for the nation of Syria, while having a significant minority of Christians*
*Christians living in Syria include, but are not limited to, Melkite Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Latin Rite Catholics, Armenians, and Assyrians (of the Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church**), with the Syrian Orthodox Church for example changing its name to the Syriac Orthodox Church around the year 2000 (I am not sure if/when the Syriac Catholic Church rebranded). And they suffered terribly during the Syrian Civil War due to persecution from Al Nusra and later ISIS, which was headquartered in Raqqa, and even Raqqa had a Christian population, and the churches in the Old Town of Aleppo (as well as various mosques and other historic buildings) were completely destroyed. Also, the ancient synagogue in Dura Europos, which attested to the antiquity of icons, and the second century Christian residential church, which also had icons, were destroyed by ISIS along with the beautiful ruined city of Palmyra by the ISIS barbarians. And in Iraq they were even worse, as we all know. I greatly appreciate
@chevyontheriver ‘s solidarity with the persecuted Christians.
** There are also substantial Christians of Syriac ethno-linguistic descent living in Kerala, India, partially related to the Kochin Jews, known as the St. Thomas Christians, including the Syro-Malabar Catholics, who use the East Syriac Rite like the Chaldean Catholics and the Assyrians, and the Malankara Catholics who use the West Syriac Rite like the Syriac Orthodox and Maronite Catholics, along with the Jacobite Syriac Orthodox under the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church also known as the Indian Orthodox, which is in a schism with the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate, and the Malankara Independent Syrian Church, and also the Protestant Mar Thoma Syrian Church.
Speaking of Maronites, I would imagine a small minority live in Syria, but the vast majority live in Lebanon and have lived there for a long time, and they benefit to a large extent from safety in numbers, with the Lebanese constitution requiring the President be a Maronite Catholic, and the Prime Minister be a Muslim (a Sunni Muslim, I think), with the Druze also having positions of power. There is an ethnically Maronite YouTuber who does brilliant science videos, who not knowing much about his heritage, looked to me for the opportunity to learn something about it due to my status as pretty much his only friend who is a theologian and someone deeply interested in the history of the Syriac speaking people, and he was thrilled to learn of his Maronite Catholic heritage. I absolutely love the Maronite Catholic Church.
There is an extremely interesting Maronite anaphora which is presently not in use, but there are discussions about how to restore it to use among the six that are currently in use, at different times of the year (there used to be something like 52, as the Maronite liturgy is very similiar to the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, which also has a massive number of anaphoras), known as the Anaphora of St. Peter (Sharar), which is particularly interesting because it is the only known Anaphora of the East Syriac style that has no connection with the Church of the East. Speaking of which, in several respects the Chaldeans have managed to preserve or revive aspects of Assyrian liturgy which were lost in the Church of the East in the chaos following the genocide of Tamerlane, for example, there is a Chaldean church in Toronto which features a traditional Bema for reading the Law, the Prophets, the Epistle and the Gospel connected to the Altar via a thin platform, and Chaldean churches feature the iconography which has tragically disappeared from most parishes of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East.
