Syriac Christianity forum

[Gregory Thompson]

No, the Catholics did not kill them. They were not even able to convert all of them to Catholicism, and those that did convert wound up keeping the East Syriac liturgical rite.

Those that did not sent messengers to the Catholicos of the East, but their communication wound up reaching the Maphrian, the Syriac Orthodox Catholicos of the East, and then his boss, the Patriarch of Antioch rather than the autocephalous Catholicos of the East who was the Patriarch of the Church of the East, of which the Mar Thoma Christians were a part. So most joined the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, but a schism emerged in the late 19th century involving Indians who desired local control, and a very small third Oriental Orthodox Church, this one in full communion with the Protestant Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is itself a part of the Anglican Communion, came into being in Thoyizoor. Meanwhile, the Assyrian Church of the East launched a mission and many St. Thomas Christians returned to them. The Syriac Orthodox also had a Western Rite mission in Sri Lanka, which was recently revived.

But remember, the Mar Thoma Christians are just one facet of the Syriac Christian community. You also have the Assyrians in the Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, and the vaguely related Chaldean Catholic Church (technically, the Chaldeans are in a different tribe than the members of the Assyrian church, and the members of that tribe, which were historically concentrated in Baghdad and its predecessor Seleucia-Cstesipon (the Euphrates changes its alignment, which has caused what amounts to Babylon to have been relocated at least twice in the past 2500 years).

Then you have the West Syriacs: the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics, and the Aramaic speaking members of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, who historically worshipped using a liturgy similar to that of the Syriac Orthodox, and you have the Maronite Catholics, who were also evangelized by St. Thomas, but broke away from the Syriac Orthodox and settled in the mountains of Lebanon, forming a distinct culture centered around the idea of a Phoenician identity and also with a strong emphasis on military defense against the Muslims, much like the Druze, the third largest religion in Lebanon, which also took advantage of the mountains to prevent the Muslims from killing them.

But all of these Christians use the Peshitta Bible, they were all evangelized originally by St. Thomas and his disciples Addai and Mari, and they all have a shared poetic and hymnographic culture largely defined by the beautiful hymns and metrical homilies of Ephrem the Syrian, who last night I discovered was beloved by John Wesley. So for example, the leading fifth century Syriac Orthodox hymnographer and homilest is James of Sarugh, and the leading Assyrian hymnographer from that time was Mar Narsai, and their respective churches style them “the Flute of the Spirit” because all Syriac Christians venerate Ephrem as “the Harp of the Spirit.”

This sounds like something distinct, an actual answer to my previous questions. I would support the creation of a forum for this.

 

[BeyondET]

So presently there is no denomination-neutral place on the Internet to talk about Syriac Aramaic Christianity or the Syriac Aramaic speaking churches, which include the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church the Indian Orthodox Church, the Malankara Independent Syrian Church, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, the Church of South India, the Malankara Catholic Church, the Maronite Catholic Church, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, and also isolated communities in the Antiochian Orthodox Church. And there are a few other Protestant denominations I think, for example, I recall seeing mention of a Syriac Pentecostal Church.

This grouping of churches includes three Oriental Orthodox denominations, two ancient denominations descended from the Church of the East (sometimes incorrectly called Nestorian), five Sui Juris Catholic churches, including the Maronite Catholic Church, which is the second largest religion in Lebanon (and I recall either the President or the Prime Minister is required to be a Maronite under the treaties that hold the country together), at least three Protestant denominations, including the Church of South India, which is one of the largest in the world, as it, and its counterpart, the Church of North India, was formed by the merger of most Protestant churches in India after the end of the British Raj, but the CSI embraced aspects of Syriac identity because Syriac Christianity has been in India since before 53 AD, when the Apostle Thomas was martyred there, with a spear.

This group of churches includes a vast diaspora in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Continental Europe, particularly Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Russia, and these churches have large indigenous populations in Lebanon and India, a smaller indigenous population in Israel, and persecuted populations ranging from under ten thousand in Turkey (formerly the most populous Syriac Orthodox country) to hundreds of thousands in Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Such a forum would need to be in the English language because this is the lingua franca of the Syriac Christian communities. Not all of them speak Syriac in the vernacular and those that do speak in different dialects that aren’t really mutually intelligible. As a group, however, Syriac-speaking Christians are the largest users of Aramaic, and of the roughly ten million Syriac Christians worldwide, not counting the Church of South India, a million can speak vernacular Syriac, including nearly the entire community of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East. Thus, Syriac Christians are collectively the largest vernacular users of the Aramaic language, by far, and our Lord spoke a dialect of Aramaic.

I like the translation James Murdock did of the Syriac Peshitta, he was quite talented

TRANSLATED FROM THE SYRIAC PESHITO VERSION BY JAMES MURDOCK

 

[The Liturgist]

I like the translation James Murdock did of the Syriac Peshitta, he was quite talented

TRANSLATED FROM THE SYRIAC PESHITO VERSION BY JAMES MURDOCK

Actually the Murdock Peshitta is one of my favorite English translations of the New Testament (I also like the KJV, the Douai Rheims, the RSV and the old edition of the NIV). Of the traditional language editions, the Murdock translation and the RSV are the easiest to read.

I wish Murdock had been able to translate the Old Testament (as far as I know, he did not; the only edition I have seen with the Old Testament is the Lamsa Bible, which I have been told by Syriac scholars is problematic, setting aside Lamsa’s erroneous belief in Peshitta Primacy.

 

[BeyondET]

Actually the Murdock Peshitta is one of my favorite English translations of the New Testament (I also like the KJV, the Douai Rheims, the RSV and the old edition of the NIV). Of the traditional language editions, the Murdock translation and the RSV are the easiest to read.

I wish Murdock had been able to translate the Old Testament (as far as I know, he did not; the only edition I have seen with the Old Testament is the Lamsa Bible, which I have been told by Syriac scholars is problematic, setting aside Lamsa’s erroneous belief in Peshitta Primacy.

I don’t think he translated the OT either, I like coming across the old english words not in use anymore within his translation. I like the KJV also another translation I like and it’s free domain is “the new heart english bible” translation.

 

[anna ~ grace]

I don’t know… you’ve actually got at least three radically different Churches going on here. Different in Christology and ecclesiology, and on major points, too.

Syriac Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East. These are three different Churches.

 

[The Liturgist]

I don’t know… you’ve actually got at least three radically different Churches going on here. Different in Christology and ecclesiology, and on major points, too.

Syriac Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East. These are three different Churches.

Actually four, when we factor in the Protestants. But they represent a unified and cohesive group with a common origin, two liturgical rites, Eastern and Western, which are basically the same (Chaldean Catholic music is nearly identical to Assyrian music, Maronite music and Syriac Catholic music is nearly identical to Syriac Orthodox music, and what is more, the Eastern and Western musical rites are also very similiar; the Western tradition uses eight formally defined modes, like Byzantine and Gregorian chant, and the Eastern tradition uses the same modes and could be divided into them, but this feature is indocumented).

As for the appearance of the churches, the vestments of the clergy, and the liturgical texts, these are strikingly similar between the East Syriac churches (Catholic and Church of the East), the Syriac Catholic Church is also vested this way, the Maronites wear vestments similiar to Byzantine Rite vestments, and the Syriac Orthodox, Indian Orthodox and Malankara Catholics wear incredibly beautiful vestments manufactured in India by a very ancient ecclesiastical tailor, which use beautiful trim consisting of a brocade, often red, but also in other colors, decorated with silver or gold grape leaves.

And the liturgical texts fall into just two groups, East Syriac and West Syriac. Only an expert such as myself could easily tell a Maronite liturgical text from a Syriac Orthodox, and the Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic and Syro Malabar Catholic texts are virtually identical, so that I would not be able to easily identify them.

So, we have a common origin in Thomas the Apostle, and his fellow apostles Addai and Mari, common Patristic figures who are venerated by all the Syriac churches, including Ephrem the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian, John Damascene, and Gregorios bar Hebraeus, common worship in the form of shared liturgical texts (primarily the West Syriac use the Divine Liturgy of St. James, and the East Syriac the Divine Liturgy of the Apostles Addai and Mari, both of which are contenders for the title of oldest liturgy still in use, but even the other Anaphorae, and other liturgical texts and the prayers of the Divine Office / Liturgy of the Hours are shared between the different churches, and the Maronite Church even has an East Syriac Eucharistic liturgy very similiar to Addai and Mari, the “Liturgy of Peter (Sharar)”, common liturgical music inside and between the rites, and common vestments.

And there is a surprisingly large community of Western converts and the Syriac Orthodox on two occasions ordained bishops to spread the faith to the West, which has resulted in a proliferation of small but interesting Syriac Rite churches in the US, UK and Continental Europe.

 

[dzheremi]

Actually four, when we factor in the Protestants. But they represent a unified and cohesive group with a common origin, two liturgical rites, Eastern and Western, which are basically the same (Chaldean Catholic music is nearly identical to Assyrian music, Maronite music and Syriac Catholic music is nearly identical to Syriac Orthodox music, and what is more, the Eastern and Western musical rites are also very similiar; the Western tradition uses eight formally defined modes, like Byzantine and Gregorian chant, and the Eastern tradition uses the same modes and could be divided into them, but this feature is indocumented).

As for the appearance of the churches, the vestments of the clergy, and the liturgical texts, these are strikingly similar between the East Syriac churches (Catholic and Church of the East), the Syriac Catholic Church is also vested this way, the Maronites wear vestments similiar to Byzantine Rite vestments, and the Syriac Orthodox, Indian Orthodox and Malankara Catholics wear incredibly beautiful vestments manufactured in India by a very ancient ecclesiastical tailor, which use beautiful trim consisting of a brocade, often red, but also in other colors, decorated with silver or gold grape leaves.

And the liturgical texts fall into just two groups, East Syriac and West Syriac. Only an expert such as myself could easily tell a Maronite liturgical text from a Syriac Orthodox, and the Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic and Syro Malabar Catholic texts are virtually identical, so that I would not be able to easily identify them.

So, we have a common origin in Thomas the Apostle, and his fellow apostles Addai and Mari, common Patristic figures who are venerated by all the Syriac churches, including Ephrem the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian, John Damascene, and Gregorios bar Hebraeus, common worship in the form of shared liturgical texts (primarily the West Syriac use the Divine Liturgy of St. James, and the East Syriac the Divine Liturgy of the Apostles Addai and Mari, both of which are contenders for the title of oldest liturgy still in use, but even the other Anaphorae, and other liturgical texts and the prayers of the Divine Office / Liturgy of the Hours are shared between the different churches, and the Maronite Church even has an East Syriac Eucharistic liturgy very similiar to Addai and Mari, the “Liturgy of Peter (Sharar)”, common liturgical music inside and between the rites, and common vestments.

And there is a surprisingly large community of Western converts and the Syriac Orthodox on two occasions ordained bishops to spread the faith to the West, which has resulted in a proliferation of small but interesting Syriac Rite churches in the US, UK and Continental Europe.

I don't know about some of this, my friend. What do you mean when you say that Maronite music is nearly identical to Syriac Orthodox music? They do both use the octoechos, but it's hard not to tell the difference between say, this

B'outho d'Mor Ephrem (Maronite)

and this

B'outho d'Mor Ephrem (Syriac Orthodox)

No doubt there are many finer aspects of musicological analysis that I am missing here since I'm no expert (i.e., I don't know off hand what mode the Maronite hymn is in, while the Syriac Orthodox prayer is very helpfully marked as the 8th mode, which I'm sure means something to someone who actually knows what that means, such as yourself), but I don't know...you can hear it with your ears.

I've asked older Maronites I know why the Maronite qurbono seems so different than the Syriac Orthodox at this level (I'm sure the hymn texts probably have a fair bit in common, not only due to the common wellspring shared by all Syriac Christians, but also due to some peculiarities of the Maronites, like how a lot of their prayers are attributed to anti-Chalcedonian saints like Mor Jacob of Serugh), and they said that there was a lot of damage done to their traditional spirituality with increased contact with the west in the centuries following the crusades, and even more damage more recently when large numbers of them came to the west and were under the auspices of Latin rite bishops who didn't know anything about traditional Syriac spirituality and were at least somewhat suspicious of its orthodoxy (no different in that regard than some of the more radical among the earlier Jesuits who had shown up in Lebanon and burned a lot of traditional books, if Maronite authors like Georges T. Labaki are to be believed).

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Actually the Murdock Peshitta is one of my favorite English translations of the New Testament (I also like the KJV, the Douai Rheims, the RSV and the old edition of the NIV). Of the traditional language editions, the Murdock translation and the RSV are the easiest to read.

I wish Murdock had been able to translate the Old Testament (as far as I know, he did not; the only edition I have seen with the Old Testament is the Lamsa Bible, which I have been told by Syriac scholars is problematic, setting aside Lamsa’s erroneous belief in Peshitta Primacy.

This stuff is is such a blast from the past. I gave my away a most of my Peshitta stuff to my friend who is a bishop, in what is almost the most tiny jurisdiction in the World. I kept my deluxe hard back Study Bible, Peshitta because it some nice stuff there.

Wow and all the Peshitta primacy stuff, boy I was into that stuff 15-20 years ago.


It is really sad all the stuff Lamsa was wrong on. Even the famous "rope through the eye of a needle". Sad thing is so many people who got into this stuff don't realize it. Like I've mentioned it before in Facebook groups, and initially shocked people, but I doubt they remembered it etc. I'm pretty sure, my best friend who is at least nominally ACE repressed it.

 

[The Liturgist]

This stuff is is such a blast from the past. I gave my away a most of my Peshitta stuff to my friend who is a bishop, in what is almost the most tiny jurisdiction in the World. I kept my deluxe hard back Study Bible, Peshitta because it some nice stuff there.

Wow and all the Peshitta primacy stuff, boy I was into that stuff 15-20 years ago.


It is really sad all the stuff Lamsa was wrong on. Even the famous "rope through the eye of a needle". Sad thing is so many people who got into this stuff don't realize it. Like I've mentioned it before in Facebook groups, and initially shocked people, but I doubt they remembered it etc.

Well, actually, the Peshitta does translate that sentence as rope through the eye of a needle, as opposed to a camel passing through the eye of a needle, and this reading makes more sense than the Greek; it is an example of Aramaic Source Hypothesis rather than Peshitta Primacy, where Lamsa is pretty wacky.

So dude, you have a Peshitta Study Bible? I wasn’t aware that existed. What translation is it?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Well, actually, the Peshitta does translate that sentence as rope through the eye of a needle, as opposed to a camel passing through the eye of a needle, and this reading makes more sense than the Greek; it is an example of Aramaic Source Hypothesis rather than Peshitta Primacy, where Lamsa is pretty wacky.

What about Carusco statement that it came from 1200 AD Syriac Lexicon?

But... Hippolytus says the Logia of Jesus were in the Aramaic or the language of Jesus etc. So it would be nice if the Peshitta is right about a few things.


I found an old discussion on it here.
Peshitta Forum - Camel or Rope? Matt: 19:24


But Paul Younan has the rope interpretation in the peshitta.org Matthew 24 interlinear so maybe it's legit or at least a valid alternate reading vs. the more western Talmudic idiom interpretation.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I gained some insight into one of my pet peeves with the Lamsa peshita. When Jesus encounters Legion in the Gadarenes. Lamsa has something like "the man attacked the pigs". I did learn from this Heiser video that the Hebrew word for possess is simply attack, so it did make sense for some of the confusion. Even though I would have thought grammar would have indicated the evil spirits did the attacking etc. so not sure if that is Lamsa being a modernist or how the grammar actually is. And since language isn't my thing not going to learn the hard way, but I will look for expert opinion on it.

 

[The Liturgist]

I gained some insight into one of my pet peeves with the Lamsa peshita. When Jesus encounters Legion in the Gadarenes. Lamsa has something like "the man attacked the pigs". I did learn from this Heiser video that the Hebrew word for possess is simply attack, so it did make sense for some of the confusion. Even though I would have thought grammar would have indicated the evil spirits did the attacking etc. so not sure if that is Lamsa being a modernist or how the grammar actually is. And since language isn't my thing not going to learn the hard way, but I will look for expert opinion on it.

So that’s just a case of Lamsa being wrong.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

So that’s just a case of Lamsa being wrong.

There were some little things I liked especially from his book of idioms.


Luke 6:38
King James Version

38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.


There was a nice little write up on how they didn't have pockets back in ancient times and how they often had to use their garments to carry things like that one scene from the book of Ruth...



Ruth 3

15 He also said, “Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.” When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and placed the bundle on her. Then he went back to town.

16 When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, “How did it go, my daughter?”

Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her 17 and added, “He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’”

18 Then Naomi said, “Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today.”