History

Throughout Syria and Mesopotamia, Aramaic, in its many dialectical forms, was the language of the land, and Syriac, originally the Aramaic dialect of Edessa in Northern Mesopotamia, seems to have been the most influential literary form of Aramaic. When we speak of Syriac Christianity, we refer to Christians whose native tongue was Syriac and/or who employed Syriac as their liturgical language.

Syriac Christianity was not centered just in Antioch, the Roman capital of Syria. In fact, Syriac Christianity can be traced further East in Mesopotamia. As local tradition tells us, Christianity was received in Edessa during the time of the Apostles. This is reported in a number of documents including Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. He gives us the text of a correspondence between the city’s king, Abgar Ukomo, and none other than Jesus Himself:

Abgar Ukomo, the toparch, to Jesus the good Savior who has appeared in the district of Jerusalem, greetings. I have heard concerning you and your cures, how they are accomplished by you without drugs and herbs … And when I heard of all these things concerning you I decided that it is one of two things, either that you are God and came down from Heaven to do these things, or are the Son of God for doing these things. For this reason I write to beg you to hasten to me and to heal the suffering which I have…

The reply, according to the same tradition, was carried by a certain Ananias:

Blessed are you who believed in me, not having seen me … Now concerning what you wrote to me, to come to you, I must first complete here all for which I was sent, and after thus completing it be taken up to Him who sent me; and when I have been taken up, I will send to you one of my disciples to heal your suffering and give life to you and those with you.

The story continues to describe how one of the Seventy disciples was sent to King Abgar.

Historical literary sources tell us that by the second half of the second century there was an established church in the city, though probably most of the inhabitants remained pagan. The Chronicle of Edessa tells us that in the year 201, a disastrous flood destroyed the church of the Christians in the city. However, it took only about a century until most of the city was under the umbrella of Christianity. Edessa, indeed, prides itself as the first Kingdom that officially accepted the new faith.

India had its own share of Syriac Christianity. According to tradition, Christianity in India was established by St. Thomas who arrived in Malankara (Kerala) from Edessa in A.D. 52. The close ties between the Church in Malankara and the Near East go back to at least the fourth century when a certain Joseph of Edessa travelled to India and met Christians there. The church in Malankara is an integral part of the Syrian Orthodox Church with the Patriarch of Antioch as its supreme head. The local head of the church in Malankara is the Catholicose of the East, ordained by and accountable to the Patriarch of Antioch.

Syriac Christianity spread rapidly in the East. The Bible was translated into Syriac to serve as the main source of teaching as early as the second century. Till this day, the antiquity of the Syriac biblical versions is upheld with high esteem by modern scholars. In the words of Dr. Arthur Vööbus, “In our search for the oldest translation of the Greek original [of the New Testament] we must go back to the Syriac idiom” (Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac, p. 1). The same applies to the Hebrew Old Testament. In fact the Syriac Church Fathers made no less than six translations and revisions of the New Testament and at least two of the Old Testament. Their scholarship in this domain has no equal in Church history.

The Church of Antioch was thriving under the Byzantine Empire until the fifth century when Christological controversies split the Church. After the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, two camps of the one Church emerged: The Greek Church of Byzantium and the Latin Church of Rome accepted Chalcedon, but the Syriac and Coptic (later Armenian as well) Churches rejected the council. The former group professed that Christ is in two natures, human and divine, whilst the latter adopted the doctrine that Christ has one incarnate nature from two natures. It is worth noting that the drafts of the Council were according to the position of the Syrian and Coptic Churches. The final resolution, however, was according to the doctrine of the Western Churches. The difference lies in the one preposition (in or from two natures). This schism had sad consequences on the Syriac Church during the next few centuries.

As the Emperor supported the Chalcedonian camp, the Syriac Church came under much persecution. Many bishops were sent to exile, most notably Patriarch Mor Severius, who was later given the epithet togho dsuryoye or “Crown of the Syrians”. Mor Severius died in exile in 538. By the year 544, the status of the Syriac Church came to a low end when only three bishops remained. It was at this time that Mor Jacob Baradaeus appeared. Mor Jacob traveled to Constantinople for an audience with Empress Theodora, the daughter of a Syrian Orthodox priest from Mabbug, Syria, and wife of Emperor Justinian. Theodora used her influence to get Jacob ordained as bishop in 544. Later, Jacob would travel across the entire land reviving the Church. He managed to consecrate 27 bishops and hundreds of priests and deacons. For this, the Syrian Orthodox Church honors this saint on July 30 of every year, the commemoration of his death which took place in 578. A few centuries later, adversaries labeled the Syrian Orthodox Church “Jacobite” after St. Jacob. The Syrian Orthodox Church rejects this belittling label which suggests that the Church was founded by St. Jacob.

Aside from their ecclesiastical role, Syriac Churchmen have contributed to world civilization. As early as the fourth century, academies and schools were set up in monasteries throughout Syria and Mesopotamia. Monks and scholars where busy studying the sciences of the Greeks, commenting and adding to them. It is no surprise that when the Arabs, who conquered the Near East at the end of the seventh century, wanted to acquire Greek knowledge, they turned to Syriac scholars and churchmen. Arab caliphs commissioned the Syrians to translate the sciences of the Greeks into Arabic. One of the most famous translators was Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873) who left us a list of more than a hundred works he translated himself. Hunayn explains his methodology about the translation of Galen’s Book on the Medical Schools: he first collected and compared all surviving Greek manuscripts; the then translated the text into Syriac and compared it with an existing Syriac translation; he then translated it into Arabic. In such scholary manner did Syriac shcolars and churchmen transmit the sciences of the Greeks to the Arabs. Later on, these same sciences would be transmitted by the Arabs to al-Andalus (Spain) where they were translated into Latin and formed the basis of European thought. In his film Forgotten Christians, the British reporter Christopher Wenner describes the impact of Syriac scholars and Churchmen when he describes the school at Deir az-Za’faran monastery, “It was through the monks here that the Arabs received Greek learning, and it was the Arabs of course who passed it back to Europe. Had it not been for the Syriac monks, we in Europe might never have had a renaissance.”

The Syrian Orthodox Church survived under the dominion of many empires in the centuries that followed. Under the Arabs, Mongols, Crusades, Mamluks and Ottomans, the Syriac Orthodox Church continued its survival. Neither intimidation nor oppression could suppress the faithful.

Today, the Syrian Orthodox Church has faithful not only in the Middle East and India, but in Europe, the Americas and Australia as well. The distribution of the faithful can be seen from the organization of the Church today.

Text taken from: http://sor.cua.edu/Intro/index.html