Syriac Christianity (, Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto or Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā) is a branch of Eastern Christianity. The formative body of Syriac literature, covering theological writings and traditional liturgies, are expressed in the Classical Syriac language, a variation of the old Aramaic language. In a wider sense, the term can also refer to Aramaic Christianity in general, thus encompassing all Christian traditions that are based on the liturgical uses of the Aramaic language and its variations, both historical and modern.
Along with Greek and Latin, Classical Syriac was one of the three most important languages of Early Christianity. It became a vessel for the development of a distinctive Syriac form of Christianity which flourished throughout the Near East and other parts of Asia during late antiquity and the early medieval period, giving rise to various liturgical and denominational traditions, represented in modern times by several churches which continue to uphold the religious and cultural heritage of Syriac Christianity.
Syriac Christianity comprises two liturgical traditions: the East Syriac Rite and the West Syriac Rite.
The East Syriac Rite (also known as the Chaldean, Assyrian, or Persian Rite) uses the Liturgy of Addai and Mari. It is the rite of the churches descended from the Church of the East, including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Syrian Church, and the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.
The West Syriac Rite (also called Antiochian Syriac Rite) uses the Liturgy of Saint James. It is the rite of the Oriental Orthodox Syriac Orthodox Church (including its component the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church), Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, and the Malabar Independent Syrian Church; and the Catholic Maronite Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, and Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Protestant forms of this rite are used by the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India.
In India, indigenous Eastern Christians (Saint Thomas Christians) of both liturgical traditions (East and West Syriac) are called Syrian Christians. The traditional East Syriac community is represented by the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Chaldean Syrian Church of India. The West Syriac liturgical tradition was introduced after 1665, and the community associated with it is represented by the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church (part of the Syriac Orthodox Church) and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, both of which are Oriental Orthodox, in addition to the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic church), the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church (part of the Anglican Communion), and the Malabar Independent Syrian Church (an independent Oriental Orthodox Church not part of the Oriental Orthodox Communion).
The Syriac language is a variety of Aramaic language that emerged in Edessa, Upper Mesopotamia, during the first centuries AD. It is related to the Aramaic of Jesus, a Galilean dialect.Allen C. Myers, ed. (1987), "Aramaic". The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. p. 72. . "It is generally agreed that Aramaic was the common language of Palestine in the first century A.D. Jesus and his disciples spoke the Galilean dialect, which was distinguished from that of Jerusalem (Matt. 26:73)." This relationship added to its prestige for Christians. The form of the language in use in Edessa predominated in Christian writings and was accepted as the standard form, "a convenient vehicle for the spread of Christianity wherever there was a substrate of spoken Aramaic". The area where Syriac or Aramaic was spoken, an area of contact and conflict between the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire, extended from around Antioch in the west to Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Sasanian capital in Mesopotamia in the east and comprised the whole or parts of present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and southeastern parts of Turkey and western parts of Iran, with its speakers being largely Semitic Assyrians, Arameans, Phoenicians, Mandaeans and Judeans.
Name
In modern English, the term "Syriac Christianity" is preferred over the alternative form "Syrian Christianity", that was also commonly used in older literature, as a synonym, particularly during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Since the latter term proved to be very polysemic, a tendency occurred (firstly among scholars) to reduce the term "Syrian Christianity" to its primary (regional) meaning, that designates the Christianity in Syria, while more specific term (Syriac Christianity) came to be used as preferred designation for the entire Syriac branch of Eastern Christianity. That distinction is not yet universally accepted, even among scholars. It is gradually introduced in most of the English speaking world, with some notable exceptions. Churches of Syriac tradition in India still self-identify, in Indian English, as "Syrian" Churches, both for sociolinguistic and legal reasons.
Modern distinctions between "Syrian" and "Syriac" (Christianity) are observed in English language as a partially accepted convention, but such distinctions do not exist in most of the other languages, nor on the endonymic (native) level among adherents of Syriac Christianity. Native terms (ethnonyms, demonyms, glottonyms) that were derived from the name of Syria did not possess a distinctive formal duality that would be equivalent to the conventional English distinction between terms Syrian and Syriac. Since the proposed distinction is not yet universally accepted among scholars, its individual and often inconsistent application has created a complex narrative, that is additionally burdened by older problems, inherited from terminological controversies that originated much earlier, within Syriac studies in particular, and also within Aramaic studies in general.
The use of Syrian/Syriac labels was also challenged by common scholarly reduction of Syriac Christianity to the Eastern Aramaic Christian heritage found among the Assyrian people in what is today Iraq, Southeast Turkey and Northwest Iran, and its offspring. Such reduction was detaching Syriac Christianity from Western Aramaic Christian traditions, that were enrooted in the very homeland of Christianity, encompassing ancient Aramaic-speaking communities in Judea and Palestine, with Galilee and Samaria, and also those in the regions of Nabatea and Palmyrene to the east, and Phoenicia and Syria proper to the north. Since Western Aramaic Christians did not fit into narrow scholarly definition of Syriac Christianity, focused on Eastern Aramaic traditions, various researchers have opted for an additional use of some wider terms, like "Aramaic Christianity", or "Aramaic Christendom", thus designating a religious, cultural and linguistic continuum, encompassing the entire branch of Christianity that stemmed from the first Aramaic-speaking Christian communities, formed in apostolic times, and then continued to develop throughout history, mainly in the Near East and also in several other regions of Asia, including India and China.
In English language, the term Aramaic Christianity should not be confused with term Aramean Christianity, since the first designation is linguistically defined and thus refers to Aramaic-speaking Christians in general, while the second designation is more specific and refers only to Christian Arameans.
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.