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The present paper introduces, inventories and interrogates prevailing narratives about the complex trajectories through which a putative Syrian Christian dynasty named Villarvattom has taken root in communal genealogies and the popular imagination of Kerala. The paper, by examining historical evidence, argues that the existing historical documents compel us to consider it as a retrospectively invented and imagined tradition necessitated and facilitated by the unique socio-political structures of Kerala viz. the ideational complexes wrought by caste and allied practices, the dislocation caused by successive colonial regimes and the overall crisis experienced by the indigenous Christian community. The paper surveys the present state of literature, discusses explanatory models, points to the possibility of cultural introjection and seeks ways in which the study can be taken forward more comprehensively and productively so that we gain perceptive insights into both the ecclesiastical and secular histories of Kerala. The paper argues that it is an invented tradition, a defence mechanism collectively, and perhaps unconsciously, evolved by the beleaguered Syrian Christians under the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule, which had inflicted debilitating blows to the power and glory enjoyed by this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether for his political choices or his philanthropic activities, Gregorios IV Haddad, the Patriarch of Antioch and the Whole East 1906–1924, is still remembered as a strong supporter of Arabism. Arab nationalist historiography overwhelmingly locates Gregorios's story within the ideological framework of Arabism nationalism. This ideological interpretation, however, simplifies the intricate political reality in the final decade of Ottoman rule in Syria, a period characterized by a multiplicity of identities including Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism. More importantly, it downplays Gregorios's political brilliance and pragmatic approach in running the affairs of the Greater Syrian Christians, a minority community that was subject to suspicion and censorship during critical historical junctures. This article examines some of the ways in which a leader of a religious minority navigated the political upheavals that characterized the Ottoman Empire's last decade of power in Greater Syria. It will show that Gregorois's sense of responsibility for his community obliged him to prioritize pragmatism over nationalist ideology in order to best respond to the political circumstances of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Select research has indicated that widespread migration is catalysing the novel reimagining of eldercare and transformative changes in the local eldercare economy in the Global South. Yet research on ageing and migration from the South has largely focused on transnational care practices of providing emotional support and economic remittances. Drawing on ethnographic research among the privileged and affluent community of Syrian Christians of Kerala, India, I argue for a diverse and complex Southern reconfiguration of eldercare at the intersection of migration, which also includes 'market transfer' of proximate care services as reciprocal filial care. Further, the paper illuminates how specificities of migration, ageing and care are locally nuanced and shape diverse transnational care practices. In turn, transnational care strategies employed by the migrants to overcome distances transform the local eldercare economy and (re)produce class-stratified eldercare spaces. Through the study of a privileged community, the paper highlights the increasing marketisation of the eldercare landscape in the sending countries of the South and contributes to furthering diversified understandings of the ageing-migration nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction is presented to the article "Variant Readings of Luke 22:15-20 and the Relationship of Codex Bezae to Curetonian Syriac" which appeared in the November 08, 2024 issue.

For centuries, the legal rate of interest in the Roman Empire was "one-hundredth": 1 percent of the principal of the loan was added to it each month. Although Christian leaders and writers in the Greek and Latin west did not approve of this practice, Syriac-speaking Christian communities in the eastern Roman Empire incorporated the rate of "one-hundredth" into canon law, and some grounded it in a novel interpretation of the Syriac Bible. In this paper, I describe the incorporation of Roman lending norms into the framework of the Syriac church and discuss an early document that both reflects and modifies these norms: a "circular letter" of Symeon Stylites (d. 459), in which he commands that interest rates be lowered by 50 percent as a temporary act of piety. That letter is preserved in a manuscript of Symeon's Syriac Life, found today in the British Library (Add. 14,484, fols. 130b–133b). I situate the letter within that Syriac tradition, and I offer the possibility that Justinian's law of 528, which also lowered interest rates by 50 percent (CJ 4.32.26), might have been the result of contacts with this Syriac tradition, and specifically with Symeon's regulation. I also examine the reception of the Roman rate of "one-hundredth" in early Christian normative sources ("lawbooks" and "canons") from the Church of the East, in the Sasanian Empire. These Christians received the Roman norm of "one-hundredth" differently and did not incorporate Symeon's pious reduction of the interest rate, or Justinian's imperial legislation to the same effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines casteism and the food practices of dominant-caste Syrian Christians during Holy Week in Kerala, India. Kerala is often deemed to be educated, progressive and secular. However, education and secular practices have not eradicated casteism. Looking at three specific breads made by Syrian Christians during Holy Week, I trace the difference between Syrian Christian food-giving to Dalit Bahujan workers, and food-sharing between Syrian Christians and dominant-caste Hindus. Food, I argue, gives us a lens to understand how casteism continues to function despite narratives of Kerala's secular and progressive exceptionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of Mary, Lazarus’s sister, receives an enhanced role in the Old Syriac Sinaiticus translation of the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–46). Four readings in the Syriac translation focus on Mary and consist of additions or reelaborations of the Greek text that are not errors or misunderstandings of the original but rather the result of reading the figure of Mary in the context of the Fourth Gospel as a whole. The result is a portrait of Mary of Bethany in the Sinaiticus translation that should properly be titled “portrait of a disciple.” This analysis results in a deeper appreciation of the Old Syriac translator’s overall interpretation of John 11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on the analysis of two manuscripts in the Arabic language produced by the West Syrian scribe Yūsuf ibn Sbāṭ of Amida/Diyarbakır, in 1352 in Cairo and in 1358 in Famagusta, respectively. The former is one of the earliest complete and dated manuscripts written in Garshuni (Arabic in Syriac characters), whereas the latter is written in a fine, Arabic hand. By following Yūsuf across the eastern Mediterranean, this article seeks to explain his journey and scribal practices in light of contemporary cultural and socio-economic trends. Retrospectively, it also aims to demonstrate how Yūsuf's case can shed light on the history of Syriac Christians living outside their historical homeland. It thus investigates the various ways they dealt with a challenging multi-cultural context, and how the latter influenced several aspects of their habits and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes narratives of emigration among Syriac Christians who migrated from Turkey to Vienna, Austria. It sets out from a starting point of exploring the different ways that migration affects family life and reproduction. By using “linked biographies,” the discussion focuses upon intergenerational aspects in order to explore the ways in which history is understood and reproduced by individuals with their own narrative but interconnected with the biographies of family members. Through the analysis of the narrative strategies of three men and their sons, it is shown how the individuals draw on cultural idioms of Syriac family and masculinity when telling their stories and simultaneously negotiating their moral agency. The paper argues that the analysis of biographical material reveals that postmigration intergenerational loyalties are not only about negotiating collective identity but also about pressures for social mobility.

Situated on the far reaches of Latin Christendom, the crusader states witnessed daily contact between numerous religious groupings, both between subjected peoples and their Frankish rulers, and regarding travellers passing in and out of the latter's territories. Though this most obviously included Muslim communities, it also meant engaging with Eastern Christian populations whose presence far pre-dated, and extended beyond the limits of, Frankish authority. This posed distinct challenges for the ruling elites of Latin polities in imposing and maintaining power. This article discusses these difficulties by examining the nature of inter-Christian, or more specifically Latin–Syriac, contact in the principality of Antioch and county of Edessa, through theoretical frameworks proposed in Thomas Nail's 2016 Theory of the Border. It will be argued that the realities of human movement in such a diverse and topographically fragmented region left little chance for impermeable borders between the Christian communities who lived there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of migration have extensively studied the economic, social, and political impact of migration and the secular changes amongst diasporic communities, but changes in religious faith, practice and institutions remain opaque. Yet, they form part of the most intimate aspect of the lives transformed in movement and were, in fact, the most active fault line in diasporic communities and at home. However, in relation to religion in the Middle East, historians have hardly paid any attention to movement of people and ideas across and beyond the geographical boundaries of the region. This makes our understanding at best incomplete and, in some instances, incorrect in identifying the sources, dynamics and reasons for change in religious institutions and faith. This article attempts to fill these lacunae by looking at an example of how migration inflected religious institutions and how faith and religion shaped the migratory experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is aimed at studying the nature of Christian Syrians' historical memory about the era of the martyrs on the Syrian territory for the period between the end of the IV century and the first half of the V. That was the time when Christianity was developing as the state religion in the Roman Empire. We tried to figure out how the historical memory of the martyrs reflects the peculiarities of the cultural identity of the Syrians and their attitude to representatives of other ethnic groups. Also we tried to create a systematic historical review of the main social and ideological functions that were inherent in Syrians' historical memory about the era of the martyrs (for the period between the late IV century and the first half of the V). This article is written under the principles of historicism and through several methods, namely historical-chronological and historical-typological. They are also complemented by structural-functional analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and comments upon a recent monograph by Aaron M. Butts on linguistic contacts between Greek and Syriac, Language Change in the Wake of Empire : this volume is also used as an opportunity to discuss the expectations for this kind of studies in the future years, and to reflect upon their past. The importance of Butts' book as a crucial tool for the scholarly community involved in contact-induced studies is here highlighted. Butts offers a most welcome new and thorough analysis of the materials collected by his predecessors and adds his personal new data. This review article also provides a brief recollection of previous studies, that opened the way to Butts' comprehensive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contains the original unpublished Syriac text of the Story of the Holy Friday, an anonymous hagiographic composition that promotes an idiosyncratic form of Friday veneration, which demands that Christians refrain from work on that day completely. The text of the Story, published on the basis of manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, syr. 234, is accompanied with an English translation and discussion of its unusual message, possibly related to the early period of Muslim-Christian relations in the Near East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores the narrations and narrative styles of three Syriac authors and genocide survivors from the Diyarbakır province of the Ottoman Empire: Naaman Abed Qarabashi, Ishāq bar Armalto (Armale) and Henno, comparing them with the Armenian and Greek survivors Rev. Grigoris Balakian (Գրիգորիս Պալագեան, Grigoris Palagean), Yervant Odian (Երուանդ Օտեան – Eruand Ōtean1 ), Elias Venezis and Dido Sotiriou, who all wrote and published memoirs of events they were close to. The three Syriac authors developed an antagonistic narrative shaped by biblical narrative styles, Christian martyrology and their perception of contemporary events as inter-religious war and traditional Jihad. The non-Syriac authors that have been considered here replaced, in various degrees, this approach by internalization. Greek authors from Asia Minor, such as Venezis or Dido argued, in their narrations, against the ethnic or religious ascription of guilt by emphasizing cases of solidarity between Ottoman Turks (Muslims) and Orthodox Greeks. The two Armenian authors examined here represent a middle position between Syriac moral antagonism and the differentiating introspection of Greek authors. In spite of their very different backgrounds and professions as clergyman and secular journalist, both tried to present their testimonials as documentary, unvarnished and “unliterary” as possible. Is it possible to survive in a system based on violence and terror without the loss of human empathy and dignity? The Syriacs saw this possibility mainly in individual martyrdom. Elias Venezis and Dido Sotiriou, however, named culprits and victims on both sides of the ethno-religious divide and included Muslim rescuers in their narrations. The Armenian authors Yervant Odian and Grigoris Balakian focused their narrations on suffering as such. In the face of their numerous compatriots who had been silenced forever, they cleared their “survival debts” by writing about the unspeakable and witnessing genocidal destruction.

This article presents a new perspective on the meaning and function of the Syriac construction hwayt qāṭēl used with a non-past reference. Beginning with the traditional method of cross-linguistic comparison, the author contextualizes the construction in question within a pragmatic-cognitive framework of general linguistics, an approach that has so far been largely overlooked in Syriac studies. The language used here for comparison is the literary Christian of Urmi, a modern dialect of Aramaic, whose verbal system presents itself as a valid typological parallel for Syriac. Thus, through analysing the renditions of hwayt qāṭēl in Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic within the corpus of the New Testament, the semantics and function of the Syriac hwayt qāṭēl receive precise characteristics, followed by an attempt to explain the use of the past tense form hwayt (perfect) for the present-future reference. An additional brief treatment of other command-related forms in Syriac, such as the imperative and imperative-derived constructions, contributes further, more detailed observations on the Syriac verbal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the rhetorical invocation of "secular ethnicity" among diasporic Syriac Orthodox Christian activists living in the Netherlands as they seek political recognition as an endangered, indigenous ethnoreligious group of the Middle East from the UN Human Rights Council, the Dutch state, and their local municipal government. In tracing how their efforts to stake a politically salient ethnic identity on the holy rites and rituals of the Syriac liturgical tradition are legible to some audiences while remaining illegible to others, I analyze how secularity intertwines with theologically informed ritual practices in geographically variable ways to shape how Syriac Christian kinship is reproduced in diaspora. I analyze these intertwined forms of legibility and illegibility through the notion of perforation, which I offer as an alternative to the one-dimensional metaphor of secular rupture, in order to show how diasporic Syriac Orthodox kinship is premised on the conviction that Christianity is an inherent, rather than an optional, dimension of human personhood. Ultimately, I argue that secular power and its effects are subsumed within other historical processes of division and reconciliation in a broader contest over the proper dispensation of political and ritual power throughout the history of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present essay examines the ritual functions of Four-Gospel books, or tetraevangelia, in late ancient Syriac Christianity. Drawing on a range of sources—including tetraevangelia manuscripts, liturgical texts, and material evidence from late ancient Syria and Mesopotamia—the essay makes two primary points. First, it argues that the physical form and layout of Syriac Gospel codices conditioned how they were read, both inside and outside of the context of the liturgy. Second, it demonstrates that Gospel codices were not mere textual containers, but were themselves powerful ritualizing objects that manifested the physical presence and agency of Christ, again both inside and outside of liturgical contexts. In making these arguments, the essay engages with and contributes to research across the fields of art history, ritual theory, and late ancient studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weddings can be seen as ‘rites of passage’ and also as ‘symbolic struggles’ since their glamour appears to be a new indicator of status for many families, especially migrant ones. A mixture of traditional as well as reinvented wedding customs serves a community searching for ethnic identity markers that can help it to embrace all of its descendants. This article presents a case study of how Assyrian/Syriac wedding rituals and marriage traditions that are being performed and transformed in the migratory context of Sweden over the last 50 years. Among the Middle Eastern Christians, who have been emigrating from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq since the 1960s, and which today numbers 120,000 individuals, marriage is a very serious business - a permanent union between spouses and their respective families. The purpose of the article is to analyse Assyrian/Syriac wedding rituals and to discuss how they have shaped the modern Assyrian/Syriac identity. It also explores how local marriages connect and reconnect migrants of this ethno-religious group(s) and how it differentiates them from their peers in the surrounding Swedish society - religiously, socially and even aesthetically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the importance of acknowledging the underlying methodology in the interpretation of early Christian art. I raise these issues via an engagement with the frescoes at Dura Europos, as interpreted by Michael Peppard in his recent work, The World's Oldest Church. I demonstrate that Peppard's ideology and archaeological methodology entail a creative, hermeneutical nexus for interpreting the initiation rituals at the Dura Europos house church. For Peppard, this nexus entails an innovative interplay between non-canonical sources, art and liturgical identity. This yields a surprising interpretation of initiation rituals at Dura Europos and, by extension, of early Christianity in Syria. After describing some problematic aspects of Peppard's ideological and archaeological choices, I offer suggestions for a related proposal on Christology and visual exegesis at the Dura Europos house church baptistery. This proposal begins with clarification of ideological issues that foreground visual exegesis at Dura Europos, and argues for the adoption of six essential criteria when reconstructing the operative Christology in the baptistery of Dura Europos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large portion of the Syriac works attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis survives in the form of collected poetic anthologies. This paper argues that previous attempts to assign authorship and date of composition to Ephrem's hymn cycles mistakenly treat these works as if they were treatises written by Ephrem. Scholars have tended to treat the hymn cycles as units and to judge the authenticity of each cycle as a whole. By contrast, this paper contends that the cycles postdate Ephrem and were assembled and supplemented by later editors. It further proposes that the heterogeneous origin of most of the hymn cycles makes it impossible to date them to a particular time in Ephrem's career. To hypothesize a date of composition is to assume that Ephrem composed the hymns in that cycle at a particular time and collected them as a unit. Likewise, this paper contends that scholars must be frank about the general lack of historical evidence, which severely challenges our ability to contextualize fourth-century Syriac poetry. The paper concludes by proposing a new approach to questions related to authorship and date of composition, one focused on smaller metrical sub-units (meter-melodies) that comprise the large hymn cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin Bailey (1791–1871) was one of the first English-born Church Missionary Society missionaries to go to India. Along with Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker, Sr, he was part of what has been called the Travancore Trio. Their objective was to reform the ancient community of Syrian Christians in Travancore so that they in turn might be a great native missionary force in India. Their mission was known as the ‘Mission of Help’ to the ancient Syrian Church. The mission was distinctive from others in India at that time which sought more directly to call for the conversion of the country's massive Hindu and Muslim populations. This article will show that Bailey seriously underestimated doctrinal differences between the CMS and the Syrians. Moreover, the place of the Syrians in the complex social fabric of Travancore was not adequately understood. Unlike other missions, this one may almost be said to have as its aim the conversion of an existing church. That call for conversion, however, arose from fundamentally divergent understandings of Christian belief and practice. The article concludes by considering further some of the sources of these divergences and engaging with some of the critique that the Mission of Help has received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marquis de Fénelon’s internationally popular didactic narrative, Les aventures de Télémaque, went through a remarkable number of metamorphoses in the Nahḍah, the Arab world’s cultural revival movement of the long nineteenth century. This article examines two early manuscript translations by Syrian Christian writers in the 1810s, the rhymed prose version by Rifāʿah Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī in the 1860s; its rewriting by Shāhīn ʿAṭiyyah in 1885; and Saʿdallāh al-Bustānī’s musical drama of 1869, the basis for performances later in the century by the famous actor Salāmah Ḥijāzī. Placing Télémaque’s Arabic trajectory within its global vogue in the Enlightenment suggests ways of reading the Nahḍah between theories of world literature and ‘transnational mass-texts’, and more specific local histories of translation and literary adaptation. The ambiguity of Télémaque, its hybrid and transitional form, was important to its success in milieux facing analogous kinds of hybridity and transition—among them those of the Arab Nahḍah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Syriac translation of the New Testament produced by Thomas of Harkel in ad 616 provides a rich source for studying the transmission of the Greek New Testament. In this case, its relationship to the Byzantine text in the Catholic Epistles is used to test the results of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (cbgm), a new computerized tool being used to edit the standard editions of the Greek New Testament (NA28/UBS5). Against claims that the cbgm is not useful for understanding textual history, this study shows that, when used carefully, it can provide valuable clarity to our understanding. The results of this test have implications for the cbgm, for the textual worth of the Byzantine text, and for how all “texts” are related and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The of article presents selected examples of how and why this undertext of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest (SGP) is important for scholarship, especially in disciplines beyond them confines of Syriac Christianity. It mentions that examples illustrate two points first, how the Greek text of Galen's Simples may be corrected on the basis of textual evidence provided by Sergius's Syriac translation, and second, how Sergius's sixth- century translation was to prove fundamental even centuries later.

The article summarizes a longitudinal study of the music of Maronite communities located in the Galilee, Northern Israel, where, for several reasons, this tradition has remained practically unchanged. Audio recordings of the "second round," made by the author, follow the recordings stored in the National Sound Archive (Israel). A new collection of Maronite music, recently released in the West, is compared with the "local model" of this culture and with the systematization of church tunes that became known as Gregorian chants in medieval Europe. An exploration of Maronite history and a background on Syriac chant are part of the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to read the event of Malabar migration as articulated in the migrant writings. Arguably, the event and the representations - both individual and community narratives - are political documents which facilitate different discourses on minority politics in Kerala/India. Community identity and claims of legitimacy in a secular modern state become crucial in these narratives which make them significant within the sphere of history-literature on the historical event of Malabar migration. The narratives are examined in view of the cultural and political signification of Syrian Christian community and the very act of writing history has in the ideological nexus associated within. In doing so, the paper looks at the way these discourses make inroads to the idea of modernity, nation-state, and thereby opens up discursive terrains of the politics of representation and the articulations of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moshe Bar Kepha, as a churchman, exegete and apologist, lived in the time and place of the most troubled center of the Abbasid Empire, witnessing the consequences of its policies upon the Christian communities. The most daring policy was the Islamization policy of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861 ), under which Christianity was not merely assailed as a false faith, but also as a social evil. In addition to paying Jizyah, this caliph further humiliated the Christians by imposing on them harsher rules which came to be known as “cUmar Conditions.” It was in the context of enduring the Islamization policy and in the context of open and receptive relationships among Christians of different traditions that Moshe Bar Kepha ministered, taught, and wrote his Commentary on the Gospel of Luke. In fact, he produced a masterpiece of an inclusive (ecumenical) theological approach, and with apologetic tendency responding to Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original Syriac composition known as the Cave of Treasures, ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian, presents a peculiar account of Christian sacred history. Due to its idiosyncratic nature, it is not easy to situate this pseudepigraphic work within the multifaceted world of Syriac Christianity of Late Antiquity. This paper carries out a reexamination of some scholarly assumptions about the date and milieu of this work and offers new arguments that may help us to contextualize it with greater certainty. It is argued that the Cave was composed, most likely, during the period between the middle of the sixth century and the first decades of the seventh century. As for the work’s provenance, it is proposed that it was authored by a West-Syrian writer, who lived in the Sasanian-controlled part of Northern Mesopotamia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents three hypotheses that may shed light on the place of 2 Baruch in the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus, the sixth-/seventh-century Old Testament codex that contains the only known complete copy of 2 Baruch. Whereas scholars of 2 Baruch have generally treated this copy in isolation from the rest of the manuscript, using it primarily as a witness to the (hypothetical) early Jewish text, this essay approaches 2 Baruch as an integral part of the codex, exploring codicological elements, the order and organization of books, as well as paratextual features. Inspired by the perspective of New Philology, this article contributes to the ongoing discussions about the origins, transmission and transformation of the so-called Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, claiming the importance of studying them in the manuscript contexts in which they are copied. The article will also be a contribution to the further study of the Codex Ambrosianus and the engagement with 2 Baruch among Syriac Christians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the history of reception of the Story of Melchizedek, an original Greek composition from Late Antiquity, among Syriac-speaking Christians during the Middle Ages. For the first time the original Syriac text, English translation and discussion of three different witnesses to this apocryphal work in Syriac is provided, namely (1) the abbreviated translation of the Story incorporated into Catena Severi (ninth century), (2) the Pseudo-Athanasian excerpt found in ms. Vatican Syr. 159, and (3) the brief discourse entitled Melchizedek the Priest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]