Syrian Christians Research Articles

Historicity of the Qur’anic Dhu al-Qarnayn and the Myths of Alexander

Several verses of SËrah al-Kahf (the Qur’an 18:85-98) contains a didactic lesson of history which unlike the moralistic lesson of Plato on the rise, growth and fall of mythical Atlantis, is an abridged record on events in the unnamed Eurasian empire threatened by terror of the raiding hordes of ferocious nomads from the Northeast in the Iron Age. It is neither history of Alexander the Macedon’s conquest of Greece, Phoenicia, Egypt, Persia and India reported by Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Appian, Plutarch and Justin nor the Alexandrine Romance composed by the anonymous Syrian Christian writer (or writers) in the early Middle Ages of the Mediterranean. Didactica of this Qur’anic SËrah is not based on the Persian Iskander-name, either. Like the life of the historical Prophet Isa (Jesus,a.s.), the historicity of Qur’anic monotheistic ruler DhË al-Qarnayn deeply divides the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and agnostic readers of the ancient history. Their opinions are intellectual mirrors of continuous struggle between monotheism, henotheism and secularism, contextualized into historical drama of divided nations and empires.

Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization by Efthymios Nicolaidis (review)

Reviewed by: Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization by Efthymios Nicolaidis Maria Mavroudi Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization. By Efthymios Nicolaidis. Translated by Susan Emanuel. [Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context]. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2011. Pp. xx, 252. $55.00. ISBN 978-1-4214-0298-7.) Recent discussions on the relation between religion and science in various historical contexts have mitigated an earlier view, influenced by Enlightenment anticlericalism, that this encounter was generally inimical. The volume under review offers Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodoxy as an example inviting further reflection on this problem. It also partly redresses the lack of any monograph on Byzantine science (pp. 197–202), generated by a widely shared perception that Byzantium was marginal to developments in world history and that the Byzantine legacy of the entire Orthodox world (Greek, Slavic, or other) is incompatible with and obstructive to modernity. Accordingly, researching the sciences among Orthodox Christians under Ottoman rule meant measuring Greek progress toward modernity and eventually explaining what led to the creation of a modern Greek nation-state. The Byzantine period (fourth to fifteenth century) is covered in approximately 100 pages, whereas another 100 are dedicated to subsequent developments among Greek-speaking orthodox Christians until the end of the twentieth century (geopolitically covering the Ottoman lands, Eastern and Western Europe, and Greece since its independence in 1830). Conceived and completed within four years (p. xii), this volume is admirably succinct. Its author, who acknowledges the difficulties generated by the dearth of existing research on the subject and the complexity of the issues involved, deserves gratitude for producing the only comprehensive reference available to scholars working both within and outside the fields it directly covers. The volume focuses on the aspects of science where later developments led to the so-called scientific revolution: the constitution of the world as a physical entity and its function in astronomical terms, especially planetary motion. It implicitly assumes that the definition of science and its distinction from “pseudo-science” remained stable throughout the seventeen centuries it covers and was approximately the same as the modern one. The author repeats ideas found in secondary literature instead of scrutinizing and reformulating them. As a result, the book reproduces earlier interpretations [End Page 96] of Byzantine culture abandoned by Byzantinists and occasionally includes factual errors. For example, chapter 2 contrasts the spherical universe of a postulated Alexandrian school, derived from “Hellenic” sources and embraced by highbrow culture, with the flat universe of an Antiochian school based on “Asiatic” sources and propagated by monks and the lower clergy in “popular” texts such as lives of saints. This contrast is no longer tenable, especially since what the author describes as the “popular” and “primitive” angelology of the Antiochian school (p. 31) is, in fact, a key ingredient of a particularly highbrow medieval endeavor: the ninth-century translations of Greek material into Arabic by Hunayn b. Ishaq and his associates, who routinely rendered the ancient gods of the pagan texts as angels. This reflected a philosophical tradition embraced by both pagans and Christians in late antiquity and beyond: the derivation of cosmology from the allegorical interpretation of ancient mythology. The book’s negative assessment of Byzantine culture during iconoclasm (seventh–ninth centuries) ignores its positive reevaluation by recent scholarship. The account of Byzantine-Arab astrological exchanges during this period is muddled and inaccurate regarding the careers of the elusive Stephen (of Alexandria, Athens, and so forth) and Theophilos of Edessa (not a Greek Orthodox astrologer who immigrated from Byzantium to the caliphate, but a Syrian Christian born in Muslim lands and active at the court of caliph al-Mahdi). Two very distinct literary forms, hagiography and the Erotapokriseis (teaching manuals in question-and-answer form) are conflated (p. 54). Psellos is presented as a reader of predominantly “pagan” literature, which presumably led to a subsequent need for Emperor Alexios I to “re-Christianize” Byzantine education; this interpretation disregards Psellos’s extensive engagement with patristic literature and generally distorts the outlook of eleventh-century Byzantine education. The author states that, in the fourteenth century, Theodore Metochites “hoped to purify...

Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt

In this study, Febe Armanios uses a series of snapshots of religious life—discourses, rituals, and festivals—in order to chart the history of the Ottoman Coptic community from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. As such, it is a study predicated on the centrality of the church in communal life and on the primacy of religious identity in the early modern period. Still, this history is rigorously contextualized; it is also deeply informed by the author's knowledge of broader Coptic history and the histories of other religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire. The period under investigation was a tumultuous time in Egyptian history. In 1517, Egypt came under Ottoman control, bringing to an end several centuries of Mamluk rule and issuing a period of religious persecution, economic insecurity, and political upheaval. Although centralized authority would not return until the early nineteenth century, in the eighteenth century, the rise of military households/tax farms provided the backdrop against which the Coptic community experienced a measure of revival. The Copts—Egypt's largest Christian (and non-Muslim) community whose religion is ancient, ritualistic, and ceremonial—have historically been insular. Their transition from Mamluk rule (and its generally oppressive treatment of non-Muslims) did not bring immediate relief. Although Ottoman rule over Egypt brought Copts in closer contact with the region's other non-Muslims, including the Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities, their geographic confinement to Egypt did not afford them the benefits, available to others, of imperial connections or European coreligionists. At the same time, intensified Catholic missionary activity and the arrival of newly Uniate Syrian Christians in Egypt would add to the community's challenges. In the eighteenth century, ironically, their lack of European contact made them trustworthy in the eyes of the powerful military households that held sway in Egypt and who were eager to make use of the Copts' local knowledge as scribes, accountants, and tax collectors. Although lay Coptic leaders, archons, played a significant role in community affairs, it is their relationship to clerical authority and role as patrons of religion that is addressed here.

Man Slaving to Divine: A Socio-religious Custom Gleaned from the Nineteenth Century Palm Leaves

This paper is an attempt to explore and analyse the practice of the institution of slavery observed by the Syrian Christian communities in Kerala. There are eighteenth and nineteenth century palm leaf (manuscript) records in the Syrian Christian churches in Kerala establishing the same which needs to be understood in its secular and spiritual senses since these records are evidence of both the secular practice of slavery as a social custom and a religious practice of adima (slave) offering as a spiritual activity. So also, this paper is an attempt to explore and analyse the origin of adimappanam or adimakasu found in the Church records.
 Keywords: Syrian Christians; Slavery; Palm leave records; Adima; Adimappanam; Slave offering

Decoupling Religion and Ethnicity: Second-Generation Indian American Christians

Classic assimilation theory was based on the assumption of individualistic adaptation, with immigrants and their children expected to shed their ethnic identities to become Americans. In the sphere of religion, however, they could maintain their communitarian traditions through American denominations. In contemporary society, multiculturalism, spiritual seeking, and postdenominationalism have reversed this paradigm. First- and second-generation immigrants integrate by remaining ethnic and group-identified, but religion is viewed as a personal quest. This paper examines how this paradigm shift affects the ethnic and religious behavior of second-generation Americans. It is based on research among Malankara Syrian Christians belonging to an ancient South Indian community.

Obliged by Grace: Edward Jurji’s Legacy in the History of Religions at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1939–77

A study in the history of the history of religions at Princeton Theological Seminary, the article reflects on the contribution of an under-appreciated figure on the faculty, Edward Jurji, a Syrian Christian acclaimed as a scholar of Islam and as a phenomenologist. Jurji’s intellectual odyssey is traced as he emerged from the shadow of his predecessor Samuel Zwemer, famed (and reviled) as a missionary polemicist in the Middle East, to become an avid proponent of a dialogical approach to the history of religions. Much is owed to Jurji for pioneering the seminary’s first large-scale interfaith colloquies.

Mapping Dowry Exchanges: Snapshots of Nineteenth Century Palm Leaves

The Palm leave records of the Syrian Christian communities in Kerala, belonging to eighteenth and nineteenth century, remain as evidences of the practice of dowry (Stridhanam) among the Syrian Christians and donations such as passaram, nadavazhakkam, kurippanam, kudappanam etc made to the churches and priests in relation to the marriage. Records say that this social custom, also known as Stridhanam was a crucial point of marriage and it was very often a matter of dispute and family problems. In spite of all disputes and difficulties existed in the Syrian Christian families and in the society at large because of this custom, no church record could be traced against this system. This paper is an attempt to explore and analyse the nature and practice of this social custom among Syrian Christians in the nineteenth century, who are Christian in faith and religion but are not different from the Hindus in their social customs and practices. Likewise, this paper is an attempt to analyse the social and cultural impacts of dowry (stridhanam) and the attitude of the society as well as that of Church authorities towards this custom and how did they tax the people in connection with the marriage.
 Keywords: Dowry; stridhanam; syrian christians; passaram; nadavazhakkam; palm leave records; christian marriage

Entangled communities: interethnic relationships among urban salesclerks and domestic workers in Egypt, 1927–61

This paper examines the relationships among salesclerks and other lower-level commercial and domestic employees in inter-war and post-Second World War urban Egypt, especially Cairo. It argues that the Italians, Greeks, local Jews, Armenians, Syrian Christians, Maltese, Coptic Christians and Muslims who often worked side by side on the floors of department stores and private homes participated in multiethnic occupational subgroups, formal unions and leisure cultures that created a series of networks linking lower-middle-class people in workplaces, public and neighbourhood space as well as commerce. These networks spanned ethnic, religious and linguistic boundaries, and they reveal a complex shared Mediterranean culture, underpinned by a juridical system shaped by European colonialism. Although historians have documented the vertical relations within ethnic groups and the horizontal relationships among the business elite of different communities, horizontal relationships among the lower and lower-middle classes of locally resident foreigners or Egyptians, who made up the bulk of the different communities, evidence both deep entanglement and regular conflict. The history of lived Mediterranean or cosmopolitan experiences thus challenges contemporary uses of both terms.

‘I am a Believer but not a Conformist’: Negotiating Claims to being Religious among Syrian Christians and Muslims

ABSTRACTPsychologists' attempts to define and measure religion reveal substantial variability, a lack of consensus, cultural variation and differences between religions. A discursive psychology approach can address variability in meanings and the inferential issues that may inform claims to be religious. This paper identifies strategies used by Syrian Muslims and Christians to affirm, reformulate or deny religiousness. The analysis is based on a corpus of data generated through semi‐structured interviews with 158 men and women. It shows how some speakers affirm that they are religious and treat this as a non‐accountable matter. When asked to describe the basis of being religious, they produced descriptions of their own practices or a set of general criteria. Other speakers denied or modified ‘being religious’, using an ‘x but not y’ formulation to reject one meaning (for example, conformist) in favour of another (for example, believer). Some speakers' self‐ascriptions were reinforced by characterizing their own views of religion as morals and good behaviour. Thus speakers deploy multiple meanings of religion for different purposes. Moreover their accounts address inferential and interpersonal problems that arise when claiming to be religious: specifically that others may infer extremism or conformity, or prejudice against members of other religions. The implications of these observations for social psychological studies of religion are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia (review)

Reviewed by: Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia Matteo Nicolini-Zani Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia. Edited by Dietmar W. Winkler and Li Tang. [Orientalia—patristica—oecumenica,Vol. 1.] (Münster–Vienna: Lit Verlag. 2009. Pp. iv, 395. €39,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-643-50045-8.) In the last twenty years, research on the commonly mistermed “Nestorian” Christianity in central and eastern Asia has grown in Eastern and Western academic circles. New publications have resulted in a new approach that is based more on sources and a broader philological foundation, which can be truly regarded as a turning point in the history of research on East Syrian Christianity in Asia. The volume under review is the outcome of the second conference on “Research on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia” in 2006. It contains papers written by scholars from disciplines such as church history, [End Page 616] philology (Syriac, Turkic, Iranic, and Chinese), archaeology, and theology. It explores the subject of East Syrian Christianity from various perspectives. The volume is organized in four parts. The first part, on “Inscriptions” (pp. 13–132), contains current research on texts carved in stone from various geographical areas (Central Asia, Inner Mongolia, China). Particularly relevant in this section are essays on Syriac and Syro-Turkic inscriptions by Mark Dickens, Wassilios Klein, Kuvatbek Tabaldiev, Li Chonglin, and Niu Ruji. They give the original text, transliteration, translation, and a commentary of Christian gravestones found in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzistan, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang (China), all dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Also worth mentioning is Li Tang’s preliminary study (text analysis, commentary, and translation) on the Chinese Christian inscription found in Luoyang in 2006 and dating from the ninth century. The second part deals briefly with “Manuscripts and Texts” (pp. 135–80). Among the three articles in this section, Max Deeg’s provocative essay invites scholars to consider the proper and improper ways to proceed in placing in their context the Chinese Christian documents of the Tang period (618–907). The third part, on “History” (pp. 183–334), is the richest and presents the evaluation and interpretation of various sources such as inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and texts coming from different regions of central and eastern Asia and dating back to various historical periods. Among the eleven essays contained in this section five concern Syriac Christianity in China and Korea during the first centuries of the second millennium: Pierre Marsone writes on the time when the Temple of the Cross at Fangshan was a “Christian Temple”; Maurizio Paolillo about King George, the thirteenth-century Christian chief of the Öngüt tribe; Li Tang on Christians of the Mongol (or, better, Mongolised Turkish) Naiman tribe and one of their princes, Küchlüg khan, as referred to in medieval sources; Yin Xiaoping on Christians in the Chinese region of Jiangnan during the Yuan dynasty (1272–1368); Alexander Toepel about Christians in Korea at the end of the thirteenth century. In addition, Matteo Nicolini-Zani shows how Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries referred to Tang Christianity in their writings to further their own mission, and Chen Huaiyu investigates the textual and artistic encounter between East Syrian Christianity and Tantric Buddhism in medieval China and Tibet. The last part is devoted to “Liturgy and Arts” (pp. 337–92), with three articles exploring the fields of liturgical music and religious arts. Yan Xiaojing’s article, in particular, shows the interaction between Christian, Buddhist, and Daoist artistic patterns. Photographs of historical relics are inserted in some of the contributions. Regrettably, the volume is rather carelessly edited. The two editors note in their introduction that they were aware of the challenging work of editing [End Page 617] such a collection of diverse interdisciplinary scholarship. Nevertheless, the book is a unique collection of “hidden treasures” for all those who wish to know more about those fascinating and mostly neglected interreligious and intercultural exchanges in which Christianity was involved in its diffusion along the Silk Road for about one thousand years. Matteo Nicolini-Zani Monastero di Bose Magnano...

To Survive or To Flourish? Minority Rights and Syrian Christian Community Assertions in Twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala

The arrival of modernity not only constituted communities but also impelled them in competition against each other in Kerala. Modern politics of the state as a result is inextricably linked with intense community politics. The success of community politics for rights and resources varied across communities, so also did strategies of assertion. This article will focus on different instances of community assertions by the Syrian Christians in twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala. The confrontation of the community with the ‘Hindu state’ and the then Dewan in the 1930s, the ‘Liberation Struggle’ against the Communists during late 1950s and the anti-eviction movements of the 1960s testifies its lack of primordial adherences and openness to heterogeneous strategies as required by different historical circumstances. It moves freely from secular to non-secular, minoritarian to majoritarian and lawful to unlawful, with claims to a greater citizenship. The hegemonic developmentalist ideology to which the community subscribes, along with reiteration of a righteous and industrious citizen, ensured the transformation of the ‘unlawful’ into ‘lawful’. Using even state secularism as a route of sectarianism, Syrian Christian politics resorted to no permanent self-representation, resulting in unfixed community constellations. The article also suggests that the recent recourse of the community to minority rights may hint at an inherent crisis and a loss of moral weight it possessed earlier.

“May I treasure up the words in my heart!”: Syriac Culture in Modern Aramaic Oral Tradition

Modern Aramaic philology is a research field that has attracted the attention of few scholars and vernacular literature preserved in manuscripts appears indeed to be a rather marginal phenomenon in comparison with both oral tradition and Classical Syriac writing (copying of the classical heritage and composition of new original texts). In the last few decades and especially in the last few years, a surprising number of grammatical descriptions of modern Aramaic varieties have appeared. All of them include the transcription and translation of oral texts, some of which are particularly valuable from a literary point of view. Both written and oral texts reveal an extraordinary tenacity of classical stories and motifs. A couple of examples will be given here: the story of the Maccabean martyrs and their mother Shmuni and of Joseph and Mary. In both cases oral transmission has preserved ancient lore in the collective memory of the community, although in rather creative and somehow distorted ways, as is typical of the oral/aural medium. The earliest written witnesses of Modern Aramaic are religious texts composed in learned varieties of Jewish and Christian vernaculars of present-day northern Iraq. Their linguistic, literary and stylistic forms attest the existence of a rich and probably much earlier oral literature in the vernacular. They are written texts that have drawn on classical literatures – Hebrew, Jewish Aramaic and Classical Syriac, but they are clearly intended for oral transmission, being homiletic texts in the case of Jewish authors and lengthy hymns to be chanted by soloists and/or choirs in the case of East Syrian Christians. The latter exhibit stylistic features and structuring devices typical of oral poetry: rhyme, rhythm, formulae, copia verborum, multilingual hendyadis, anaphora and anadiplosis. The earliest dated Christian texts originated in the Mosul plain around the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. It was only since the 18th century, however, that Christian Aramaic vernacular literature was committed to writing in manuscripts as a marginal, quantitatively almost insignificant phenomenon in the context of that flourishing of scribal and literary activities which is known as the “school of Alqosh”. Since the 16th century, a number of authors and families of professional scribes of Alqosh, in the Mosul plain, or the surrounding region, were extraordinarily active in copying, reading, commenting Classical Syriac works and became original authors themselves in the classical language and – to a far lesser extent – in the vernacular. In the 19th century, this kind of literary production attracted the attention of the first European scholars who dealt with Modern Aramaic. They used it especially as a source of linguistic evidence and were seldom interested in literary features. After the first ground-breaking publications, almost a century elapsed before Semitic scholars rediscovered the charm of modern Aramaic tongues. This renewed interest was cultivated mostly by dialectologists who became progressively more aware of the risk of extinction that threatened what they usually label “Neo-Aramaic” dialects. Only a few scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating manuscripts containing Modern Aramaic literary texts. 5 The intense and meticulous labor of the linguists resulted in the publication of a number of grammatical descriptions of Neo-Aramaic dialects. Especially in the last few

Renewal in the Malankara Orthodox Church, India

The Malanakra Orthodox Syrian Church, which belongs to the family of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, proudly claims to be founded by the Apostle St Thomas. Its history before the fifteenth century is very poorly documented. However, this ancient Christian community was in intermittent relationship with the East Syrian Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which was discontinued with the arrival of the Portuguese, who forcefully converted it to Roman Catholicism. After a union of fifty-five years, the St Thomas Christians were able to contact the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, thanks to the arrival of the Dutch in Malabar and the expulsion of the Portuguese. The introduction of the West Syrian Liturgical rites was completed by the middle of the nineteenth century. The arrival of the Anglican Missionaries in Malabar in the beginning of the nineteenth century provided the Syrian Christians the opportunity for modern English education and thus to make significant contributions to the overall development of Kerala, one of the states of the Indian Republic.

Perceptions of Urinary Incontinence Among Syrian Christian Women Living in Sweden

The purpose of this study was to describe the perception of urinary incontinence (UI) among Syrian women living in Sweden. A qualitative, descriptive design with focus group discussions (FGDs) was used and analyzed with content analysis. Fourteen Syrian women were interviewed in three FGDs. Three categories emerged, "Thoughts on UI," "Managing UI," and "Communication With the Health Care System." Among the interviewees, UI was a common, and expected, problem, which could be managed. However, some expressed shame and embarrassment. Some talked about communication problems with health care. The health care system should be adjusted to the women's needs, with awareness of the communication difficulties, which could result in misunderstanding and neglected treatments.

The Formation of a Communal Identity among West Syrian Christians: Results and Conclusions of the Leiden Project

AbstractAmong those who opposed the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the West Syrian (or Syriac Orthodox) Christians were probably least likely to form a national or ethnic community. Yet a group emerged with its own distinctive literature and art, its own network, and historical consciousness. In an intricate process of adoption and rejection, the West Syrians selected elements from the cultures to which they were heirs, and from those with which they came into contact, thus defining a position of their own. In order to study this phenomenon, scholars from various disciplines, and affiliated to two different faculties, were brought together in a programme financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO. This essay introduces their research project and methodology, and presents their results and conclusions.

Tradition and the Formation of the 'Nestorian' Identity in Sixth- to Seventh-Century Iraq

AbstractReligious identities in ancient Near Eastern Christianity were mainly and primarily defined along the lines of Christological positions held by the different Christian communities. This article discusses the origin, development, and propagation of the East Syrian 'Nestorian' Christology of the two natures and two hypostaseis in Christ. It is argued that the process of the formation of the East Syrian Christological identity took a relative long time due to the complex and pluriform cultural tradition in East Syrian Christianity by the end of the sixth century and the radically changing historical, political, and social conditions in late sixth- and early seventh-century Iraq.

Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus (review)

Reviewed by: Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus Nils Arne Pedersen Jason BeDuhnPaul Mirecki, eds. Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus Nag Hammadi & Manichaean Studies 61 Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007 Pp. viii + 178. €93.00/$139.00. In recent years there has been a growing interest in anti-Manichaean literature, which was an important branch of the heresiological genre. One of these texts, the fourth-century Acts of Archelaus (AA) by the otherwise unknown Hegemonius, [End Page 435] appeared in a new English translation by Vermes in 2001 which gave the impetus for Frontiers of Faith. Frontiers of Faith consists of a preface and eleven chapters with bibliography, table of biblical references, and indexes. It is a very successful achievement which, as the first book-length study of AA, deserves to be used and discussed in future studies of Manichaeism. The first chapter, by the editors themselves, attempts to contextualize AA and discusses its provenance, structure, and sources in connection with an introduction to the subsequent chapters. A main characteristic of both this and the other contributions is to see Manichaeism in its roots and self-understanding as a “Christian” movement. I share this view, which is becoming increasingly common, though there is not yet a consensus within the scholarly community. BeDuhn and Mirecki subscribe to the more convincing part of the “Bauer Thesis” that the original Christianity of eastern Syria was of a “heterodox” character. They also accept the late Drijvers’s additional argument that Addai, the legendary Christian missionary to Edessa, was a fictional imitation of the Manichaean Adda. This theory, however, now seems less convincing in the light of Addai’s appearance in the First Apocalypse of James. BeDuhn and Mirecki convincingly suggest that the “heterodox” character of eastern Syrian Christianity should be linked to the cultural and linguistic separateness of the region. I would add that since other parts of the Bauer Thesis seem less convincing—e.g., that Colin Roberts could show that the literary remains of early Egyptian Christianity were not predominantly “heterodox”—we should probably not follow Bauer in linking regional differences with the emergence of early “catholic”/“proto-orthodox” and “heterodox” diversities of Christianity in the rest of the Roman Empire, where early Christians used Greek as their medium. These diversities are better explained by assuming that house-churches and lack of well-organized offices in first-century Christianity stimulated the emergence of fractions and differences. Coyle sharply characterizes the polemical character of AA, while Sala, by means of structuralism and narratology, challenges the scholarly tradition of assuming that a monolithic and somehow logically coherent entity lies behind the largely fragmentary Manichaean sources. This is a most welcome contribution, since too often there has been little attention to the diversity in Manichaeism. It seems, however, less persuasive when Pettipiece, in a study of competing ideas of kingship in AA, argues that a dichotomy exists between Manichaean ideas of the kingdom of Light as non-violent and Archelaus’s idea of Christ as a triumphant king. Pettipiece thinks that the Manichaean view is the older one, closer to the New Testament, and he assumes that the different ideas can be connected to diverging views about authority and response to suffering and persecution. Hegemonius’s arguments, however, seem so bound up with the polemical context that it is unsound to assume too much about his more complete views. It is a fact, moreover, that the Manichaeans also used military metaphors. Kaatz deals with the “two natures,” free will and scriptural evidence in AA. Other contributions treat the sources of AA, the use of rituals in AA (Mirecki) and the Basilides fragment (Bennett). Gardner compares Mani’s Letter to Marcellus in AA with fragments of other Mani Letters and establishes convincingly that [End Page 436] this Letter is either by Mani himself or is a close imitation of him; it may be at least partly authentic. On this basis BeDuhn attempts to find more remnants of the Letter in AA. This contribution is at the same time an interesting and careful study of Manichaean biblical interpretation. Elsewhere BeDuhn argues that the...

From Nostalgia to Critique: An Overview of Arab American Literature

One major purpose of this special issue of MELUS is to introduce scholars, critics, teachers, and students of ethnic literary works to an understudied and undervalued area of ethnic literature. This essay provides an overview of the history of Arab American literature, with particular attention to the history of Arab immigration. In addition to introducing readers to the major figures and major themes in the literature, it also points to the future by considering unresolved questions and unexplored subjects. Arab American literature mirrors the patterns of Arab American history, which scholars have traditionally divided into three phases, based on the three distinct waves of Arab immigrants who came to the US. (1) The first wave (1880-1924) of immigrants was made up of Greek Orthodox, Maronite, and Melchite Christians from Mount Lebanon and the surrounding Syrian and Palestinian provinces. For the first several years, immigration documents identified these Christians as Turks because they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The immigrants, however, despised their repressive Ottoman overseers and preferred to identify themselves as Syrians. Unskilled and often illiterate, many of these early Christian Arabs found work as itinerant peddlers, fanning across the country, and often spending months on the road. It was a lifestyle which accelerated assimilation because it provided ample opportunities to learn English and mix with the local populace. Later, the Syrians settled in widely dispersed communities across the country, where many opened retail shops. Generally hardworking and law abiding, the immigrants enthusiastically embraced American values. Immigration from Greater Syria came to a halt during World War I, when famine and war ravaged the homeland. Although immigration resumed after the war, it came to a virtual standstill when harsh quotas were imposed on Syrians and other unwelcome ethnic groups in 1924. With immigration slowed to a trickle of approximately one hundred people a year, the population of the once vibrant, scattered community was not replenished. Despite the publication in the United States of numerous Arabic-language newspapers, the Syrians were increasingly cut off from events in their country of origin. As Alixa Naff notes, many Syrian Americans were largely unconscious of the nationalist aspirations in their homeland that led to the formation of the new Lebanese state in 1947 (16). The second wave of immigration began in the decade following World War II. Unlike the first wave, which was predominantly Christian, the new wave contained a significant number of Muslims. This second wave of immigrants consisted of educated, skilled professionals, who were more likely to be familiar with the nationalist ideologies that permeated the Arab world. Unlike the Syrian Christians, they staunchly identified themselves as Arabs. Included in this group were a number of Palestinian refugees who had been rendered stateless as a result of the catastrophic 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The third major wave of immigration, which began in 1967 and continues to this day, accelerated the trends of the post-World War II immigration period. In 1965, new liberalized immigration laws abolished the long-standing quota system. As a result, large numbers of West Bank Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims from Southern Lebanon fled to America after the 1967 war with Israel and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. The Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s produced a further flood of refugees. Imbued with anti-colonial sentiment and Arab nationalist ideas, this new group was highly politicized. For the first time, Arab American organizations were formed to defend the Arab point of view and to combat negative stereotypes of Arabs in the popular press. Newly sensitized to their ethnic identity by worldwide political events, the descendants of first- and second-wave immigrants joined their newly arrived countrymen in support of Arab concerns. …

A crypto‐Dravidian origin for the nontribal communities of South India based on human leukocyte antigen class I diversity

The Dravidian communities are considered to be the original inhabitants of India, now restricted to South India. The southern most state, Kerala, is socio-culturally stratified into Hindus, Muslims and Christians on the basis of religion. The origin of these religious communities in Kerala is considered to be unique in comparison with that in other parts of the country. These communities were later influenced by the hierarchical caste structure established by the Hindu Brahmins. In the present study, we compared six nontribal (Namboothiri, Nair, Ezhava, Pulaya, Malabar Muslim and Syrian Christian) communities belonging to the major religious groups in Kerala (Hindu, Muslim and Christian) based on the human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A, -B and -C diversity. Our aim was to understand the genomic substructuring associated with the changing social scenario in various caste and religious groups and compare it with the Dravidian tribal and other world populations. The present study reveals that the HLA diversity of the Dravidian communities is very distinct from that in the other world populations. It is obvious that the nontribal communities of Kerala display a greater Dravidian influence, but traces of genetic admixture with the Mediterranean, western European, central Asian and East Asian populations can be observed. This characterizes the crypto-Dravidian features of the nontribal communities of Kerala. Demic diffusion of the local progressive communities with the migrant communities may have given rise to crypto-Dravidian features among the nontribal communities of Kerala.

Qambel Maran: Syriac Chants from South India (review)

Reviewed by: Qambel Maran: Syriac Chants from South India Zoe Sherinian (bio) Qambel Maran: Syriac Chants from South India. Pan Records Ethnic Series, Leiden, Netherlands. One CD, divided into five sections. Liner notes and photography by Joseph J. Palackal. Contact information: Paradox@dataweb.nl. Ethnomusicologist Joseph Palackal's unique recording of Syrian Christian chants from Southern and Central Kerala in Southwest India reflects a growing interest in the music of India's religious minorities. Cassettes of Christian music, particularly of the evangelical variety, are widely available in India. One can also find a few recordings of karnatak-style Tamil Christian music. However, none of these recordings has the extensive ethnomusicological treatment found here, or the valuable historical account of the development of a liturgical practice. Kerala has one of the highest populations of Christians in India at 19 percent, while nationally Christians make up 2.5 percent of the Indian population. Kerala is also home to the oldest community of Indian Christians. Liturgical evidence presented in this recording supports the claim that Christians migrated from Syria to Kerala by the fourth century CE. Folklore, however, still contends that St. Thomas the Apostle established Christian communities in South India as early as 52 CE. While there are over six major Christian sects in Kerala, Palackal focuses on the Chaldean liturgical chant tradition, also known as the East Syriac tradition of the Syro-Malabar Church. The bulk of these chants were recorded at a monastery chapel, while a few were recorded in a studio in Ernakulam. The monastery recordings, in particular, have a beautiful natural resonance. Overall, the quality of sound is very clear, while the inconsistent quality of the religious practitioner's voices lends a "field recording" quality to the collection. Palackal's accompanying notes exemplify thorough historical and contextual ethnomusicological writing. He includes valuable information on the Syrian Christian community, the performers, the text, musical elements, musical instruments, the repertoire, and notes on each piece. He also includes photographs of the musicians, icons, a monastery, and individuals with significant importance to the practice. While there are no translations or transcriptions in the CD notes, one can obtain them by writing to PAN Records. [End Page 158] In his notes, Palackal includes a discussion of the history of Syriac, the language of the majority of these chants. Syriac is a form of Aramaic and a part of the Semitic language family. It was a language of commerce during Ashoka's reign in India (273–32 BCE) and was related to the colloquial language of the Jews and Jesus. Palackal draws the listener to focus on the sound of East Syriac: a fusion of Syriac words with inflections and pronunciation from Malayalam, the language of Kerala. Palackal's discussion of linguistic fusion begs the listener to ask to what degree local musical elements have been fused with these Syriac melodies. Indeed, the whole collection represents musically the culture contact between Malayali, Roman, Syrian, and British Christians over at least the last 1,600 years. However, while Palackal discusses linguistic fusions at length, his discussion of musical fusions is less developed. The strongest influence of the Portuguese and the British appears in the instrumental performance practice heard in this recording. Instrumental accompaniment includes a snare drum-shaped tambor that functions as a bass drum, a tiriyankol, (a Malayalam adoption of the Portuguese triangulo), and the violin, also called rebec. This name, along with iconographic evidence, points to its probable pre-sixteenth century presence in India. Palackal also references the use of an organ as early as 1505. The recording is divided into five sections based on liturgical context: (1) chants from the Liturgy of Hours; (2) chants from the Raza (Eucharistic Orders); (3) Chants from the Service of the Dead; (4) Syriac translation of Latin chants for paraliturgical services; and (5) chants for special occasions. The first section of liturgical chants represents the monastic tradition of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate. It also reflects the mixture of cultural sources in the music. The instrumental accompaniment on the first chant includes a bhajan-style harmonium timbre mixed with melodic gestures of Orthodox Christian chants and chordal patterns of Protestant Indian Christian hymnody usually played...