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Terms for Syriac Christians

January 01, 1970

Terms for Syriac Christians are endonymic (native) and exonymic (foreign) terms, that are used as designations for Syriac Christians, as adherents of Syriac Christianity.[1][2] In its widest scope, Syriac Christianity encompass all Christian denominations that follow East Syriac Rite or West Syriac Rite, and thus use Classical Syriac as their main liturgical language.[3] Traditional divisions among Syriac Christians along denominational lines are reflected in the use of various theological and ecclesiological designations, both historical and modern. Specific terms such as: Jacobites, Saint Thomas Syrian Christians, Maronites, Melkites, Nasranis, and Nestorians have been used in reference to distinctive groups and branches of Eastern Christianity, including those of Syriac liturgical and linguistic traditions. Some of those terms are polysemic, and their uses (both historical and modern) have been a subject of terminological disputes between different communities, and also among scholars.[4][5][6]

Maunsell's map, a Pre-World War I British Ethnographical Map of the Middle East showing (6) "Nestorians" around Urmia, Salmas and Julamerk, (7) "Chaldeans" along the Tigris river valley, and (8) "Jacobites" in Tur Abdin.

Territorially, Syriac Christians are divided in two principal groups: Syriac Christians of the Near East,[7] and Syriac Christians of India.[8] Terminology related to Syriac Christians of the Near East includes a specific group of ethnoreligious terms, related to various Semitic communities of Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christians, that are indigenous to modern Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine.[9][10][11]

Syriac Christians of the Near-Eastern (Semitic) origin use several terms for their self-designation. In alphabetical order, main terms are: Arameans, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians and Syriacs. Each of those polysemic terms has a complex semantic history. First four of those names are expressing and implying direct connections with distinctive Semitic peoples of the Ancient Near East (ancient Arameans, ancient Assyrians, ancient Chaldeans, and ancient Phoenicians), while the fifth term (Syriacs) stems from a very complex etymology of the term Syria, and thus has a wide range of onomastic meanings, both historical and modern.[12][13][14]

Terminology related to several groups of Arab Christians and other Arabic-speaking Christians who are adherents of Syriac Christianity, presents a specific challenge. Some of those questions, related to geopolitical affiliations and cultural Arabization, are of particular interest for the remaining communities of Syriac Christians in Arab countries of the Near East.[15][16][17] In modern times, specific terminological challenges arose after 1918, with the creation of a new political entity in the Near East, called Syria, thus giving a distinctive geopolitical meaning to the adjective Syrian. Distinction between Syrian Christians as Christians from Syria in general, and Syriac Christians as Syriac-Rite Christians, is observed in modern English terminology.[18]

Religious terms for Syriac Christians

 
Historical divisions within Syriac Christianity in the Near East

Syriac Christians belong to several Christian denominations, both historical and modern. Various terms that are applied to those denominations are also used to designate Syriac Christian communities that belong to distinctive branches of the Christian denominational tree. Most important of those terms are: Jacobites, Saint Thomas Syrian Christians, Maronites, Melkites, Nasranis, and Nestorians, each of them designating a distinctive community, with its particular theological and historical traditions.[1]

Historically, Syriac Christianity emerged in the Near East, among Aramaic-speaking communities that accepted Christianity during the first centuries of Christian history. Politically, those communities were divided between eastern regions (ruled in turn by Parthian and Persian empires), and western regions (ruled by the Roman, or Byzantine empire). That division created a specific notions of "East" and "West" within Syriac Christianity, with first term designating regions under Parthian/Persian rule, and second those under Roman/Byzantine rule.[19][20]

After the emergence of major theological disputes and divisions (4th–7th century), regional distinction between eastern and western branches of Syriac Christianity gained additional significance. A majority of eastern Syriac Christians adhered to the Church of the East, while a majority of those in the western regions adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. At the same time, Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in some regions (like Byzantine Palestine) opted for the Chalcedonian Christianity. All of those divisions created a basis for the emergence of several denominational terms, created as endonymic (native) or exonymic (foreign) designations for distinctive Christian communities. Main of those terms were, in alphabetical order: Jacobites, Maronites, Melkites, and Nestorians. All of those terms are denominational, without ethnic connotations.[4][7][1][5]

Syriac Jacobites

During the 5th and 6th century, Christological disputes related to monophysitism and miaphysitism led to the emergence of lasting divisions among Eastern Christians throughout the Near East. Miaphysite communities in the wider region of Syria (consisted of both Greek and Aramaic/Syriac adherents of miaphysitism) became known as Jacobites,[5] after Jacob Baradaeus (d. 578), a prominent miaphysite metropolitan of Edessa who created a network of miaphysite ecclesiastical structures throughout the region. In later polemics between Christians, Jacobite appellation was often used by various opponents of miaphysitism as designation for heresy, thus creating basis for a complex history of the term. Various leaders of the miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church have both rejected,[21] or accepted the term.[22] In polemic terminology, Jacobites were sometimes also labeled as Monophysites, a term they have always disputed, preferring to be referred to as Miaphysites.[6]

Syriac Maronites

During the 7th century, renewed Christological disputes related to monoenergism and monothelitism led to the emergence of new divisions among Christians in the Near East. Some of those who accepted monothelite teachings became known as the Maronites, after their main center, the Monastery of Saint Maron, situated in northeastern region of modern Lebanon. Maronite community included both Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking adherents. During the following centuries, both Greek and Aramaic/Syriac traditions were gradually weakened by the process of Arabization. In modern times, renewed interest for patrimonial historical heritage among Catholic Maronites led to the revival of Aramaic/Syriac cultural traditions and Aramean identity.[23][15][24]

Syriac Melkites

Official state support, provided by the Byzantine imperial authorities to adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity after 451, laid the foundation for the emergence of a new, specific use of Aramaic terms that designated those who were loyal to the Empire. This loyalty was understood not just in a political sense but also in regard to their acceptance of imperial religious policies. Throughout the Near East, all Christians who accepted the state-backed Chalcedonian Christianity became known as "Melkites", a term derived from the Aramaic word malkā (meaning ruler, king, emperor), thus designating those who were loyal to the Empire and its officially imposed religious policies.[25][26]

The term “Melkites” originally designated all loyalists, regardless of their ethnicity (Arameans, Copts, Greeks, Jews, etc.), thus including those Aramaic-speaking Christians who adhered to Chalcedonian Christianity. Since Melkite communities were dominated by the Greek episcopate, the position of Aramaic-speaking Melkites within the wider Melkite community was somewhat secondary to that of Greek Melkites. This led to the gradual decline of Syriac-Aramaic traditions. Classical Syriac was initially the liturgical language of the Syriac Melkites in Antioch and parts of Syria, while some other Aramaic-speaking Melkites, predominantly of Jewish descent, used the Syro-Palestinian dialect in Palestine and Transjordan.[27][28] The Syriac Melkites (Malkāyā Suryāyē in Aramaic)[29] changed their church’s West Syriac Rite to that of Constantinople in the 9th to 11th centuries, requiring new translations of all their Classical Syriac liturgical books.[30] The decline of Syriac-Aramaic traditions among Syriac Melkites was further enhanced (since the 7th century) by gradual Arabization, since under Islamic rule, Arabic became the main language of public life and administration. In later centuries, several Melkite communities were split, thus creating additional distinctions between Orthodox Melkites and Catholic Melkites. Within both communities, Syriac Melkites are today represented by small minorities.[31][32]

Syriac Nestorians

Theological controversies that arose in the first half of the 5th century regarding the teachings of Nestorius (d. c. 450) resulted in the creation of a specific term: Nestorians, that was used to designate those Christians who shared his views in the fields of Christology and Mariology. That term was applied to all who agreed wit teaching of Nestorius, both within the borders of Roman Empire and beyond, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or other backgrounds. Among Greek Christians, Nestorianism was eventually suppressed, but within some communities of Syriac Christians, particularly those beyond Byzantine imperial borders, support for Nestorius persisted, particularly within the Church of the East in the Sassanian Empire, where Nestorius came to be counted among the teachers of the Church and eventually became venerated as a saint. Since it was the only Christian denomination that practiced such reverence for Nestorius, the term Nestorians became commonly used as designation for adherents of the Church of the East in general, regardless of the fact that its official theological positions, finally formulated by the Babai the Great at the council of 612, was distinctive both in essence and terminology.[4][33][34][35][36]

Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, the practice of labeling Syriac Christians of the Church of the East as "Nestorians" persisted among other Christian denominations, and even entered the terminology of Islamic scholars. Because of that, a specific duality was created within the Church of the East: reverence for Nestorius as a saint persisted, but Nestorian label was resisted if used as a derogatory term by opponents. In modern times, those questions were reexamined and reevaluated by scholars, who argued against improper uses of the term, and that position was also reflected in modern inter-denominational terminology, that avoids the use of any controversial terms. David Wilmshurst noted that for centuries "the word 'Nestorian' was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syrian theology, as a term of pride by many of its defenders [...] and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others. Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma".[37] Referring to the same issues, Sebastian Brock noted: "the association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature, and to continue to call that Church 'Nestorian' is, from a historical point of view, totally misleading and incorrect – quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners".[38]

To designate converts from Nestorianism to Catholicism, some early western researchers have coined the term "Catholic Nestorians", but that combination was criticized as contradictory.[39] The term occurred in works of several researchers.[40][41]

Ritual distinctions

In terms of liturgical (ritual) distinctions, Syriac Christians are divided into:

Regional terms for Syriac Christians

Since Syriac Christians live in various regions, both historical and modern, several terms that are generally applied to Christians of those regions are also used to designate local Syriac Christian communities. Various terminological issues, that are related to the proper use of regional and denominational designations, are often examined in scholarly literature, but some terminological issues proved to be particularly challenging for the news media.

To distinguish between regional, ethnic, linguistic and other meanings of various polysemic terms, scholars are analyzing both historical and modern aspects of their uses, but those complexities are rarely observed properly outside scholarly circles, by those who are not familiar with terminological distinctions. In the news media, Syriac Christians are often spoken of simply as Christians of their country or geographical region of residence, even when the subject of reporting is specifically related to Syriac denominations. Common terms such as: "Iraqi Christians", "Iranian Christians", "Turkish Christians", and particularly "Syrian Christians", are often used in a way that is seen by Syriac Christian communities in those countries as non-specific or even improper. Since some of those states (Syria) are officially defined as "Arab Republics", the Assyrian International News Agency interpreted the practice of regional labeling as "Arabist policy of denying Assyrian identity and claiming that Assyrians, including Chaldeans and Syriacs, are Arab Christian minorities".[42]

Syrian designations

See also: Name of Syria and Name of Syriac Christianity

In modern English language, "Syrian" designations are most commonly used in relation to the modern state of Syria, or (in historical context) to the region of Syria. In accordance with that, English term "Syrian Christians" is commonly used to designate Christians of Syria in general, but the same term was also used to designate Christians of "Syrian" (Syriac) rites, regardless of their regional affiliation. Because of that, the distinctive term "Syriac" was introduced and favored by some scholars to designate the Syriac branch of Eastern Christianity, thus reducing Syrian designations to their primary (regional) meanings, related to Syria. Terminological transition from "Syrian" to "Syriac" designations is implemented gradually, primarily in scholarly literature, but duality of forms still persists, even in some modern scholarly works, thus resulting in a continuous variety of parallel uses (Syriac Christianity/Syrian Christianity, Christian Syriacs/Christian Syrians, East Syriac Rite/East Syrian Rite, West Syriac Rite/West Syrian Rite).[43][44][45][46]

Syrian designations in particular may be confusing for an outsider, since someone may self-identify as both Syrian and Syriac. For example, Syriac Orthodox Christians from modern Syria are "Syriacs" as members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, but also "Syrians" as inhabitants of Syria. Since the historical region of Syria was much wider than modern Syria,[47] in various writings related to earlier historical periods Syriac Christians could also be termed both as "Syriacs" by rite, and "Syrians" by region, even if their homelands are located outside the borders of modern Syria, but do belong within borders of the historical region of Syria. One of the most notable example is related to the city of Antioch on the Orontes, that was historical seat of the Patriarchate of Antioch and the capital city of Roman Syria,[48] but since 1939 became part of modern Turkey. Therefore, earlier history of Syriac Christianity in such regions belongs to the Syrian regional history, but since those regions are now in Turkey, their heritage also belongs to the history of Christianity in Turkey.

In India, term "Syrian Christians" is still used as one of main designations for Saint Thomas Christians, who are traditionally using Syriac rites and Syriac language in their liturgical practices.[49] Some authors even consider them to be "a distinct, endomagous ethnic group, in many ways similar to a caste. They have a history of close to two thousand years, and in language, religion, and ethnicity, they are related to Persian as well as West Syrian Christian traditions".[50]

In recent years, English terminology (based on Syrian/Syriac distinctions) was made even more complicated, since several modern authors started to favor exonymic Turkish term Süryânî, by using it in texts written in English language, and thus promoting additional term for Syriac Christians.[51][52][53]

Some similar questions arose in regard to the use of Assyrian designations as regional terms. John Joseph stated that in the English terminology of the 19th century, term "Assyrian Christians" initially designated Christians of geographical Assyria, but later transformed into 'Christian Assyrians'", thus gaining ethnic connotations,[54] and also cited James Coakley, who remarked that "the link created between the modern 'Assyrians' and the ancient Assyrians of Nineveh known to readers of the Old Testament [...] has proved irresistible to the imagination".[55]

Ethnic terms for Syriac Christians

 
Gradual decline of Aramaic-speaking communities in the Near East, from the 1st century CE, down to the modern times
 
Remaining communities of Neo-Aramaic speakers in the modern Near East

Since Syriac Christians belong to various ethnic groups, native to the Near East and India, and also spread throughout diaspora, several terms that are applied to those groups are also used to designate Syriac Christian communities that belong to distinctive ethnicities.

Various groups among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East derive and uphold their ethnic identities by claiming descendancy from peoples of the Ancient Near East, such as: ancient Arameans, ancient Assyrians, ancient Chaldeans, and ancient Phoenicians. Since ethnic composition of the Near East suffered many substantial and successive changes during ancient, medieval, and modern times, all questions related to ethnic continuity are not only viewed as complex, but also treated as highly sensitive. Some of those questions proved to be very challenging, not only for distinctive communities and their mutual relations, but also for scholars from several fields related to the study of Syriac Christianity.[56][57][58][59]

A common cultural denominator for all communities of Syriac Christians is found in the use of Aramaic languages, both historical (Edessan Aramaic: Classical Syriac) and modern (Neo-Aramaic languages), acknowledging in the same time, within the bounds of mutually shared cultural heritage, that ancient Aramaic language was accepted as lingua franca during the final two centuries of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[60]

A simplified list presents various self-identifications among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East, with regard to their ethnic or ethno-religious identity (in alphabetical order):

Ethnic identity disputes

 
Alqosh, located in the midst of a contemporary ethnically Assyrian community

One of the main questions, related to ethnic identity of modern Syriac Christians of the Near East, stems from a dispute between two conflicting and mutually exclusive claims:

  • Pan-ethnic claim: All of modern Syriac Christians of the Near East share the same ethnicity, and thus should be united under a single name.
  • Poly-ethnic claim: Modern Syriac Christians of the Near East are divided into several, mutually distinctive ethnicities, each having its own name.

Proponents of pan-ethnic claims are further divided in two radicalized groups, that are mutually adversarial,[64] and also deeply invested into mutual denialism:

  • those who favor Pan-Aramean ethnic identity claim that all Aramaic-speakers are ethnic Arameans, thus denying the validity of all other competing identities, with particular focus on the denial of any Assyrian continuity. Pan-Aramean views are advocated by some activists, who are working mainly within Aramean ethnic and political organizations, such as the World Council of Arameans,[65] and the Aramean Democratic Organization.[66]
  • those who favor Pan-Assyrian ethnic identity claim that all Aramaic-speakers are ethnic Assyrians, thus denying the validity of all other competing identities, with particular focus on the denial of a distinctive Chaldean ethnicity and Aramean continuity. Pan-Assyrian views are supported by Finnish scholar Simo Parpola, who stated in 2004: "In this context it is important to draw attention to the fact that the Aramaic-speaking peoples of the Near East have since ancient times identified themselves as Assyrians and still continue to do so",[67] thus affirming his general pan-Assyrian positions within the wider field of Assyriology.[68]

Contrary to radical pan-Aramean and pan-Assyrian claims, various proponents of poly-ethnic views are focused mainly on their own communities, recognizing at the same time the equality of other communities and the validity of their self-designations, thus creating a base for mutual acknowledgment and toleration. Advocates of such views are found in all groups, among moderate Arameans, Assyrians, Chaldeans and others. Prominent Assyrian scholar, professor Amir Harrak, who supports Assyrian continuity that is based on historical traditions of Assyrian heartlands, also acknowledges Aramean continuity that is based on similar historical traditions of some other (western) regions, thus demonstrating a balanced and moderate approach to those sensitive issues.[69][70]

Most who support such poly-ethnic approach are ready to accept traditional "Syriac" designation as a cultural umbrella term, but without any suppression of distinctive ethnic identities. Thus, the term "Syriac peoples" (in plural) would designate a poly-ethnic group that includes distinctive peoples such as: modern Arameans, modern Assyrians, modern Chaldeans, and others. Such poly-ethnic pan-Syriac views are endorsed by some organizations, such as the European Syriac Union.[71]

Similar preferences for the use of Syrian/Syriac designations as unifying terms were also manifested during the formative stages of national awakening, at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1910, Nestorius Malech (d. 1927) edited and published a work of his late father George Malech (d. 1909), that contained a chapter under the title: "The Arameans, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Syrians are One Nation and their Language is One". In order to explain the nature of those terms, the authors also claimed: "These four names are not national, but geographical significations". Emphasizing the common use of "Syrian language" among all those groups, the authors also advocated for the acknowledgement of a common "Syrian nation".[72]

Such ideas, based on the use of "Syrian" designations, lost their practicality soon after 1918, when the foundations of modern Syria were laid, thus giving a distinctive geopolitical meaning to Syrian appellations, that became firmly tied to a country whose population was consisted mainly of Muslim Arabs. Later attempts to employ slightly distinctive Syriac designations came from foreign terminology, since native language had only one principal and widely accepted form (Suryaye/Suryoye) that simply meant: Syrians, and it took almost a century to accept Syrian/Syriac distinctions, but only in cases when self-designations are expressed in foreign languages. Thus became acceptable to use terms like: Syriac Christianity, Syriac language, Syriac literature, and Syriacs in general, but traditional native appellations (Suryaye/Suryoye) remained unchanged.[73]

Views on endonymic (native) designations are also divided. Aramean activists are endorsing two terms: Ārāmayē (ܐܪܡܝܐ) and Sūryāyē (ܣܘܪܝܝܐ), but they are emphasizing that the second term was historically accepted as an alternative self-identification only since the 5th century CE, under the influence of Greek terminology.[74][59] Assyrian activists are endorsing the term Āṯūrāyē (ܐܬܘܪܝܐ), and also accept the term Sūryāyē (ܣܘܪܝܝܐ), but they claim that it always represented just a slightly shortened form of the main designation for Assyrians. In the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language, both terms are thus used: Āṯūrāyē ("Assyrians") and Sūrāyē/Sūryāyē ("Syrians/Syriacs").[75]

Disputes over ethnic identity began to intensify during the 1970s and gradually escalated to the point of mutual animosity[64] that attracted the attention of foreign scholars and international institutions. Mutual denialism, particularly between radicalized proponents of pan-Aramean and pan-Assyrian claims, was perceived as being at odds with internationally endorsed principles, based on the notion that every ethnic community should be respected and allowed to choose its own self-designation. By the beginning of the 21st century, foreign scholars and institutions have shown an increasing tendency of taking neutral positions, that also affected terminology. Several attempts were made to create acceptable compound terms, by using various combinations of basic terms for Arameans, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs in general. Some of those solutions were applied in the US census ("Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac"), and in the Swedish census ("Assyrier/Syrianer").[76]

Additional distinctions also appeared in regard to some other issues. Unlike the Assyrians, who emphasize their non-Arab ethnicity and have historically sought a state of their own,[77] some urban Chaldean Catholics are more likely to assimilate into Arab identity.[78] Other Chaldeans, particularly in America, identify with the ancient Chaldeans of Chaldea rather than the Assyrians. In addition, while Assyrians self-define as a strictly Christian nation, Aramaic organizations generally accept that Muslim Arameans also exist, and that many Muslims in historic Aramea were converts (forced or voluntary) from Christianity to Islam.[79] An exception to the near-extinction of Western Aramaic are the Lebanese Maronite speakers of Western Neo-Aramaic; however, they largely self-identify as the Phoenicians (the ancient people of Lebanon) and not Arameans. Some Muslim Lebanese nationalists espouse Phoenician identity as well.

Assyria-Syria naming controversy

The question of ethnic identity and self-designation is sometimes connected to the scholarly debate on the etymology of "Syria". The question has a long history of academic controversy.[80][81]

The terminological problem dates from the Seleucid Empire (323–150 BC), which applied the term Syria, the Greek and Indo-Anatolian form of the name Assyria, which had existed even during the Assyrian Empire, not only to the homeland of the Assyrians but also to lands to the west in the Levant, previously known as Aramea, Eber Nari and Phoenicia (modern Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel) that later became part of the empire. This caused not only the original Assyrians, but also the ethnically and geographically distinct Arameans and Phoenicians of the Levant to be collectively called Syrians and Syriacs in the Greco-Roman world.

The 1997 discovery of the Çineköy inscription appears to prove conclusively that the term Syria was derived from the Assyrian term 𒀸𒋗𒁺 𐎹 Aššūrāyu., and referred to Assyria and Assyrian. The Çineköy inscription is a Hieroglyphic Luwian-Phoenician bilingual, uncovered from Çineköy, Adana Province, Turkey (ancient Cilicia), dating to the 8th century BCE. Originally published by Tekoglu and Lemaire (2000),[82] it was more recently analyzed by historian Robert Rollinger,[83][84] who lend a strong support to the age-old debate of the name "Syria" being derived from "Assyria" (see Name of Syria).

The examined section of the Luwian inscription reads:

§VI And then, the/an Assyrian king (su+ra/i-wa/i-ni-sa(URBS)) and the whole Assyrian "House" (su+ra/i-wa/i-za-ha(URBS)) were made a fa[ther and a mo]ther for me,
§VII and Hiyawa and Assyria (su+ra/i-wa/i-ia-sa-ha(URBS)) were made a single "House".

The corresponding Phoenician inscription reads:

And the king [of Aššur and (?)]
the whole "House" of Aššur ('ŠR) were for me a father [and a]
mother, and the DNNYM and the Assyrians ('ŠRYM)

The object on which the inscription is found is a monument belonging to Urikki, vassal king of Hiyawa (i.e. Cilicia), dating to the 8th century BC. In this monumental inscription, Urikki made reference to the relationship between his kingdom and his Assyrian overlords. The Luwian inscription reads "Sura/i" whereas the Phoenician translation reads 'ŠR or "Ashur" which, according to Rollinger (2006), settles the problem once and for all.[83][84]

Some scholars in the past rejected the theory of 'Syrian' being derived from 'Assyrian' as "naive" and based purely on onomastic similarity in Indo-European languages,[85] until the inscription identified the origins of this derivation.[83][84]

In Classical Greek usage, terms Syria and Assyria were used interchangeably. Herodotus's distinctions between the two in the 5th century BCE were a notable early exception.[86] Randolph Helm emphasizes that Herodotus "never" applied the term Syria to Mesopotamia, which he always called "Assyria", and used "Syria" to refer to inhabitants of the coastal Levant.[87] While himself maintaining a distinction, Herodotus also claimed that "those called Syrians by the Hellenes (Greeks) are called Assyrians by the barbarians (non-Greeks).[88][80][81]

Greek geographer and historian Strabo (d. in 24 CE) described, in his "Geography", both Assyria and Syria, dedicating specific chapters to each of them,[89] but also noted, in his chapter on Assyria:

Those who have written histories of the Syrian empire say that when the Medes were over thrown by the Persians, and the Syrians by the Medes, they spoke of the Syrians only as those who built the palaces at Babylon and Ninos. Of these, Ninos founded Ninos in Atouria, and his wife Semiramis succeeded her husband and founded Babylon ... The city of Ninos was destroyed immediately after the overthrow of the Syrians. It was much greater than Babylon and was situated in the plain of Atouria.[90]

Throughout his work, Strabo used terms Atouria (Assyria) and Syria (and also terms Assyrians and Syrians) in relation to specific terminological questions, while comparing and analyzing views of previous writers. Reflecting on the works of Poseidonius (d. 51 BCE), Strabo noted:

For the people of Armenia, the Syrians, and the Arabians display a great racial kinship, both in their language and their lives and physical characteristics, particularly where they are adjacent ... Considering the latitudes, there is a great difference between those toward the north and south and the Syrians in the middle, but common condition s prevail, [C42] and the Assyrians and Arimanians somewhat resemble both each other and the others. He [Poseidonios] infers that the names of these peoples are similar to each other, for those whom we call Syrians are called Aramaians by the Syrians themselves, and there is a resemblance between this [name], and that of the Armenians, Arabians, and Erembians.[91]

In the 1st century AD, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about various peoples who were descended from the Sons of Noah, according to Biblical tradition, and noted that: "Assyras founded the city of Ninus, and gave his name to his subjects, the Assyrians, who rose to the height of prosperity. Arphaxades named those under his rule Arphaxadaeans, the Chaldaeans of to-day. Aramus ruled the Aramaeans, whom the Greeks term Syrians".[92] Those remarks testify that Josephus regarded all there peoples (Assyrians, Chaldeans, Arameans) as his contemporaries, thus confirming that in his time non-of those peoples were considered as extinct.

"Syria" and "Assyria" were not fully distinguished by Greeks until they became better acquainted with the Near East. Under Macedonian rule after Syria's conquest by Alexander the Great, "Syria" was restricted to the land west of the Euphrates. Likewise, the Romans clearly distinguished the Assyria and Syria.[93]

Unlike the Indo-European languages, the native Semitic name for Syria has always been distinct from Assyria. During the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC), Neo-Sumerian Empire (2119–2004 BC) and Old Assyrian Empire (1975–1750 BC) the region which is now Syria was called The Land of the Amurru and Mitanni, referring to the Amorites and the Hurrians. Beginning from the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), and also in the Neo Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC) and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BC) and Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC), Syria was known as Aramea and later Eber Nari. The term Syria emerged only during the 9th century BC, and was only used by Indo-Anatolian and Greek speakers, and solely in reference to Assyria.[citation needed]

According to Tsereteli, the Georgian equivalent of "Assyrians" appears in ancient Georgian, Armenian and Russian documents,[94] making the argument that the nations and peoples to the east and north of Mesopotamia knew the group as Assyrians, while to the West, beginning with Luwian, Hurrian and later Greek influence, the Assyrians were known as Syrians.[84]

Ethnic identities

Assyrian identity

 
Assyrian flag (since 1968)[95]
 
Assyria under the Persian Empire
Main articles: Assyrian nationalism and Assyrian continuity

An Assyrian identity is today maintained by followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Assyrian Evangelical Church, and to a much lesser degree the Syriac Catholic Church.[96] Those identifying with Assyria, and with Mesopotamia in general, tend to be Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic speaking Christians from northern Iraq, north eastern Syria, south eastern Turkey and north west Iran, together with communities that spread from these regions to neighbouring lands such as Armenia, Georgia, southern Russia, Azerbaijan and the Western World.

The Assyrianist movement originated in the 19th to early 20th centuries, in direct opposition to Pan-Arabism and in the context of Assyrian irredentism. It was exacerbated by the Assyrian genocide and Assyrian War of Independence of World War I. The emphasis of Assyrian antiquity grew ever more pronounced in the decades following World War II, with an official Assyrian calendar introduced in the 1950s, taking as its era the year 4750 BC, the purported date of foundation of the city of Assur and the introduction of a new Assyrian flag in 1968. Assyrians tend to be from Iraq, Iran, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria, Armenia, Georgia, southern Russia and Azerbaijan, as well as in diaspora communities in the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Sweden, Netherlands etc.

Assyrian continuity, embodied in the idea that the modern Assyrians are descended from the ancient Assyrians, is also supported by several western scholars, including: Henry Saggs,[97] Robert Biggs,[98] John Brinkman,[99] Simo Parpola,[100][101] and Richard Frye.[102] It is denied by historian John Joseph, himself a modern Assyrian,[103][104] and Semitologist Aaron Michael Butts.[105]

Eastern Syriac Christians are on record, but only from the late nineteenth century, calling themselves Aturaye, Assyrians,[106] and the region now in Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey was still known as Assyria (Athura, Assuristan) until the 7th century AD.

Christian missionary Horatio Southgate (d. 1894), who travelled through Mesopotamia and encountered various groups of indigenous Christians, stated in 1840 that Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from Assyrians, but he also recorded that the same Chaldeans hold that Jacobites are descended from those ancient Syrians whose capital city was Damascus. Referring to Chaldean views, Southgate stated:

Those of them who profess to have any idea concerning their origin, say, that they are descended from the Assyrians, and the Jacobites from the Syrians, whose chief city was Damascus[107]

Rejecting assumptions of Asahel Grant, who claimed (in 1841) that modern Nestorians and other Christian groups of Mesopotamia are descendants of ancient Jewish tribes,[108] Southgate remarked (in 1842):

The Syrians are remarkably strict in the observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest, and this is one of a multitude of resemblances between them and the Jews. There are some of these resemblances which are more strongly marked among the Syrians than among the Nestorians, and yet the Syrians are undoubtedly descendants of the Assyrians, and not of the Jews[109]

Southgate visited Christian communities of the Near East sometime before the ancient Assyrian sites were rediscovered by western archaeologists,[110] and in 1844 he published additional remarks on local traditions of ancient ancestry:

At the Armenian village of Arpaout, where I stopped for breakfast, I began to make inquiries for the Syrians. The people informed me that there were about one hundred families of them in the town of Kharpout, and a village inhabited by them on the plain. I observed that the Armenians did not know them under the name which I used, Syriani; but called them Assouri, which struck me the more at the moment from its resemblance to our English name Assyrians, from whom they claim their origin, being sons, as they say, of Assour (Asshur)[111]

Remarks of Horatio Southgate have been noted and analyzed by several scholars, in relation to their significance for the question or Assyrian continuity.[112] Some authors have noted that in the language of Southgate's Armenian informers, term Assouri (Asori) would designate Syrians in general, while Armenian specific term for "Assyrians" would be Asorestantsi.[113][114][115] Such views were criticized by other authors.[116] Noting that Southgate's reports do not state that Syriac Jacobites self‐identified as Assyrians, some authors have pointed out that Southgate himself did accept such notions, in opposition to Grant's theories.[117] Systematic use of "Assyrian" designations for Syriac Christians gained wider acceptance in the context of later Protestant missions in the region, particularly after the establishment of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians (1886), that avoided the term "Nestorians" for adherents of the Church of the East.[118][119]

Syriac identity

Syriac identity is manifested in several forms among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East. For some, those who self-identify as ethnic Syriacs (Suryoye) represent a distinctive ethnic group. For others, Syriacs are Arameans (from the pro-Aramean point of view), or Assyrians (from the pro-Assyrian point of view). In some communities, Syriac identity is thus closely merged with the modern Aramean identity,[63][13] while among modern Assyrians, Syriac designation is viewed and accepted as a terminological variation, due to the etymological origin of the term.[citation needed]

Additional form of Syriac identity is manifested as a specific pan-Syriac identity, that is viewed as an all-encompassing pan-ethnic identity. Some international non-governmental organisations, such as the European Syriac Union, founded in 2004, promote the notion that such (pan-Syriac) identity represents and includes all other ethnic and ethno-religious identities, and thus unites all groups (Arameans, Assyrians, Chaldeans and others).[71] Similar notions are supported by some political organizations, like the Syriac Union Party in Lebanon, and the Syriac Union Party in Syria, who also use Syriac designations as unifying terms.[120]

Historically, endonymic (native) variants (Suryaya/Suryoyo) were commonly used as designations for linguistic (Syriac language), denominational (Syriac Christianity) and liturgical (Syriac rite) self-identification, thus referring to Syriac-speaking Christians of the Near East in general. In medieval times, those designations (Suryaya/Suryoyo) were often used as common terms of collective self-identification, but later emergence of modern Syria (after 1918) created some new challenges, in the fields of both regional and international terminology. In modern English terminology, term Syrians is most commonly used as a demonym for general population of the modern state of Syria. To distinguish themselves, modern Syriac Christians have thus accepted a more specific term Syriacs, that is particularly favored among adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church. In 2000, the Holy Synod of the Syriac Orthodox Church officially recommended that in English language this church should be called "Syriac" after its official liturgical Syriac language.[121]

Chaldean identity

What is now known to be Biblical Aramaic was until the second half of the 19th century called "Chaldean" (Chaldaic, or Chaldee),[122][123][124] and East Syriac Christians, whose liturgical language was and is a form of Aramaic, were called Chaldeans,[125] as an ethnic, not a religious term.[citation needed] Hormuzd Rassam applied the term "Chaldeans" to the "Nestorians", those not in communion with Rome, no less than to the Catholics.[126] He stated that "the present Chaldeans, with a few exceptions, speak the same dialect used in the Targum, and in some parts of Ezra and Daniel, which are called 'Chaldee'."[127][128]

In western terminology, the term "Chaldeans" was used in the 15th century, as designation for a group of Eastern Christians in Cyprus, who originally descended from Mesopotamia, and entered an ephemeral union with the Catholic Church in 1445, and later for those who entered into communion with the Catholic Church in their ancestral regions, between the 16th and 18th centuries.[129][130]

Until at least the mid-nineteenth century, the name "Chaldean" was the ethnic name for all the area's Christians, whether in or out of communion with Rome. William F. Ainsworth, whose visit was in 1840, spoke of the non-Catholics as "Chaldeans" and of the Catholics as "Roman-Catholic Chaldeans".[131] For those Chaldeans who retained their ancient faith, Ainsworth also stated that the name "Nestorians" was applied to them since 1681, to distinguish them from those in communion with Rome.[132] A little later, Austen Henry Layard also used the term "Chaldean" even for those he also called Nestorians.[133] The same term had earlier been used by Richard Simon in the seventeenth century, writing: "Among the several Christian sects in the Middle East that are called Chaldeans or Syrians, the most sizeable is that of the Nestorians".[134] As indicated above, Horatio Southgate, who said that the members of the Syriac Orthodox Church (West Syrians) considered themselves descendants of Asshur, the second son of Shem, called the members of the divided Church of the East Chaldeans and Papal Chaldeans.

In 1875, Henry Van-Lennep stated that the term "Chaldean Church" is a "generic name" for Christian "Assyrians". Thus, speaking of the Nestorian Schism of 431, that occurred many centuries before the division of the Church of the East into those who accepted and those who rejected communion with the Catholic Church, he wrote: "At the schism on account of Nestorius, the Assyrians, under the generic name of the Chaldean Church, mostly separated from the orthodox Greeks, and, being under the rule of the Persians, were protected against persecution".[135]

Although it was only towards the end of the 19th century that the term "Assyrian" became accepted, largely through the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians, at first as a replacement for the term "Nestorian", but later as an ethnic description,[136] today even members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, such as Raphael Bidawid, patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church from 1989 to 2003, accept "Assyrian" as an indication of nationality, while "Chaldean" has for them become instead an indication of religious confession. He stated: "When a portion of the Church of the East became Catholic in the 17th Century, the name given was 'Chaldean' based on the Magi kings who were believed by some to have come from what once had been the land of the Chaldean, to Bethlehem. The name 'Chaldean' does not represent an ethnicity, just a church... We have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion... I myself, my sect is Chaldean, but ethnically, I am Assyrian".[137] Before becoming patriarch, he said in an interview with the Assyrian Star newspaper: "Before I became a priest I was an Assyrian, before I became a bishop I was an Assyrian, I am an Assyrian today, tomorrow, forever, and I am proud of it".[110]

That was a sea change from the earlier situation, when "Chaldean" was a self-description by prelates not in communion with Rome: "Nestorian patriarchs occasionally used 'Chaldean' in formal documents, claiming to be the 'real Patriarchs' of the whole 'Chaldean Church'."[138] Nestorian Christians who "denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons. They consecrated leavened bread and used the 'Chaldean' (Syriac) language".[139]

Hannibal Travis states that, in recent times, a small and mainly United States-based minority within the Chaldean Catholic Church have begun to espouse a separate Chaldean ethnic identity.[140]

In 2005, the new Constitution of Iraq recognized Chaldeans as a distinctive community (Article 125).[141] In 2017, the Chaldean Catholic Church issued an official statement of its Synod of Bishops, reafirming its commitment to a distinctive Chaldean identity:

"As a genuine Chaldean people, we officially reject the labels that distort our Chaldean identity, such as the composite name "Chaldean Syriac Assyrian" used in the Kurdistan Region, contrary to the name established in the Iraqi constitution. We call upon our daughters and sons to reject these labels, to adhere to their Chaldean identity without fanaticism, and to respect the other names such as 'Assyrians', 'Syriacs', and 'Armenians'."[62]

Chaldo-Assyrian identity

 
Memorial of the Seyfo genocide, in Paris, with commemorative inscription using composite Assyro-Chaldean designation

In modern political history, some attempts were made to overcome terminological divisions by creating some new, complex terms like: Chaldo-Assyrians or Assyro-Chaldeans. Those designations were aimed to provide a composite umbrella term, that would serve as a vessel for the promotion of an unified national identity. Term "Assyro-Chaldeans", as a combination of terms "Assyrian" and "Chaldean", was used in the Treaty of Sèvres, which spoke of "full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities".[142]

Soon after the implementation of political changes in Iraq, a conference was held in Baghdad on 22–24 October 2003, attended by representatives of Christian communities, both Assyrian and Chaldean, adopting a resolution that proclaimed national unity under a composite name "Chaldoassyrians", with a distinctive spelling "ChaldoAssyrians". The proposed name was not accepted by major political factions in Iraq. In 2005, the new Constitution of Iraq was adopted, recognising Assyrians and Chaldeans as two distinctive communities (Article 125). That constitutional provision was criticized by proponents of national unity.[143][144][141]

Aramean identity

Further information: Arameans § Legacy
 
Aramean flag

An Aramean identity is advocated by modern Syriac Christians, primarily adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Maronites in Israel, as well as by the Western Aramaic-speaking Sunni Muslims and Melkite Christians in the towns of Maaloula and Jubb’adin in southwestern Syria.[145][146][147][148][149][150][151] They are mainly descended from western regions of the Near East, including various parts of modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and some southeastern parts of modern Turkey, but are today living in the Aramean diaspora, especially in some European countries, such as Sweden, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.[152][63][13]

Modern Arameans claim to be the descendants of the ancient Arameans, who emerged in the Levant in the 12th century BCE, and formed a number of local Aramean kingdoms, that were conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the course of the 8th and the 7th centuries BCE.[153] They preserved their ethnic and linguistic identity throughout several periods of foreign domination, and later accepted Christianity.[154][155]

In English language, they self-identify as "Arameans" or "Syriacs", sometimes combining those designations in compound terms such as "Syriacs-Arameans" or "Arameans-Syriacs". In Swedish, they call themselves Syrianer, and in German, Aramäer is a common self-designation.[156][152]

In 2014, Israel decided to recognize the Aramean community within its borders as a national minority (Arameans in Israel), allowing most of the Syriac Christians in Israel (around 10,000) to be registered as "Aramean" instead of "Arab".[157]

The self-identification of some Syriac Christians as Arameans is documented in Syriac literature. Mentions include that of the poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh, (c. 451 – 29 November 521) who describes St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 – 373) as "He who became a crown for the people of the Aramaeans [armāyūthā], (and) by him we have been brought close to spiritual beauty".[158] Ephrem himself made references to Aramean origins,[159] calling his language Aramaic, and describing Bar-Daisan (d. 222) of Edessa as "The Philosopher of the Arameans", who "made himself a laughing-stock among Arameans and Greeks". Michael the Great (d. 1199) writes of his race as that of "the Aramaeans, namely the descendants of Aram, who were called Syrians".[160]

However, references such as these to an Aramean ethnic and linguistic identity are scarce after the Middle Ages, until the development of Aramean nationalism in the 20th century.[citation needed]

During Horatio Southgate's travels through Mesopotamia, he encountered indigenous Christians and stated that Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from Assyrians, but he also recorded that the same Chaldeans hold that Jacobites are descended from ancient Syrians of Damascus: "Those of them who profess to have any idea concerning their origin, say, that they are descended from the Assyrians, and the Jacobites from the Syrians, whose chief city was Damascus".[107] Those ancient Syrians of Damascus, in terms of Biblical tradition, were ancient Arameans of Aram-Damascus.[161]

Phoenician identity

Main article: Phoenicianism
 
Map of Phoenicia
 
Map of Phoenicia and its Mediterranean trade routes

Many of the Catholic Maronites identify with a Phoenician origin, as do some of the Lebanese population, and do not see themselves as Assyrian, or Aramean.[16] This comes from the fact that present day Lebanon, the Mediterranean coast of Syria, and northern Palestine is the area that roughly corresponds to ancient Phoenicia and as a result like the majority of the Lebanese people identify with the ancient Phoenician population of that region.[162] Moreover, the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous Phoenician elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. In a 2013 interview the lead investigator, Pierre Zalloua, pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions:"Lebanon already had well-differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities, but not significant differences, and religions came as layers of paint on top. There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another."[163]

However, a small minority of Lebanese Maronites like the Lebanese author Walid Phares tend to see themselves to be ethnic Assyrians and not ethnic Phoenicians. Walid Phares, speaking at the 70th Assyrian Convention, on the topic of Assyrians in post-Saddam Iraq, began his talk by asking why he as a Lebanese Maronite ought to be speaking on the political future of Assyrians in Iraq, answering his own question with "because we are one people. We believe we are the Western Assyrians and you are the Eastern Assyrians."[164]

Another small minority of Lebanese Maronites like the Maronites in Israel tend to see themselves to be ethnic Arameans and not ethnic Phoenicians.[157]

However, other Maronite factions in Lebanon, such as Guardians of the Cedars, in their opposition to Arab nationalism, advocate the idea of a pure Phoenician racial heritage (see Phoenicianism). They point out that all Lebanese people are of pre-Arab and pre-Islamic origin, and as such are at least, in part, of the Phoenician-Canaanite stock.[162]

Arab identity

Further information: Arab Christians

Among modern Arab Christians, several communities belong to various branches of Syriac Christianity. Historical relations between those communities and the long-standing process of Arabization in the Near East is viewed as a complex and contentious issue.[165] The Assyrian International News Agency interpreted promotion of Arab identity among Syriac Christians as an "Arabist policy" and mentioned in particular the dedication by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of a webpage to the Maronite Kahlil Gibran, who is "viewed in Arabic literature as an innovator, not dissimilar to someone like W. B. Yeats in the West".[166] The vast majority of the Christians living in Israel self-identify as Arabs, but the Aramean community have wished to be recognized as a separate minority, neither Arab nor Palestinian but Aramean, while many others wish to be called Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than Arabs.[167] The wish of the Aramean community in Israel was granted in September 2014, opening for some 200 families the possibility, if they can speak Aramaic, to register as Arameans.[168] Other Christians in Israel criticized this move, seeing it as intended to divide the Christians and also to limit to Muslims the definition of "Arab".[169]

Saint Thomas Christians of India

The Saint Thomas Christians of India, where they are known as Syrian Christians, though ethnically unrelated to the peoples known as Assyrian, Aramean or Syrian/Syriac, had strong cultural and religious links with Mesopotamia as a result of trade links and missionary activity by the Church of the East at the height of its influence. Following the 1653 Coonan Cross Oath, many Saint Thomas Christians passed to the Syriac Orthodox Church and later split into several distinct churches. The majority, remaining faithful to the East Syriac Rite, form the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, from which a small group, known as the Chaldean Syrian Church, seceded and in the early 20th century linked with what is now called the Assyrian Church of the East.

Names in diaspora

United States

In the United States, adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East (who originated from the Near East) are upholding Assyrian ethnic identity,[170][171] but among followers of some other communities of Syriac Christians, like those of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church, there are significant internal diversities, since parts of those communities uphold the Chaldean or Syriac/Aramean identity.[172][173][174]

Several questions related to ethnic identities of Syriac Christians were also the subject of official analyses by the United States Congressional Joint Immigration Commission[175] and United States census authorities. In the 1980 census, Arameans and Assyrians were classified under two distinctive codes (430 and 452),[176] while in the 1990 census, all communities, both ethnic and ethno-religious, were grouped under a single code (482).[177]

During the 2000 United States census, Syriac Orthodox Archbishops n the US, Cyril Aphrem Karim and Clemis Eugene Kaplan, issued a declaration that their preferred English designation is "Syriacs".[178] Within the official census classification, a specific solution was implemented by grouping all communities under a composite designation "Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac". That decision was not welcomed by some Assyrian-American organizations, who sued the United States Census Bureau, but lost the case.[179][180][181] Some Maronite Christians also joined this US census (as opposed to Lebanese American).[182]

Sweden

In Sweden, adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East uphold the Assyrian identity, but among adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church, who emigrated mainly from the Turkey during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, internal disputes arose over the question of ethnic identity. Those among them, who preferred the indigenous designation "Suryoyo" in Swedish as well, later came to be known as "Syrianer" in Swedish). Among "Syrianer", Aramean identity is usually also advocated. One consequence of this problem lead to the Syriac Orthodox Church creating two parallel jurisdictions in Sweden (1994), one for Syriacs-Arameans, and other for Assyrians. When referring to the community, Swedish authorities use the double term assyrier/syrianer.[183][184][185][76][63]

See also

Citations

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    Herodotus. "Herodotus VII.72". VII.72: In the same fashion were equipped the Ligyans, the Matienians, the Mariandynians, and the Syrians (or Cappadocians, as they are called by the Persians). {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
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Further reading

  • Alkhas, Wilfred (2006). "Neo-Assyrianism & the End of the Confounded Identity"
  • Fred, Aprim (2004). "The Assyrian Cause and the Modern Aramean Thorn"
  • Jammo, Sarhad. , Kaldu.org
  • Odisho, Edward (2003). "Assyrians, Chaldeans & Suryanis: We all have to hang together before we are hanged separately", Zinda Magazine
  • Warda, William (2005). ""

January 01, 1970
terms, syriac, christians, endonymic, native, exonymic, foreign, terms, that, used, designations, syriac, christians, adherents, syriac, christianity, widest, scope, syriac, christianity, encompass, christian, denominations, that, follow, east, syriac, rite, w. Terms for Syriac Christians are endonymic native and exonymic foreign terms that are used as designations for Syriac Christians as adherents of Syriac Christianity 1 2 In its widest scope Syriac Christianity encompass all Christian denominations that follow East Syriac Rite or West Syriac Rite and thus use Classical Syriac as their main liturgical language 3 Traditional divisions among Syriac Christians along denominational lines are reflected in the use of various theological and ecclesiological designations both historical and modern Specific terms such as Jacobites Saint Thomas Syrian Christians Maronites Melkites Nasranis and Nestorians have been used in reference to distinctive groups and branches of Eastern Christianity including those of Syriac liturgical and linguistic traditions Some of those terms are polysemic and their uses both historical and modern have been a subject of terminological disputes between different communities and also among scholars 4 5 6 Maunsell s map a Pre World War I British Ethnographical Map of the Middle East showing 6 Nestorians around Urmia Salmas and Julamerk 7 Chaldeans along the Tigris river valley and 8 Jacobites in Tur Abdin Territorially Syriac Christians are divided in two principal groups Syriac Christians of the Near East 7 and Syriac Christians of India 8 Terminology related to Syriac Christians of the Near East includes a specific group of ethnoreligious terms related to various Semitic communities of Neo Aramaic speaking Christians that are indigenous to modern Syria Iraq Iran Turkey Lebanon Israel Jordan and Palestine 9 10 11 Syriac Christians of the Near Eastern Semitic origin use several terms for their self designation In alphabetical order main terms are Arameans Assyrians Chaldeans Phoenicians and Syriacs Each of those polysemic terms has a complex semantic history First four of those names are expressing and implying direct connections with distinctive Semitic peoples of the Ancient Near East ancient Arameans ancient Assyrians ancient Chaldeans and ancient Phoenicians while the fifth term Syriacs stems from a very complex etymology of the term Syria and thus has a wide range of onomastic meanings both historical and modern 12 13 14 Terminology related to several groups of Arab Christians and other Arabic speaking Christians who are adherents of Syriac Christianity presents a specific challenge Some of those questions related to geopolitical affiliations and cultural Arabization are of particular interest for the remaining communities of Syriac Christians in Arab countries of the Near East 15 16 17 In modern times specific terminological challenges arose after 1918 with the creation of a new political entity in the Near East called Syria thus giving a distinctive geopolitical meaning to the adjective Syrian Distinction between Syrian Christians as Christians from Syria in general and Syriac Christians as Syriac Rite Christians is observed in modern English terminology 18 Contents 1 Religious terms for Syriac Christians 1 1 Syriac Jacobites 1 2 Syriac Maronites 1 3 Syriac Melkites 1 4 Syriac Nestorians 1 5 Ritual distinctions 2 Regional terms for Syriac Christians 2 1 Syrian designations 3 Ethnic terms for Syriac Christians 3 1 Ethnic identity disputes 3 2 Assyria Syria naming controversy 3 3 Ethnic identities 3 3 1 Assyrian identity 3 3 2 Syriac identity 3 3 3 Chaldean identity 3 3 4 Chaldo Assyrian identity 3 3 5 Aramean identity 3 3 6 Phoenician identity 3 3 7 Arab identity 3 3 8 Saint Thomas Christians of India 3 4 Names in diaspora 3 4 1 United States 3 4 2 Sweden 4 See also 5 Citations 6 General sources 7 Further readingReligious terms for Syriac Christians nbsp Historical divisions within Syriac Christianity in the Near East Syriac Christians belong to several Christian denominations both historical and modern Various terms that are applied to those denominations are also used to designate Syriac Christian communities that belong to distinctive branches of the Christian denominational tree Most important of those terms are Jacobites Saint Thomas Syrian Christians Maronites Melkites Nasranis and Nestorians each of them designating a distinctive community with its particular theological and historical traditions 1 Historically Syriac Christianity emerged in the Near East among Aramaic speaking communities that accepted Christianity during the first centuries of Christian history Politically those communities were divided between eastern regions ruled in turn by Parthian and Persian empires and western regions ruled by the Roman or Byzantine empire That division created a specific notions of East and West within Syriac Christianity with first term designating regions under Parthian Persian rule and second those under Roman Byzantine rule 19 20 After the emergence of major theological disputes and divisions 4th 7th century regional distinction between eastern and western branches of Syriac Christianity gained additional significance A majority of eastern Syriac Christians adhered to the Church of the East while a majority of those in the western regions adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church At the same time Aramaic speaking Christian communities in some regions like Byzantine Palestine opted for the Chalcedonian Christianity All of those divisions created a basis for the emergence of several denominational terms created as endonymic native or exonymic foreign designations for distinctive Christian communities Main of those terms were in alphabetical order Jacobites Maronites Melkites and Nestorians All of those terms are denominational without ethnic connotations 4 7 1 5 Syriac Jacobites During the 5th and 6th century Christological disputes related to monophysitism and miaphysitism led to the emergence of lasting divisions among Eastern Christians throughout the Near East Miaphysite communities in the wider region of Syria consisted of both Greek and Aramaic Syriac adherents of miaphysitism became known as Jacobites 5 after Jacob Baradaeus d 578 a prominent miaphysite metropolitan of Edessa who created a network of miaphysite ecclesiastical structures throughout the region In later polemics between Christians Jacobite appellation was often used by various opponents of miaphysitism as designation for heresy thus creating basis for a complex history of the term Various leaders of the miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church have both rejected 21 or accepted the term 22 In polemic terminology Jacobites were sometimes also labeled as Monophysites a term they have always disputed preferring to be referred to as Miaphysites 6 Syriac Maronites During the 7th century renewed Christological disputes related to monoenergism and monothelitism led to the emergence of new divisions among Christians in the Near East Some of those who accepted monothelite teachings became known as the Maronites after their main center the Monastery of Saint Maron situated in northeastern region of modern Lebanon Maronite community included both Greek speaking and Aramaic speaking adherents During the following centuries both Greek and Aramaic Syriac traditions were gradually weakened by the process of Arabization In modern times renewed interest for patrimonial historical heritage among Catholic Maronites led to the revival of Aramaic Syriac cultural traditions and Aramean identity 23 15 24 Syriac Melkites Official state support provided by the Byzantine imperial authorities to adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity after 451 laid the foundation for the emergence of a new specific use of Aramaic terms that designated those who were loyal to the Empire This loyalty was understood not just in a political sense but also in regard to their acceptance of imperial religious policies Throughout the Near East all Christians who accepted the state backed Chalcedonian Christianity became known as Melkites a term derived from the Aramaic word malka meaning ruler king emperor thus designating those who were loyal to the Empire and its officially imposed religious policies 25 26 The term Melkites originally designated all loyalists regardless of their ethnicity Arameans Copts Greeks Jews etc thus including those Aramaic speaking Christians who adhered to Chalcedonian Christianity Since Melkite communities were dominated by the Greek episcopate the position of Aramaic speaking Melkites within the wider Melkite community was somewhat secondary to that of Greek Melkites This led to the gradual decline of Syriac Aramaic traditions Classical Syriac was initially the liturgical language of the Syriac Melkites in Antioch and parts of Syria while some other Aramaic speaking Melkites predominantly of Jewish descent used the Syro Palestinian dialect in Palestine and Transjordan 27 28 The Syriac Melkites Malkaya Suryaye in Aramaic 29 changed their church s West Syriac Rite to that of Constantinople in the 9th to 11th centuries requiring new translations of all their Classical Syriac liturgical books 30 The decline of Syriac Aramaic traditions among Syriac Melkites was further enhanced since the 7th century by gradual Arabization since under Islamic rule Arabic became the main language of public life and administration In later centuries several Melkite communities were split thus creating additional distinctions between Orthodox Melkites and Catholic Melkites Within both communities Syriac Melkites are today represented by small minorities 31 32 Syriac Nestorians Theological controversies that arose in the first half of the 5th century regarding the teachings of Nestorius d c 450 resulted in the creation of a specific term Nestorians that was used to designate those Christians who shared his views in the fields of Christology and Mariology That term was applied to all who agreed wit teaching of Nestorius both within the borders of Roman Empire and beyond regardless of their ethnic linguistic or other backgrounds Among Greek Christians Nestorianism was eventually suppressed but within some communities of Syriac Christians particularly those beyond Byzantine imperial borders support for Nestorius persisted particularly within the Church of the East in the Sassanian Empire where Nestorius came to be counted among the teachers of the Church and eventually became venerated as a saint Since it was the only Christian denomination that practiced such reverence for Nestorius the term Nestorians became commonly used as designation for adherents of the Church of the East in general regardless of the fact that its official theological positions finally formulated by the Babai the Great at the council of 612 was distinctive both in essence and terminology 4 33 34 35 36 Throughout the medieval and early modern periods the practice of labeling Syriac Christians of the Church of the East as Nestorians persisted among other Christian denominations and even entered the terminology of Islamic scholars Because of that a specific duality was created within the Church of the East reverence for Nestorius as a saint persisted but Nestorian label was resisted if used as a derogatory term by opponents In modern times those questions were reexamined and reevaluated by scholars who argued against improper uses of the term and that position was also reflected in modern inter denominational terminology that avoids the use of any controversial terms David Wilmshurst noted that for centuries the word Nestorian was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syrian theology as a term of pride by many of its defenders and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma 37 Referring to the same issues Sebastian Brock noted the association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature and to continue to call that Church Nestorian is from a historical point of view totally misleading and incorrect quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners 38 To designate converts from Nestorianism to Catholicism some early western researchers have coined the term Catholic Nestorians but that combination was criticized as contradictory 39 The term occurred in works of several researchers 40 41 Ritual distinctions In terms of liturgical ritual distinctions Syriac Christians are divided into Denominations of the West Syriac Rite Malankara Orthodox Church Maronite Catholic Church Syriac Catholic Church Syriac Orthodox Church including Syriac Orthodox Church in India Malabar Independent Syrian Church Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church Syro Malankara Catholic Church Denominations of the East Syriac Rite Ancient Church of the East Assyrian Church of the East Assyrian Evangelical Church Assyrian Pentecostal Church Chaldean Catholic Church Syro Malabar Catholic ChurchRegional terms for Syriac ChristiansSince Syriac Christians live in various regions both historical and modern several terms that are generally applied to Christians of those regions are also used to designate local Syriac Christian communities Various terminological issues that are related to the proper use of regional and denominational designations are often examined in scholarly literature but some terminological issues proved to be particularly challenging for the news media To distinguish between regional ethnic linguistic and other meanings of various polysemic terms scholars are analyzing both historical and modern aspects of their uses but those complexities are rarely observed properly outside scholarly circles by those who are not familiar with terminological distinctions In the news media Syriac Christians are often spoken of simply as Christians of their country or geographical region of residence even when the subject of reporting is specifically related to Syriac denominations Common terms such as Iraqi Christians Iranian Christians Turkish Christians and particularly Syrian Christians are often used in a way that is seen by Syriac Christian communities in those countries as non specific or even improper Since some of those states Syria are officially defined as Arab Republics the Assyrian International News Agency interpreted the practice of regional labeling as Arabist policy of denying Assyrian identity and claiming that Assyrians including Chaldeans and Syriacs are Arab Christian minorities 42 Syrian designations See also Name of Syria and Name of Syriac Christianity In modern English language Syrian designations are most commonly used in relation to the modern state of Syria or in historical context to the region of Syria In accordance with that English term Syrian Christians is commonly used to designate Christians of Syria in general but the same term was also used to designate Christians of Syrian Syriac rites regardless of their regional affiliation Because of that the distinctive term Syriac was introduced and favored by some scholars to designate the Syriac branch of Eastern Christianity thus reducing Syrian designations to their primary regional meanings related to Syria Terminological transition from Syrian to Syriac designations is implemented gradually primarily in scholarly literature but duality of forms still persists even in some modern scholarly works thus resulting in a continuous variety of parallel uses Syriac Christianity Syrian Christianity Christian Syriacs Christian Syrians East Syriac Rite East Syrian Rite West Syriac Rite West Syrian Rite 43 44 45 46 Syrian designations in particular may be confusing for an outsider since someone may self identify as both Syrian and Syriac For example Syriac Orthodox Christians from modern Syria are Syriacs as members of the Syriac Orthodox Church but also Syrians as inhabitants of Syria Since the historical region of Syria was much wider than modern Syria 47 in various writings related to earlier historical periods Syriac Christians could also be termed both as Syriacs by rite and Syrians by region even if their homelands are located outside the borders of modern Syria but do belong within borders of the historical region of Syria One of the most notable example is related to the city of Antioch on the Orontes that was historical seat of the Patriarchate of Antioch and the capital city of Roman Syria 48 but since 1939 became part of modern Turkey Therefore earlier history of Syriac Christianity in such regions belongs to the Syrian regional history but since those regions are now in Turkey their heritage also belongs to the history of Christianity in Turkey In India term Syrian Christians is still used as one of main designations for Saint Thomas Christians who are traditionally using Syriac rites and Syriac language in their liturgical practices 49 Some authors even consider them to be a distinct endomagous ethnic group in many ways similar to a caste They have a history of close to two thousand years and in language religion and ethnicity they are related to Persian as well as West Syrian Christian traditions 50 In recent years English terminology based on Syrian Syriac distinctions was made even more complicated since several modern authors started to favor exonymic Turkish term Suryani by using it in texts written in English language and thus promoting additional term for Syriac Christians 51 52 53 Some similar questions arose in regard to the use of Assyrian designations as regional terms John Joseph stated that in the English terminology of the 19th century term Assyrian Christians initially designated Christians of geographical Assyria but later transformed into Christian Assyrians thus gaining ethnic connotations 54 and also cited James Coakley who remarked that the link created between the modern Assyrians and the ancient Assyrians of Nineveh known to readers of the Old Testament has proved irresistible to the imagination 55 Ethnic terms for Syriac Christians nbsp Gradual decline of Aramaic speaking communities in the Near East from the 1st century CE down to the modern times nbsp Remaining communities of Neo Aramaic speakers in the modern Near East Since Syriac Christians belong to various ethnic groups native to the Near East and India and also spread throughout diaspora several terms that are applied to those groups are also used to designate Syriac Christian communities that belong to distinctive ethnicities Various groups among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East derive and uphold their ethnic identities by claiming descendancy from peoples of the Ancient Near East such as ancient Arameans ancient Assyrians ancient Chaldeans and ancient Phoenicians Since ethnic composition of the Near East suffered many substantial and successive changes during ancient medieval and modern times all questions related to ethnic continuity are not only viewed as complex but also treated as highly sensitive Some of those questions proved to be very challenging not only for distinctive communities and their mutual relations but also for scholars from several fields related to the study of Syriac Christianity 56 57 58 59 A common cultural denominator for all communities of Syriac Christians is found in the use of Aramaic languages both historical Edessan Aramaic Classical Syriac and modern Neo Aramaic languages acknowledging in the same time within the bounds of mutually shared cultural heritage that ancient Aramaic language was accepted as lingua franca during the final two centuries of the Neo Assyrian Empire 60 A simplified list presents various self identifications among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East with regard to their ethnic or ethno religious identity in alphabetical order Arameans mostly endorsed by adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church and also by some in the Syriac Catholic Church and the Maronite Catholic Church 13 Assyrians endorsed mostly by adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East and also by some in the Ancient Church of the East the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church 61 Chaldeans endorsed mostly by adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church 62 Phoenicians endorsed by some in the Maronite Catholic Church mainly in Lebanon 16 Syriacs mostly endorsed as a distinctive ethnic identity by some in the Syriac Orthodox Church and also by some in the Syriac Catholic Church 63 Ethnic identity disputes nbsp Alqosh located in the midst of a contemporary ethnically Assyrian community One of the main questions related to ethnic identity of modern Syriac Christians of the Near East stems from a dispute between two conflicting and mutually exclusive claims Pan ethnic claim All of modern Syriac Christians of the Near East share the same ethnicity and thus should be united under a single name Poly ethnic claim Modern Syriac Christians of the Near East are divided into several mutually distinctive ethnicities each having its own name Proponents of pan ethnic claims are further divided in two radicalized groups that are mutually adversarial 64 and also deeply invested into mutual denialism those who favor Pan Aramean ethnic identity claim that all Aramaic speakers are ethnic Arameans thus denying the validity of all other competing identities with particular focus on the denial of any Assyrian continuity Pan Aramean views are advocated by some activists who are working mainly within Aramean ethnic and political organizations such as the World Council of Arameans 65 and the Aramean Democratic Organization 66 those who favor Pan Assyrian ethnic identity claim that all Aramaic speakers are ethnic Assyrians thus denying the validity of all other competing identities with particular focus on the denial of a distinctive Chaldean ethnicity and Aramean continuity Pan Assyrian views are supported by Finnish scholar Simo Parpola who stated in 2004 In this context it is important to draw attention to the fact that the Aramaic speaking peoples of the Near East have since ancient times identified themselves as Assyrians and still continue to do so 67 thus affirming his general pan Assyrian positions within the wider field of Assyriology 68 Contrary to radical pan Aramean and pan Assyrian claims various proponents of poly ethnic views are focused mainly on their own communities recognizing at the same time the equality of other communities and the validity of their self designations thus creating a base for mutual acknowledgment and toleration Advocates of such views are found in all groups among moderate Arameans Assyrians Chaldeans and others Prominent Assyrian scholar professor Amir Harrak who supports Assyrian continuity that is based on historical traditions of Assyrian heartlands also acknowledges Aramean continuity that is based on similar historical traditions of some other western regions thus demonstrating a balanced and moderate approach to those sensitive issues 69 70 Most who support such poly ethnic approach are ready to accept traditional Syriac designation as a cultural umbrella term but without any suppression of distinctive ethnic identities Thus the term Syriac peoples in plural would designate a poly ethnic group that includes distinctive peoples such as modern Arameans modern Assyrians modern Chaldeans and others Such poly ethnic pan Syriac views are endorsed by some organizations such as the European Syriac Union 71 Similar preferences for the use of Syrian Syriac designations as unifying terms were also manifested during the formative stages of national awakening at the beginning of the 20th century In 1910 Nestorius Malech d 1927 edited and published a work of his late father George Malech d 1909 that contained a chapter under the title The Arameans Chaldeans Assyrians and Syrians are One Nation and their Language is One In order to explain the nature of those terms the authors also claimed These four names are not national but geographical significations Emphasizing the common use of Syrian language among all those groups the authors also advocated for the acknowledgement of a common Syrian nation 72 Such ideas based on the use of Syrian designations lost their practicality soon after 1918 when the foundations of modern Syria were laid thus giving a distinctive geopolitical meaning to Syrian appellations that became firmly tied to a country whose population was consisted mainly of Muslim Arabs Later attempts to employ slightly distinctive Syriac designations came from foreign terminology since native language had only one principal and widely accepted form Suryaye Suryoye that simply meant Syrians and it took almost a century to accept Syrian Syriac distinctions but only in cases when self designations are expressed in foreign languages Thus became acceptable to use terms like Syriac Christianity Syriac language Syriac literature and Syriacs in general but traditional native appellations Suryaye Suryoye remained unchanged 73 Views on endonymic native designations are also divided Aramean activists are endorsing two terms Aramaye ܐܪܡܝܐ and Suryaye ܣܘܪܝܝܐ but they are emphasizing that the second term was historically accepted as an alternative self identification only since the 5th century CE under the influence of Greek terminology 74 59 Assyrian activists are endorsing the term Aṯuraye ܐܬܘܪܝܐ and also accept the term Suryaye ܣܘܪܝܝܐ but they claim that it always represented just a slightly shortened form of the main designation for Assyrians In the Assyrian Neo Aramaic language both terms are thus used Aṯuraye Assyrians and Suraye Suryaye Syrians Syriacs 75 Disputes over ethnic identity began to intensify during the 1970s and gradually escalated to the point of mutual animosity 64 that attracted the attention of foreign scholars and international institutions Mutual denialism particularly between radicalized proponents of pan Aramean and pan Assyrian claims was perceived as being at odds with internationally endorsed principles based on the notion that every ethnic community should be respected and allowed to choose its own self designation By the beginning of the 21st century foreign scholars and institutions have shown an increasing tendency of taking neutral positions that also affected terminology Several attempts were made to create acceptable compound terms by using various combinations of basic terms for Arameans Assyrians Chaldeans and Syriacs in general Some of those solutions were applied in the US census Assyrian Chaldean Syriac and in the Swedish census Assyrier Syrianer 76 Additional distinctions also appeared in regard to some other issues Unlike the Assyrians who emphasize their non Arab ethnicity and have historically sought a state of their own 77 some urban Chaldean Catholics are more likely to assimilate into Arab identity 78 Other Chaldeans particularly in America identify with the ancient Chaldeans of Chaldea rather than the Assyrians In addition while Assyrians self define as a strictly Christian nation Aramaic organizations generally accept that Muslim Arameans also exist and that many Muslims in historic Aramea were converts forced or voluntary from Christianity to Islam 79 An exception to the near extinction of Western Aramaic are the Lebanese Maronite speakers of Western Neo Aramaic however they largely self identify as the Phoenicians the ancient people of Lebanon and not Arameans Some Muslim Lebanese nationalists espouse Phoenician identity as well Assyria Syria naming controversy The question of ethnic identity and self designation is sometimes connected to the scholarly debate on the etymology of Syria The question has a long history of academic controversy 80 81 The terminological problem dates from the Seleucid Empire 323 150 BC which applied the term Syria the Greek and Indo Anatolian form of the name Assyria which had existed even during the Assyrian Empire not only to the homeland of the Assyrians but also to lands to the west in the Levant previously known as Aramea Eber Nari and Phoenicia modern Syria Lebanon and northern Israel that later became part of the empire This caused not only the original Assyrians but also the ethnically and geographically distinct Arameans and Phoenicians of the Levant to be collectively called Syrians and Syriacs in the Greco Roman world The 1997 discovery of the Cinekoy inscription appears to prove conclusively that the term Syria was derived from the Assyrian term 𒀸𒋗𒁺 𐎹 Assurayu and referred to Assyria and Assyrian The Cinekoy inscription is a Hieroglyphic Luwian Phoenician bilingual uncovered from Cinekoy Adana Province Turkey ancient Cilicia dating to the 8th century BCE Originally published by Tekoglu and Lemaire 2000 82 it was more recently analyzed by historian Robert Rollinger 83 84 who lend a strong support to the age old debate of the name Syria being derived from Assyria see Name of Syria The examined section of the Luwian inscription reads VI And then the an Assyrian king su ra i wa i ni sa URBS and the whole Assyrian House su ra i wa i za ha URBS were made a fa ther and a mo ther for me VII and Hiyawa and Assyria su ra i wa i ia sa ha URBS were made a single House The corresponding Phoenician inscription reads And the king of Assur and the whole House of Assur SR were for me a father and a mother and the DNNYM and the Assyrians SRYM The object on which the inscription is found is a monument belonging to Urikki vassal king of Hiyawa i e Cilicia dating to the 8th century BC In this monumental inscription Urikki made reference to the relationship between his kingdom and his Assyrian overlords The Luwian inscription reads Sura i whereas the Phoenician translation reads SR or Ashur which according to Rollinger 2006 settles the problem once and for all 83 84 Some scholars in the past rejected the theory of Syrian being derived from Assyrian as naive and based purely on onomastic similarity in Indo European languages 85 until the inscription identified the origins of this derivation 83 84 In Classical Greek usage terms Syria and Assyria were used interchangeably Herodotus s distinctions between the two in the 5th century BCE were a notable early exception 86 Randolph Helm emphasizes that Herodotus never applied the term Syria to Mesopotamia which he always called Assyria and used Syria to refer to inhabitants of the coastal Levant 87 While himself maintaining a distinction Herodotus also claimed that those called Syrians by the Hellenes Greeks are called Assyrians by the barbarians non Greeks 88 80 81 Greek geographer and historian Strabo d in 24 CE described in his Geography both Assyria and Syria dedicating specific chapters to each of them 89 but also noted in his chapter on Assyria Those who have written histories of the Syrian empire say that when the Medes were over thrown by the Persians and the Syrians by the Medes they spoke of the Syrians only as those who built the palaces at Babylon and Ninos Of these Ninos founded Ninos in Atouria and his wife Semiramis succeeded her husband and founded Babylon The city of Ninos was destroyed immediately after the overthrow of the Syrians It was much greater than Babylon and was situated in the plain of Atouria 90 Throughout his work Strabo used terms Atouria Assyria and Syria and also terms Assyrians and Syrians in relation to specific terminological questions while comparing and analyzing views of previous writers Reflecting on the works of Poseidonius d 51 BCE Strabo noted For the people of Armenia the Syrians and the Arabians display a great racial kinship both in their language and their lives and physical characteristics particularly where they are adjacent Considering the latitudes there is a great difference between those toward the north and south and the Syrians in the middle but common condition s prevail C42 and the Assyrians and Arimanians somewhat resemble both each other and the others He Poseidonios infers that the names of these peoples are similar to each other for those whom we call Syrians are called Aramaians by the Syrians themselves and there is a resemblance between this name and that of the Armenians Arabians and Erembians 91 In the 1st century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about various peoples who were descended from the Sons of Noah according to Biblical tradition and noted that Assyras founded the city of Ninus and gave his name to his subjects the Assyrians who rose to the height of prosperity Arphaxades named those under his rule Arphaxadaeans the Chaldaeans of to day Aramus ruled the Aramaeans whom the Greeks term Syrians 92 Those remarks testify that Josephus regarded all there peoples Assyrians Chaldeans Arameans as his contemporaries thus confirming that in his time non of those peoples were considered as extinct Syria and Assyria were not fully distinguished by Greeks until they became better acquainted with the Near East Under Macedonian rule after Syria s conquest by Alexander the Great Syria was restricted to the land west of the Euphrates Likewise the Romans clearly distinguished the Assyria and Syria 93 Unlike the Indo European languages the native Semitic name for Syria has always been distinct from Assyria During the Akkadian Empire 2335 2154 BC Neo Sumerian Empire 2119 2004 BC and Old Assyrian Empire 1975 1750 BC the region which is now Syria was called The Land of the Amurru and Mitanni referring to the Amorites and the Hurrians Beginning from the Middle Assyrian Empire 1365 1020 BC and also in the Neo Assyrian Empire 935 605 BC and the succeeding Neo Babylonian Empire 605 539 BC and Achaemenid Empire 539 323 BC Syria was known as Aramea and later Eber Nari The term Syria emerged only during the 9th century BC and was only used by Indo Anatolian and Greek speakers and solely in reference to Assyria citation needed According to Tsereteli the Georgian equivalent of Assyrians appears in ancient Georgian Armenian and Russian documents 94 making the argument that the nations and peoples to the east and north of Mesopotamia knew the group as Assyrians while to the West beginning with Luwian Hurrian and later Greek influence the Assyrians were known as Syrians 84 Ethnic identities Assyrian identity nbsp Assyrian flag since 1968 95 nbsp Assyria under the Persian Empire Main articles Assyrian nationalism and Assyrian continuity An Assyrian identity is today maintained by followers of the Assyrian Church of the East the Ancient Church of the East the Chaldean Catholic Church Syriac Orthodox Church Assyrian Pentecostal Church Assyrian Evangelical Church and to a much lesser degree the Syriac Catholic Church 96 Those identifying with Assyria and with Mesopotamia in general tend to be Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic speaking Christians from northern Iraq north eastern Syria south eastern Turkey and north west Iran together with communities that spread from these regions to neighbouring lands such as Armenia Georgia southern Russia Azerbaijan and the Western World The Assyrianist movement originated in the 19th to early 20th centuries in direct opposition to Pan Arabism and in the context of Assyrian irredentism It was exacerbated by the Assyrian genocide and Assyrian War of Independence of World War I The emphasis of Assyrian antiquity grew ever more pronounced in the decades following World War II with an official Assyrian calendar introduced in the 1950s taking as its era the year 4750 BC the purported date of foundation of the city of Assur and the introduction of a new Assyrian flag in 1968 Assyrians tend to be from Iraq Iran southeast Turkey northeast Syria Armenia Georgia southern Russia and Azerbaijan as well as in diaspora communities in the US Canada Australia Great Britain Sweden Netherlands etc Assyrian continuity embodied in the idea that the modern Assyrians are descended from the ancient Assyrians is also supported by several western scholars including Henry Saggs 97 Robert Biggs 98 John Brinkman 99 Simo Parpola 100 101 and Richard Frye 102 It is denied by historian John Joseph himself a modern Assyrian 103 104 and Semitologist Aaron Michael Butts 105 Eastern Syriac Christians are on record but only from the late nineteenth century calling themselves Aturaye Assyrians 106 and the region now in Iraq northeast Syria and southeast Turkey was still known as Assyria Athura Assuristan until the 7th century AD Christian missionary Horatio Southgate d 1894 who travelled through Mesopotamia and encountered various groups of indigenous Christians stated in 1840 that Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from Assyrians but he also recorded that the same Chaldeans hold that Jacobites are descended from those ancient Syrians whose capital city was Damascus Referring to Chaldean views Southgate stated Those of them who profess to have any idea concerning their origin say that they are descended from the Assyrians and the Jacobites from the Syrians whose chief city was Damascus 107 Rejecting assumptions of Asahel Grant who claimed in 1841 that modern Nestorians and other Christian groups of Mesopotamia are descendants of ancient Jewish tribes 108 Southgate remarked in 1842 The Syrians are remarkably strict in the observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest and this is one of a multitude of resemblances between them and the Jews There are some of these resemblances which are more strongly marked among the Syrians than among the Nestorians and yet the Syrians are undoubtedly descendants of the Assyrians and not of the Jews 109 Southgate visited Christian communities of the Near East sometime before the ancient Assyrian sites were rediscovered by western archaeologists 110 and in 1844 he published additional remarks on local traditions of ancient ancestry At the Armenian village of Arpaout where I stopped for breakfast I began to make inquiries for the Syrians The people informed me that there were about one hundred families of them in the town of Kharpout and a village inhabited by them on the plain I observed that the Armenians did not know them under the name which I used Syriani but called them Assouri which struck me the more at the moment from its resemblance to our English name Assyrians from whom they claim their origin being sons as they say of Assour Asshur 111 Remarks of Horatio Southgate have been noted and analyzed by several scholars in relation to their significance for the question or Assyrian continuity 112 Some authors have noted that in the language of Southgate s Armenian informers term Assouri Asori would designate Syrians in general while Armenian specific term for Assyrians would be Asorestantsi 113 114 115 Such views were criticized by other authors 116 Noting that Southgate s reports do not state that Syriac Jacobites self identified as Assyrians some authors have pointed out that Southgate himself did accept such notions in opposition to Grant s theories 117 Systematic use of Assyrian designations for Syriac Christians gained wider acceptance in the context of later Protestant missions in the region particularly after the establishment of the Archbishop of Canterbury s Mission to the Assyrian Christians 1886 that avoided the term Nestorians for adherents of the Church of the East 118 119 Syriac identity Syriac identity is manifested in several forms among modern Syriac Christians of the Near East For some those who self identify as ethnic Syriacs Suryoye represent a distinctive ethnic group For others Syriacs are Arameans from the pro Aramean point of view or Assyrians from the pro Assyrian point of view In some communities Syriac identity is thus closely merged with the modern Aramean identity 63 13 while among modern Assyrians Syriac designation is viewed and accepted as a terminological variation due to the etymological origin of the term citation needed Additional form of Syriac identity is manifested as a specific pan Syriac identity that is viewed as an all encompassing pan ethnic identity Some international non governmental organisations such as the European Syriac Union founded in 2004 promote the notion that such pan Syriac identity represents and includes all other ethnic and ethno religious identities and thus unites all groups Arameans Assyrians Chaldeans and others 71 Similar notions are supported by some political organizations like the Syriac Union Party in Lebanon and the Syriac Union Party in Syria who also use Syriac designations as unifying terms 120 Historically endonymic native variants Suryaya Suryoyo were commonly used as designations for linguistic Syriac language denominational Syriac Christianity and liturgical Syriac rite self identification thus referring to Syriac speaking Christians of the Near East in general In medieval times those designations Suryaya Suryoyo were often used as common terms of collective self identification but later emergence of modern Syria after 1918 created some new challenges in the fields of both regional and international terminology In modern English terminology term Syrians is most commonly used as a demonym for general population of the modern state of Syria To distinguish themselves modern Syriac Christians have thus accepted a more specific term Syriacs that is particularly favored among adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church In 2000 the Holy Synod of the Syriac Orthodox Church officially recommended that in English language this church should be called Syriac after its official liturgical Syriac language 121 Chaldean identity What is now known to be Biblical Aramaic was until the second half of the 19th century called Chaldean Chaldaic or Chaldee 122 123 124 and East Syriac Christians whose liturgical language was and is a form of Aramaic were called Chaldeans 125 as an ethnic not a religious term citation needed Hormuzd Rassam applied the term Chaldeans to the Nestorians those not in communion with Rome no less than to the Catholics 126 He stated that the present Chaldeans with a few exceptions speak the same dialect used in the Targum and in some parts of Ezra and Daniel which are called Chaldee 127 128 In western terminology the term Chaldeans was used in the 15th century as designation for a group of Eastern Christians in Cyprus who originally descended from Mesopotamia and entered an ephemeral union with the Catholic Church in 1445 and later for those who entered into communion with the Catholic Church in their ancestral regions between the 16th and 18th centuries 129 130 Until at least the mid nineteenth century the name Chaldean was the ethnic name for all the area s Christians whether in or out of communion with Rome William F Ainsworth whose visit was in 1840 spoke of the non Catholics as Chaldeans and of the Catholics as Roman Catholic Chaldeans 131 For those Chaldeans who retained their ancient faith Ainsworth also stated that the name Nestorians was applied to them since 1681 to distinguish them from those in communion with Rome 132 A little later Austen Henry Layard also used the term Chaldean even for those he also called Nestorians 133 The same term had earlier been used by Richard Simon in the seventeenth century writing Among the several Christian sects in the Middle East that are called Chaldeans or Syrians the most sizeable is that of the Nestorians 134 As indicated above Horatio Southgate who said that the members of the Syriac Orthodox Church West Syrians considered themselves descendants of Asshur the second son of Shem called the members of the divided Church of the East Chaldeans and Papal Chaldeans In 1875 Henry Van Lennep stated that the term Chaldean Church is a generic name for Christian Assyrians Thus speaking of the Nestorian Schism of 431 that occurred many centuries before the division of the Church of the East into those who accepted and those who rejected communion with the Catholic Church he wrote At the schism on account of Nestorius the Assyrians under the generic name of the Chaldean Church mostly separated from the orthodox Greeks and being under the rule of the Persians were protected against persecution 135 Although it was only towards the end of the 19th century that the term Assyrian became accepted largely through the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury s Mission to the Assyrian Christians at first as a replacement for the term Nestorian but later as an ethnic description 136 today even members of the Chaldean Catholic Church such as Raphael Bidawid patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church from 1989 to 2003 accept Assyrian as an indication of nationality while Chaldean has for them become instead an indication of religious confession He stated When a portion of the Church of the East became Catholic in the 17th Century the name given was Chaldean based on the Magi kings who were believed by some to have come from what once had been the land of the Chaldean to Bethlehem The name Chaldean does not represent an ethnicity just a church We have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion I myself my sect is Chaldean but ethnically I am Assyrian 137 Before becoming patriarch he said in an interview with the Assyrian Star newspaper Before I became a priest I was an Assyrian before I became a bishop I was an Assyrian I am an Assyrian today tomorrow forever and I am proud of it 110 That was a sea change from the earlier situation when Chaldean was a self description by prelates not in communion with Rome Nestorian patriarchs occasionally used Chaldean in formal documents claiming to be the real Patriarchs of the whole Chaldean Church 138 Nestorian Christians who denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons They consecrated leavened bread and used the Chaldean Syriac language 139 Hannibal Travis states that in recent times a small and mainly United States based minority within the Chaldean Catholic Church have begun to espouse a separate Chaldean ethnic identity 140 In 2005 the new Constitution of Iraq recognized Chaldeans as a distinctive community Article 125 141 In 2017 the Chaldean Catholic Church issued an official statement of its Synod of Bishops reafirming its commitment to a distinctive Chaldean identity As a genuine Chaldean people we officially reject the labels that distort our Chaldean identity such as the composite name Chaldean Syriac Assyrian used in the Kurdistan Region contrary to the name established in the Iraqi constitution We call upon our daughters and sons to reject these labels to adhere to their Chaldean identity without fanaticism and to respect the other names such as Assyrians Syriacs and Armenians 62 Chaldo Assyrian identity nbsp Memorial of the Seyfo genocide in Paris with commemorative inscription using composite Assyro Chaldean designation In modern political history some attempts were made to overcome terminological divisions by creating some new complex terms like Chaldo Assyrians or Assyro Chaldeans Those designations were aimed to provide a composite umbrella term that would serve as a vessel for the promotion of an unified national identity Term Assyro Chaldeans as a combination of terms Assyrian and Chaldean was used in the Treaty of Sevres which spoke of full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities 142 Soon after the implementation of political changes in Iraq a conference was held in Baghdad on 22 24 October 2003 attended by representatives of Christian communities both Assyrian and Chaldean adopting a resolution that proclaimed national unity under a composite name Chaldoassyrians with a distinctive spelling ChaldoAssyrians The proposed name was not accepted by major political factions in Iraq In 2005 the new Constitution of Iraq was adopted recognising Assyrians and Chaldeans as two distinctive communities Article 125 That constitutional provision was criticized by proponents of national unity 143 144 141 Aramean identity Further information Arameans Legacy nbsp Aramean flag An Aramean identity is advocated by modern Syriac Christians primarily adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Maronites in Israel as well as by the Western Aramaic speaking Sunni Muslims and Melkite Christians in the towns of Maaloula and Jubb adin in southwestern Syria 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 They are mainly descended from western regions of the Near East including various parts of modern Syria Lebanon Palestine and some southeastern parts of modern Turkey but are today living in the Aramean diaspora especially in some European countries such as Sweden Germany Belgium and the Netherlands 152 63 13 Modern Arameans claim to be the descendants of the ancient Arameans who emerged in the Levant in the 12th century BCE and formed a number of local Aramean kingdoms that were conquered by the Neo Assyrian Empire in the course of the 8th and the 7th centuries BCE 153 They preserved their ethnic and linguistic identity throughout several periods of foreign domination and later accepted Christianity 154 155 In English language they self identify as Arameans or Syriacs sometimes combining those designations in compound terms such as Syriacs Arameans or Arameans Syriacs In Swedish they call themselves Syrianer and in German Aramaer is a common self designation 156 152 In 2014 Israel decided to recognize the Aramean community within its borders as a national minority Arameans in Israel allowing most of the Syriac Christians in Israel around 10 000 to be registered as Aramean instead of Arab 157 The self identification of some Syriac Christians as Arameans is documented in Syriac literature Mentions include that of the poet theologian Jacob of Serugh c 451 29 November 521 who describes St Ephrem the Syrian c 306 373 as He who became a crown for the people of the Aramaeans armayutha and by him we have been brought close to spiritual beauty 158 Ephrem himself made references to Aramean origins 159 calling his language Aramaic and describing Bar Daisan d 222 of Edessa as The Philosopher of the Arameans who made himself a laughing stock among Arameans and Greeks Michael the Great d 1199 writes of his race as that of the Aramaeans namely the descendants of Aram who were called Syrians 160 However references such as these to an Aramean ethnic and linguistic identity are scarce after the Middle Ages until the development of Aramean nationalism in the 20th century citation needed During Horatio Southgate s travels through Mesopotamia he encountered indigenous Christians and stated that Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from Assyrians but he also recorded that the same Chaldeans hold that Jacobites are descended from ancient Syrians of Damascus Those of them who profess to have any idea concerning their origin say that they are descended from the Assyrians and the Jacobites from the Syrians whose chief city was Damascus 107 Those ancient Syrians of Damascus in terms of Biblical tradition were ancient Arameans of Aram Damascus 161 Phoenician identity Main article Phoenicianism nbsp Map of Phoenicia nbsp Map of Phoenicia and its Mediterranean trade routes Many of the Catholic Maronites identify with a Phoenician origin as do some of the Lebanese population and do not see themselves as Assyrian or Aramean 16 This comes from the fact that present day Lebanon the Mediterranean coast of Syria and northern Palestine is the area that roughly corresponds to ancient Phoenicia and as a result like the majority of the Lebanese people identify with the ancient Phoenician population of that region 162 Moreover the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous Phoenician elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years In a 2013 interview the lead investigator Pierre Zalloua pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions Lebanon already had well differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities but not significant differences and religions came as layers of paint on top There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another 163 However a small minority of Lebanese Maronites like the Lebanese author Walid Phares tend to see themselves to be ethnic Assyrians and not ethnic Phoenicians Walid Phares speaking at the 70th Assyrian Convention on the topic of Assyrians in post Saddam Iraq began his talk by asking why he as a Lebanese Maronite ought to be speaking on the political future of Assyrians in Iraq answering his own question with because we are one people We believe we are the Western Assyrians and you are the Eastern Assyrians 164 Another small minority of Lebanese Maronites like the Maronites in Israel tend to see themselves to be ethnic Arameans and not ethnic Phoenicians 157 However other Maronite factions in Lebanon such as Guardians of the Cedars in their opposition to Arab nationalism advocate the idea of a pure Phoenician racial heritage see Phoenicianism They point out that all Lebanese people are of pre Arab and pre Islamic origin and as such are at least in part of the Phoenician Canaanite stock 162 Arab identity Further information Arab Christians Among modern Arab Christians several communities belong to various branches of Syriac Christianity Historical relations between those communities and the long standing process of Arabization in the Near East is viewed as a complex and contentious issue 165 The Assyrian International News Agency interpreted promotion of Arab identity among Syriac Christians as an Arabist policy and mentioned in particular the dedication by the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee of a webpage to the Maronite Kahlil Gibran who is viewed in Arabic literature as an innovator not dissimilar to someone like W B Yeats in the West 166 The vast majority of the Christians living in Israel self identify as Arabs but the Aramean community have wished to be recognized as a separate minority neither Arab nor Palestinian but Aramean while many others wish to be called Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than Arabs 167 The wish of the Aramean community in Israel was granted in September 2014 opening for some 200 families the possibility if they can speak Aramaic to register as Arameans 168 Other Christians in Israel criticized this move seeing it as intended to divide the Christians and also to limit to Muslims the definition of Arab 169 Saint Thomas Christians of India The Saint Thomas Christians of India where they are known as Syrian Christians though ethnically unrelated to the peoples known as Assyrian Aramean or Syrian Syriac had strong cultural and religious links with Mesopotamia as a result of trade links and missionary activity by the Church of the East at the height of its influence Following the 1653 Coonan Cross Oath many Saint Thomas Christians passed to the Syriac Orthodox Church and later split into several distinct churches The majority remaining faithful to the East Syriac Rite form the Syro Malabar Catholic Church from which a small group known as the Chaldean Syrian Church seceded and in the early 20th century linked with what is now called the Assyrian Church of the East Names in diaspora United States In the United States adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East who originated from the Near East are upholding Assyrian ethnic identity 170 171 but among followers of some other communities of Syriac Christians like those of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church there are significant internal diversities since parts of those communities uphold the Chaldean or Syriac Aramean identity 172 173 174 Several questions related to ethnic identities of Syriac Christians were also the subject of official analyses by the United States Congressional Joint Immigration Commission 175 and United States census authorities In the 1980 census Arameans and Assyrians were classified under two distinctive codes 430 and 452 176 while in the 1990 census all communities both ethnic and ethno religious were grouped under a single code 482 177 During the 2000 United States census Syriac Orthodox Archbishops n the US Cyril Aphrem Karim and Clemis Eugene Kaplan issued a declaration that their preferred English designation is Syriacs 178 Within the official census classification a specific solution was implemented by grouping all communities under a composite designation Assyrian Chaldean Syriac That decision was not welcomed by some Assyrian American organizations who sued the United States Census Bureau but lost the case 179 180 181 Some Maronite Christians also joined this US census as opposed to Lebanese American 182 Sweden In Sweden adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East uphold the Assyrian identity but among adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church who emigrated mainly from the Turkey during the 1960s 1970s and 1980s internal disputes arose over the question of ethnic identity Those among them who preferred the indigenous designation Suryoyo in Swedish as well later came to be known as Syrianer in Swedish Among Syrianer Aramean identity is usually also advocated One consequence of this problem lead to the Syriac Orthodox Church creating two parallel jurisdictions in Sweden 1994 one for Syriacs Arameans and other for Assyrians When referring to the community Swedish authorities use the double term assyrier syrianer 183 184 185 76 63 See also nbsp Christianity portal Assyrians Assyrian continuity Assyrian nationalism Assyrian homeland Assyria Syria region Name of Syria Cinekoy inscription Arameans Aram region Phoenicianism Chaldea Babylonia Mesopotamia Neo Aramaic languagesCitations a b c Murre van den Berg 2007 pp 249 268 William Ambrose Shedd The Syrians of Persia and Eastern Turkey Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 35 no 1 1903 1 7 https doi org 10 2307 197537 Winkler 2019 pp 119 133 a b c Brock 1996 pp 23 35 a b c Seleznyov 2013 pp 382 398 a b Brock 2016 pp 45 52 a b O Mahony 2006 pp 511 536 Perczel 2019 pp 653 697 Nisan 2002 Corbon 1998 pp 92 110 Winkler 2013 pp 107 125 Heinrichs 1993 pp 99 114 a b c d Wozniak 2015b pp 483 496 Bakker Kellogg 2019 pp 475 498 a b Rio Sanchez 2013 pp 3 11 a b c Salameh 2020 pp 111 129 Baarda 2020 pp 143 170 Millar 2006 pp 107 109 Meyendorff 1989 pp 96 100 Baum amp Winkler 2003 pp 1 5 Southgate 1844 p V Indian branch of the Syriac Orthodox Church calls itself the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church Meyendorff 1989 pp 333 373 Abouzayd 2019 pp 731 750 Meyendorff 1989 p 190 Dick 2004 p 9 Arman Akopian 11 December 2017 Other branches of Syriac Christianity Melkites and Maronites Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies Gorgias Press p 573 ISBN 9781463238933 The main center of Aramaic speaking Melkites was Palestine During the 5th 6th centuries they were engaged in literary mainly translation work in the local Western Aramaic dialect known as Palestinian Christian Aramaic using a script closely resembling the cursive Estrangela of Osrhoene Palestinian Melkites were mostly Jewish converts to Christianity who had a long tradition of using Palestinian Aramaic dialects as literary languages Closely associated with the Palestinian Melkites were the Melkites of Transjordan who also used Palestinian Christian Aramaic Another community of Aramaic speaking Melkites existed in the vicinity of Antioch and parts of Syria These Melkites used Classical Syriac as a written language the common literary language of the overwhelming majority of Christian Arameans CLASSICAL SYRIAC Gorgias Handbooks p 14 In contrast to Nestorians and Jacobites a small group of Syriacs accepted the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon Non Chalcedonian Syriacs called them Melkites from Aramaic malka king thereby connecting them to the Byzantine Emperor s denomination Melkite Syriacs were mostly concentrated around Antioch and adjacent regions of northern Syria and used Syriac as their literary and liturgical language The Melkite community also included the Aramaic speaking Jewish converts to Christianity in Palestine and the Orthodox Christians of Transjordan During the 5th 6th centuries they were engaged in literary work mainly translation in Palestinian Christian Aramaic a Western Aramaic dialect using a script closely resembling the Estrangela cursive of Osrhoene Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World p 151 ISBN 9780192846761 Syrian i e Syriac using Melkites malkaya suryaye The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity p 917 ISBN 9780192562463 Syriac liturgy belongs to the rite of Antioch though in the case of the east Syriac tradition Mesopotamian is a preferable term The west Syriac tradition covers the Syriac Orthodox Maronite and Melkite churches though the Melkites changed their Church s rite to that of Constantinople in the 9th 11th centuries which required new translations of all its liturgical books Dick 2004 p 13 54 Brock 2011a p 96 97 sfn error no target CITEREFBrock2011a help Brock 1999a pp 281 298 Brock 2006 pp 159 179 Baum amp Winkler 2003 pp 15 16 Williams 2013 pp 387 395 Wilmshurst 2000 p 4 Brock 1996 p 35 Badger 1852a p 180 Oussani 1901 pp 81 84 Aydin amp Verheij 2012 pp 21 27 Arabization Policy Follows Assyrians into the West aina org Haddad 1970 pp 5 20 Spinks 2007 pp 339 340 Wood 2012 pp 170 194 Walker 2012 pp 1007 1036 Millar 2015 Andrade 2013 pp 1 33 Winkler 2019 pp 130 132 Wickeri 2007 p 77 Trigona Harany 2013 Ozcosar 2017 pp 327 335 Clements 2019 pp 423 443 Joseph 2000 p 18 Coakley 1992 p 366 Joseph 2000 Yana 2008 Atto 2011a a b Messo 2017 Bae 2004 pp 1 20 Donabed 2012 pp 407 431 a b The Statement of the Synod of the Chaldean Church Bishops 2017 a b c d Wozniak 2015a a b Wozniak 2012 pp 77 78 World Council of Arameans Aramean Demogratic Organization Parpola 2004 p 16 Frahm 2006 p 90 Harrak 1998 p 475 Harrak 1999 p 225 a b European Syriac Union 2004 Malech amp Malech 1910 pp 40 41 Joseph 2000 pp 1 32 Messo 2011 pp 111 125 Nicholas Awde Nineb Lamassu Nicholas Al Jeloo 2007 Aramaic Assyrian Syriac Dictionary amp Phrasebook Swadaya English Turoyo English English Swadaya Turoyo Hippocrene Books p 4 ISBN 978 0 7818 1087 6 a b Wozniak 2012 p 75 Wozniak 2012 p 79 Chaldeans Minority Rights Group 19 June 2015 ARAMAIC HISTORY aramaic dem org a b Frye 1992 pp 281 285 a b Frye 1997 pp 30 36 Tekoglu et al 2000 pp 961 1007 a b c Rollinger 2006a pp 72 82 a b c d Rollinger 2006b pp 283 287 Heinrichs 1993 pp 106 107 Dalley amp Reyes 1998 p 94 Joseph 2000 p 21 Pipes 1992 s History of Herodotus Book 7 clarification needed Herodotus Herodotus VII 63 VII 63 The Assyrians went to war with helmets upon their heads made of brass and plaited in a strange fashion which is not easy to describe They carried shields lances and daggers very like the Egyptian but in addition they had wooden clubs knotted with iron and linen corselets This people whom the Hellenes call Syrians are called Assyrians by the barbarians The Chaldeans served in their ranks and they had for commander Otaspes the son of Artachaeus Herodotus Herodotus VII 72 VII 72 In the same fashion were equipped the Ligyans the Matienians the Mariandynians and the Syrians or Cappadocians as they are called by the Persians a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a Missing or empty url help Roller 2014 pp 689 699 699 713 Roller 2014 pp 689 690 Roller 2014 p 71 Thackeray 1961 p 71 Joseph 1997 p 38 Tsereteli Sovremennyj assirijskij jazyk Moscow Nauka 1964 page needed Assyria Archived 12 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine Yildiz 1999 pp 15 30 Saggs 1984 p 290 The destruction of the Assyrian empire did not wipe out its population They were predominantly peasant farmers and since Assyria contains some of the best wheat land in the Near East descendants of the Assyrian peasants would as opportunity permitted build new villages over the old cities and carry on with agricultural life remembering traditions of the former cities After seven or eight centuries and various vicissitudes these people became Christians Biggs 2005 p 10 Especially in view of the very early establishment of Christianity in Assyria and its continuity to the present and the continuity of the population I think there is every likelihood that ancient Assyrians are among the ancestors of modern Assyrians of the area Assyrian Academic Society Summary of the Lecture Quote from a lecture held in 1999 by historian John A Brinkman There is no reason to believe that there would be no racial or cultural continuity in Assyria since there is no evidence that the population of Assyria was removed Parpola 2000 pp 1 16 Parpola 2004 pp 5 22 Frye 1997 p 34 Some of those speakers of Neo Syriac who live or lived in present day Iraq or Iran prefer to call themselves Assyrians to distinguish themselves from the inhabitants of present day Syria They are not wrong in this designation or in claiming descent from the ancient Assyrians who had adopted the Aramaic or the Syriac language as it was later called in Christian times as their everyday tongue Just as modern Egyptians although they speak Arabic claim to be descended from the ancient Egyptians or some inhabitants of Anatolia although they speak Turkish claim descent from the Hittites or other ancient peoples of Asia Minor so the modern Assyrians with more justification since their language is a Semitic tongue related to ancient Assyrian claim descent from ancient Assyrians and history is more the record of what people believe than the mere recording of events Joseph 1997 pp 37 43 Joseph 2000 pp 18 19 Butts 2017 pp 599 612 Joseph 2000 pp 18 38 a b Southgate 1840 p 179 Grant 1841 Southgate 1842 p 249 a b Donabed 2012 p 411 Southgate 1844 p 80 Kawerau 1958 pp 158 578 587 Heinrichs 1993 p 107 Joseph 2000 p 20 Butts 2017 p 608 Yana 2008 pp 94 96 Butts 2017 pp 602 608 Coakley 1992 Butts 2017 pp 601 602 Syriac Union Party Lebanon SOCNews The Holy Synod approves the name Syriac Orthodox Church sor cua edu Gesenius amp Prideaux Tregelles 1859 Furst 1867 Davies 1872 Girling 2017 p 29 Rassam 1885 p 377 Even at the present time the Nestorians are considered a very warlike people and the Armenians just the opposite as they were in the time of Xenophon Why then should the Armenians be called Armenians but the Chaldeans merely Nestorians Rassam 1885 p 378 Ur of the Chaldees from which Abraham originated is placed by some scholars in northern Mesopotamia Victor P Hamilton The Book of Genesis Chapters 1 17 Eerdmans 1990 Cyrus H Gordon Where Is Abraham s Ur in Biblical Archaeology Review 3 2 June 1977 pp 20ff Horatio Balch Hackett A Commentary on the Original Text of the Acts of the Apostles Boston 1852 p 100 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 112 O Mahony 2008 pp 105 106 Ainsworth 1841 p 36 Ainsworth 1842b p 272 Layard 1849a p 260 Richard Simon Histoire critique de la creance et des coutumes des nations du Levant Francfort 1684 p 83 Van Lennep 1875 p 344 Butts 2017 p 602 Parpola 2004 p 22 Joseph 2000 p 8 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 83 Travis 2010 p 237 277 a b UN WIPO Iraqi Constitution 2005 in English translation Section I Articles 1 260 World War I Document Archive wwi lib byu edu UNPO 2003 Assyria The Chaldoassyrian community in today s Iraq opportunities and challenges Naby 2004 pp 197 203 Rafik Schami Marchen aus Malula in German Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH amp Company KG p 151 ISBN 9783446239005 Ich kenne das Dorf nicht doch gehort habe ich davon Was ist mit Malula fragte der festgehaltene Derwisch gt Das letzte Dorf der Aramaer lt lachte einer der Yaron Matras Jeanette Sakel 2007 Grammatical Borrowing in Cross Linguistic Perspective De Gruyter p 185 ISBN 9783110199192 The fact that nearly all Arabic loans in Ma lula originate from the period before the change from the rural dialect to the city dialect of Damascus shows that the contact between the Aramaeans and the Arabs was intimate Dr Emna Labidi Untersuchungen zum Spracherwerb zweisprachiger Kinder im Aramaerdorf Dschubbadin Syrien in German LIT p 133 ISBN 9783643152619 Aramaer von Ǧubbˁadin Prof Dr Werner Arnold P Behnstedt 1993 Arabisch aramaische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamun Syrien in German Harassowitz p 42 ISBN 9783447033268 Die arabischen Dialekte der Aramaer Prof Dr Werner Arnold P Behnstedt 1993 Arabisch aramaische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamun Syrien in German Harassowitz p 5 ISBN 9783447033268 Die Kontakte zwischen den drei Aramaer dorfern sind nicht besonders stark Prof Dr Werner Arnold Lehrbuch des Neuwestaramaischen in German Harrassowitz p 133 ISBN 9783447053136 Aramaern in Ma lula Prof Dr Werner Arnold Lehrbuch des Neuwestaramaischen in German Harrassowitz p 15 ISBN 9783447053136 Viele Aramaer arbeiten heute in Damaskus Beirut oder in den Golfstaaten und verbringen nur die Sommermonate im Dorf a b Wozniak 2012 pp 73 83 Lipinski 2000 Griffith 2002 pp 5 20 Healey 2019 pp 433 446 Atto 2011b pp 191 200 a b Ministry of Interior to Admit Arameans to National Population Registry Arutz Sheva 16 September 2014 Brock 1999b p 15 Griffith 2002 p 20 Rompay 1999 p 277 Joseph 2000 p 5 a b Salibi 1971 pp 76 86 Maroon Habib 31 March 2013 A geneticist with a unifying message Nature Retrieved 3 October 2013 70th Assyrian Convention Addresses Assyrian Autonomy in Iraq aina org Haddad 1970 pp 4 14 20 Amirani Shoku Hegarty Stephanie 12 May 2012 Why is The Prophet so loved BBC News via bbc com Judy Maltz Israeli Christian Community Neither Arab nor Palestinian Are Fighting to Save Identity in Haaretz 3 September 2014 Jonathan Lis Israel Recognizes Aramean Minority in Israel as Separate Nationality in Haaretz 17 September 2014 Ariel Cohen Israeli Greek Orthodox Church denounces Aramaic Christian nationality in Jerusalem Post 28 September 2014 Donabed 2003 Donabed amp Donabed 2006 Aydin 2000 Kiraz 2019 Kiraz 2020 pp 77 94 Reports of the Immigration Commission Dictionary of Races and Peoples 1911 p 18 20 Census of Population and Housing 1980 United States p 127 1990 Census of Population and Housing p H 9 Syriac Orthodox Church USA Census 2000 History 2000 Census of Population and Housing p 583 584 U S Federal Judge Rejects ANC s Census Protest 2000 ANC Press Release on Census 2000 Decision 2000 Archived copy Archived from the original on 11 May 2003 Retrieved 11 May 2003 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Berntson 2003 p 51 Gunner amp Halvardson 2005 Brock 2008 p 31 General sourcesAbouzayd Shafiq 2019 The Maronite Church The Syriac World London Routledge pp 731 750 ISBN 978 1 138 89901 8 Ainsworth William F 1841 An Account of a Visit to the Chaldeans Inhabiting Central Kurdistan And of an Ascent of the Peak of Rowandiz Ṭur Sheikhiwa in Summer in 1840 The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 11 21 76 doi 10 2307 1797632 JSTOR 1797632 Ainsworth William F 1842a Travels and Researches in Asia Minor Mesopotamia Chaldea and Armenia Vol 1 London John W Parker Ainsworth William F 1842b Travels and Researches in Asia Minor Mesopotamia Chaldea and Armenia Vol 2 London John W Parker Akgunduz Emrullah 2012 Some Notes on the Syriac Christians of Diyarbekir in the Late 19th Century A Preliminary Investigation of Some Primary Sources Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir 1870 1915 Leiden Boston Brill pp 217 240 ISBN 978 90 04 22518 3 Albrecht Susanne 1992 Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Federal Republic of Germany In Search of Identity Proceedings of the XXXII International Congress for Asian and North African Studies Stuttgart Franz Steiner pp 294 297 ISBN 978 3 515 04808 8 Al Jeloo Nicholas 1999 Who are the Assyrians The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal 4 Andersson Stefan 1983 Assyrierna En bok om praster och lekman om politik och diplomati kring den assyriska invandringen till Sverige Stockholm Tiden ISBN 978 91 550 2913 5 Andrade Nathanael J 2013 Syrian Identity in the Greco Roman World Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 107 24456 6 Andrade Nathanael J 2011 Framing the Syrian of Late Antiquity Engagements with Hellenism Journal of Modern Hellenism 28 2010 2011 1 46 Andrade Nathanael J 2014 Assyrians Syrians and the Greek Language in the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Periods Journal of Near Eastern Studies 73 2 299 317 doi 10 1086 677249 JSTOR 10 1086 677249 S2CID 163755644 Andrade Nathanael J 2019 Syriac and Syrians in the Later Roman Empire Questions of Identity The Syriac World London Routledge pp 157 174 Atto Naures 2011a Hostages in the Homeland Orphans in the Diaspora Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora Leiden Leiden University Press ISBN 978 90 8728 148 9 Atto Naures 2011b A Flock without a Shepherd Parole de l Orient 36 191 200 Aydin Edip 2000 The History of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in North America Challenges and Opportunities MA thesis Crestwood NY Saint Vladimir s Orthodox Theological Seminary Archived from the original on 19 April 2003 Aydin Suavi Verheij Jelle 2012 Confusion in the Cauldron Some Notes on Ethno Religious Groups Local Powers and the Ottoman State in Diyarbekir Province 1800 1870 Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir 1870 1915 Leiden Boston Brill pp 15 54 ISBN 978 90 04 22518 3 Baarda Tijmen C 2020 Arabic and the Syriac Christians in Iraq Three Levels of Loyalty to the Arabist Project 1920 1950 Arabic and its Alternatives Religious Minorities and their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East 1920 1950 Leiden Boston Brill pp 143 170 doi 10 1163 9789004423220 007 ISBN 978 90 04 38269 5 S2CID 216310663 Badger George Percy 1852a The Nestorians and Their Rituals Vol 1 London Joseph Masters Badger George Percy 1852b The Nestorians and Their Rituals Vol 2 London Joseph Masters ISBN 978 0 7905 4482 3 Bae Chul hyun 2004 Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire 538 333 B C E Journal of Universal Language 5 1 20 doi 10 22425 jul 2004 5 1 1 Bagg Ariel M 2017 Assyria and the West Syria and the Levant A Companion to Assyria Hoboken John Wiley amp Sons pp 268 274 Bakker Kellogg Sarah 2019 Perforating Kinship Syriac Christianity Ethnicity and Secular Legibility Current Anthropology 60 4 475 498 doi 10 1086 705233 hdl 1874 386369 S2CID 224800760 Baum Wilhelm Winkler Dietmar W 2003 The Church of the East A Concise History London New York Routledge Curzon ISBN 978 1 134 43019 2 Becker Adam H 2015 Revival and Awakening American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 14531 0 Berntson Martin 2003 Assyrier eller syrianer Om fotboll identitet och kyrkohistoria PDF Granser Popularvetenskapliga forelasningar hallna under Humanistdagarna den 4 5 oktober 2003 Goteborg Goteborgs Universitet pp 47 52 Bettany George T 1888 The World s Inhabitants London New York Ward Lock amp Co Biggs Robert D 2005 My Career in Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 19 1 1 23 Archived from the original PDF on 27 February 2008 Brock Sebastian P 1982 Christians in the Sasanian Empire A Case of Divided Loyalties Studies in Church History 18 1 19 doi 10 1017 S0424208400016004 ISBN 978 0 631 18060 9 S2CID 163971637 Brock Sebastian P 1996 The Nestorian Church A Lamentable Misnomer PDF Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 3 23 35 doi 10 7227 BJRL 78 3 3 Brock Sebastian P 1999a The Christology of the Church of the East in the Synods of the Fifth to Early Seventh Centuries Preliminary Considerations and Materials Doctrinal Diversity Varieties of Early Christianity New York and London Garland Publishing pp 281 298 ISBN 978 0 8153 3071 4 Brock Sebastian P 1999b St Ephrem in the Eyes of Later Syriac Liturgical Tradition PDF Hugoye Journal of Syriac Studies 2 1 5 25 doi 10 31826 hug 2010 020103 S2CID 212688898 Brock Sebastian P 2006 Fire from Heaven Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy Aldershot Ashgate ISBN 978 0 7546 5908 2 Brock Sebastian P 2008 The Syrian Orthodox Church in Modern History Christianity in the Middle East Studies in Modern History Theology and Politics London Melisende pp 17 38 ISBN 978 1 901764 49 9 Brock Sebastian P 2011 Christian Palestinian Aramaic Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press pp 96 97 Brock Sebastian P 2016 Miaphysite not Monophysite Cristianesimo Nella Storia 37 1 45 52 ISBN 978 88 15 26168 7 Buck Christopher G 1996 The Universality of the Church of the East How Persian Was Persian Christianity Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society 10 1 54 95 Butts Aaron M 2017 Assyrian Christians A Companion to Assyria Malden John Wiley amp Sons pp 599 612 Calder Mark D 2016 Syrian Identity in Bethlehem From Ethnoreligion to Ecclesiology Iran and the Caucasus 20 3 4 297 323 doi 10 1163 1573384X 20160304 Clements Henry 2019 Documenting Community in the Late Ottoman Empire International Journal of Middle East Studies 51 3 423 443 doi 10 1017 S0020743819000369 S2CID 201442968 Coakley James F 1992 The Church of the East and the Church of England A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury s Assyrian Mission Oxford Clarendon Press ISBN 978 0 19 826744 7 Corbon Jean 1998 The Churches of the Middle East Their Origins and Identity from their Roots in the Past to their Openness to the Present Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East The Challenge of the Future Oxford Clarendon Press pp 92 110 ISBN 978 0 19 829388 0 Dalley Stephanie Reyes Andres T 1998 Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World 1 To the Persian Conquest The Legacy of Mesopotamia New York Oxford University Press pp 85 106 ISBN 978 0 19 814946 0 Davies Benjamin 1872 A Compendious and Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament London Asher Debie Muriel 2009 Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation Church History and Religious Culture 89 1 3 93 114 doi 10 1163 187124109X408014 Dick Iganatios 2004 Melkites Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics of the Patriarchates of Antioch Alexandria and Jerusalem Roslindale MA Sophia Press Archived from the original on 8 June 2023 Retrieved 17 February 2021 Dinno Khalid 2013 The Syrian Orthodox Church Name as a Marker of Identity Parole de l Orient 38 193 211 Donabed Sargon G 2003 Remnants of Heroes The Assyrian Experience The Continuity of the Assyrian Heritage from Kharput to New England Chicago Assyrian Academic Society Press ISBN 978 0 9744450 7 6 Donabed Sargon G Donabed Ninos 2006 Assyrians of Eastern Massachusetts Charleston Arcadia Publishing ISBN 978 0 7385 4480 9 Donabed Sargon G Mako Shamiran 2009 Ethno cultural and Religious Identity of Syrian Orthodox Christians PDF Chronos Revue d Histoire de l Universite de Balamand 19 69 111 Donabed Sargon G 2012 Rethinking Nationalism and an Appellative Conundrum Historiography and Politics in Iraq National Identities Critical Inquiry into Nationhood Politics amp Culture 14 4 407 431 doi 10 1080 14608944 2012 733208 S2CID 145265726 Donabed Sargon G 2015 Reforging a Forgotten History Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978 0 7486 8605 6 Donabed Sargon G 2017 Neither Syriac speaking nor Syrian Orthodox Christians Harput Assyrians in the United States as a Model for Ethnic Self Categorization and Expression Syriac in its Multi Cultural Context Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 359 369 ISBN 978 90 429 3164 0 Fiey Jean Maurice 1965 Assyriens ou Arameens L Orient Syrien 10 141 160 Frahm Eckart 2006 Images of Assyria in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Western Scholarship Orientalism Assyriology and the Bible Sheffield Sheffield Phoenix Press pp 74 94 Frenschkowski Marco 2019 Are Syrians Arameans Some Preliminary Remarks on Syriac Ethnic Identity in Late Antiquity Research on Israel and Aram Autonomy Independence and Related Issues Tubingen Mohr Siebeck pp 457 484 ISBN 978 3 16 157719 2 Frye Richard N 1992 Assyria and Syria Synonyms Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51 4 281 285 doi 10 1086 373570 S2CID 161323237 Frye Richard N 1997 Assyria and Syria Synonyms PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 11 2 30 36 Archived from the original PDF on 13 July 2020 Frye Richard N 1999 Reply to John Joseph PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 13 1 69 70 Archived from the original PDF on 11 July 2020 Frye Richard N 2002 Mapping Assyria Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena Milano Universita di Bologna pp 75 78 ISBN 978 88 8483 107 1 Furst Julius 1867 A Hebrew amp Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament With an Introduction Giving a Short History of Hebrew Lexicography London Williams amp Norgate Gaunt David 2012 Relations between Kurds and Syriacs and Assyrians in Late Ottoman Diyarbekir Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir 1870 1915 Leiden Boston Brill pp 241 266 ISBN 978 90 04 22518 3 Gesenius Wilhelm Prideaux Tregelles Samuel 1859 Gesenius s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures London Bagster Gewargis Odisho Malko 2002 We Are Assyrians PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 16 1 77 95 Archived from the original PDF on 21 April 2003 Georgis Mariam 2017 Nation and Identity Construction in Modern Iraq Re Inserting the Assyrians Unsettling Colonial Modernity in Islamicate Contexts Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Publishing pp 67 87 ISBN 978 1 4438 9374 9 Ginkel Jan J van 2005 History and Community Jacob of Edessa and the West Syrian Identity Redefining Christian Identity Cultural Interaction in the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 67 75 ISBN 978 90 429 1418 6 Girling Kristian 2017 The Chaldean Catholic Church Modern History Ecclesiology and Church State Relations London Routledge ISBN 978 1 138 04005 2 Grant Asahel 1841 The Nestorians or the Lost Tribes Containing Evidence of Their Identity London John Murray Griffith Sidney H 1997 From Aramaic to Arabic The Languages of the Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 11 31 doi 10 2307 1291760 JSTOR 1291760 Griffith Sidney H 2002 Christianity in Edessa and the Syriac Speaking World Mani Bar Daysan and Ephraem the Struggle for Allegiance on the Aramean Frontier Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 2 5 20 doi 10 31826 jcsss 2009 020104 S2CID 212688584 Archived from the original on 11 December 2018 Gunner Goran Halvardson Sven 2005 Jag behover rotter och vingar Om assyrisk syriansk identitet i Sverige Skelleftea Artos amp Normaurl ISBN 978 91 7217 080 3 Haddad Robert M 1970 Syrian Christians in a Muslim Society An Interpretation Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1 4008 7258 9 Harrak Amir 1992 The Ancient Name of Edessa PDF Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51 3 209 214 doi 10 1086 373553 S2CID 162190342 Archived from the original PDF on 9 August 2014 Healey John F 2019 Arameans and Aramaic in Transition Western Influences and the Roots of Aramean Christianity Research on Israel and Aram Autonomy Independence and Related Issues Tubingen Mohr Siebeck pp 433 446 ISBN 978 3 16 157719 2 Harrak Amir 1998 Arabisms in Part IV of the Syriac Chronicle of Zuqnin Symposium Syriacum VII Roma Pontificio Istituto Orientale pp 469 498 ISBN 978 88 7210 319 7 Harrak Amir ed 1999 The Chronicle of Zuqnin Parts III and IV A D 488 775 Toronto Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies ISBN 978 0 88844 286 4 Heinrichs Wolfhart 1993 The Modern Assyrians Name and Nation Semitica Serta philologica Constantino Tsereteli dicata Torino Zamorani pp 99 114 ISBN 978 88 7158 024 1 Joseph John B 1997 Assyria and Syria Synonyms PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 11 2 37 43 Archived from the original PDF on 15 July 2020 Joseph John B 1998 The Bible and the Assyrians It Kept their Memory Alive PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 12 1 70 76 Archived from the original PDF on 15 July 2020 Joseph John B 2000 The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East A History of Their Encounter with Western Christian Missions Archaeologists and Colonial Powers Leiden Brill ISBN 90 04 11641 9 Kawerau Peter 1958 Amerika und die Orientalischen Kirchen Ursprung und Anfang der amerikanischen Mission unter den Nationalkirchen Westasiens Berlin Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 083395 9 Kiraz George A 2019 The Syriac Orthodox in North America 1895 1995 A Short History Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press ISBN 978 1 4632 4037 0 Kiraz George A 2020 Negotiating Identity with the Homeland The Syriac Orthodox of North America in the Early Twentieth Century From Polarization to Cohabitation in the New Middle East Wiesbaden Harrassowitz Verlag pp 77 94 ISBN 978 3 447 11456 1 Layard Austen H 1849a Nineveh and its Remains With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan Vol 1 London John Murray Layard Austen H 1849b Nineveh and its Remains With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan Vol 2 London John Murray Lipinski Edward 2000 The Aramaeans Their Ancient History Culture Religion Leuven Peeters Publishers ISBN 978 90 429 0859 8 Makko Aryo 2010 The Historical Roots of Contemporary Controversies National Revival and the Assyrian Concept of Unity Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 24 1 58 86 Makko Aryo 2011 Between Integration and Exclusion Reflections on Contemporary Assyrian Historiography Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society 25 1 2 25 31 Makko Aryo 2012 Discourse Identity and Politics A Transnational Approach to Assyrian Identity in the Twentieth Century The Assyrian Heritage Threads of Continuity and Influence Uppsala Uppsala Universitet pp 297 317 ISBN 978 91 554 8303 6 Makko Aryo 2017 The Assyrian Concept of Unity after Seyfo The Assyrian Genocide Cultural and Political Legacies Vol 1 London Routledge pp 239 253 ISBN 978 1 138 28405 0 Malech George D Malech Nestorius G 1910 History of the Syrian nation and the Old Evangelical Apostolic Church of the East From Remote Antiquity to the Present Time Minneapolis Author s edition McClure Erica 2001 Language and Identity in the Assyrian Diaspora Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 31 1 107 120 Messo Johny 2011 The Origin of the Terms Syria n and Suryoyo Once Again Parole de l Orient 36 111 125 Messo Johny 2017 Arameans and the Making of Assyrians The Last Aramaic speaking Christians of the Middle East Aramaic Press Michael Sargon R Opinion amp Reflections on Prof John Joseph s Latest Book Zinda magazine 2002 Meyendorff John 1989 Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions The Church 450 680 A D Crestwood NY St Vladimir s Seminary Press ISBN 9780881410563 Millar Fergus 2006 A Greek Roman Empire Power and Belief under Theodosius II 408 450 Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 25391 9 Millar Fergus 2015 Empire Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East Greeks Jews Syrians and Saracens Leuven Peeters Publishers ISBN 978 90 429 3291 3 Morony Michael G 2005 History and Identity in the Syrian Churches Redefining Christian Identity Cultural Interaction in the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 1 33 ISBN 978 90 429 1418 6 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2005 The Church of the East in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century World Church or Ethnic Community Redefining Christian Identity Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 301 320 ISBN 978 90 429 1418 6 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2007 Syriac Christianity The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity Malden Blackwell pp 249 268 ISBN 978 0 470 76639 2 Mutlu Numansen Sofia Ossewaarde Marinus 2019 A Struggle for Genocide Recognition How the Aramean Assyrian and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present PDF Holocaust and Genocide Studies 33 3 412 428 doi 10 1093 hgs dcz045 Naby Eden 2004 From Lingua Franca to Endangered Language The Legal Aspects of the Preservation of Aramaic in Iraq On the Margins of Nations Endangered Languages and Linguistic Rights Bath Foundation for Endangered Languages pp 197 203 ISBN 978 0 9538248 6 1 Nisan Mordechai 2002 Minorities in the Middle East A History of Struggle and Self Expression 2nd ed Jefferson NC McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 5133 3 Noldeke Theodor 1871 Assyrios Syrios Syros Hermes 5 3 443 468 JSTOR 4471183 Nordgren Kenneth Vems ar historien Historia som 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S2CID 161771865 Van Lennep Henry J 1875 Bible Lands Their Modern Customs and Manners Illustrative of Scripture New York Harper amp Brothers Walker Joel T 2012 From Nisibis to Xi an The Church of the East in Late Antique Eurasia The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity Oxford Oxford University Press pp 994 1052 ISBN 978 0 19 027753 6 Wells Herbert G 1920 The New and Revised Outline of History Vol 1 New York Macmillan Wickeri Philip L 2007 The Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala A Study of the Relationship between Liturgy and Mission in the Indian Context Christian Worship Worldwide Expanding Horizons Deepening Practices Grand Rapids Eerdmans pp 71 95 ISBN 978 0 8028 2853 8 Williams Daniel H 2013 The Evolution of Pro Nicene Theology in the Church of the East From the Oxus River to the Chinese Shores Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia Munster LIT Verlag pp 387 395 ISBN 978 3 643 90329 7 Wilmshurst David 2000 The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East 1318 1913 Louvain Peeters Publishers ISBN 978 90 429 0876 5 Wilmshurst David 2011 The martyred Church A History of the Church of the East London East amp West Publishing Limited ISBN 978 1 907318 04 7 Winkler Dietmar W 2013 Christianity in the Middle East Some historical remarks and preliminary demographic figures Syriac Christianity in the Middle East and India Contributions and Challenges Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press pp 107 125 doi 10 31826 9781463235864 011 ISBN 978 1 4632 3586 4 Winkler Dietmar W 2019 The Syriac Church Denominations An Overview The Syriac World London Routledge pp 119 133 ISBN 978 1 138 89901 8 Wozniak Marta 2011 National and Social Identity Construction among the Modern Assyrians Syrians Parole de l Orient 36 569 583 Wozniak Marta 2012 Far from Aram Nahrin The Suryoye Diaspora Experience Border Terrains World Diasporas in the 21st Century Oxford United Kingdom Inter Disciplinary Press pp 73 83 ISBN 978 1 84888 117 4 Wozniak Marta 2015a From religious to ethno religious Identity change among Assyrians Syriacs in Sweden PDF European Consortium for Political Research ECPR Wozniak Marta 2015b The Modem Arameans In Search for National Identity Parole de l Orient 40 483 496 Wood Philip 2012 Syriac and the Syrians The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity Oxford Oxford University Press pp 170 194 ISBN 978 0 19 027753 6 Yana George V 2000 Myth vs Reality Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 14 1 78 82 Archived from the original on 3 May 2004 Yana George V 2008 Ancient and Modern Assyrians A Scientific Analysis Philadelphia Exlibris Corporation ISBN 978 1 4653 1629 5 Yildiz Efrem 1999 The Assyrians A Historical and Current Reality Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 13 1 15 30 Yildiz Efrem 2000 Los Asirio Caldeos Cristianos orientales arameoparlantes PDF Dialogo Ecumenico 35 112 263 282 Further readingAlkhas Wilfred 2006 Neo Assyrianism amp the End of the Confounded Identity Fred Aprim 2004 The Assyrian Cause and the Modern Aramean Thorn Jammo Sarhad Contemporary Chaldeans and Assyrians One Primordial Nation One Original Church Kaldu org Odisho Edward 2003 Assyrians Chaldeans amp Suryanis We all have to hang together before we are hanged separately Zinda Magazine Warda William 2005 Aphrim Barsoum s Role in Distancing the Syrian Orthodox Church from Its Assyrian Heritage Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Terms for Syriac Christians amp oldid 1216971600 Chaldean identity, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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