Perspectief 2019-44

2019-44 Mor Polycarpus Augin Aydin PhD 5 its Catholic counterpart the Syriac Catholic, and the Maronite Church. The East Syrian tra- dition, however, includes the Church of the East and its Catholic counterpart the Chaldean Church. The members of these churches, while having their homelands in the Middle East and in Kerala, India, today they are spread all over the world, with sizeable Diaspora com- munities in Europe, Australia, New Zeeland, and the Americas. In India, besides the archdioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church and of the Church of the East, the Syro-Mal- abar and the Syro-Malankara churches are to be found, the former follows the East-Syriac tradition and the latter the West-Syriac tradition. The Syriac Church tradition has certain characteristics which are not found in the other two major Christian traditions, namely, the Greek East and the Latin West. The significance of the Syriac Orient in contrast with the Greek East and the Latin West is to be found in its Semitic language, culture and background. That is to say, the Syriac tradition is rooted in the biblical/Semitic world out of which the Bible and the three monotheistic religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam sprang. The Syriac language, the local Aramaic dialect of Edessa which is employed in the liturgy today is not all that different from the Galilean Aramaic which Christ himself would have spoken. The symbols and thought pat- terns are very much rooted in the Semitic culture and the world of the Bible. Furthermore, the poetic nature of the Syriac theology and liturgy as expressed by the Church Fathers such as Ephrem the Syrian, dubbed the ‘Harp of the Holy Spirit’, Jacob of Sarug, the most prolific Syriac poet after Ephrem, and the other theologian-poets who employed poetry rather than prose as a vehicle for their theology and the commentary of the Bible. For them, poetry was a better vehicle to better express the mystery of God and faith since poetry unlike prose goes beyond ‘definitions’, that is to say the borders to the word and though. The other significant feature is to be found in the wealth of ascetic and monastic literature produced by prominent figures such as John of Apamea and Isaac of Nineveh to name but two. The latter, who was native of Qatar and became a bishop of Nineveh (mod- ern day Mosul in Iraq) in the mid-seventh century, had influence beyond his native region as far as Tokyo in Japan. His writings inspired famous writers such as Dostoyevsky, and inspired the revival of the Coptic monasticism in the 19 th century. Furthermore, the Syriac writings of Isaac which are now available in other Semitic, as well as Greek and most of the modern European languages, including Russian and even Japanese circulate in monastic

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