Tag: Syriac

Free Download Baby Varghese, "Syriac Liturgy in India: Syro-Malabar, Malankara Orthodox and Marthoma Liturgies"
English | ISBN: 3447119640 | 2023 | 84 pages | PDF | 1378 KB
About four million Syriac Christians, living in the South Indian State of Kerala with important diaspora in India and outside, are following East or West Syriac liturgical traditions. They are popularly known as St Thomas Christians, as they are believed to have been evangelized by the apostle Thomas. As these Christians were in intermittent relationship with the Syriac Christianity in Mesopotamia since the early centuries, they are also known as Syriac Christians. At least since the sixth century, perhaps fourth century, they were following East Syriac Liturgy. In the sixteenth century several East Syriac Prelates, both Catholics and non-Catholics, introduced the East Syriac liturgy in its final form. Since the middle of the sixteenth century nearly half of them are following the West Syriac liturgy. Their liturgical practices provide examples of liturgical conservatism and radical reforms. Now the liturgical texts have been translated into Malayalam, language of Kerala, and English, Hindi or other regional language for the use of the diaspora. However, Syriac is used by several clergy. Syro-Malabar liturgy is a highly latinised form of East Syriac liturgy, followed in the Eastern-Catholic community. Malankara Orthodox Church follows the liturgical rites of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch. History of the Marthoma liturgy, a reformed version of the West Syriac liturgy and used by the Reformed group, is presented here for the first time for the students of Syriac Christianity and liturgy.

Free Download The Syriac Legend of Alexander’s Gate: Apocalypticism at the Crossroads of Byzantium and Iran (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity) by Tommaso Tesei
English | November 7, 2023 | ISBN: 0197646875 | True EPUB/PDF | 240 pages | 1.1/12.9 MB
The Syriac text entitled Neshana d-Aleksandros (also known as Syriac Alexander Legend) is a seminal text for late Christian and Muslim apocalyptic traditions. Containing the earliest recorded versions of literary motifs that would become central to the medieval apocalyptic tradition, it represents an early witness to an influential political ideology that guided both Byzantine and early Islamic imperial policies. While the scholarly consensus commonly dates the Neshana to the time of Heraclius (r. 610-641 CE), in this book author Tommaso Tesei argues that an earlier version of the text was produced during the reign of Justinian I (r. 527-565). This new historical contextualization of the text enables us to better delineate the role of the Neshana in the development of late antique, politicized, forms of apocalypticism, which assign to the Christian Roman Empire the task of establishing a cosmocratic rule in view of Jesus’ Second Coming.

Free Download John W. Watt, "The Aristotelian Tradition in Syriac "
English | ISBN: 1138334669 | 2019 | 304 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle’s Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus.

Free Download Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, "The Third Lung: New Trajectories in Syriac Studies: In Honour of Sebastian P. Brock "
English | ISBN: 9004537880 | 2023 | 417 pages | PDF | 131 MB
The essays of this volume capture what the field of Syriac studies has recently attained, how it presents itself at the moment, where it has yet to go, and how one person, Sebastian Brock, figures in its midst.

Free Download Kristian S. Heal, "Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early Syriac Tradition "
English | ISBN: 9004526951 | 2022 | 272 pages | PDF | 2 MB
The Syriac reception of the story of Joseph offers an unprecedented glimpse into late antique Syriac literary culture. The story inspired a diverse body of texts, written in prose, narrative poetry, dialogue poetry, and metrical homilies, including the greatest narrative poem written in Syriac. These texts explore and retell the story of Joseph with a combination of exegetical imagination, playful creativity, and a relentless focus on the exemplary virtues of the patriarch. Read through a typological lens, this study shows how the story also became an important locus of Christian-Jewish polemic.

Free Download The Construction of Equality: Syriac Immigration and the Swedish City By Jennifer Mack
2017 | 336 Pages | ISBN: 0816698694 | PDF | 15 MB
An industrial city on the outskirts of Stockholm, Södertälje is the global capital of the Syriac Orthodox Christian diaspora, an ethnic and religious minority group fleeing persecution and discrimination in the Middle East. Since the 1960s, this Syriac community has transformed the standardized welfare state spaces of the city’s neighborhoods into its own "Mesopotälje," defined by houses with Mediterranean and other international influences, a major soccer stadium, and massive churches and social clubs. Such projects have challenged principles of Swedish utopian architecture and planning that explicitly emphasized the erasure of difference. In The Construction of Equality, Jennifer Mack shows how Syriac-instigated architectural projects and spatial practices have altered the city’s built environment "from below," offering a fresh perspective on segregation in the European modernist suburbs.Combining architectural, urban, and ethnographic tools through archival research, site work, participant observation (among residents, designers, and planners), and interviews, Mack provides a unique take on urban development, social change, and the immigrant experience in Europe over a fifty-year period. Her book shows how the transformation of space at the urban scale-the creation and evolution of commercial and social districts, for example-operates through the slow accumulation of architectural projects. As Mack demonstrates, these developments are not merely the result of the grassroots social practices usually attributed to immigrants but instead are officially approved through dialogues between residents and design professionals: accredited architects, urban planners, and civic bureaucrats. Mack attends to the tensions between the "enclavization" practices of a historically persecuted minority group, the integration policies of the Swedish welfare state and its planners, and European nativism.

Free Download Martina Aras, "Syriac Theology: Past and Present "
English | ISBN: 350679339X | 2022 | 278 pages | PDF | 2 MB
This volume takes us back to the roots of Christianity and exemplifies the significance of Syriac Theology for our time. Bringing together articles by scholars from diverse disciplines, this volume aims at a deeper understanding of the legacy, importance, and challenges of Syriac Theology. The articles in the first part of the volume focus on the biblical, exegetical, and christological tradition of the Syriac Orthodox Church. The articles in the second part of the volume explore the dialogical intertextuality between Syriac Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and the Quran.