How Is Syriac Christian Thought Different from Greek and Latin Thought? | Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey

[Pavel Mosko]

Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. Her primary area of research is in Christianity of the late antique and Byzantine periods with Syriac Studies as her particular focus. She has published a number of books and articles on topics relating to asceticism, hagiography, women and gender, hymnography, homiletics, and piety in late antique Christianity. May God bless all of you!

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[The Liturgist]

Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. Her primary area of research is in Christianity of the late antique and Byzantine periods with Syriac Studies as her particular focus. She has published a number of books and articles on topics relating to asceticism, hagiography, women and gender, hymnography, homiletics, and piety in late antique Christianity. May God bless all of you!

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Is she looking at pan-Syriac though (e.g. Assyrians, Maronites, Orthodox, Chaldeans) or specifically at the Syriac Orthodox? Because there are some notable differences between Maronite, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, and Malankara Syriac thought.

Indeed the last major pan-Syriac Christians were St. Ephrem the Syrian and much later, St. Isaac the Syrian, although the interesting thing about St. Isaac is that each denomination has tried to claim him as their own (including the Eastern Orthodox…the Antiochian Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Syriac as recently as the 1200s, and still has Aramaic speaking members). However, Sebastian Brock, in research that some hardcore sectarians have refused to accept, claiming that there must have been another monk named Isaac, has shown that St. Isaac the Syrian was in fact Assyrian.

This fact is interesting, given that St. Isaac is chiefly remembered as being a monastic saint, focused on asceticism and prayer, while the modern day Assyrian Church of the East has no operational monasteries that I am aware of. Indeed, they used to have a large number of important monasteries in Mesopotamia, but have not been able to sustain any since the genocide of Tamerlane in the 12th century. A few years ago, they tried to open one in the Central Valley of California (in Modesto, I think), where a great many Assyrians live, indeed the new Catholicos, Mar Awa Royal, was previously Bishop of California, but the two would-be monks weren’t able to make it work.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

This fact is interesting, given that St. Isaac is chiefly remembered as being a monastic saint, focused on asceticism and prayer, while the modern day Assyrian Church of the East has no operational monasteries that I am aware of. Indeed, they used to have a large number of important monasteries in Mesopotamia, but have not been able to sustain any since the genocide of Tamerlane in the 12th century. A few years ago, they tried to open one in the Central Valley of California (in Modesto, I think), where a great many Assyrians live, indeed the new Catholicos, Mar Awa Royal, was previously Bishop of California, but the two would-be monks weren’t able to make it work.

Without knowing the details of specific monasteries, I understand that the centuries following the synod of Beth Lapat (or Whatever the name of the ACE Church council was) did not go well, where they went back to celibacy of monks, bishops etc. Like that was one reason why Mar Shimun was assinated in San Jose in 1975 he got married, and they hadn't had a married patriarch since the days of Zoroastrianism and early Islamic era.