Relics of our holy saints discovered in Church of St. Thomas destroyed by ISIS

[dzheremi]

I have no idea why this is only coming up now (the events described in the story itself occurred in April), but the pan-Syriac group I am a part of on FB just posted about the discovery of various saints' relics in the now-destroyed Church of St. Thomas (Mar Toma) in ISIS-occupied Iraq. It says in the original Arabic of the post "my church of Mar Toma", so this may be a direct report from HG Bishop Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf of Mosul, who is featured in the accompanying photos. As I'm translating on the spot from Arabic no doubt there is a good bit I'm not getting. But the main part is easy to understand: even though the ISIS monsters destroyed the physical church in which the relics were found, the (re)discovery of the relics themselves are a cause for great joy among a population (Syriac Orthodox of Iraq) who have been very much traumatized, dispossessed, and brutalized by the sectarian mess that has passed for the country of Iraq for the last two decades (just like all other Iraqis).

So let us celebrate with them as brothers and sisters in the Orthodox faith, because now we have relics of the following saints:
1- Mar Simon (St. Simon the Zealot, disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ)
2- Mar Theodoros
3- Mar Simeon (specified 'Al Qawmi' in the Arabic, but I don't know what that means in this context; qawmi in everyday language means 'nationalist')
4- Mar Gabriel, bishop of Tur Abdin and head of the monastery of Qartmin
5- Mar Yuhanna
6- Mar Gregorius Bar Hebreus

Here are a few photos from the discovery, translation, and veneration of the relics. The post specifies that a proper liturgy for the reception and veneration of the relics will come later, but I would assume that it has probably already happened by now, given that this story is actually a few months old.

 

[The Liturgist]

I have no idea why this is only coming up now (the events described in the story itself occurred in April), but the pan-Syriac group I am a part of on FB just posted about the discovery of various saints' relics in the now-destroyed Church of St. Thomas (Mar Toma) in ISIS-occupied Iraq. It says in the original Arabic of the post "my church of Mar Toma", so this may be a direct report from HG Bishop Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf of Mosul, who is featured in the accompanying photos. As I'm translating on the spot from Arabic no doubt there is a good bit I'm not getting. But the main part is easy to understand: even though the ISIS monsters destroyed the physical church in which the relics were found, the (re)discovery of the relics themselves are a cause for great joy among a population (Syriac Orthodox of Iraq) who have been very much traumatized, dispossessed, and brutalized by the sectarian mess that has passed for the country of Iraq for the last two decades (just like all other Iraqis).

So let us celebrate with them as brothers and sisters in the Orthodox faith, because now we have relics of the following saints:
1- Mar Simon (St. Simon the Zealot, disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ)
2- Mar Theodoros
3- Mar Simeon (specified 'Al Qawmi' in the Arabic, but I don't know what that means in this context; qawmi in everyday language means 'nationalist')
4- Mar Gabriel, bishop of Tur Abdin and head of the monastery of Qartmin
5- Mar Yuhanna
6- Mar Gregorius Bar Hebreus

Here are a few photos from the discovery, translation, and veneration of the relics. The post specifies that a proper liturgy for the reception and veneration of the relics will come later, but I would assume that it has probably already happened by now, given that this story is actually a few months old.

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Glory to God!

Also, if those photos are of the interior of the church, it looks salvageable. Not a complete loss like the tragedy of what happened to the Old City in Aleppo.

By the way, are these the relics of St. Thomas that were found by Patriarch Mor Ignatius Zakka Iwas, memory eternal, in the 1950s or 60s? I believe he found some relics of St. Thomas concealed in the wall of a church in Baghdad.

I also personally love the scholarship of Mar Gregorious bar Hebraeus, especially his comparison of Christian wisdom with worldly wisdom, the Laughable Stories.

 

[dzheremi]

Glory to God!

Also, if those photos are of the interior of the church, it looks salvageable. Not a complete loss like the tragedy of what happened to the Old City in Aleppo.

Yeah, as far as I can tell the structure of the building remains (albeit with damage). It is the inside of the church that was ransacked by ISIS.

By the way, are these the relics of St. Thomas that were found by Patriarch Mor Ignatius Zakka Iwas, memory eternal, in the 1950s or 60s? I believe he found some relics of St. Thomas concealed in the wall of a church in Baghdad.

I don't think so, because this is the Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Thomas in Mosul, not Baghdad (this is why I hypothesized that the report might be directly from HG Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, because he is the bishop of Mosul, and the Arabic reads "my church of St. Thomas", seemingly indicating that this was at a church within HG's own diocese), and the post didn't mention the relics of St. Thomas himself, but of these other saints as they were found within the Church of St. Thomas. Though there were other photos in the set that went with the post that showed the recovering of the box of relics from a hole in a wall behind a plaque with some Syriac writing on it (the post didn't specify what the plaque said), so that is a similarity. It seems like it is fairly common to preserve the relics of the saints connected to specific churches and monasteries within the walls of the buildings themselves (as also happens in floors, like in some of the monasteries in Egypt), which is wise when you consider how often across history that tragedy has befallen the Lord's people at the hands of various marauders who loot or otherwise wreck our places of worship. So it seems to me entirely possible that similar events probably happened at this church in Mosul in April, and a church of the same name in the 1950s-60s in Baghdad, etc.

I also personally love the scholarship of Mar Gregorious bar Hebraeus, especially his comparison of Christian wisdom with worldly wisdom, the Laughable Stories.

Indeed! On that note (sort of; slight rant), I wish someone reputable and not insanely-priced (i.e., not Gorgias Press!) would do a legitimate reprint of the English translation of his chronography (by E.A. Wallis Budge), because I refuse to pay good money for shoddy scanned print-on-demand garbage, and the alternative so far as I've found it is to track down an original copy of the two-volume set from 1932 or of its reprint from the Netherlands from 1976, both of which go for well into three digits these days (sometimes four) due to their scarcity. Ridiculous. It's horrible that the aforementioned Gorgias Press maintains a virtual stranglehold on the U.S. publication of English-language editions of classic Syriac Orthodox works (unless you're lucky enough to find a copy from the small print-runs of the same generally published by individual dioceses or parishes, as with, e.g., HH Michael the Great's Chronicle -- $75 from the Eastern US Diocese, trans. Matti Moosa vs. $215 from Gorgias/Amazon, trans. Amir Harrak), in addition to apparently getting into reprinting even modern works that aren't that old, like Hoyland's Seeing Islam As Others Saw It (come on...the 'original' only came out in the late 1990s!), or doing ridiculously expensive and unnecessary hardcover editions of various works connected to the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (pan-Syriac publisher in India), many of which are still available in paperback from SEERI for around $10-20!

This is one of those things where if I were a millionaire, I'd set up my own publishing venture to be the OO version of SVS/CUA Press, to produce (as they do) reasonably priced, high-quality translations of important texts that everyone should be familiar with, so that we don't have to scour used book sections for decades looking for works by Bar Hebraeus, Nerses Shnorhali, Samuel of Qalamun, Severus of Ashmunein (or even -- gasp -- of Antioch!), etc. The Chalcedonians recognize some of these (or at least the Catholics do with regard to HH St. Nerses), but we should not have to wait or hope for that, nor rely on their translations of the same. There have been some hopeful steps in the right direction concerning this lately, as in the case of Agora University Press' young output, though as far as I've seen for translations of older works, these still stick to uncontroversial, pan-communal (pre-schism) saints, as with the excellent Communion of the Holy Spirit: A Contemporary Portrait of Fifty Homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian by George Tadros. (Agora has also published shorter works on contemporary issues by modern Coptic authors, like Fr. Michael Sorial's Incarnational Exodus about the future of the Coptic Orthodox Church outside of Egypt, and a little book on Church life in the time of Coronavirus, the title and authorship of which escapes me at the moment.)

 

[The Liturgist]

Yeah, as far as I can tell the structure of the building remains (albeit with damage). It is the inside of the church that was ransacked by ISIS.



I don't think so, because this is the Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Thomas in Mosul, not Baghdad (this is why I hypothesized that the report might be directly from HG Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, because he is the bishop of Mosul, and the Arabic reads "my church of St. Thomas", seemingly indicating that this was at a church within HG's own diocese), and the post didn't mention the relics of St. Thomas himself, but of these other saints as they were found within the Church of St. Thomas. Though there were other photos in the set that went with the post that showed the recovering of the box of relics from a hole in a wall behind a plaque with some Syriac writing on it (the post didn't specify what the plaque said), so that is a similarity. It seems like it is fairly common to preserve the relics of the saints connected to specific churches and monasteries within the walls of the buildings themselves (as also happens in floors, like in some of the monasteries in Egypt), which is wise when you consider how often across history that tragedy has befallen the Lord's people at the hands of various marauders who loot or otherwise wreck our places of worship. So it seems to me entirely possible that similar events probably happened at this church in Mosul in April, and a church of the same name in the 1950s-60s in Baghdad, etc.



Indeed! On that note (sort of; slight rant), I wish someone reputable and not insanely-priced (i.e., not Gorgias Press!) would do a legitimate reprint of the English translation of his chronography (by E.A. Wallis Budge), because I refuse to pay good money for shoddy scanned print-on-demand garbage, and the alternative so far as I've found it is to track down an original copy of the two-volume set from 1932 or of its reprint from the Netherlands from 1976, both of which go for well into three digits these days (sometimes four) due to their scarcity. Ridiculous. It's horrible that the aforementioned Gorgias Press maintains a virtual stranglehold on the U.S. publication of English-language editions of classic Syriac Orthodox works (unless you're lucky enough to find a copy from the small print-runs of the same generally published by individual dioceses or parishes, as with, e.g., HH Michael the Great's Chronicle -- $75 from the Eastern US Diocese, trans. Matti Moosa vs. $215 from Gorgias/Amazon, trans. Amir Harrak), in addition to apparently getting into reprinting even modern works that aren't that old, like Hoyland's Seeing Islam As Others Saw It (come on...the 'original' only came out in the late 1990s!), or doing ridiculously expensive and unnecessary hardcover editions of various works connected to the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (pan-Syriac publisher in India), many of which are still available in paperback from SEERI for around $10-20!

This is one of those things where if I were a millionaire, I'd set up my own publishing venture to be the OO version of SVS/CUA Press, to produce (as they do) reasonably priced, high-quality translations of important texts that everyone should be familiar with, so that we don't have to scour used book sections for decades looking for works by Bar Hebraeus, Nerses Shnorhali, Samuel of Qalamun, Severus of Ashmunein (or even -- gasp -- of Antioch!), etc. The Chalcedonians recognize some of these (or at least the Catholics do with regard to HH St. Nerses), but we should not have to wait or hope for that, nor rely on their translations of the same. There have been some hopeful steps in the right direction concerning this lately, as in the case of Agora University Press' young output, though as far as I've seen for translations of older works, these still stick to uncontroversial, pan-communal (pre-schism) saints, as with the excellent Communion of the Holy Spirit: A Contemporary Portrait of Fifty Homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian by George Tadros. (Agora has also published shorter works on contemporary issues by modern Coptic authors, like Fr. Michael Sorial's Incarnational Exodus about the future of the Coptic Orthodox Church outside of Egypt, and a little book on Church life in the time of Coronavirus, the title and authorship of which escapes me at the moment.)

I am a huge fan of His Eminence Mor Nicodemus Daoud Matti Sharif! He wears the Kossita, which His Holiness Mor Ignatius Zakka Iwas, memory eternal, wore.

Regarding the other items you mentioned, I am going to send you a PM.