New Assyrian Church of the East Blog

[PresbyEphraim]

Greetings!

In the interest of providing the Orthodox world with a basic introduction to the Assyrian Church of the East (AKA "Nestorian Church") I started a blog: http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/

I'm just taking snippets from various church fathers of the Syriac tradition and from the Assyrian Church's own canonical writings and translating them, with some commentary. Hopefully, this can help us have an English repository of the texts needed for a basic understanding of this tradition. I also have an eye to informing the Assyrian Church world about Orthodoxy.

If it's interesting, please follow by email (I update about every 12 days, so I wont be flooding your box, promise) and comment on the blog itself. It's been great going to a dozen different places to see what people are writing but I have 10 comments on the blog and around 12 times that elsewhere.

http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks,

Ephraim, unworthy priest

[Alpo]

Father, from a quick reading of your blog you seem to have fairly positive or at least non-polemical view of the Assyrian church despite the fact that you switched from the Assyrian church to the EO Church. Care to tell us why did you became an EO?

[PresbyEphraim]

Father, my interest is simply in collecting material on the Church of the East, reading through it, and then posting quotations that are helpful in understanding the Assyrian Church of the East honestly. There is mountain of good stuff out there, but it requires knowledge of Syriac (beyond basic Syriac) and of the language of the Syriac fathers. I'm trying to provide as many links to English translations that are free as possible. To what extent the Church of the East is Orthodox is up to the Church to decide. I'm just trying to provide a means to aquaint ourselves.

For example, Chalcedon is accepted by the Assyrian Church but they equate Hypostasis with nature (for more info visit: http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/kyana-and-qnuma-nature-of-natures.html)  and so the Assyrian version of Chalcedon uses two natures, two qnume and one parsupa. Read the above post and you'll see why the Church of the East uses that formula. Indeed, I'm not sure that our version of Chalcedon would be unacceptable to the Church of the East. Two qnuma was merely used, as a future entry will suggest, to prohibit the idea that the natures are just theoretical (see the quote by St Ephraim in the above link). This is not a discussion of Chalcedon but of the general language of the Church of the East and why it was used the way it was used. To see the actual words of the Church of the East on the person of Christ see: http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/who-do-you-say-that-i-am-part-1.html

That'll give you some idea of the blog's purpose, which is to provide the tools for understanding and not actual ecumenism, etc. It is an exploration of a tradition that has not yet really begun to re-express itself in the modern age and that has rich soil to be tilled today, both for a member of the Church of the East and also for us Orthodox. It is good to know the past and to know it well.

[Iconodule]

Father- A very unique and important project you're embarking on!

I do share Alpo's question about why you switched.

[Salpy]

Some new articles have appeared.  There is the first of a series on icons in the Assyrian Church:

http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/assyrian-churchs-theology-of-icons-part.html


Also, the Assyrian Church and Chalcedon:

http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/who-do-you-say-that-i-am-part-ii.html

[karstan]

Re icons in the Assyrian Church:

The "Nestorian" church in Famagusta, Cyprus, has  medieval wall paintings with Syriac inscriptions

http://famagustawalledcity.org/wall-painting

[biro]

Re icons in the Assyrian Church:

The "Nestorian" church in Famagusta, Cyprus, has  medieval wall paintings with Syriac inscriptions

http://famagustawalledcity.org/wall-painting

Impressive pictures.

Welcome to the board. 

[Iconodule]

I was under the impression that the Assyrian Church did not really make use of icons aside from the Cross. Were these murals added later by the Orthodox?

[karstan]

The Syriac inscriptions seem to indicate that it was the Assyrians.  Syriac is their liturgical language.

[Samn!]

There's  a pretty large amount of literary and archaeological evidence that the Church of the East used icons prior to the Mongol conquest of the Middle East in the 13th century. Two scholarly sources that deal with this are:

H. Teule, “The Veneration of Images in the East Syriac Tradition” in Die Welt der Götterbilder, ed. B. Groneberg and H. Spieckermann (Berlin: De Gruyter 2007), 324-346

K. Parry, "Images in the Church of the East : The evidence from Central Asia and China" in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78.3 (1996), 143-162

[PresbyEphraim]

H. Teule's article is awesome. I haven't read Parry, but thank you for the reference. There is a small arabic-language book on the topic need translation very badly. Perhaps some dear reader of Arabic might be interested in reading and sharing some insightful bits from the title. If so, I might be able to land a copy.

[Achronos]

Father, from a quick reading of your blog you seem to have fairly positive or at least non-polemical view of the Assyrian church despite the fact that you switched from the Assyrian church to the EO Church. Care to tell us why did you became an EO?

Father, when you have some time, would you kindly please answer this question?

In Christ,
Achronos

[Samn!]

I read Arabic and would be happy to take a look at it if a copy can be located.

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