This thesis discusses the historical development of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Anti- och based upon its origins in the Tur 'Abdin region up to the time of its believers' emig- ration to Europe. The difficulties with which the Church was confronted are discussed, duly referencing instances of conflict, division and political upheaval. The topic of the persecution of Christians is depicted by way of an excursus. The positive develo- pments, the golden ages through history and the current (continued) subsistence of old traditions and culture in European nations are also addressed. Concomitantly, a picture is presented of the situation of those believers who live in a diaspora and may be affec- ted by discrimination and difficulties in terms of integration. The current situation in the Near East is prompting the westward migration of persecuted peoples of the most diverse ethnicities and faiths. This thesis may serve as the basis for a comparative retro- spective, since it portrays the manner in which integration in Europe was once achieved.

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Investigation on second-position clitic phenomena has steadily increased since Wackernagel’s (1892) observations. Researchers have applied contemporary clitic typology to various Semitic languages though Syriac has received little attention. This thesis identifies a group of Syriac rhetorical particles and describes their categorization as clitics, versus words or affixes. It establishes each of the Syriac particles as second-position clitics and provides evidence of this conclusion from a state-of-the-art digitized corpus of Syriac literature. Extending previous Syriac analyses, this thesis describes the nature of attachment of these second-position clitics as enclisis to either the first word or the first constituent/phrase of their domain. This variable clitic attachment behavior has been previously attested only in three other unrelated languages: Serbo-Croatian, Luiseño and Ngiyambaa. I discuss the analysis and application of these discoveries and their implications for future Syriac and linguistic research.

Le cycle hebdomadaire syro-antiochien est un cycle liturgique férial, simple et non eucharistique. Le livre de prières dont on sert pendant ces jours fériaux est appelé en syriaque Shehimo, ce que signifie « simple » ou « banal ». La valeur théologique des offices du Shehimo réside dans leur fonction actualisante qui transforme les événements salvifiques du passé en réalité vécue constamment par les fidèles à travers la mémoire. L’étude du livre, de sa structure liturgique, de son contenu et de ses sources révèle la grande richesse du cycle hebdomadaire qui a su assimiler plusieurs textes bibliques, apocryphes, patristiques et historiques afin de les présenter aux fidèles d’une manière simple pour les accompagner dans leur voyage hebdomadaire entre le premier et le huitième jour de la semaine. D’autre part, l’économie du salut réalisée par le Verbe de Dieu constitue la base solide sur laquelle se fondent les textes du Shehimo. Dieu a crée l’homme motivé par son amour et lorsque l’homme est tombé dans le péché, Dieu l’a sauvé par le même amour divin invraisemblable. L’incarnation du Fils, sa vie, son enseignement, ses miracles, sa crucifixion, sa mort et sa résurrection visaient toujours le salut de l’homme. D’une manière poétique, imaginative et mélodique, le chrétien se souvient de toute cette œuvre salvifique et divine que le Christ a réalisée en sa faveur, il affirme son attachement à cette œuvre, il chante la gloire de son Sauveur et il exprime ardemment son désir d’être digne de lui chanter éternellement sa gloire dans son Royaume céleste. / The Syro-Antiochian weekly cycle is an ordinary, simple and non-eucharistic liturgical cycle. The prayer book which we use during the ordinary days, is called Shehimo in Syriac, which means “simple” or “trivial”. The theological value of the services of the Shehimo lies in their actualizing function which transforms the salvational events of the past into a reality that is constantly lived by the faithful through their memory. The study of the book, of its liturgical structure, its content and its sources, reveals the great richness of the weekly cycle which was able to assimilate many biblical, apocryphal, patristic and historical texts in order to present them to the faithful in a simple manner so as to accompany them in their weekly journey from the first to the eighth day of the week. On the other hand, the economy of salvation that was realized by the Word of God constitutes the solid base on which the texts of the Shehimo are founded. When God created man He was motivated by His love; when man fell in sin, God has saved him with the same inconceivable divine love. The incarnation of the Son, His life, His teachings, His miracles, His crucifixion, His death and His resurrection always aimed at the salvation of man. In a poetic, imaginative and melodic way, the Christian believer remembers all this salvational and divine work that Christ has accomplished for his sake, and thus the Christian believer affirms his attachment to this work. He chants the glory of his Savior and expresses passionately his desire to be worthy of eternally chanting to Him His glory in His heavenly kingdom.

<p>According to the Syriac <italic>Acts of the Persian Martyrs</italic>, the Sasanian king Shapur II began persecuting Christians in Persia soon after Constantine's death in 337 CE. Previous studies of the <italic>Acts</italic> (and related material) set Shapur's persecution within the context of Constantine's support for Christianity in the Roman Empire. Religious allegiances are said to have been further amplified during the Roman-Persian war over Rome's Mesopotamian provinces that followed Constantine's death. According to most interpretations, by the mid-fourth century <italic>Christianitas</italic> had become coextensive with <italic>Romanitas</italic>: Persian Christians were persecuted because they worshipped Caesar's god and, thereby, allied themselves with Rome. </p><p>By contrast, this dissertation reconsiders Christian historical narratives, the rhetorical and identity-shaping nature of the martyrological genre, and assumptions about the clear divisions of religious groups in late antiquity. Although the notion of Christianity as a "Roman" religion can be found in some of the historiography of persecution in Persia, our knowledge about Christians in fourth-century Persia is a harmonized event history woven from a tapestry of vague and conflicting sources that often exhibit later religious, political, and hagiographical agendas. </p><p> </p><p>To demonstrate how Shapur's persecution came to be interpreted as the result of religious changes within the Roman Empire, the dissertation first reconsiders how Constantine is imagined as a patron of the Christians of Persia in Syriac and Greek sources. The second part looks at the ways by which constructed imperial ideals territorialized "religion" in the post-Constantinian era. Finally, the third part presents the first English translations of the <italic>Martyrdom and History of Simeon bar Sabba'e</italic>, a fourth-century Persian bishop whose martyr acts are central to the historiography of the period.</p> / Dissertation

<p>The key purpose of this research has been to study and understand how young people with Syriac ethnicity experience their identity, when living in two different cultures. The Syriac minority is something of a special case when it concerns establishing the identity of an individual, since syriac´s do not have an official country.</p><p>To be able to do this research an interview has been done with four young students with syriac ethnicity. The four of them is attending their final year at “gymnasiet” in Sweden which is equivalent to USA’s senior year in high school.</p><p>The multicultural school is today a fact and many immigrants attending the Swedish schools today feels misplaced when they meet the Swedish culture through fellow students and society. A clash between cultures occurs and most of the students, with non-Swedish ethnicity, live some kind of dual life. One side of this twin identity represents the ethnic identity which dominates at home and around relatives. The other side is displayed in circumstances outside of their home, which is at school and in the Swedish society in general.</p><p>This research shows the general opinion, among syriac high school students, concerning the individual identity and in which way they handle their own identity development when living within two different cultures.</p><p>One of my main questions to investigate is to find out if young students, with syriac ethnicity, develops a weak root in their ethnic identity by living outside of the syriac community.</p><p>One of my conclusions is that a student with syriac ethnicity, whom is educated in an intercultural school is rather encouraged in seeking his/her roots. Since the multicultural environment awakens a curiosity in students to seek their own ethnic identity.</p>

M.A. (Bible Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Ce travail de doctorat porte sur la xenia en Grande Syrie, du règne de Constantin à celui de Justinien. La comparaison des usages grec et syriaque de la notion d’hospitalité a mis en évidence d’importantes modifications sémantiques qui reflètent des divergences irréductibles entre les conceptions païennes et chrétiennes de l’hospitalité. Cette notion se christianise au cours des IVe-VIe siècles, jusqu’à devenir un objet théologique, apanage des milieux monastiques, syriaques notamment. Mais la christianisation des mentalités implique-t-elle nécessairement une modification profonde des pratiques sociales culturelles de l’accueil et une mutation complète des structures matérielles où se déroulent les activités du recevoir ? L’étude des structures d’hospitalité a révélé la pérennité de la localisation des structures d’accueil à l’échelle du territoire syrien tout au long de l’Antiquité tardive, même si la diversité des solutions adoptées, à l’échelle des structures elles-mêmes, semble témoigner d’un réel attachement aux traditions régionales. Enfin, l’analyse des acteurs de l’hospitalité a révélé que les moines sont loin d’être les seuls acteurs de l’hospitalité en Grande Syrie. Il existe par ailleurs un paradoxe entre le discours normé et universaliste de l’accueil chrétien et la réalité telle que nous pouvons la décrypter. Les liens entre hospitalité et dissidence doivent être envisagés. De nouveaux critères de sélection des hôtes apparaissent à la fin de l’Antiquité. L’hérésie réintroduit l’idée de critères particuliers, ce qui engendre une déconstruction du modèle social et de nouveaux enjeux politiques, lesquels semblent conditionner la naissance de l’Église miaphysite. / This doctoral thesis deals with xenia in Great Syria from Constantine’s reign to Justinian’s. The comparison between the Greek and the Syriac uses of the notion of hospitality brings to light important semantic modifications that reflect irreducible differences between the Pagan and Christian conceptions of hospitality. This notion gets Christianized in the course of the 4th and 5th centuries, to the point of becoming a theological topic, privilege of monastic milieux, particularly Syriac ones. But how far does the Christianization of mentalities necessarily imply a deep modification in cultural and social practices of reception and a complete change in the material structures in which reception activities take place? The study of hospitality structures and facilities reveals the durability of the localization of reception structures at the level of the Syrian territory throughout late Antiquity, even if, at the level of the structures themselves, the diversity of the solutions adopted seems to testify to a real attachment to regional traditions. Finally, the examination of the protagonists of hospitality shows that monks are far from being the only actors of hospitality in Great Syria. Besides, there is a contradiction between the standard universalist discourse of Christian welcoming and reality, as we can decipher it. The links between hospitality and dissidence have to be considered. New criteria of selection of hosts and guests appear in Late Antiquity. Heresy re-introduces the idea of specific criteria into use, which causes the “deconstruction” of the social pattern and new political stakes, which seem to influence the birth of the Non-Chalcedonian Church.

The story of Joseph and Aseneth expands a few verses from the book of Genesis into a novella-length work. In recent years, the story has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Interest has focused on questions of provenance: whether the 'longer' or 'shorter' version of the text has priority, and what this means for its interpretation. Like other works of the so-called 'Jewish Pseudepigrapha', it is increasingly used as a source for Judaism and Christianity at the turn of the Common Era. But few have engaged with the story's manuscript witness and transmission. This thesis returns to the sources. It considers how the redaction and translation of Joseph and Aseneth affected its interpretation, and looks at the interests of the redactors and copyists. It warns against placing too much weight on details that lack such an importance in the manuscript tradition. The introduction surveys modern secondary literature on the story. Section 1 investigates the translation and transmission context of the two earliest preserved versions, the Syriac and Armenian translations. Despite their text-critical importance, they have received little attention. Section 2 focuses on the Greek manuscripts of the three longest families (f, Mc, a). It argues that these redactions, and the variety within their witnesses, need to be understood within a Byzantine context, in particular, within hagiographic trends for works produced in monastic environment. Section 3 looks at how the story could be abridged and edited. It identifies the key elements of the story shared by redactors. Four versions are compared: family d, E, Latin 1 and so-called "early modern Greek". The appendices contain a synoptic presentation of Greek versions of the story, an edition and translation of the story from manuscript E, and a translation of the Greek text from manuscript 661.

L'Histoire Ecclésiastique de Grégoire Bar ‘Ebroyo (1225/6-1286 apr. J.-C.), auteur syro-orthodoxe et maphrien de l’Est, a depuis longtemps été reconnue comme une source historique inestimable pour l’histoire de l’Antiquité tardive et médiévale du Moyen-Orient, mais elle a reçu une attention limitée du monde scientifique en tant qu’œuvre de littérature à part entière, et n’a jamais fait l’objet d’une monographie. En outre, l’Histoire Ecclésiastique n’est encore et toujours seulement accessible que par l’intermédiaire d’une édition du 19e s., qui est simplement une reproduction diplomatique d’un manuscrit du 16e s. Bien que la Chronique de Bar ‘Ebroyo, dont l’Histoire Ecclésiastique forme la seconde partie, soit le seul ouvrage historiographique en syriaque préservé dans plus d’un seul manuscrit, sa riche tradition manuscrite n’a jamais été examinée. Le but de cette thèse doctorale est tout d’abord de fournir une étude philologique et historiographique de l’Histoire Ecclésiastique. Plus particulièrement, je propose une analyse de a) la tradition manuscrite et de la transmission du texte, b) de la relation avec la tradition du genre de l’histoire ecclésiastique, c) l’étude des sources. Cette étude s’accompagne d’une nouvelle édition de texte et d’une traduction anglaise. / The Ecclesiastical History of Gregory Bar ‘Ebroyo (1225/6-1286 A.D.), Syrian Orthodox author and maphrian of the East, has long been recognized as an invaluable historical source for the history of the Late Antique and Medieval Middle East but it has received limited scholarly attention as a work of literature in its own right, and it has never been made the object of a book-length study. Moreover, the Ecclesiastical History is still available only via a 19th century edition, which is basically a diplomatic reproduction of a 16th century manuscript. Although Bar ‘Ebroyo’s Chronicle, of which the Ecclesiastical History forms the second part, is the only Syriac historiographical work preserved in more than one manuscript, its rich manuscript tradition has never been examined. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a first philological and historiographical study of the Ecclesiastical History. More particularly, I propose an analysis of a) the manuscript tradition and the transmission of the text, b) the relation with the tradition of the genre Ecclesiastical History, c) the study of the sources. This study is accompanied by a newly established text and an English translation.