Syriac Christianity

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Historical Christianity is commonly depicted as a Western European religion. According to this view, Christianity, though born among Aramaic-speaking Jews in Palestine, quickly moved westward – from Rome to the North – where it eventually split into European Catholic and Protestant varieties. Underlying this geographic shift, moreover, was a shift in theological discourse, moving from a Semitic emphasis on poetry, metaphor, and symbol, to a Greco-Roman emphasis on philosophical questions and legal answers. The purpose of this course is to offer an alternate history of Christian theology that looks East rather than West, one which focuses on Christianity as it developed and was propagated in Syriac—a dialect of the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. The course will focus especially on the great Syriac theological masters, the unique genres of poetry in which they wrote, and the rich liturgical contexts in which they worshipped.