The History of Syriac Christianity

3 credits · Divinity School

This course is an introductory seminar on Syriac Christian traditions. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic which was influential in the spread of Christianity across the Middle East and Asia. By the time of the rise of Islam, Syriac-speaking Christian communities could be found in what today would be a region stretching from Lebanon across Iraq and the Persian Gulf on to India, Central Asia and China. In the Middle Ages, Syriac culture and literature flourished as a cultural bridge between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic states of the Middle East. In the modern era, Syriac communities have continued to persist to the present as minorities in the Middle East and India and in a global diaspora.This course surveys the history of these communities, the theological literature that they produced, and historiographical debates about their origins and development. [3] Mr. Michelson