Description
Book SynopsisThough nations are nowadays seen as the product of modernity, comparable processes of community building were taking place even earlier. Thus the history of the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syrian Christians shows that close-knit ethnic groups already existed in Late Antiquity and early medieval times. These communities have endured to the present day. However, there is much debate as to how they came into existence and defined themselves. The role of religion is central to this debate. A major interdisciplinary research project conducted at Leiden University investigated the identity formation of the Syriac Orthodox. It is argued that they started as a religious association. This volume presents the results of the Leiden team together with reactions from a number of other specialists. The cases of the East Syrians, Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, and Byzantine Orthodox are discussed in five additional contributions. Contributors include: Naures Atto, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Muriel Debié, Jan van Ginkel, Wim Hofstee, Mat Immerzeel, Steven Kaplan, Theo van Lint, Glenn Peers, Richard Price, Gerrit Reinink, Bas ter Haar Romeny, Uriel Simonsohn, Bas Snelders, David Taylor, Herman Teule, Jacques van der Vliet, and Dorothea Weltecke.
Trade Review"The editor and contributors are to be congratulated, for they have produced a volume which is sure to be foundational to future study." – Bradley Marsh, University of Oxford, The Journal of Theological Studies (2012) "...an eye-opener for the complexity of today's nationalism." – Chris Vonck, European Observatory of Religions and Secularism, in: Acta Comparanda XXI "I am genuinely impressed by this volume; the individual authors have engaged well with the subject. This book will be a very rich contribution to the field." – Robert Hoyland, University of Oxford "[This] volume is both stimulating and worthwhile; the contributions, all by leading scholars in their respective fields, are consistently of a high quality." – Sebastian P. Brock, Oxford University Oriental Institute, in: Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 52/1-2, pp. 125-128
Table of ContentsPreface Presentation of the results of the Leiden project The Formation of a Communal Identity among West Syrian Christians: Concluding Essay of the Leiden Project, Bas ter Haar Romeny, et al. Reaction from a social scientist Ethnicity and Ethnogenesis: Anthropological Perspectives, Wim Hofstee Reaction from a specialist in Syriac exegesis Daniel of Salah and Identity Formation in the Earliest West Syrian Exegesis, David Taylor Reactions from specialists in Syriac historiography Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation, Muriel Debié Michael the Syrian and Syrian Orthodox Identity, Dorothea Weltecke Reactions from art historians Iconography and Identity: Syrian Elements in the Art of Crusader Cyprus, Annemarie Weyl Carr Art and Identity in an Amulet Roll from Fourteenth-Century Trebizond, Glenn Peers Other sources for our knowledge of the identity formation of the Syrian Orthodox Syriac, Arabic, Muslim – Bar Salibi, Bar Shakko, and Bar Hebraeus, Herman Teule Seeking Justice among the ‘Outsiders’: Christian Recourse to Non-Ecclesiastical Judicial Systems under Early Islam, Uriel Simonsohn Cases that may be comparable Tradition and the Formation of the ‘Nestorian’ Identity in Sixth- to Seventh-Century Iraq, Gerrit Reinink The Formation of an Armenian Identity in the First Millennium, Theo van Lint The Copts: Modern Sons of the Pharaohs?, Jacques van der Vliet Dominance and Diversity: Kingship, Ethnicity, and Christianity in Orthodox Ethiopia, Steven Kaplan The Development of a Chalcedonian Identity (451-553), Richard Price Conclusions Indexes
