‘Antioch’: A New Initiative for the Study of the Rum Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch
Sebastian P.
Brock
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2008
Vol. 11, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv11n1anantioch
Sebastian P. Brock
‘Antioch’: A New Initiative for the Study of the Rum Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol11/HV11N1ANAntioch.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 11
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Rum Orthodox
Chalcedonian Orthodox
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[1] In 2006
a new charity, named ‘Antioch’, was set up and
registered with the aim of promoting research on the cultural
heritage of the Rum Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Patriarchate of
Antioch. Although the early period, up to the time of the Arab
conquests, is comparatively well known, the subsequent
centuries have been very little studied, despite their
importance, both for the history of the Orthodox Church as a
whole, and for that of the Middle East in general. Discoveries
of medieval wall paintings in Syria and Lebanon, as well as of
hitherto unknown manuscripts, forgotten saints, and the
identification of new Christian archaeological sites in recent
years are just one indication of some of the new and unexpected
aspects that are coming to light. At present, however,
‘Antioch’ is concentrating its attention on the
very large number of manuscripts of Antiochian Orthodox
provenance, written in four different languages, Greek, Syriac,
Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic. At the end of many of
these the copyist has provided a colophon with notes stating
where, when and for whom the manuscript was written; quite
often, further information of a historical or topographical
nature is also given. Work on these manuscripts has already
brought to light a forgotten saint, besides providing a lot of
new and valuable historical information. Once all this
information has been collected together, it will make it
possible to write a much more authoritative and reliable
history of the Rum Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch than is at
present available.
[2] At the
present time ‘Antioch’ is supporting the research
of Monk Elia Khalifeh, an Orthodox monk from Lebanon who is
currently residing in Oxford, where he is able to benefit from
the resources of the University’s libraries, above all
from its manuscripts and its collection of microfilms from St
Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai. He has already made an
inventory of several thousand manuscripts in Syriac, Christian
Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic, and is in the process of
entering all the varied information contained in their
colophons into a carefully designed data base. The aim of
‘Antioch’ is eventually to be able to make all this
information available to scholars in the form of a fully
searchable database, as well as to support and publish research
on the Antiochian Orthodox heritage in general. In due course
it is hoped that it will also be possible to organize
conferences on the Antiochian Orthodox tradition, and, ideally,
to establish a physical Centre to further promote research and
to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge about this
neglected and little-known tradition to a wider public.
[3] Needless
to say, the future success and development of
‘Antioch’ depends on financial support for its
work. Further information about ‘Antioch’ in
general, and about how to support it, can be found on its
website, www.AntiochCentre.net.