Surviving Communities Whose Origins Reflect Both Judaism and Early Christianity
Certain Christian communities of India, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestinian Territories have traditionally been associated with some 1st century Jewish Christian heritage. The Syriac Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church of Antioch are churches with known Jewish Christian membership that dates as far back as the 1st century. All three churches had common origins in terms of membership, where the majority of adherents was a mix of Greeks and Hellenized Jews and Syrians from Antioch and the rest of Syria who adopted the new faith. The Syriac Orthodox Church follows the Antiochene rite that celebrates liturgy in Syriac and still carries some particular customs that are considered today as purely Judaic in nature.
Some typically Grecian "Ancient Synagogal" priestly rites have survived partially to the present, notably in the distinct church service of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Melkite Greek Catholic communities of the Hatay Province of Southern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. Members of theses communities still call themselves Rûm which literally means "Eastern Roman" or "Byzantine" in Turkish, Persian and Arabic. The term "Rum" is used in preference to "Ionani" or "Yāvāni" which means Greek or "Ionian" in Classical Arabic and Ancient Hebrew.
Most Northern-MENA "Melkites" or "Rûms", can trace their ethnocultural heritage to the Greek and Macedonian settlers and Hellenized Judeo-Christians of the past, founders of the original "Antiochian Greek" communities of Cilicia and Northwestern Syria. Counting members of the surviving minorities in the Hatay Province of Turkey and their relatives in the diaspora, there are more than 1.8 million Antiochite Greco-Melkite Christians residing in the Northern-MENA, the US, Canada and Latin America today.
Today, certain families are associated with descent from the early Jewish Christians of Antioch, Damascus, Judea, and Galilee. Some of those families carry surnames such as Youhanna (John), Hanania (Ananias), Sahyoun (Zion), Eliyya/Elias (Elijah), Chamoun/Shamoun (Simeon/Simon), Semaan/Simaan (Simeon/Simon), Menassa (Manasseh), Salamoun/Suleiman (Solomon), Youwakim (Joachim), Zakariya (Zacharias) and others.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Christian
Famous quotes containing the words surviving, communities, origins, reflect, judaism, early and/or christianity:
“For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnare for our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves ...”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)