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:
“Never have anything to do with the near surviving representatives of anyone whose name appears in the death column of the Times as having “passed away.””
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“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)
“It is, after all, very interesting that sound can reflect like water, like a mirror. And notice that Vinteuil’s phrase only shows me that to which I did not pay attention at the time. Of my worries, of my loves at that time, it does not recall a thing, it has made the exchange.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“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)
“Our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them—I can write in letters which make even the blind see ... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind....”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)