Surrounded by steep escarpments to the north, south and east, Ethiopia has always been geographically and culturally set apart. It has the longest archaeological record of any country in the world. Indeed, this precipitous mountain land was where the human race began. It is also home to an ancient church with a remarkable legacy. The Ethiopian Church forms the southern branch of historic Christianity. It is the only pre-colonial church in sub-Saharan Africa, originating in one of the earliest Christian kingdoms-with its king Ezana (supposedly descended from the biblical Solomon) converting around 340 CE. Since then it has maintained its long Christian witness in a region dominated by Islam; today it has a membership of around forty million and is rapidly growing. Yet despite its importance, there has been no comprehensive study available in English of its theology and history. This is a large gap which this authoritative and engagingly written book seeks to fill. The Church of Ethiopia (or formally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church) has a recognized place in worldwide Christianity as one of five non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches.As Dr Binns shows, it has developed a distinctive approach which makes it different from all other churches. His book explains why this happened and how these special features have shaped the life of the Christian people of Ethiopia. He discusses the famous rock-hewn churches; the Ark of the Covenant (claimed by the Church and housed in Aksum); the medieval monastic tradition; relations with the Coptic Church; co-existence with Islam; missionary activity; and the Church's venerable oral traditions, especially the discipline of qene-a kind of theological reflection couched in a unique style of improvised allegorical poetry. There is also a sustained exploration of how the Church has been forced to re-think its identity and mission as a result of political changes and upheaval following the overthrow of Haile Selassie (who ruled as Regent, 1916-1930, and then as Emperor, 1930-74) and beyond.

This book is an inquiry into the mystical thought of Gregory Barhebraeus (1226-1286CE) and its contemporary relevance, to offer a reading of Barhebraeus' mystical texts by bringing them into conversation with critical religious studies and the hermeneutical tradition of philosophy. The methodological focus of my thesis has led me to pay particular attention to the language used for the study of mysticism, and I lay emphasis on finding a new language that avoids the phenomenological assumptions concerning 'mysticism' to attend to the particularity of 'mystic' traditions, such as that of the Syriac mystic tradition inherited by Barhebraeus.

Am Beispiel der Initiationssakramente (Taufe, Firmung, Eucharistiefeier) und der Priesterweihe wird einerseits die Konsekration der Materie (Wasser, Myronoel, Brot und Wein) und des Empfangers dargestellt, anderseits das Konsekrationsgeschehen der einzelnen liturgischen Vollzuge nach der syrisch antiochenischen Liturgie miteinander verglichen, analysiert und kommentiert.

An exploration of the ways in which crosses reflect and shape ideas and practices in Ethiopian culture: from religious values and rituals to magic and apocalyptic beliefs, and from individual identities to socio-political structures and power relations.

Recent years have seen increasing numbers of Protestant and Catholic Christians converting to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In this book D. Oliver Herbel examines Christian converts to Orthodoxy who served as exemplars and leaders for convert movements in America during the twentieth century. These convert groups include Carpatho Rusyns, African Americans, and Evangelicals. Religious mavericks have a long history in Americaa tradition of being anti-tradition. Converts to orthodoxy reject such individualism by embracing an ancient form of Christianity even as they exemplify it by choosing their own religious paths. Drawing on archival resources including Rusyn and Russian newspapers, unpublished internal church documents, personal archives, and personal interviews, Herbel presents a close examination of the theological reasons for the exemplary converts' own conversions as well as the reasons they offered to persuade those who followed them. He considers the conversions within the context of the American anti-tradition, and of racial and ethnic tensions in America. This book offers the first serious investigation of this important trend in American religion and the first in-depth investigation of any kind of African-American Orthodoxy.

The Syriac Bible is a fascinating field to which too little research has been devoted. In the present volume, Jan Joosten gathers a number of pilot studies, published in various journals and collective volumes, shedding light on the Syriac Old Testament, New Testament, and the relation between them. A number of studies advance the claim that the Old Syriac and Peshitta gospels preserve echoes of an Aramaic gospel tradition that gives independent access to the earliest, oral traditions on the life and teaching of Jesus.

This volume presents the work of contemporary Orthodox thinkers who attempt to integrate the theological and the mystical. Exciting and provocative chapters treat a wide variety of mysticism, including early Church accounts, patristics (including the seemingly ever-popular subject of deification), liturgy, iconography, spiritual practice, and contemporary efforts to find mystical sense in cyber-technologies and post-humanism.

The Sentences of the Syriac Menander appears in two Syriac manuscripts in the British Library, a full version in one codex, and a far shorter version, only a small fraction thereof, in another. This book presents a commentary on the text in its complete version focusing on parallels from both Jewish tradition and the Greco-Roman world, showing that the text is not, as it claims, the work of the Greek author Menander, but rather a work of Jewish Wisdom Literature composed in Syriac, possibly in the ancient city of Edessa itself, and preserved within Christian monastic circles.

The only comprehensive critical anthology of theological and historical aspects related to Florovsky's thought by an international group of leading academics and church personalities. It is the only book in English translation of Florovsky's key study in French - "The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church". The contributors tackle a broad range of subjects that comprise the theological legacy of one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. The essays examine the life and work of Florovsky, his theology and theological methodology, as well as ecclesiology and ecumenism. A must-have volume for those who study Florovsky and his legacy.

'The House of the Priest' presents and discusses the hitherto unpublished and untranslated memoirs of Niqula Khoury, a senior member of the Orthodox Church and Arab nationalist in late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. It discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion, diplomacy and identity in the Middle East in the interwar period. This original annotated translation and accompanying articles provide a thorough explication of Khoury's memoirs and their significance for the social, political and religious histories of twentieth-century Palestine and Arab relations with the Greek Orthodox church. Khoury played a major role in these dynamics as a leading member of the fight for Arab presence in the Greek-dominated clergy, and for an independent Palestine, travelling in 1937 to Eastern Europe and the League of Nations on behalf of the national movement. Contributors: Sarah Irving, Charbel Nassif, Konstantinos Papastathis, Karene Sanchez Summerer, Cyrus Schayegh

Jacob of Edessa was a seventh century polymath who witnessed the coming of Islam. In this collection of papers, specialists discuss the life and works of this literary figure with emphasis on the cultural landscape of the seventh century. Contributors include Sebastian P. Brock, Richard Price, Andreas Juckel, Alison Salvesen, Theresia Hainthaler, Amir Harrak, and Khalid Dinno.

Bulus ibn Raja' (ca. 955-ca. 1020) was a celebrated writer of Coptic Christianity from Fatimid Egypt. Born to an influential Muslim family in Cairo, Ibn Raja' later converted to Christianity and composed The Truthful Exposer (Kitab al-Wadih bi-l-Haqq) outlining his skepticism regarding Islam. His ideas circulated across the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the medieval period, shaping the Christian understanding of the Qur'an's origins, Muhammad's life, the practice of Islamic law, and Muslim political history. This book includes a study of Ibn Raja''s life, along with an Arabic edition and English translation of The Truthful Exposer.