RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESin Syria in 630 and reached an agreement on a common confession
in faith based on one will and one acting force in Christ. On that
occasion, one of the members of the delegation, Bar Sahde (Sahd6nii),
defected to the Monophysites, condemned the followers of Theodore
before Heraklios at Jerusalem, and after his return to Iraq wrote against
the belief in two natures and two qenome in a single prosopon of
Christ. Sometime between 644 and 647, Bar Sahde was established as
bishop of Mahoza dhe Ariwan in Beth Garme by Ishifyahbh of Adia-
bene. But after the latter became catholicos as Ish6'yahbh III (648-
58), Bar Sahde was expelled from his see and from the church and
pursued to Edessa by the controversialist monk Rabban Gabrie1.^99
The aftereffects of the policy of Heraklios in the east had two con-
sequences. It reinforced the Nestorian doctrine of two natures and
two qenome in one prosopon of the Son, with Mary the mother of
Christ, not of God.IOO On the other hand, the agreement allowed the
Nestorians to continue to think that their belief in two natures (dio-
physitism) made them just as orthodox as the church in the West.
Both Ish6'yahbh III and George I believed that they shared their
diophysite belief with the entire Western church.lOl The Nestorian
identity emerging by the end of the seventh century was one which
derived its distinction in contrast to Monophysitism without requiring
any break (from the Nestorian point of view) with the Orthodox
Christians in the West.
Because this new group resulted from opposition to Monophysitism,
the name of Nestorius came to be used to identify its members. Nes-
torians identified the conflict between Cyril and Nestorius with the
conflict between Monophysites and themselves. They seem to have
been recognized as "Nestorians" by the seventh century, since at the
disputation of 612 Khusraw Parviz called them "those who proclaim
the name of Nestorius." Monks from Nasibin who went to North
Africa in the middle of the seventh century are called Nestorians in a
Monothelite source. Rabban Hiirmizd is called "our Nestorius" be-
cause he combatted local Monophysites, and Nestorius was used oc-
casionally as a proper name. Later Nestorians preferred to believe that
99 Chabot, "Chastete," pp. 67-68,280-81; Stratos, Byzantium, p. 256; Thomas of
Margha, Governors, I, 69-73, 90-91; II, 125-30.
100 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 240,242, 508, 509; R. Duval, ISo'yahb Patriarchae III
Liber Epistularum, CSCO, Scr. Syri 11 (Louvain, 1955), 124-25, 202; SCT. Syri 12
(Louvain, 1955),94, 147; Simon of Taibiitheh, "Medico-Mystical Work," in A. Min-
gana Woodbrooke Studies (Cambridge, 1934), VII, 52, 309.
101 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 244, 514; Duval, Liber Epistularum, CSCO, Scr. Syri,
11:212; 12:154.