BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theoretical studies
Berner, Ulrich. Untersuchungen zur Verwendung des Synkretismus-
Begriffes. Göttingen, Germany, 1982.
Berner, Ulrich. “Synkretismus.” In Handbuch religionswissen-
schaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol. 5, pp. 143–152. Stuttgart,
Germany, 2001.
Motte, André, and Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge. “Du ‘bon usage’
de la notion de syncrétisme.” Kernos 7 (1994): 11–27.
Siller, Hermann Pius, ed. Suchbewegungen. Synkretismus—
kulturelle Identität und kirchliches Bekenntnis. Darmstadt,
Germany, 1991.
Stewart, Charles, and Rosalind Shaw, eds. Syncretism/Anti-
syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. London and
New York, 1994.
Select examples of recent usage
Baines, John. “Egyptian Syncretism. Hans Bonnet’s Contribu-
tion.” Orientalia 68 (1999): 199–214.
Beck, Roger. “The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of Their
Genesis.” Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998): 115–128.
Blázquez, José María. “El sincretismo en la Hispania Romana
entre les religiones indigenas, Griega, Romana, Fenicia y
Mistéricas.” In Religiones en la España Antiqua, pp. 29–82.
Madrid, 1991. (Originally published in 1981.)
Boyarin, Daniel. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of
Christianity and Judaism. Stanford, Calif., 1999.
Burkert, Walter. “Migrating Gods and Syncretism. Forms of Cult
Transfer in the Ancient Mediterranean.” In The Howard Gil-
man International Conferences, vol. 2: Mediterranean Cultural
Interaction, edited by Asher Ovadiah, pp. 1–21. Tel Aviv,
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Johnson, Paul Chistopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods. The Transfor-
mation of Brazilian Condomblé. Oxford, 2002.
King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? Cambridge, Mass., 2003.
Lambert, Wilfred G. “Syncretism and Religious Controversy in
Babylonia.” In Aufsätze zum 65. Geburtstag von Horst Klen-
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Martin, Luther H. “Why Cecropian Minerva? Hellenistic Reli-
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FRITZ GRAF (2005)
SYRIAC ORTHODOX CHURCH OF ANTI-
OCH. The Syriac Orthodox Church and its dependency
in India, along with the Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Ma-
lankara, and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, make up a com-
munion now called Oriental Orthodox, erroneously called
“Monophysite” in the past. These churches did not accept
the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and its Christological
definition that proposed two natures in Christ and so fell out
of communion with the rest of the Christian world. But they
never accepted the classical Monophysite position of Euty-
ches, who affirmed that the humanity of Christ was absorbed
into his single divine nature. They affirm the perfect human-
ity as well as the perfect divinity of Christ, inseparably and
unconfusedly united in a single divine-human nature of
Christ’s person. In Christology these churches follow Severus
of Antioch and also Cyril of Alexandria, who spoke of the
“one incarnate nature of the Word of God.” Long known
as Syrian Orthodox, in April 2000 this church’s Holy Synod
changed its official name in English to the Syriac Orthodox
Church of Antioch in order to avoid confusion with Syrian
nationality.
HISTORY. Antioch was one of the largest cities in the ancient
eastern Mediterranean and became an important political,
military, cultural, and commercial center after it was incor-
porated into the Roman Empire in 64 BCE. It became the
Greek-speaking capital of the Roman province of Syria,
where most of the inhabitants in the countryside spoke Syri-
ac, a dialect of Aramaic. A Christian community formed at
Antioch early in the common era; according to Acts 11:26,
it was here that the followers of Jesus were first called Chris-
tians, and a strong case has been made that the Gospel of Mat-
thew was composed in the city. Both Peter and Paul spent
time in Antioch; Paul and Barnabas later set out from the
city on their missionary journeys after the local prophets and
teachers agreed with the undertaking.
Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–c. 107 CE) provided in his
writings the first evidence of a monarchical episcopacy at An-
tioch, although the Antiochians themselves have traditional-
ly viewed Peter as their first bishop. In the second and third
centuries CE a number of heresies arose and caused unrest in
the community, including Gnosticism, docetism, Montan-
ism, and Novatianism. Yet these early centuries also saw
great scholars and thinkers, such as Paul of Samosata (third
century CE), Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428 CE), and
Diodore of Tarsus (d. 394 CE), all three of whom the Syriac
Orthodox now regard as heretics. John Chrysostom (c. 354–
407 CE) came from the Greek-speaking city church.
The leadership of the Syriac Church was decimated by
the persecution that broke out under Diocletian around 304
CE. But by the time of the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) the
metropolitanate of Antioch had largely recovered, having six
Roman provinces under its jurisdiction (Palestine, Phoeni-
cia, Coele-Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Cilicia) with
sixty-six bishops and ten rural bishops. Edessa, rather than
Antioch, was now the center of Syriac Christianity, and its
catechetical school, called the Athens of the Aramaic world,
flourished until the Byzantine emperor Zeno destroyed it in
489 CE. The center then moved to Nisibis.
Increased efforts by the Byzantine emperors to Helle-
nize the Syriac-speaking population in the countryside—
where the “one nature” Christological formula was widely
accepted—met with stiff opposition there and also in Egypt.
Resistance began in 449 CE with the Second Council of Eph-
esus (called the “Robber Council” in the West) and exploded
after Chalcedon’s adoption of the “two nature” formula in
451 CE. In spite of efforts by the Byzantine emperors to im-
pose Chalcedonian orthodoxy, in the end only about half of8938 SYRIAC ORTHODOX CHURCH OF ANTIOCH