Religious Origins of Nations? The Christian Communities of the Middle East

Review

"The editor and contributors are to be congratulated, for they have produced a volume which is sure to be foundational to future study." - Bradley Marsh, University of Oxford, The Journal of Theological Studies (2012)
"...an eye-opener for the complexity of today's nationalism." - Chris Vonck, European Observatory of Religions and Secularism, in: Acta Comparanda XXI
"I am genuinely impressed by this volume; the individual authors have engaged well with the subject. This book will be a very rich contribution to the field." - Robert Hoyland, University of Oxford
"[This] volume is both stimulating and worthwhile; the contributions, all by leading scholars in their respective fields, are consistently of a high quality." - Sebastian P. Brock, Oxford University Oriental Institute, in: Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 52/1-2, pp. 125-128

Product Description

This volume presents the results of the Leiden project on the identity formation of the Syrian Orthodox Christians, which developed from a religious association into an ethnic community. A number of specialists react to the findings and discuss the cases of the East Syrians, Armenians, Copts, and Ethiopians.

From the Back Cover

Though nations are nowadays seen as the product of modernity, comparable processes of community building were taking place even earlier. Thus the history of the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syrian Christians shows that close-knit ethnic groups already existed in Late Antiquity and early medieval times. These communities have endured to the present day. However, there is much debate as to how they came into existence and defined themselves. The role of religion is central to this debate. A major interdisciplinary research project conducted at Leiden University investigated the identity formation of the Syrian Orthodox. It is argued that they started as a religious association. This volume presents the results of the Leiden team together with reactions from a number of other specialists. The cases of the East Syrians, Armenians, Copts, and Ethiopians are discussed in five additional contributions. Contributors include: Naures Atto, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Muriel Debi, Jan van Ginkel, Wim Hofstee, Mat Immerzeel, Steven Kaplan, Theo van Lint, Glenn Peers, Richard Price, Gerrit Reinink, Bas ter Haar Romeny, Uriel Simonsohn, Bas Snelders, David Taylor, Herman Teule, Jacques van der Vliet, and Dorothea Weltecke.

About the Author

Bas ter Haar Romeny, Ph.D. (1997), Leiden University, is Professor of Old Testament and Eastern Christianity at Leiden University. He has published extensively on Syriac Christianity, Late Antiquity, and history of biblical interpretation, including From Rome to Constantinople (Peeters, 2007).