Early Eastern Christianity Beyond Byzantium Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary—Hamilton Dr

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Dr. Don Fairbairn

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary—Hamilton Dr. Don Fairbairn – January 2017

Dr. Fairbairn’s Contact Information: Email: [email protected] Phone: (704) 940-5842

Dr. Fairbairn’s assistant is Vyacheslav Lytvynenko (“Dr. Slavik”): Email: [email protected]

Course Schedule: The class meetings will be held Wednesday – Friday, Jan. 4-6, and Monday – Tuesday, Jan. 9-10. Saturday, Jan. 7, and Wednesday, Jan. 11, will be available as snow days.

Office Hours: I will be staying on campus Jan. 3-11 and will be available for informal conversations at any time—over meals or in the evenings. I will be reachable by email once I return to Charlotte.

Catalog Course Description This course considers the theology and practice of the Eastern Christian churches outside the Greek-speaking world prior to the rise of Western colonialism and the Western missionary activity that accompanied it. Students give attention to the early Syrian, Persian, and East African churches, and to Eastern missions work in Asia and the Slavic world. Major focus is placed on the Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches after their separation from the Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox.

Relation to Curriculum: This course can serve as a CH or TH elective in any program that requires one (e.g. M.Div., MACH, MATH). It can serve as a general elective for other students. Anyone interested in the material is welcome to join the class as an auditor.

Course Purpose: Western treatments of Christian history usually focus on the Roman Empire and follow developments in Europe and North America, devoting significant attention to Africa and Asia only when covering modern Protestant missions in those regions. This style of treatment, while understandable, gives an imbalanced impression of the history of the Church prior to the modern period. This course attempts to redress that imbalance by focusing geographically on the Eastern churches outside the Byzantine Empire. This focus also leads to an extensive consideration of non-Chalcedonian churches, as well as the history of the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church outside of the Greek world.

Course Objectives: In keeping with Gordon-Conwell’s mission statement, I intend that upon completing this course, you will:

1. Gain exposure to the history and literature of the non-Byzantine Eastern churches of the pre-modern era.

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Dr. Don Fairbairn

2. Assess (in a tentative way) the historical reliability of traditional accounts of early Christianity in Asia and Africa. 3. Identify lessons we can learn from the way the Eastern churches interacted with the societies around them. 4. Understand the Christological issues that led to the division of Christendom into three major groups in the fifth and sixth centuries. 5. Assess (in a tentative way) the orthodoxy of the non-Chalcedonian churches.

Course Requirements: Achievement of the course objectives will be measured through a variety of assignments. The successful completion of these assignments will require each student to spend at least 135 hours devoted to coursework, both in class and outside of class. The following chart indicates how these hours are distributed across the various course assignments. More specific descriptions of the assignments are given later in this syllabus.

Course Assignment Approximate Time Commitment Reading textbooks and other sources 65 hours Keeping reading journal 20 hours Theological Paper 25 hours Historical Paper 25 hours

Required Materials and Textbooks: The reading for this course comes mainly from primary sources, some of which are available in printed editions and others of which are in electronic form.

The printed works you are required to read are as follows. (These will be available in the bookstore and on reserve in the library. You may not want to purchase all of them.): Allen, Pauline, and C. T. R. Hayward, trans. Severus of Antioch. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2005. (ISBN: 978-0415234023) Brock, Sebastian, trans. St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise. Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990. (ISBN: 978-0881410761) Cliff, Nigel, trans. Marco Polo: The Travels. New York: Penguin, 2015. (ISBN: 978- 0241253052) Noble, Samuel, ed. The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources. Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. (ISBN: 978-0875807010) Roberson, Ronald. The Eastern Christian Churches: A Brief Overview. 7th revised edition. University Press of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2008. (ISBN: 978-8872103592) Vivian, Tim, trans. Four Desert Fathers. Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004. (ISBN: 978-0881412567)

The electronic sources you are required to read are in the “Resources” section of the Sakai site. Please download these and have them available (on your computer or printed out) in class. On

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Dr. Don Fairbairn

Sakai and in the reading schedule below, these sources are numbered to help you read them in the correct order.

Course Assignments:

1. Reading in preparation for class discussions: Each student must read the printed and electronic sources indicated in the schedule below (totaling approximately 1600 pages). Because a significant portion of class time will be spent discussing the readings, the student should make every effort to complete each day’s reading prior to the day it is to be discussed. This will mean beginning the reading in late December and/or planning to read in the evenings, on any snow days, and over the weekend when the class is meeting. Furthermore, each student is urged to do the reading from these textbooks in the order given in the schedule below.

2. Reading Journal (40 points): As you read, you must keep a reading journal in which you reflect on lessons we can learn from the history of the Eastern churches, their theology and spirituality, and their interaction with the cultures around them. You are not limited to any particular format in keeping the journal, and it is not necessary for it to be written in defined paragraphs or even complete sentences. Instead, it is to be an informal guide to help you get back to the pages in the material if you need to look at them again later, and also a set of preliminary reflections about positive and negative lessons we can learn. There is no minimum or maximum length for the journal, but if you are faithfully noting your reflections as you read, it may reach a length of 20 pages or perhaps much longer. This journal will demonstrate your achievement of objectives 1 and 3 above and will also constitute evidence that you have completed the reading. It is due on Saturday, January 14.

3. Theological Paper (30 points): On the basis of your readings and our class discussions, write a paper of 8-10 pages in which you assess the theological orthodoxy and spiritual vitality of either the Assyrian Church of the East or the Oriental Orthodox churches (or one particular Oriental Orthodox Church). You should give some attention to Christological issues, but you should also deal with other aspects of that group’s theology and/or practice. This is not a research paper in the strict sense, and thus it is not necessary to do research beyond the class readings. Instead, you are to reflect theologically on the reading you have done from that tradition. Of course, you are welcome to do some further research if you believe you need to do so in order to cover the assignment. This paper will demonstrate your achievement of objectives 4-5 above. It is due on Wednesday, January 25.

4. Historical Paper (30 points): Choose one of the geographical regions covered in the course (Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Persia, India, China, or the Slavic world) and write a paper of 8-10 pages in which you assess the historical accuracy of the traditions related to the early history of Christianity in that region. You may focus on several historical/traditional documents related to one region, or if you wish, on a single document. You should do some reading of modern scholarship on the document(s) you choose to consider. This paper will demonstrate your achievement of objective 2 above. It is due on Saturday, February 4.

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Dr. Don Fairbairn

Document Formatting and Citation Style Requirements: All written assignments should be submitted in either MS-Word or PDF format. (If you use a different word processor than MS- Word, please convert the file to PDF before submitting it.) Assignments should be double spaced with 1” margins on all sides of each page, and should be printed in Times New Roman 12 point type or another font of similar size and appearance. Citations of the required readings may take the form of simple parenthetical references (e.g., Kebra Nagast, p. xx). Citations of outside sources should follow Chicago (Turabian) style. Assignments must be submitted electronically by posting on the Sakai site. Hard-copies will not be accepted.

Grading: The point values listed above mean that the total number of points available for the course is 100. Final letter grades will be applied with cutoffs as follows: A 95, A- 90, B+ 87, B 83, B- 80, C+ 77, C 73, C- 70, D+ 67, D 63, D- 60, F below 60. A grade of A+ will be given very rarely, when the student’s work is truly exceptional. (At Gordon-Conwell, a grade of A+ and a grade of A are both counted the same way in calculating the student’s GPA. Thus, a GPA above 4.0 is not possible.)

Late work: All late work will be penalized the equivalent of one letter grade per week beyond the due date, unless arrangements are made ahead of time. Extenuating circumstances will be considered as appropriate. Work turned in after February 4 will normally require that an extension be approved by the Seminary. If you anticipate a problem, contact the professor as soon as possible.

Course Schedule: Please note that in the following schedule, readings from books are listed by the title of the work, the region or branch of the Church to which it pertains [in brackets], and the page numbers. In the case of readings from documents on Sakai, each entry includes the title of the work, the section numbers to be read (if you are not reading the whole thing), the region or branch of the Church to which it pertains [in brackets], and then in parentheses the document number on Sakai and the page numbers. In some cases the files on Sakai do not have page numbers, so you may find the correct portions to read by the section numbers. Please make every effort to complete the reading prior to the day it is to be discussed. If you get behind, try to get the next day’s reading done on time, and go back later to finish the unread portion of a previous day’s reading.

Wednesday, Jan. 4:

Introduction to Eastern Christianity Roberson, The Eastern Christian Churches, pp. 9-183

Asian Christianity prior to the Christological Schisms Acts of Thomas [India] (Document 01 on Sakai, pp. 1-53) Doctrine of Addai [Edessa] (Document 02 on Sakai, pp. 1-18) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.13 [Edessa], 2.1-3 [Syria], 3.1 [Ukraine], 6.20, 33, 37

CH/TH638: Early Eastern Christianity beyond Byzantium Dr. Don Fairbairn

[Arabia] (Document 03 on Sakai) Aphrahat the Persian, Demonstrations 1, 8, 17, 21, 22 (Document 04 on Sakai, pp. 1-38) Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, pp. 7-188 Agathangelos, St. Gregory and the Conversion of Armenia (Document 05 on Sakai, pp. 1-18) Rufinus, Church History 10.11 [Georgia] (Document 06 on Sakai, pp. 20-23)

Thursday, Jan. 5:

East African Christianity prior to the Christological Schisms Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15-17 [Egypt] (Document 03 on Sakai) Four Desert Fathers [Coptic Egypt], pp. 25-162 Rufinus, Church History, 10.9-10 [Ethiopia] (Document 06 on Sakai, pp. 18-20)

Friday, Jan. 6:

The Christological Schisms and their Aftermath Allen, ed, Severus of Antioch [Oriental Orthodox], pp. 3-206 The Book of Marganitha [Church of the East] (Document 07 on Sakai, pp. 1-30) Roberson, The Eastern Christian Churches, pp. 185-220

The Oriental Orthodox Churches and the African World John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History [Nubia] (Document 08 on Sakai, pp. 1-30) Kebra Nagast, chaps. 1-68, 84-95, 113-117 [Ethiopia] (Document 09 on Sakai, pp. 1-98, 123-145, 193-199)

Monday, Jan. 9:

The Assyrian Church of the East and the Asian World Christian Sutras [China] (Document 10 on Sakai) Timothy I’s Dialogue with Mahdi [Persia] (Document 11 on Sakai, pp. 1-46) Marco Polo: The Travels [Middle East/China/India], pp. 3-31, 53-81, 87-95, 134-140, 146-150, 157-161, 189-195, 217-221, 261-264, 283-296

Tuesday, Jan. 10:

The Chalcedonian Orthodox Church and the Arab World The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, pp. 3-235

The Chalcedonian Orthodox Church and the Slavic World Life of Constantine/Cyril (Document 12 on Sakai, pp. 25-81) Russian Primary Chronicle (Document 13 on Sakai, pp. 51-126)

Saturday, Jan. 14: Reading Journal Due Wednesday, Jan. 25: Theological Paper Due Saturday, Feb. 4: Historical Paper Due