Tradition and the Formation of the ‘Nestorian’ Identity in Sixth- to Seventh-Century Iraq
Gerrit J. Reinink*
Abstract Religious identities in ancient Near Eastern Christianity were mainly and primarily defined along the lines of Christological positions held by the different Christian communities. This article discusses the origin, development, and propagation of the East Syrian ‘Nestorian’ Christology of the two natures and two hypostaseis in Christ. It is argued that the process of the formation of the East Syrian Christological identity took a relative long time due to the complex and pluriform cultural tradition in East Syrian Christianity by the end of the sixth century and the radically changing historical, political, and social conditions in late sixth- and early seventh-century Iraq.
Keywords Church of the East; identity; Christology; School of Nisibis; Henana of Adiabene; Theodore of Mopsuestia.
According to the East Syrian monk John bar Penkaye, Christianity was divided in three parts by the time of the Arab conquests. The ‘Easterns’ confessed the true and Orthodox doctrine of Christ being God and man, one Son of God, man who became God and God who became man, two natures and two hypostases in union, one prosopon of sonship. The ‘Westerns’, on the contrary, confessed the dogma of the passibility and mortality of the Divine Being on the one hand and the dogma of the two natures and one hypostasis on the other hand.1 In so defining the internal divisions of Christendom, John testifies that
*) This article is an adapted and revised form of my (unpublished) paper presented tothe Fourth Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam: Patterns of Communal Identity in the Late Antique and Early Islamic Near East, London, – May, . 1) John bar Penkaye, Ktab¯ a¯ d-r¯eˇs mell¯e, ed. Alphonse Mingana, Sources syriaques (Mosul, ), pp. *,–*,. For this for the most part still unedited work, see T. Jansma, ‘Projet d’édition du ketâbâ derêˇs melle¯ de Jean bar Penkaye’, L’Orient Syrien (), pp. – Gerrit J. Reinink by the end of the seventh century it had become perfectly clear that the religious identity of his own ‘Church of the East’ over against both Miaphysitism and Chalcedonian Dyophysitism should be formulated on the lines of the profession of faith that the East Syrian bishops had offered to the Persian Shah Khusrau II in .2 Or, to put it in the words of a modern definition of social identity, the ‘mode de discrimination à la fois cognitive et pragmatique’ of the East Syrian community was at that time basically defined by the Christology of the two qn¯om¯e (the Syriac translation of the Greek hypostaseis)3 in Christ, by which all those who were attached to the doctrine of one nature and one qn¯oma¯ on the one hand, or to the doctrine of the two natures and one qn¯oma¯ in Christ on the other, were declared ‘éléments étrangers’ to the community. The ‘unicité’ postulated by that ‘pratique discriminatoire’ consisted in the claim
. For recent publications on this work, see Gerrit J. Reinink, ‘Paideia: God’s Design in World History according to the East Syrian Monk John bar Penkaye’, in Erik Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle . Proceedings of the nd International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle, Driebergen/Utrecht, – July (Amsterdam–New York, ), pp. – (reprint in Gerrit J. Reinink, Syriac Christianity under Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Rule [Aldershot, ], Ch. ); Gerrit J. Reinink, ‘East Syrian Historiography in Response to the Rise of Islam: The Case of John bar Penkaye’s Ktab¯ a¯ d-r¯eˇs mell¯e’, in Jan J. van Ginkel, Heleen L. Murre-van den Berg, and Theo M. van Lint (eds.), Redefining Christian Identity. Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam (OLA ; Leuven, ), pp. –; Peter Bruns, ‘Von Adam und Eva bis Mohammed—Beobachtungen zur syrischen Chronik des Johannes bar Penkaye’, Oriens Christianus (), pp. – ; Hubert Kaufhold, ‘Anmerkungen zur Textüberlieferung der Chronik des Johannes bar Penkay¯ e’,¯ Oriens Christianus (), pp. –. 2) Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Synodicon Orientale ou Recueil de synodes nestoriens (Paris, ), ed. pp. ,–,, trans. pp. –; see Luise Abramowski and Alan E. Goodman, A Nestorian Collection of Christological Texts (Cambridge, ), ed. Vol. , pp. ,–,, trans. Vol. , pp. ,–,. Also translated by Sebastian P. Brock, ‘The Christology of the Church of the East in the Synods of the Fifth to Early Seventh Centuries’, in George D. Dragas (ed.), Aksum-Thyateira: a Festschrift for Archbishop Methodios of Thyateira and Great Britain (London, ), pp. – (reprint in Sebastian P. Brock, Studies in Syriac Christianity [London, ], Ch. ). Micheline Albert’s suggestion that John bar Penkaye, like Henana of Adiabene before him, belonged to ‘la mouvance d’opposants à l’Église nestorienne établie’ is not confirmed by John’s Ktab¯ a¯ d-r¯eˇs mell¯e (see also ed. Mingana, p. *,–); cf. Micheline Albert, ‘Une centurie de Mar Jean bar Penkaye’,¯ in R.-G. Coquin (ed.), Mélanges Antoine Guillaumont. Contributions à l’étude des christianismes orientaux (Genève, ), p. . 3) Cf. in general Marcel Richard, ‘L’introduction du mot “hypostase” dans la théologie de l’incarnation’, Mélanges de science religieuse (), pp. –, –. For the semantic implications of the translation of hypostasis by qn¯oma¯, see Brock, ‘The Christology’, pp. – .