One of the reasons to go to far eastern Turkey near the Syrian border is to visit the two monasteries in Mardin and Midyat. We were impressed with both of them, and the monks and Bishop Gabriel were very cordial and helpful, as I had set out to make recordings of a priest or novitiate reading the ancient Syrian translation of Jesus’ teaching, specifically portions of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5, and the Lord’s Prayer in Mt 7) and some parables of Jesus in Lk. 15 and also the parable of the Good Samaritan. The reason why I was wanting to record this is because this is the closest we can get to the original Aramaic of Jesus among living languages that use the Bible. It would be like hearing Jesus offer his own teachings. The person who did the reading for us was Simon Chepe, in his good clear voice in a chapel with a nice ring. It was important that his pronunciation reflected both the Syriac, and the Arabic way of pronouncing some words, so says Asbury’s expert on Syriac when it sound like ancient Aramaic. met these requirements and you will see him below.
With me was three of my doctoral students— Keldie who just got her degree, Eric and Kevin who are in process. Here we are together in the courtyard.
These monasteries are beautifully maintained, and they have recently, during the Syrian war, served as places of refuge for Syrian Orthodox persons who fled into Turkey during the war. Most of them have gone home now. Below is a picture of our audience with Bishop Gabriel and one of his priests from Lebanon. We had an interesting discussion about Christology, with the Bishop pressing me about my belief about Jesus vis a vis the council of Chalcedon’s notion of Christ having two natures, something the NT says and implies absolutely nothing about. I agreed with the good bishop that that theology is problematic. Everything in the NT about the incarnate Christ simply predicates alls things of him as a person, not parcelling out somethings to his human nature, and some to his divinity. This was part of the reason for the split between the eastern and western churches after Chalcedon in 450, with also some differences on the Holy Spirit’s role. Here’s a shot of our visit…
Below we also have in the picture my long time Turkish guide and dear friend, Meltem Chiftci whom I had the honor of baptizing in the Jordan and serving her her first communion at the Garden tomb in Jerusalem several years ago.
The chapels here are gorgeous and acoustically wonderful. Here’s one of them.
More on our adventures in Turkey in the next post.
English (US) · 