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Seminar 9:
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Christianity started in Jerusalem following the Ascension of Christ. Jerusalem was, at the time, one of the main cities in the province of Syria. Consequently, the indigenous inhabitants of Syria, the Syrians, were some of the first witnesses of the acts of Christ and some of the first believers. It is therefore natural to anticipate that they would be one of the main contributors to Christian tradition. The Syrians were influential in the early Church in many aspects. One of their contributions was through the Aramaic language being the native tongue of Syria. This can be seen through some of the words and verses of the ancient versions of the Bible discovered in recent history: Vetus Syria, Diatessaron and the famous Peshitta. The Syrian fathers were also formative in many fields – linguistics, theology and liturgy. One of the clearest examples of this is in the introduction of the technicus termus of "qnoumo" which alleviated the stresses the Oriental Aramaic-speaking Churches faced with regards to the Holy Trinity. Another example is the introduction of the Choir into the Church. Some of these contributions have been widely adopted (the Choir system), while some others (the use of the technical term qnoumo) are used by only a few churches. Due to the involvement of the Syrians in the early Church, further contributions made by the Syrians to the Christian tradition will be discovered.
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