აღმოსავლეთის ეკლესიის ღმრთისმეტყველება (IV ს.)

Abstract

From ancient times Christianity was taking shape beyond the borders of the Roma Empire - in the East, in Syria. Important historical sources regarding the formation of the church in the Sassanian Empire are dated to the 4th c. In the process of study of issues of the church history of the 5th-6th cc. the fact should be taken into consideration that at that period “the Ecumenical Council” did not mean the “World” Council. This was the Council held in the oikoumene of the Roman Empire, it was convened by the Emperor and was attended by the bishops only from the Empire proper. Thus, the “Ecumenical Council” had no direct relations to the Christian church existing in the Persian Empire (roughly the territory of modern Iraq and Iran) or the Church of the East, until later on the latter recognized it, which was officially confirmed at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (410), 85 years after the adoption of the Symbol of Faith at the Council of Nicaea. The Christology of the Church of the East was characterized by archaism. In the 5th-7th cc. numerous works of Greek patristic literature were translated into the Syriac language. Most of these translations were made in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and not in Persia. So, the Church of the East familiarized with this material for the first time, primarily through the main point of contact with the Roman Church the Persian School of Edessa, in which the works by Theodore of Mopsuestia were translated into the Syriac language in the 430s. Owing to the growing influence of the Greek language in the Syrian churches, translators from Greek into Syrian were moving from the quite free and paraphrastic manner of translation, characteristic for two and a half centuries, to an increasingly accurate style, which at the beginning of the 7th c. strived to reflect as many details of the Greek original as possible.