St. Thomas Cross is a symbol of that shared heritage among the many Syriac denominations in India. (Submitted image)
ishtartv.com - vanderbilt.edu
By Ann
Marie Deer Owens, Feb. 8, 2017
An
international collaboration that includes a Vanderbilt University divinity
scholar has published three new online reference works to help preserve Syriac,
a Middle East language and culture on the edge of extinction.
The
Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic used extensively by Christians in the
Middle East.
“For
more than a thousand years, Syriac was one of the most widely used languages in
the ancient and medieval culture,” said David
A. Michelson, assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity
School. He is also an affiliate assistant professor of classical and
Mediterranean studies in the College of Arts and Science. “Syriac culture is very
important for understanding key moments in the development and intersection of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”
This
new research on Syriac culture is published by Syriaca.org, an online reference work of which Michelson is
the general editor. Syriaca.org has received funding from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the International Balzan Prize Foundation.
Syriaca.org
seeks to document the history of all “Syriac heritage communities,” which
includes several Aramaic minority populations in the Middle East who have ties
to the Syriac language. These communities include ethnic and religious
populations who identify various as Syriac, Assyrian, Aramean, Maronite, St.
Thomas Christians, Chaldean Catholic, Antiochian Othodox, Syro-Malabar Catholic
and the Church of the East.
As a
result of ongoing strife in countries such as Syria and Iraq, the present-day
Syriac and Aramaic-heritage communities have been under extreme pressure to
flee or risk death. “In addition to this terrible human cost, Syriac and
Aramaic cultures are gravely threatened,” Michelson said. “Syriaca.org is
striving to preserve and digitally record the collective heritage of these
threatened communities around the world.”
The
three new online publications works are A Guide to Syriac
Authors, a handbook of persons who wrote in Syriac; Qadishe, a digital
catalogue of saints venerated by the Syriac churches; and Bibliotheca Syriaca
Hagiographica Electronica, a guide to Syriac literature about these saints.
“There
was a period of time—about 300 to 1300 A.D.—when Syriac culture, especially its
literature, flourished,” Michelson said. “Syriac-speaking communities could be
found in what today would be Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq,
Iran, India, Central Asia, China and Mongolia. In fact, the Medieval version of
the Mongolian alphabet was actually derived from the Syriac alphabet.”
Michelson
noted that the new publications are interlinked. For example, one might look up
information about a particular saint in the guide to saints. The saint’s
biographical page then points the reader to the Syriaca.org authors guide for
information about an author who wrote about the saint. That author page then
links to the Syriaca.org guide on Syriac literature. In 2014, Syriaca.org
published The
Syriac Gazetteer, a geographical guide to Syriac culture which is also
linked in the same way to these new publications.
Michelson’s
use of digital technology to document ancient history is part of new research
at Vanderbilt in the field of digital humanities. The recently opened Vanderbilt
Center for Digital Humanities in Buttrick Hall supports Michelson’s work
and similar research on campus. “A core aspect of the Syriaca.org research is
using digital technology to gather and publish our collected data,” Michelson
said. “Just to illustrate, we have some 1,800 texts in our guide to the Syriac
saints. Keeping our information online makes updates much easier.”
“Having
a digital humanities center at Vanderbilt means that there’s a lot of energy,
faculty collaboration and opportunity to train undergraduates and graduate
students in digital research methods for the humanities,” Michelson said.
One
example of faculty across disciplines sharing resources involves Michelson and Steven Wernke,
associate professor of anthropology and director of the Spatial Analysis
Research Lab.
“The
code that we wrote for The Syriac Gazetteer was done in such a way that
researchers could use it for describing other historical geographic data,”
Michelson said. “Steve was able to use the application that we had
built—changing the Syriac to the relevant South American languages for his
research—for a historical gazetteer of the Andes region. That’s exactly the
sort of scholarly collaboration that can happens when digital resources are
shared.”
Those
who would like to learn more about Michelson’s digital humanities research are
invited to view “Syriac:
Preserving an Endangered World Culture” at the Vanderbilt
Divinity Library through September 2017. Charlotte Lew, a Divinity library
assistant, and Stephanie Fulbright, a master’s of theological studies
candidate, were the curators for this exhibit, which has a permanent home online.
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