Omschrijving
Publications of Oriental churches are crucial building blocks in transnational religious practice, anchoring them in the lands of migration and transmitting tradition to the next generation. In this edited volume, publications from Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, and Tewahdo publishers are taken as crucial witnesses of how these communities rewrite themselves in the lands of migration, taking into account not only the texts as such, but also how physical books accompanied by social media and digital publications are central in a transnational religious practice geared towards transmitting tradition to the next generation. In this, the volume bridges the gap between two burgeoning fields, the anthropology of Orthodox Christianity and the historical study of the major texts that form the backbone of the Oriental religious traditions.
Scholars from a variety of disciplines (including history, anthropology, theology and religious studies), as well as practitioners in the field of education and publishing, have contributed to this volume by bringing in a variety of case studies. Thus they helped to situate the concerns of the ERC project Rewriting Global Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodox Churches in Europe, 1970-2020, in a broader context of the study of the role of texts and traditions in the Oriental Churches, with examples from the North America, Armenia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sweden, France, Belgium and Germany. The volume is opened by an introductory article discussing a few of the underlying themes of the project and the volume (religion, books, learning) and closed by an overview of the communal work of the project in mapping publications and publishing by Oriental Orthodox Churches in Europe, based on the project’s website, https://fourcornersoftheworld.ptrs.ru.nl/. Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
1 Labour of Love: Introductory Notes on Religion, Books, and Learning
– Heleen Murre-van den Berg
2 Addressing a Global Audience: The Ethiopian Orthodox Textual Tradition in the Context of the Early Ecumenical Movement
– Stanislau Paulau
3 From Intibah to #baytokh_ʿīdto: Literary Production in the American Syriac Orthodox Diaspora
– George A. Kiraz
4 From Apostolic Mandate to Print Magazine: Al-Kiraza and the Networked History of the Coptic Church
– Johannes A.P. Makar
5 Literary works within the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in Germany with a focus on Baden-Wurttemberg
– Josef Önder
6 The Migration of the Syriac Orthodox Community to Sweden: Towards a Description of Patterns of Change and Liturgical Adaptation
– Gabriel Bar-Sawme
7 Recovering the Monastic Tradition: Publishing Trends in the Armenian Apostolic Church in Armenia and America
– Jesse Siragan Arlen
8 Armenian Liturgical Commentaries in the Twenty-First Century: What the Changes in an Ancient Christian Genre Tell us about the Oriental Orthodox Today
– Christopher Sheklian
9 Online Coptic Theology: A Comparison between French and British Websites
– Gaétan du Roy
10 Rewriting Global Orthodoxy: Contemporary Oriental Orthodox Textual Traditions in Europe
– Heleen Murre-van den Berg