Ancient Christians in Iraq have managed to survive

By Gene Krider
news@statesville.com
Sunday, January 20, 2008

When I was about 12 years old, I got hooked on ancient history by a pair of books in the Statesville Public Library that were pulled off the shelf by the librarian, Mrs. Edith Conway. Ever since I checked out a book by Washington Irving, Mrs. Conway’s favorite author, she gave me special attention.

It took me all summer and several renewals to finish “A History of Ancient Egypt” by the Rev. James Biakie. From then on I have been fascinated by ancient history and have read everything on the subject.

Back at the beginning of the war in Iraq, a newspaper map showed the location of the different sects in Iraq, and I was astonished to see Assyrian Christians shown. During biblical times, there were four great kingdoms in the land around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I am sure many will remember these names from our fourth grade geography.

First were the Chaldeans of Ur, the city of Abraham, whom three religions claim as their founder. Then came Babylonia, whose King Nebuchadnezzar enslaved the Israelites and destroyed Solomon’s great temple. Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar, held a feast during which he drank wine from the gold cups looted from the Israelite temple and wrote on the wall, “mene mene tekel parsan,” which Daniel interpreted correctly that Belshazzar would be killed by the Persian King Cyrus who would free the Israelites and allow them to return to Jerusalem.

Later, the Assyrians from Nineveh conquered the Persians and in turn ruled over Israel.

All of this happened long before the Christian era but, if you remember your Bible, Christianity spread out over the known world and converted many pagans. The Coptics in Egypt are the best known.

St. Paul wrote letters to Greek and Roman cities instructing them in the finer points of the Christian religion, but this is the first time I had any inkling that Chris-tians tried to convert those in the Fertile Crescent or that descendants of these early converts were still active in that area we now call Iraq.

The largest of groups are Chaldean Eastern-rite Catholics. The BBC News Web site notes that they “are autonomous from Rome but who recognize the Pope’s authority.” From what I know of Roman Catholicism, that is a big oxymoron.

Iraqi Muslims speak a dialect of Arabic but these old Christians still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. The famous Dead Sea Scrolls were written mostly in Aramaic. Chaldean Christians have congregations in Mosul, Kirkuk and Baghdad.

The other ancient Christian group is Assyrian, which founded the Ancient Church of the East, the oldest Christian church in Iraq. Other Assyrians founded the Syrian Catholic, the Armenian Orthodox and the Armenian Catholic Christians. The ancient capital of Assyria was Nineveh, near modern Mosul.

When the British were given these lands after World War I, they allowed Catholic and Protestant missionaries to convert the Arabic population. Now, there is a hodgepodge of Christian groups and churches all over Iraq.

Under Saddam Hussein, the Christian communities and their churches were protected from various Muslim war lords. After Saddam’s downfall, these tribal groups began to harass the Christians, so many fled to Europe and the U.S., where they live in exile today. Saddam did relocate many Christians from the oil-rich areas and replaced them with Arabs, which started the Christian flight into exile.

From the first century, these scattered peoples from the mighty Assyrian and Chaldean empires have survived until today. I find this remarkable, particularly because they are the only people who still speak the language of Jesus.

Webmaster's notes:
With all due respect to Gene Krider the contemporary Chaldeans are not related to the ancient people of Chaldia. The name Chaldean was given, in 1553, to a faction of the Assyrian Church of the East, by the pope Julius III, when it joined the Roman Catholic Church. Since then Clergies of the new church and their Latin Associates have preferred to call its adherents Chaldean to distinguish them from those who remained faithful to the ancient church.

For more information see:

http://christiansofiraq.com/Assycatholic.html

Also

The Roman Catholic Church Role in Promoting Chaldean identity for the Catholic Assyrian