Working Reconciliation in Jesus' Land
Maronite Bishop Speaks of Being an Arab Christian in the Universal Church

ROME, DEC. 23, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The Eastern-rite Maronite Church, which traces its founding to St. John Maroun, is the only Eastern Catholic Church that never separated from Rome. Instead of Latin, the language of the liturgy is Syriac, an ancient dialect of Aramaic.

The Maronite Church is one of the smaller Catholic communities numbering only 12,000 in a region where the Christian population numbers barely 50,000. The community is decimated by emigration, especially in the West Bank.

Mark Riedemann for Where God Weeps in cooperation with Aid to the Church in Need spoke with one of the leaders of this Church, Archbishop Paul Nabil Sayah of Haifa and the Holy Land.

More at http://www.zenit.org/article-34045?l=english

The Maronites, of all people, have no real claim to be Arabs, other than speaking the language. And I do wish they would get over this "We never separated from Rome" thing. On the other hand, there's that saying about a people united by a common misconception of their shared past.

Perhaps, then, as an historian, you could give us the real story and identity of these people so that we all can be relieved of our misconceptions.

They are all lineal descendants of the original Syro-Phoenician-Greek population of Syria prior to the Muslim conquest. As Sharian does not permit a Muslim woman to marry a Christian, and insists on the children of all unions between Christian women and Muslim men be raised as Muslims, anyone who is a Christian in the Middle East today is descended from people who were Christians in 632.

When the Arabs arrived in the 7th century, they constituted a distinct minority of the population in Syria and Palestine. The Muslims, like many conquerors, constituted a thin ruling veneer, administering the region through the remaining Byzantine elites. Over time, the vicissitudes of dhimmitude led to a slow but steady defection of Christians to Islam, in order to get out from under the social, economic and political disabilities Sharia imposed on non-Muslims (which means, in effect, that a lot of so-called "Arab" Muslims in the region are actually descended from former Syro-Phoenician-Greek Christians). This situation pertained until the 13th century, when the Mamluk sultans moved Christian peasants off the land (their consistent support for the Crusaders made them a security risk), replacing them with Arab peasants from what is now Yemen. Genetic surveys of Lebanese natives--Christian and Muslim--shows that 1 in 3 carries Syro-Phoenician genetic markers, as compared to 1 in 17 throughout the Levant.

As for the Maronites, they were "Melkite" (Chalcedonian) Christians who accepted the Ecthesis of Patriarch Sergeius and Emperor Heraclius I, promoting the doctrine of Monotheilitism. When the Muslims overran the Middle East, the Maronites withdrew to the area around Mount Lebanon and were able to maintain a large degree of independence. However, this also meant they were cut off from the other Christian confessions in the area--whether Melkite or Jacobite (indeed, there was periodic conflict among them, since each regarded the others as heretics).

When the Frankish Crusaders showed up in 1099, the Maronites were relieved to be free of Muslim oppression, and readily sought alliance with the Westerners. But it wasn't a mutual love fest. For one thing, there was that monothelitism. Apparently a majority of Maronites were willing to ditch a doctrine whose significance had become increasingly obscure to them, especially in return for the security offered by the Crusaders. But a substantial minority were not, leading to what appears to have been a civil war within the Maronite community, which recurred in 1282 and 1499.

The truth of Maronite history is hard to discern, because so many of their original records were lost over the centuries, and it was politically expedient to paint a picture of Maronites as having "always" been in communion with Rome, which in turn allowed Western powers (mainly France) to act as protectors of their interests against Arab and Ottoman oppression.