Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/14

viii To the ordinary English Churchman of to-day "the Eastern Church" is the Church to the east of him—viz. the Greek Orthodox; the Church of the old "Eastern Roman Empire," of Constantinople, with her great daughter, the Russian Church. The name "Eastern," however, as applied by those Greeks, meant the Church to the east of them—beyond the oriental frontier of the Roman Empire.

To speak of "the Persian Church" is to do as much violence to ancient facts, as to speak to-day of "the Turkish Church" (meaning thereby some one Christian melet in the Ottoman Empire) is to disregard modern facts.

"Syrian," to an Englishman, does not mean "a Syriac-speaking man"; but a man of that district between Antioch and the Euphrates where Syriac was the vernacular once, but which is Arabic-speaking to-day, and which was never the country of the "Assyrian" Church. "Chaldæan" would suit admirably; but it is put out of court by the fact that in modern use it means only those members of the Church in question who have abandoned their old fold for the Roman obedience: and "Nestorian" has a theological significance which is not justified. Thus it seemed better to discard all these, and to adopt a name which has at least the merit of familiarity to most friends of the Church to-day.

The representation of the Syriac names of men and places in English, presents a problem almost as incapable of ideal solution as that of finding a name for the Church; and we make no claim to consistency in our practice. As a rule we have transliterated; marking compounds by a hyphen which has no existence in Syriac (e.g. Ishu-yahb). But where the name has a western version (Greek or biblical), which for any reason is familiar to