The Syriac Orthodox Church

Denomination·Founded 451 CE·est. ~2 million worldwide excluding the Indian archdiocese, which is counted here as the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church; Syrian and Turkish figures have fallen sharply since 2011.

Judaism → Christianity → Oriental Orthodoxy → The Syriac Orthodox Church → 2 branches

The Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the EastArchiveDepartment of Syriac Studies

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Rite of The Syriac Orthodox Church

The Qurbono of Saint James.

The West Syriac liturgy is chanted end to end and takes two to three hours, longer on feasts. Its anaphora is attributed to James the brother of the Lord and is the oldest complete eucharistic prayer still in regular use anywhere. The chant is catalogued in the Beth Gazo — the treasury — in eight modes that rotate week by week.

⏱ Weekly on Sunday, and daily in the monasteries◌ The parish; the deacons carry half the singing
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What happensThe Anaphora of Saint James, chanted throughout, with the priest at the altar behind a curtain that opens at the consecration
What it needsLeavened bread stamped with crosses, wine, a censer, and a choir that knows the mode of the week
What it aims atTo offer the same Qurbono Jerusalem offered, in the language it was first offered in
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this rite is held

The Anaphora of Saint James underlies the whole West Syriac family — Syriac Orthodox, Maronite, Syriac Catholic, and both Malankara churches. The Syriac Orthodox tradition preserves dozens of alternative anaphoras and uses a rotation of them, which is unusual; most rites settled on one or two. The Beth Gazo is the reference book of the chant, learned by ear and now recorded; a deacon who knows it well is a substantial figure in the parish. Services are increasingly bilingual — Syriac with Arabic, Turkish, Swedish, German or English — and the choice of second language is one of the running arguments in diaspora parishes.

The same ground, other faiths

rites that share this one's ideas
The Eucharist. Christianity Go deeper →
The Mass. Catholicism Go deeper →
The liturgy is heaven on earth. Eastern Orthodoxy · core tenet Go deeper →
Word and sacrament. Lutheranism Go deeper →
The sacrament meeting. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Go deeper →
The Holy Qurbana. The Church of the East Go deeper →

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