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Saturday, March 16, 2019

Where Maronite Christians Met Jews

Nadene Goldfoot                                     
Christian Maronite Woman with armed Zeibek in middle and on left is a Maronite Lebanese man of Royalty. Lebanese people who are adherents of the Maronite Church in Lebanon, which is the largest Christian denomination in the country.
            The Ottoman Empire opened their gates to the Jews of Spain and later from Portugal escaping from the Spanish Inquisition of 1492.  Jews left  because of forced conversions to Christianity.  
The Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine for 400 years, ending in 1917.  They had taken CONSTANTINOPLE in 1453.                                                         
     Maronite Christians of Lebanon 
Famine, mainly resulting from Ottoman blockades and confiscations during World War I (1914-1917) , that killed an estimated one third to one half of the population, the Lebanese Civil War between 1975-1990 and the low fertility rate greatly decreased their numbers in the Levant. Maronites today form about more than one quarter of the total population in the Republic of Lebanon.  With only two exceptions, all Lebanese presidents have been Maronites as part of a tradition that persists as part of the National Pact, by which the Prime Minister has historically been a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the National Assembly has historically been a Shi'i Muslim.
Though concentrated in Lebanon, Maronites also show presence in neighboring SyriaIsrael, and Cyprus as well as a significant part in the Lebanese diaspora in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Africa.
Maronites are a minority group of Christians in Lebanon.  Their government policy in Lebanon is that the president is to come from the Maronite Christians.  "The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church in full communion with the Pope and the worldwide Catholic Church, with self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.  Traditionally, the Maronite Church ministers to the Levant, particularly around Mount Lebanon, where its headquarters Bkerke is located north of Beirut.  
                                                                       
                                                                       
It's about 494 miles from Jerusalem to Antioch

Maronites say their origins go back to St. Maron or Maro who was a Syrian hermit born in the late 4th or early 5th centuries in the 300s to 400s and to St. John Maron or Joannes Maro who was the patriarch of the city of Antioch, Turkey in 586 to 707.  Antioch had been an ancient Syrian city.  Jews were living there at the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, and it had a synagogue in which some Temple vessels , stolen by Antiochus Epiphanes, were eventually hidden. The city was the capital of the Seleucid Empire until 63 B.C. when the Romans took control, making it the seat of the Roman governor. From the early 4th century the city was the seat of the Count of the Orient, head of the regional administration of sixteen provinces. It was also the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period

In the 1st century CE the Jewish population was large, and many gentiles attended Jewish worship.    Maronite Christians and Jews met here in Antioch.  
                                                     
St. Maron
Following Maron's death in 410 AD, his disciples built Beth-Maron monastery at Apamea (present day Qalaat al-Madiq). This formed the nucleus of the Maronite Church. In 452, after the Council of Chalcedon, the monastery was expanded by the Byzantine emperor Marcian.
At the time of the revolt against Rome from 66-70 CE when Jerusalem was burned down and the Temple destroyed, conditions deteriorated, and for a while Jewish observances were suppressed.  Jewish influence on the Christians was considerable by the 4th century when a gerousiarch (synagogue leader)  controlled Jewish life.  By the 5th century, the Jews suffered from mounting ecclesiastical intolerance, and there were outbreaks against them during the reign of Zeno from 474 to 491.  (Zeno the Isaurian, originally named Tarasis Kodisa Rousombladadiotes, was Eastern Roman Emperor from 474 to 475 and again from 476 to 491.)

"Jews, originally Judaean Israelite tribes from the Levant in Western Asia, migrated to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was Pompey's conquest of the East beginning in 63 BCE although Alexandrian Jews had migrated to Rome before this event. "The reason would have been for trading, but then as Romans gained power, the army would have taken Jews as slaves.                                     
Jews marched to Rome as captives after 70 CE 
On the Arch of Titus in Rome 

 After 70CE. Jews were slaves and they were taken to Rome as slaves to build, to be in their circus along with Christians captured.  

 A Jewish community is recorded to have existed in Rome at least since the 1st century BCE. (Although they may even have established a community there as early as the second century BCE, for in the year 139 BCE the pretor Hispanus issued a decree expelling all Jews who were not Italian citizens). At the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus (27 BCE) there were over 7,000 Jews in Rome: this is the number that escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus. The Jewish historian Josephus confirms that as early as 90 CE there was already a Jewish diaspora living in Europe, made-up of the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Thus, he writes in his Antiquities: " …there are but two tribes in Asia (Turkey) and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now and are an immense multitude."


In 608, before the Persian invasion, the Jews of Antioch revolted and were suppressed only after bitter fighting with a lot of massacre and exile following, and so the community ended.  

The Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in CONSTANTINOPLE was called the Byzantium.  Until 637, the area it ruled over included Palestine.  Jews were present in Byzantium from its foundation in the 4th century.  "The legal standing of the Jews of the Byzantine Empire was unique during the entire history of the Empire; they did not belong to the Christian Eastern Orthodox faith, which was the state religion, nor were they—in most circumstances—grouped together with heretics and pagans. They were placed in a legal position somewhere between the two worlds."
                                                 
Constantine is the son of the famous Helena.
She became the consort of the future Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus (reigned 293–306) and the mother of the future Emperor Constantine the Great. She made a religious tour of Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem, during which she allegedly discovered the True Cross.   The Eastern Orthodox ChurchOriental Orthodox ChurchRoman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion revere her as a saint; the Lutheran Church commemorates her.
          
In 321 CE, the Emperor CONSTANTINE, the 1st Christian emperor of Rome who ruled from 312 to 337., and had issued regulations which shows us the existence of an organized Jewish community with rabbis and elders living in Cologne, GermanyHe issued his EDICT OF TOLERATION from Milan in 312 established the supremacy of Christianity.  By 313 his decrees had become anti-Jewish, canceling  Jewish exemptions from municipal office and prohibiting proselytization or interference with Jewish converts to Christianity.  His legislation started the legal degradation of Jews that was typical of the Middle Ages.  
  Probably Jews settled in other places on the Rhineland at the time.  There were even Jewish soldiers, they think, in Roman garrisons.  By the 9th century Jews were living in Augsburg, Metz, and by the 10th century in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne, etc became popular Jewish cities.  RASHI, famous Jewish commentator and rabbi, was born in 1040 in Troyes, France.  He had his school in the Rhineland.   

 CONSTANTINOPLE IS NOW CALLED ISTANBUL.  WHY?  Because the Republic of The center of the Ottoman Empire was Turkey.  Turkey declared it the official name in 1923 and the Turkish Postal Telegraph and Telephone Office began sending back all mail addressed to the city by any other name from 1930.
                                                                       
Emperor Justinian, depicted with a halo
Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and also Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565.
Justinian was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565.  He was intolerant to religious minorities which resulted in an anti-Jewish policy.  Jews were not allowed to serve in civil or military posts, to own Christian slaves, to give evidence against Christians, or to celebrate Passover at the same time as Easter.  In 553, he issued an edict regulating the synagogue service and forbade the rabbi's explanations of the readings which to me is the most interesting part of a service.  In Africa Justinian outlawed synagogues in 535
and forcefully converted the Jews of Borion.  An unsuccessful revolt by the Samaritans and Jews against his rule happened at Caesarea in 556.  

 Justinian II invaded with his Byzantine armies and were routed in 684 which made the Maronites an independent people.  

Emperor Heraelius in 614 had issued an edict ordering the conversion of the Jews.  The practice of Judaism was formally forbidden by successive emperors, by Leo in 723; by Basil I in 873 to 874, by Romanus Lucapenus in 932 to 936, etc. .  

By the 8th century, Jews were allowed into Lithuania.  
Lithuanians received Christianity in 1387.  

Jews lived in Poland over a 1,000 years ago-by 11th century. 
Christianity reached them by 966.  

Benjamin of Tudela found only 10 Jewish families in Antioch in 1170. In Constantinople, Jews were treated with contempt.  The Turks finally conquered the Byzantine Empire in 1453.  The former Byzantine communities had their own rite of prayer, similar to the Italian rites.  

Though their traditions assert that the Maronites were always orthodox Christians in union with the Roman see, there is evidence that for centuries they were Monothelites, followers of the heretical doctrine of Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, who affirmed that there was a divine but no human will in Christ. According to the medieval bishop William of Tyre, the Maronite patriarch sought union with the Latin patriarch of Antioch in 1182. A definitive consolidation of the union, however, did not come until the 16th century, brought about largely through the work of the Jesuit John Eliano. In 1584 Pope Gregory XIII founded the Maronite College in Rome, which flourished under Jesuit administration into the 20th century and became a training centre for scholars and leaders.

1453:   Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. End of the Byzantine Empire.

 By 1930, as Germany started to become hostile to Jews and may have caused some to immigrate, there were 200 Jews residing in Antioch, with probably none today.                                     
                                                      

"A peace treaty was signed.  The May 17 Agreement of 1983 was an agreement signed between Lebanon and Israel during the Lebanese Civil War on May 17, 1983, after Israel invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut in 1982. It called for withdrawal of the IDF from Beirut and provided a framework for the establishment of normal bilateral relations between the two countries. Lebanon was under both Israeli and Syrian military occupations during its negotiation.
Resource: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maronite-church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maronite_Church
https://www.jewishhistory.org/ashkenazic-and-sephardic-jewry/
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-two-great-traditionsthe-sephardim-and-the-ashkenazim/
 http://www.catacombsociety.org/officers-of-the-synagogue/
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/byzantinechron.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_%28empress%29
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia; Antioch, Justinian,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Europe
update 6/4/19: file:///C:/Users/Home.DELL.000/Downloads/Are%20the%20Maronites%20of%20Lebanon%20really%20Jews.pdf , MIKHAEL

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