Qnoma?...definition

[Paul Younan]

Shlama Akhi Dave,

Actually, you are correct in stating that our understanding is heavily influenced by our theological stand on Christology. The piece you are missing is that this word, Qnoma, has an archaic meaning (pre-Hellenism) and another totally different meaning, post-Hellenism. The archaic meaning has been preserved by the Church of the East, while the altered (post-Hellenistic) meaning has been adopted by other groups such as the Syriac Orthodox Church.

This topic is treated extensively by the series of Pro-Oriente Dialogues which can be found at http://www.pro-oriente.at/Home2Startseite_en.htm. These meetings involving all the churches of the Aramaic tradition were held in Vienna beginning in 1994 and continuing to this day.

I quote from Professor Sebastian Brock, of the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, who presented at the 1994 session of Pro-Oriente in Vienna:

"First of all (and this goes without saying), we need to try to understand what writers actually meant by the technical terms they use, rather than rely on what their opponents claimed they meant.....in this context, both the Syriac (Aramaic) terminology, and the understanding of that terminology, in the Church of the East can be described as both archaic and conservative."

"I conclude by looking at two sets of specific example....both are cases where the language used by the Church of the East could best be described as archaic.....we are dealing with imagery which was once widespread and which is still preserved in the Church of the East after it had been for the most part dropped by everyone else in the course of the fifth century controversies."

"It is essentially this (the archaic) understanding of kyana that is retained in the Church of the East.....by contrast, later fifth- and sixth-century Syrian Orthodox writers understand kyana as virtually a synonym with hypostasis.....significantly, in Syriac Orthodox translations of the later fifth and of the sixth century, the older rendering...is replaced by various other translations, thus removing the (now archaic) association of kyana with ousia."

"At the outset I would suggest that....it is important to retain the Syriac term (Qnoma), and not retrovert it into hypostasis (let alone translate it as "person", as has occasionally been done)."

"In many cases...the tradition of the Church of the East will be found to have preserved images and metaphors of the incarnation which were once widely current, but which writers in other Syriac traditions had subsequently dropped, either on grounds of their perceived inadequacy, or because they were thought to lend support to the position of their theological opponents."

"The 4th century texts seem to understand kyana very much with ousia....This meaning was kept unchanged in the East. In the 6th and 7th centuries however the Syrian Orthodox moved with the times and their understanding came close to the Western/Greek development of hypostasis/prosopon. This gave rise to most of the problems."

"The Church of the East in the Sasanian Persian Empire up to the Sixth Century and it's absence from the Councils in the Roman Empire", by Prof. Sebastian Brock, Oxford University, June 25th, 1994, Vienna Austria - presented at the First Syriac Dialogue, hosted by Pro Oriente. ISBN: 3-901188-05-3

As you can see from Prof. Brock's (a Roman Catholic) excellent analysis - the Syrian Orthodox understanding of these terms evolved over time to become closer to Greek definitions and Christology. You see, they lived in the Byzantine empire where the Greek church was the official creed. The Church of the East, on the other hand, lay in Persia outside of the reach of Hellenism.

The "lexicons" and "dictionaries" you mention which give meanings of "self" and "person" are, disastrously, influenced by this very chain of events mentioned by Prof. Brock (by no means a member of the CoE.) Because the SOC meanings changed, this is reflected in the dictionaries and lexicons. But, again, the archaic meaning of these Aramaic terms, as preserved by the Church of the East, is vastly different and more correct. This is according to a Roman Catholic professor at Oxford University....not Andrew and I.

I very much agree with the excellent treatment of this topic in Akhan Andrew's post. We must adapt to Qnoma and not try to redefine what it means based on our Western mindset. It is this very thing which Prof. Brock (the world's pre-eminent Aramaic scholar) warned against when he suggested that we not "retrovert" it into "person."

The bottom line is that, as any bi-lingual person can attest, sometimes there can be no 1-to-1 relationship between words in two different languages (especially when the languages are as different as Aramaic and Greek (or English) are.) This is an unfortunate consequence of the tower of Babel. But it's a fact we have to live with.

We have to leave Qnoma alone. I know both Aramaic and English, so trust me when I say that we don't have an English "Qnoma." The concept doesn't even exist, let alone a word.