Talk:Abris

Speedy deletion

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Djwilms (talk)

Proof

What proof is there that Abris was fictitious.--Shemsdin2010 (talk) 01:30, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The process by which the early patriarchs were invented or borrowed from elsewhere (as in the case of Shahlufa and Ahadabui, two contemporary bishops of Erbil) to fill the gap between Mari and Papa was convincingly demonstrated by J. M. Fiey in his magisterial study of the sources for the history of the Church of the East, Jalons pour un histoire de l'Eglise en Iraq (Louvain, 1970). I have added an appropriate citation in all the relevant articles.

For an impression of how little we know about many of the so-called patriarchs of the Church of the East, see the article Patriarchs of the Church of the East.

Djwilms (talk) 07:05, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

October 2010

76.66.197.17 (talk) 05:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)Mar Abris is absolutely not "fictitious" the Chronicle of Arbela details all his life in stunning detail. Please remove any such biased theologically charged claims away from this article. He is a documented Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Church even knows where he lies buried in Seleukia-Ctesiphon.

Oh my God, not the Chronicle of Arbela yet again! The source you mention is almost worthless. Here's my take on it from my forthcoming book on the Church of the East:

Several other palpable inventions can be dated to this period. Around 550 an unknown author from Adiabene wrote a Syriac history of the church of Erbil and its bishops and martyrs. This history, the Chronicle of Erbil, drew on a number of standard western and eastern sources for its general historical background. It was structured around the careers of twenty bishops of Adiabene who sat between the second and sixth centuries, from Paqida, said to have been consecrated by the apostle Addai shortly before his death in 104, to Hnana, who became metropolitan of Adiabene in 511. Most of the early bishops in this sequence were invented by the author, who bolstered his fiction by assigning improbably precise reign-dates to each of them. The Chronicle of Erbil, first edited at the beginning of the twentieth century by Alphonse Mingana, who published the Syriac text of the Chronicle with a French translation in 1907, has become a battleground for scholars of the Church of the East, because it has been alleged to be a modern forgery. According to Mingana, the Chronicle was the work of Mshiha-zkha, an obscure Nestorian historian mentioned by Abdisho Bar Brikha, and survived in a single manuscript. It has since been shown beyond reasonable doubt that Mingana doctored his text in order to support this unlikely ascription, and to provide the manuscript with a convincing provenance. Hardly surprisingly, some scholars have suspected that he went further, and also wrote the text itself. Mingana was as brilliant as he was unscrupulous, but it is unlikely that he was capable of deception on so massive a scale. It is far more likely that the text itself is a genuine product of the sixth century, and that Mingana merely forged its provenance in a misguided attempt to win it scholarly acceptance. This appears to be the view of the German scholar Peter Kawerau, who has stubbornly defended the Chronicle's authenticity and historical value and has recently published a new edition of its text. But even if the Chronicle is a genuine product of the sixth century, that does not mean that its evidence can be trusted. The Chronicle was probably written by a monk in one of the Erbil monasteries, who cheerfully mingled truth with fiction for the greater glory of the diocese of Erbil. It may conceivably contain information of great value on pagan customs and other aspects of life in Parthian and Sassanian Persia, but it is rarely possible to separate the gold from the dross.

I have added a mention of the Chronicle of Erbil to the list of sources that mention Abris, stressing its unreliability. I had already mentioned Bar Hebraeus, so there was no need for you to mention him again.

You should read my book The Martyred Church when it comes out next year, as it demonstrates that much of the early history of the Church of the East was forged. In some cases, e.g. the invention of the Mar Awgin legend, it is possible to date the forgery to a precise decade. Mar Awgin first appears in Ishodnah of Basra's Book of Chastity (c.860). Thomas of Marga's Book of Governors (c.840), although a monastic history, doesn't mention him. Conclusion? Mar Awgin was invented by Ishodnah of Basra c.850. This is how historians disentangle truth from fiction. I'm not going to waste time here going into the precise reasons why Abris is invented, because judging from the tone of your edits you're not the kind of person who welcomes logical argument. If you want to know why, read J. M. Fiey's Jalons pour un histoire de l’Église en Iraq (Louvain, 1970).

I've restored the article to its original state before you vandalised it, and have drawn the matter to the attention of an administrator, asking him to block any further emotional edits by you.

Djwilms (talk) 01:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

- Pal you just called the church documents forgeries and you have NOTHING to prove it. I am undoing the changes until you prove this lie that Mingana made up an ancient syriac document (a conspiracy on the scale of the martians in area 51) which is ridiculous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.209.122 (talk) 06:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Djwilms has given a source backing up the statement that Abris was fictional, J. M. Fiey's Jalons pour un histoire de l'Église en Iraq. If you want to argue that Abris was a historical figure, you are going to have to find reliable sources backing specifically backing up the claim.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

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