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Julia Hintlian, MTS ′18 and Harvard PhD Candidate

“I’ve spent time in the Republic of Armenia, and in ‘Western Armenia’ (now Eastern Turkey). A lot of our churches have been desecrated and destroyed, and those of us who are fortunate to survive have a responsibility not only to know what we’ve lost, but to know that what we have inherited is valuable.”

Julia graduated in 2018 with an MTS from HDS. She is now a rising doctoral student in religion at Harvard. This past summer, she taught at the seminary of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Formations of My Identity

My doctoral degree is in the history of Christianity, and I am working on the influences of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism on Syriac and Armenian Christianity in Late Antiquity. My master’s degree is in Silk Road Religions, an individualized area of focus that included the same subjects I am studying now—as well as some other, lesser studied traditions like the religion of the Yazidis of Northern Iraq, and Ismailism, a sect of Shia Islam. During my undergraduate degree in religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, I focused on Hinduism and Islam. So, I arrived at the history of Christianity by studying many other traditions through the lens of “world religions.”

My mom got an MTS when I was in high school, and she would come home from her classes and talk to my 14-and-15-year-old self about what she was learning. She encouraged me to ask questions that I was not taught to ask in school, like: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? What have writers over millennia had to say in answer to these questions?

I am ethnically Armenian, baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian Church is ancient, and we are an ancient people with a rich religious history, strongly identified by our Oriental Orthodoxy. The traditional date of our conversion is 301 AD, which we claim makes us the oldest Christian nation in the world. This legacy has also been a big factor in my identity and my decision to study religion. Prior to being Christian, the Armenians were Zoroastrian, and our Zoroastrianism was somewhat unique from Persian Zoroastrianism. So, I think I have a lot to be proud of in terms of Armenia’s long-term historical, religious legacy, which has “evolved” to reach me over the course of many generations.

I feel that I have a responsibility to all the people who came before me to take my scholarship seriously. Especially on the Armenian side, because two thirds of our population was wiped out one hundred years ago in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Those of us who remain must carry this identity into the future. I’ve spent time in the Republic of Armenia, and in “Western Armenia” (now Eastern Turkey). A lot of our churches have been desecrated and destroyed, and those of us who are fortunate to survive have a responsibility not only to know what we’ve lost, but to know that what we have inherited is valuable.

Teaching at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

I have lived in Armenia on two separate occasions, and on a third occasion I traveled to Western Armenia. My family is Western Armenian. The Western Armenians lived under the Byzantine and later Ottoman Empires, and the Eastern Armenians lived under the Persian and later Russian Empires. The dialects are a bit different; they are mutually intelligible, but Western Armenian is more influenced by Arabic and Turkish, and Eastern Armenian is more influenced by Persian and Russian. Culturally, Eastern and Western Armenians are a bit different, too. It is a very complex history!

Last summer, I was teaching at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the center of the Armenian Church, which is located in Vagharshapat, half an hour outside of Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. I taught in the Gevorgian Seminary, which is where they train the next generation of clergy. I was mostly teaching deacons, and my courses were “English for Theological Reading” and “Introductory Syriac Language.” We read Irenaeus of Lyon’s second-century Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching in my English class, and we talked about the theology. I picked this text because it was basically lost to history for many centuries, and then it reappeared in Armenian translation (from the original Greek) in 1904.

In Communion

As Armenians, I think it is very important to know that we are in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, which are unfortunately very understudied in Western academia, are the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India. We have been in communion for many centuries, and these communities are often located in places that are not (or historically have not been) safe, and yet we have kept our faith and traditions alive. I think it is important to have inter-community relations, and that is one reason I study Syriac. I still have much to learn from my advisor, Professor Charles Stang, but I thought that it was important for these deacons to have at least a taste of Syriac, so they might one day find common ground with Syriac priests. Common language encourages the exchange of ideas!

It was very meaningful for me a few years ago when our HDS Syriac lecturer took us to a service at the local Syriac church. When they discovered I was Armenian, they said, “Why didn’t you take communion with us? We would have been so happy to have you!” And they were speaking to me in Armenian and really making an effort to welcome me and to let me know they were happy to have me in their church.  

Each Oriental Orthodox Church has its own leaders and hierarchy, but the leaders of those churches are in contact with each other. The Armenian Church has a Catholicos for its spiritual leader (actually there are two Catholicoi, but that’s a complicated story!) and then two Patriarchs, in Jerusalem and Istanbul.

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Shedding Light

Orthodox Christianity in general is understudied in America, but even when we do refer to Orthodox Christianity, we are usually talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, which has its own rich heritage and tradition and history. I think it would be good for more light to be shed on Oriental Orthodoxy.

In the History of Christianity track here, there are people who have had very limited exposure to Oriental Orthodox history and theology. Many scholars of Christianity know that the “Miaphysite” Oriental Orthodox Churches broke away from the fourth ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451, but they know little of our history after that. Christianity is such a massive tradition, with so many iterations all over the world, but the Oriental Orthodox Churches are very ancient, most of them have been around since the very early Christian period, and they have survived many trials and tribulations. Right now, the Coptic Church is facing significant persecution in Egypt, and my students in Armenia expressed concern over this situation. Armenians know what it is like to feel unsafe and to work to preserve our faith at all costs.

There are a few reasons these traditions are understudied in the West. The theological breaks are very old, and the churches are very small (especially compared to Catholic and Protestant denominations). Linguistically, they are difficult to access; there are few people who know Classical Armenian and can teach it—same with Classical Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic. These are obscure languages, and culturally foreign, which makes them more obscure and less accessible than languages like Greek or Latin.

It’s interesting to study Christianity right now, because some people seem to be saying it is a Eurocentric tradition of oppression and colonialism. When I hear that, I wonder how much people know about Christianity outside the West, and I feel compelled to say that this is a very diverse tradition, with a unifying theology and ideology that is manifest in many different cultural settings. But I do find in Protestantism and Catholicism a narrative that I believe in, and I look positively on these traditions because though there are linguistic and cultural differences, I think we are aspiring to the same truth.

The Catholic Church and the Armenian Church are two examples of churches that have been finding common ground recently, and I see beauty in that. In 2015, for the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, Pope Francis named one of the great Armenian theologians and spiritual fathers, Grigor Narekatsi/Gregory of Narek (10th/11th c.), as a Doctor of the Church, and erected a statue of him in the Vatican. The Armenian Catholicoi and Armenian political leaders were present for this special moment.

A Priceless Heritage

I spend a lot of time with my head in books from the fifth century, reading things that happened a long time ago. But it is also very important to me to care for the modern iterations of the traditions that I study. Their continuing survival and existence inspires me. To this end, I’ve done a little bit of work for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in Washington D.C. as well.

Tur Abdin is a region in Turkey with a lot of Syriac monasteries. Unfortunately, the Turkish government has been trying to seize some of these properties, including the fourth-century Mar Gabriel monastery. Unless you can appreciate what happened at Mar Gabriel hundreds of years ago, the theology, spirituality, and history created there, you might say, “Why does it matter if the Turkish government takes it away?” But if you know its religious significance, you know why it is worth preserving.

I often contemplate what my ancestors would think of me, especially two of my great-grandmothers, Antaram and Sultan, who managed to escape Armenia with their children after their husbands were killed in the genocide. I hope they are proud of me, I hope they know that they passed a heritage to me that is priceless and beautiful, and I hope they know that I am doing everything I can to defend it.  

Interview and photos by Anais Garvanian