De Verborgen Parel (THE HIDDEN PEARL)

Syrian Orthodox Church and Its Ancient Aramaic Heritage

What do customers receive for this price?

• 3 books
• 3 video cassettes
• 2 video DVD

The Arameans or the Syriacs are a people with a glorious history, but are now in danger of being forgotten as well as being quite frequently misrepresented. The Arameans of Mesopotamia were the first pagans who had accepted the Christian faith.

The apostle (Simon) Peter established (together with the other apostles) in 37 AD the Syriac Church in Antioch (present-day Antakya in Turkey), the former capital of the Roman province Syria where the first followers of Jesus were called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). This name “Christians” is still in use today by millions of people. The Church of Antioch had gradually passed on the torch of the Christian Gospel to many nations and tribes and in Antioch the missions of the apostle Paul were prepared (Acts 13:1-3; 14:26). 

The missionaries of the Church of Antioch made many converts in Armenia, Georgia, Persia, Afghanistan, India, China, and the rest of the far East. The present-day Syriac-Orthodox Church is in all its aspects the direct successor of the early Syriac Church of Antioch. The title of the Patriarch of the Syriac-Orthodox Church is: The Patriarch of the Syriac-Orthodox Church of Antioch and all the East. 

To provide more publicity regarding the glorious history of the Arameans of Mesopotamia a project was recently launched by the Syriac-Orthodox Church of Antioch in co-operation with the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA) -- since 2012 known as the "World Council of Arameans (Syriacs)" -- to chart structurally the almost forgotten history, the culture and the Churches of the Arameans of Mesopotamia. The Italian film producer Giacomo Pezalli was so impressed by the history of the one of the oldest still existed people in the world that he decided to make a film about this people entitled” The Hidden Pearl: The Aramaic Heritage of the Syriac Orthodox Church”. The script for the film is written by among others the British professor in Hebrew and Aramaic Sebastian P. Brock who was a highly respected professor at the Oxford University. This project is finished in April 2001 and exists out of three videotapes and three illustrated books