Assyrian Church News Official News Site of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East
The Assyrian Church of the East, Archdiocese of Australia, New Zealand and Lebanon has welcomed the noted Syriac Studies scholar, Dr J.J. van Ginkel, Fellow of the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden Institute for Area Studies at Leiden University (The Netherlands) to Sydney to present a lecture on the history of the Church of the East.
The lecture, held on Friday 19 October 2012 in the H.H. Mar Dinkha IV Assembly Hall at Sydney’s St Hurmizd Assyrian Primary School was attended by a large number of faithful interested in learning more about the deep, glorious and complex history of the Church of the East.
Accompanying Dr van Ginkel during his visit to the Assyrian Church of the East was renowned Syriac scholar, Professor Rifaat Ebied of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Sydney.
Dr van Ginkel’s impressive presentation explored the early beginnings of the Christian faith in the apostolic age and tracked the spread and expansion of the faith throughout the East and then further into the rest of the world.
Dr van Ginkel’s lecture focused at length on the famous missionary enterprise of the Church of the East which had at its height spread from Mesopotamia to India, China, Japan throughout Central Asia and Tibet, and according to Dr van Ginkel, possibly even as far as Indonesia.
A full recording of Dr van Ginkel’s lecture can be viewed online at the below link:
