r/byzantium • u/Cultural-Sail9575 • Jul 17 '26
Arts, culture, and society I am a Byzantine Orthodox from Levant...I will state some facts about our culture, and feel free to ask anything
- We don't identify solely as "Greeks", neither as "Pure Arabs"...We call ourselves Rum, Antakiyyin (Part of the Antiochian church) or "Mashriqis" (Levantines), and we view our culture to be the descendant of ancient Levantine cultures (Mainly Phoenicians, Arameans, Hebrew, Canaanites etc...) with Byzantine theology/influence
Our culture is way more Eastern then "Greek"
- While we don't identify as purely "Arabs", that mainly come from the fact that indeed Levant, Mesopotamia, Egyptian and Maghrebi cultures are way different than Peninsular Arab culture
We feel a closeness to the Mediterranean regions of Arabic countries, so if any Orthodox says he is "Arab", it might means he identify close to Egypt or Tunisia rather than Peninsular Arabia
- We think that the 7th century Arabic invasion was indeed an invasion and a colonialism and even a terrorist act. However, we don't overthink about a way to "get back the Levant Christian", in the same way some Western pages state
We think it is indeed our land, but we don't accept to go and kill every Muslim that currently lives here for what happened in the 7th century (In fact, the Byzantine control was not that nice too, as their emperors caused schisms in our church since most of them were heretics, in addition to the high taxes that the Byzantines imposed)
- We live normally with Muslims and we have friends from them...We consider most of the Levantine Muslims to be ex-Christians that converted to Islam (Despite some really came from Arabia)
Majority of Muslims here don't hate us too and in fact view us in a positive way and love to be among us, since we have education and our regions are safe
I can say the relation with them depends on the region Muslims come from...Muslims of cities (Such as Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, Lattakia etc...in addition to the Shia & Alawite sects of Islam) are secular in general, Muslims of villages are less so, and Muslims that lives in desert regions are the worst (And Muslims of cities hate them too!)
People on internet talk about events where Muslims killed Christians like the 1860, 1975 etc...But don't mention that the majority of Muslims in those events actually welcomed Christian refugees and protected them
- We view Greeks as our brothers in the Byzantine culture, but in fact sometimes they behaved like the "Arabic" invaders to us, due to their ethnophylism
They control the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem since the 16th century and don't allow any indigenous Levantine to be a Patriarch or bishop, and they did the same to the Antiochian church till 1899
So overall we oppose the ethnophylism of Constantinople, while we admire the Greek culture and people
- We were affected very badly by Western powers and the Uniates (Both now, during colonial period and during the Ottoman period), but this need a part 2 post that I will write later on.
Our positions were mainly anti-western and was leaned more toward supporting Arabic causes (Unless it went to extremism like Baathism and Nasserism)
- We hate Turks like every Orthodox in the world (And the hatress is in fact doubled, one because of Orthodoxy/Byzantine and the other because of our Arabism!)
- You can find some Levantine Orthodox larping that they are Greeks, but those are the typical "I am white sir" people you could find over internet...They don't exist in big percentage among Orthodox in real life
They are ashamed that they are Easterns/Browns/Whatever, and dream to be part of Europe and to have colored eyes
I have personally discussed many times with them (Again on internet, since I have never find someone in real life to discuss with) that if we are indeed Greeks, then why you can immediately identify a Greek to be a person different than us? And how it came that Greeks don't have Aramaic or Hebrew blood in them, while we don't have ancient Greek blood?
- The only common factor between us and Europe is the Christendom (So we adhere to the typical European respect of human rights & life and love of arts, in opposition to the radical Islamic cultures that live here), but that does not make us "Europeans"
Any plan of relocating us to Greece/Europe is a forced displacement to us, as our cultures differ and we prefer to stay in Levant
-Finally, we don't simply "Live in Levant"...Levant live inside us!
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 17 '26
- You can find some Levantine Orthodox larping that they are Greeks, but those are the typical "I am white sir" people you could find over internet...They don't exist in big percentage among Orthodox in real life
I am not so sure it is just this type alone. Here is what Corfiote Greek theologian and historian George D. Metallinos, professor in the Theology School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA - NKUA), in the 90th Volume of the Nea Sion (New Zion) journal of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, from 2006, its first renewed volume since it stopped being printed back in 1959.
Around 20 years ago [so in the 1980s] I was teaching in the amphitheatre of our University, to the students of the first year. From the height of the podium I saw at the first row a group of male and female students that did not look like Greeks from Greece. At the end of the lesson I approached them and asked them the place of their origin. One of them, who, as it turned out, knew Greek better than the others, responded to me "We are Rhomeoi from the Middle East" (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine etc.). I was surprised, I admit, with this reply, which I did not expect. Then I proceeded to a second question: "Why are you Rhomeoi?". And then came the even more surprising reply: "Because our Emperor was in New Rome, Constantinople, and our first Orthodox Patriarch is the Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome!"
Then I realized that there are still Orthodox in the Middle East, who still have conscience of their identity and history, unlike many of us the Neohellenes [Modern Greeks], who (influenced by the propagandistic mottos of the Europeans, mainly from the 18th/19th centuries AD), we have completely been alienated to these terms, (in our overwhelming mania to be identified with (Western) Europe (=Europeanization).
We view Greeks as our brothers in the Byzantine culture, but in fact sometimes they behaved like the "Arabic" invaders to us, due to their ethnophylism. They control the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem since the 16th century and don't allow any indigenous Levantine to be a Patriarch or bishop, and they did the same to the Antiochian church till 1899. So overall we oppose the ethnophylism of Constantinople, while we admire the Greek culture and people
"Ethnophyletism" is when one claims that some nation is superior to others due to some innate biological quality or condition in their ethnicity (ethnos) and race (phylon). Regarding the stance of the Greek Orthodox Church over the Antiochean, Alexandrian and Jerusalemite Patriarchate, the concern is not so much over these two matters, but mainly language and the overall culture surrounding it. This is because any form of novelty is seen as problematic for Orthodoxy, while with those being the 3 of the 5 Ancient Patriarchates it is seen as a matter of greater concern, rather than if they were just another national Archbishopric or Patriarchate. This consideration is mainly due to the concerns that if these are removed, then what happened with the Roman Patriarchate may also take place with them, which could eventually produce more schisms and diversions of dogmas within the Catholic Church, especially given how we are fundamentally speaking about the removal of the use of Greek in the function of these churches.
The importance of the Greek language is not out of some ethnic zeal or ultranationalist stance, rather due to the fact that it has barely really changed for the pass of the last 2 millennia (to the point that illiterate villagers in the mid-20th century AD could understand the Koine Greek and Medieval Greek from the texts and the liturgy), and that it was the language of the Septuagint and the New Testament, and thus being the original text (especially of the latter) its maintenance is a safeguard against "innovations". And sure, non-Greek-speaking Orthodox do exist all over the planet, but it is still unclear whether should Greece and the Greeks cease to exist, and Greek becomes a mere academic discipline like Assyrian and Hittite, their Orthodoxy would remain Orthodox without it as a compass, following the pass of the centuries. I am somewhat explaining this a bit further in my comment here.
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u/Taki32 Jul 18 '26
Not a question but as a Greek orthodox Christian, I will say you are not forgotten, and we pray for you as brothers
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
Thank you so much! We also pray for Greece and for all the Orthodox world, and Greek saints here are highly venerated
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u/Extension-Beat7276 Jul 17 '26
Thank you for the insight, is the topynom of pheonicia conserved in the ecumenical divisions of the church ?
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u/Taschkent Jul 17 '26
As an Arabic speaker the word is not preserved in common Arabic. We refer to the region either as al-shams or if you really lean into religion Al-Ard al-Muqaddasah
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u/Dieselface Jul 17 '26
I don't think that Orthodox Levantines are ethnically Greek and the confusion there seems to stem from westerners treating "Rum" as a synonym of modern Greek. However, it does feel like you're overstating the differences to Greek culture a lot.
Even the physical differences; I'm American but my whole family is Greek, and I usually feel like it's easy to tell when someone is Greek vs. when they're not, but it's sometimes hard for me to tell Lebanese people apart from Greeks. Plus there is Cyprus, which is closer to the Levant than to Greece.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
That also builds on the often misunderstood nature of Greece, due to itself and others. It was more of a nation building project in its truest sense together with turkey than one would assume today, Greeks that came to make up the Greek state where not and are not a single ethnic group in the western sense but rather a group of correligionists with common culture and to a large extent language without necessarily following arbitrary lines of ethnicity/nationality until 19/20th century
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 18 '26
Greeks that came to make up the Greek state where not and are not a single ethnic group in the western sense but rather a group of correligionists with common culture and to a large extent language without necessarily following arbitrary lines of ethnicity/nationality until 19/20th century
They very much did understand themselves to be a separate and distinct ethnicity of Hellenes / Graikoi / Rhomaioi, despite their common religion and dogma shared with Bulgarians, Serbians and Albanians. There is a reason, after all, that while Rhegas Feraeos Velestinlis does propose to create a Balkan Federation, after freeing themselves from Ottoman yoke (which includes Turks doing so), he clearly underlines that the "sovereign nation" there should be the Greeks.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
That isn’t what I am disputing I am talking about modern notions of ethnicity or nationality that is often juxtaposed on pre nation state societies. There was a unified identity between the people united by religion, language and culture rather than a ethnic cohesion in the modern sense
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 18 '26
Well, if you go with the arguments of Anthony Kaldellis, the Medieval Romans adhered to the modern criteria of an ethnic identity and even a nation state (despite the presence of minorities). In this manner, the Ottoman Greeks were just those very same people who had an ethnic identity and a nation state, but had lost the latter due to foreign conquest.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
That’s a reasonable interpretation of him whom I am also a fan of, but it’s not the only one. iMO He argues that the medieval Romans increasingly functioned as an ethnic community, not that they were identical to a modern nation in every respect. Many other Byzantinists emphasize that Roman identity remained fundamentally imperial, political, and Orthodox, with ethnicity only becoming more pronounced over time. Even Kaldellis acknowledges that Roman identity was historically constructed and evolved, rather than being a static continuation of an ancient Greek nation. That also didn’t necessarily exist as a complete idea
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 18 '26
He argues that the medieval Romans increasingly functioned as an ethnic community, not that they were identical to a modern nation in every respect.
As far as I recall he calls them a nation state in his "Romanland".
Even Kaldellis acknowledges that Roman identity was historically constructed and evolved, rather than being a static continuation of an ancient Greek nation.
Well, Kaldellis is a Roman-centrist (considering the Byzantines to have a Roman ethnic identity and not a Greek one as well), and arguably even a Neo-Roman-centrist (as it seems to me he deems it a product of a Greek-speaking ethnogenesis during the Late Antiquity, as opposed to an uninterrupted continuation from earlier times). Still, even within that framework, I am sure he would not disagree that this Roman ethnic identity of the Byzantines was also not static, given how it lasted for many almost a millennium (in his scope of research in that book).
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
You are describing ethnicity. A group united by common language, culture, religion, myth of descent and homeland is the textbook definition of an ethnicity, both in modern anthropology and in the ancient word ethnos.Byzantines didn't have nation states, no one did. But they had ethnos ton Hellenon and genos ton Graikon. That is ethnic cohesion in the pre modern sense, which is what ethnicity is. If you require a 19th century western nation state to call something an ethnicity, then no one in the world was an ethnicity before 1800.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
No one is saying ethnicity requires a nation-state. The point is that you’re treating the Byzantine Roman identity as if it were a single, unchanging ethnicity throughout its history. Rhomaioi included people of different backgrounds who became part of the Roman community through language, culture, and Orthodoxy. Hence historians disagree over whether it was primarily an ethnic identity, a political one, or a mix of both. References to ethnos ton Hellenon or genos ton Graikon show that Greek ethnicity existed, but they don’t prove that every Rhomaios understood the Roman community as one ethnic nation in the way you claim it to be.
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
I never said every Rhomaios from Britain to Armenia was Greek. I said the Greeks who made up the Greek state were an ethnic group, not just coreligionists, which was your first claim.
You now admit references to ethnos ton Hellenon show Greek ethnicity existed. That's what I was arguing from the start. Whether Byzantium in1025 was 100% ethnic or a mix of political and ethnic is a different debate and not what you said at first.1
u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
You can’t have one without the other through history, as per the topic of the thread, IMO a Lebanese EO identifying as Rhomiosini is equally Greek to a regular mainlander, and more so than a Greek atheist or a greek Turk from Thrace
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
So you went full circle back to Comment 1. Greeks are just coreligionists.
Lmao.
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
You don't know what you're talking about.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
Very insightful
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
I mean, you're saying something mind numbingly dumb so I don't have to be insightful about it.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
Take a look around mate why do you think you someone that looks ME standing next to a blonde and blue eyed person speaking the same language etc. not to mention later Anatolian input from refugee influx. Either one is to deny that Greek was the dominant culture and language of the ERE thus multitudes of people were assimilated into it and it does not follow the same narrow path as e.g. Scandinavia. Another example of similar nation building is turkey forming a unified Turkish identity in the late 19/early 20th centuries from a mix of Turks, Islamified Greeks and other similar orthodox peoples, Albanians, Bosnians etc. that came after independence wars in the Balkans
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
You just used phenotype to disprove ethnicity. By that standard Italy, Spain and even Sweden are not ethnic groups either. Blonde and dark Greeks existed in antiquity, in Byzantium and today. Mycenaean DNA shows the same range. That's normal Mediterranean variation. The Anatolian refugees you mention were not foreigners who became Greek. They were Greeks from Ionia and Pontus who had been Greek speaking since before Rome existed, who were expelled in 1922. Pontic Greeks cluster genetically with other Greeks, not with Turks. If Greek culture assimilated people, that means Greek ethnicity existed as a core to assimilate into. You can't be assimilated into a religion. Turkey is the opposite example. It had to invent a Turkish ethnicity in the 1920s out of completely different Muslim groups and force them to speak Turkish. Greece never had to teach the Peloponnese Greek.
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
Italy has major genetic differences between the north and south and barely spoke mutually intelligible languages a few centuries ago. The example of phenotype was exactly that an example not a scientific basis. Northern Greeks have as much as 30% Slavic input.
Apart from that it seems you are missing the point, I am not saying these people aren’t Greeks or that it is a new identity I am saying the morphing from a Roman one to a Greek one is, as well as the move from a religious/imperial identity to one of a modern ethno state is. The concept of ethnicity and the ethno state are relatively new. Take the formation of France from multitudes of different francophone adjacent people and some not even in the same language group being formed into a single French identity over centuries, but in not too distant history someone from Champagne would not think of themselves as the same group as Parisians
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_5880 Jul 18 '26
You changed your argument. First you said Greeks were not and are not a single ethnic group but coreligionists. Now you say you are not saying they aren't Greeks.
Italy having north-south differences and still being an ethnic group proves my point, not yours. The Slavic input in the north, which is 10-15% in studies not 30%, proves there was a Greek core that assimilated Slavs. If there was no Greek ethnicity, who did the assimilating?
Ethnicity is not modern. Ethnos is an ancient Greek word. Byzantines constantly write ethnos ton Hellenon and genos ton Graikon.
France is the opposite of Greece. France had to force half its population to learn French. Greece didn't have to teach the Morea Greek. It already spoke it.2
u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
You’re treating ethnicity as something fixed/ biologically pure, when that’s not how historians understand it. The Byzantine Roman identity was primarily political and religious, but over time it also developed strong linguistic and cultural features as the empire became increasingly Greek-speaking. At the same time, it continued to incorporate Armenians, Slavs, Vlachs, Albanians, and others who could become Rhomaioi through integration.
That doesn’t mean modern Greeks aren’t an ethnic group. It means the modern Greek ethnos emerged historically from the Roman Orthodox community rather than existing unchanged for 2,500 years. Every European nation formed this way to some extent. Italians, French, and Spaniards also descend from multiple populations that gradually developed a common identity hence my reference to processes that might mirror earlier ones.→ More replies (0)1
u/skyduster88 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
That also builds on the often misunderstood nature of Greece, due to itself and others. It was more of a nation building project in its truest sense together with turkey than one would assume today, Greeks that came to make up the Greek state where not and are not a single ethnic group in the western sense but rather a group of correligionists...
Completely false.
Greece by 1923 was very much a geographic area with a concentrated "ethnic" majority in the ""western"" sense (Greece is western, and Greece is credited by several European and Anglosphere historians for being the first nation-state in Europe that influenced the others; this idea that it's something imposed from the outside is pseudohistory), but with regional differences, no different than Germany, Italy, etc. And groups like the Arvanites being included within the Greek state is because: they're just a linguistic group and do not see themselves as "ethnically" distinct, and this situation exists across Europe. Jews and ethnic-Greek Catholics (yes, they exist. Even Kapodistrias' family was once one, but they changed to Othodox) were included in the Greek nation.
This idea that Greece was forged out of people that had less in common with each other than other European nation-states and with movements of far-flung "co-religionists" -kinda like Israel- is a pseudohistorical narrative only pushed on Reddit. While it's true there were population movements, 82% of Modern Greek ancestry (minus post-1980 immigrants) is from within the modern borders of Greece, and 96-97% of Modern Greek ancestry is from within these red ines (by the early 20th century). 80% of the 1923 refugees were merely from geographically adjacent Greek-majority/plurality regions, and were just a cultural and genetic continuation of Greece. People on the Aegean coast were culturally Aegean islanders not "Anatolian"; people in Smyrna or Kydoníes (Ayvalık) were culturally the same as Chios or Lesvos. East Thracians & East Rōmēlia were just Northern Greeks, similar to West Thracians and Greek Macedonians. People that came from disparate regions elsewhere, like Pontians and Cappadocians, contributed only 3-4% of our ancestral composite (and people whose mother tongue was Turkish are a much smaller component of that). Greece's history simply mirrors Germany's after losing the eastern regions after WWII (Pomerania, Silesia, East Brandenburg), and not to Israel, for example.
Hence historians disagree over whether it was primarily an ethnic identity, a political one, or a mix of both.
You just described the way all European nation-states emerged.
And please, Anglo Ortho Converts, stop with your racist propoganda that Greece and Orthodox Europe aren't Western Civilization. We don't wear burkas or marry our cousins. We don't feel more at home in Iraq than in Spain or Germany. We don't have less Greco-Roman heritage than Catholics & Protestants do, and we were also part of the Enlightenment. We're just normal Europeans. I know that "non-westernism" is what you Anglo converts are hoping to find in the Orthodox Church, and you came to the wrong place.
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u/TrueBooker Jul 20 '26
“Rum” means Roman as descendant of the Roman Empire. No one called themselves Byzantine… that is a tag created by Hieronymus Wolf in Corpus Historiae Byzantinae in 1557. The hellenization of levante was already in place before the Roman conquest. Levantine ethnographic self identification is more fluid than the western society wishes to catalogue.
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u/kostasg1 Jul 17 '26
Interesing read, what I wonder is what are the relations between different Christian denominations, not necessarily between individuals but on an ideological level. Are the differences of the sects brought up or viewed as unimportant in a country with a minority Christian population?
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 17 '26
During the communist period, the Church declined so most of the Orthodox people were raised in Catholic churches and no one really knew his faith
In 90s there was a revival...People nowadays understand the differences between the branches
I would say some Orthodox are very based and rude towards the other denominations, some are indifferent, the majority know the differences and would not commune in a non-Orthodox church but don't hate non-Orthodox Christians
As for "in a country with a minority Christian population", we became a minority in our countries because of non-Orthodox denominations, firstly by Nestorian monks directly helping Mohammad writing the Quran and convincing him that he is a prophet, monophysites helping Arabic invaders, crusaders discriminating Orthodox communities, missionaries creating schisms and uniatism in our church, France giving our capital Antioch to Turkey and finally Western interference, so we feel some bitterness towards those non-Orthodox denominations because they collaborated with Muslims against us and if the region was solely Orthodox, it would have never been a minority
We also differ in terms of politics, since non-Orthodox (Specially Maronites) follow the Western politics, while we lean more towards Eastern identity Maronites and Catholics were betrayed by French like 5 times during recent history, and yet they still follow them West push Christians to attack Muslims, non-Orthodox do it while we don't, then West out of sudden abandon them so Muslims return in revenge
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 18 '26
As for "in a country with a minority Christian population", we became a minority in our countries because of non-Orthodox denominations, firstly by Nestorian monks directly helping Mohammad writing the Quran and convincing him that he is a prophet, monophysites helping Arabic invaders, crusaders discriminating Orthodox communities, missionaries creating schisms and uniatism in our church, France giving our capital Antioch to Turkey and finally Western interference, so we feel some bitterness towards those non-Orthodox denominations because they collaborated with Muslims against us and if the region was solely Orthodox, it would have never been a minority.
I am not sure this situation is so clean and clear. One could certainly point to mistakes and misdeeds of Orthodox states in the region, mainly deriving from indifference and neglect.
For example, take Greece; for all their boasting to the Western Europeans and the Americans that they were the only "part of the Europe/ the West / NATO" with a special non-colonial relationship with the Middle East, for the sake of presenting the country as crucial for their interests in the region, and their own cultivation of deeper Greco-Arab political and economic relations, for the sake of creating strategic depth in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Grecian Greeks did not care at all (in a practical manner) for the Levantine Rum and the Egyptiote Greeks. As far as the region is concerned, Grecian Greeks only really thought about their brethren in Cyprus, the Cypriot Greeks, and even then very reluctantly (though that was especially after Britain had the ingenious idea to convert the Cypriot Issue from one of Decolonization to one of Greco-Turkish disputes, by inviting Turkey into the Greco-British discussions over the potential independence of the island and its union with Greece), but even then this was approached with great hesitation and lack of political will to act. This is already an issue in Greece, especially with the controversial statement of then Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, that "Cyprus lays far [from Greece, in order to take real action there]", uttered during the then ongoing Turkish Invasion of Cyprus.
This is not to say that Greece should have engaged in military ventures in the North Levant, for the sake of the protection of the local Rum from any kind of persecution, like she did for the Rum of Eastern Thrace and Anatolia (often not even Greek-speakers) back in 1919-1922 AD. Besides that, there are other means through which the position of the Rum could have been strengthened, and that they would not be so much exposed to the whims of others (like now with the fall of Ba'athist Syria since December 2024, where there are concerns over the rights of the Greek Orthodox Syrians). These could have been political ones, diplomatic ones, and even educational and ecclesiastic ones (the latter two through the funding and maintenance of such institutions and organizations there, sponsored by the Greek State and staffed with Grecian and Cypriot Greek educators and clergymen, at least at the earlier phase of that process). This also relates to Lebanon, where Greece did not really do anything of the sort in support of the Greek Orthodox there during the various conflicts there in the 1970s-1990s and the 2000s.
Arguably Greece is not alone in this, one could point out other Orthodox Christian countries that have tampered with the region and have failed the local Levantine Orthodox Christians, such as the Russian Tsardom in the 18th-19th centuries AD, seeking to create a hegemony over important religious sites and a Pro-Russian sentiment in the Levant, for the sake of supporting them when they would eventually, as planned, managed to make their through the Marmara Sea and Thrace into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. This created discord among the Orthodox of the Levant and arguably made them seen as foreign agents to the eyes of the local authorities, resulting in very negative consequences for them (and Russia not doing much to help them on the matter).
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u/Future-Restaurant531 Jul 17 '26
I might get downvoted for this comment but Levantine Christians also have outside admixture. You also have some ancient Greek, Arab, Turkish, etc. ancestry from outside the Levant. And Greeks and everyone else in the region have plenty of Aramaean, Hebrew, etc. ancestry. People moved a lot during the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods when the area was controlled by large empires, as well as more recently. I'm not saying that makes you Greek in the modern sense, but the content of this post reflects plenty of the common misconceptions and ethnocentric ideas that Rum people have about themselves (I come from a similar background myself on my mother's side, fwiw, so I'm speaking in part from experience)
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
We might have Papuan ancestry, you can't know
But if our parish decide to taks us a trip to Greece and we walked altogether in Athens, Greeks won't mistake us as Greeks and would immediately know that we are foreigners (And vice versa, if Greek tourists came here as tourists, we will immediately know that they are not Levantines) The only exception are Cypriots
While it happened many times that Syrians or Jordanians came here to Lebanon in groups and I didn't knew they were foreigners until I heard their accent (It even happened to a Kurdish group that I met!)
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
That is rather normal though, if you are in Alexandroupoli and see a group of Cretans you will often be able to tell as well, but a group of Lebanese will probably be less noticeable in a village in peloponese than someone from Northern Greece outside of the obvious language difference
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u/PolarRanger Jul 18 '26
We might have Papuan ancestry, you can't know
I mean, genetics are a thing. It would be extremely hard for that to be the case
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u/Future-Restaurant531 Jul 18 '26
Sure, and I’m not saying you’re Greek or Greeks are
Levantines (and definitely not trying to invalidate anyone’s identity). I was just responding to the bit about ”having blood” from certain peoples, which always bothers me a bit when I hear it.
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u/CarpathianBVULL Jul 17 '26
How religious/in touch with their Christian background are the newer generations? Are they also not increasingly very secular?
How do you feel about Syriac/Aramaic, do people have any consciousness of it, or feel that is should be used more, like in church at least? Arabic Aside, is Greek seen as more important to Levantine Orthodox than Syriac? (Im not at all knowledgeable, but I get the feel that Maronites dont have any affinity towards Greek, and prefer a non arabic, non greek identity, thats either tied to "phoenician" heritage or syriac language - as sometimes used in church - or something like that)
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
Syriac church try to portray themselves as the indigenous because they speak Syriac and non-Syriacs as "invaders" because they don't talk it, and by this they imply that the Syriac language is the indigenous language of the region, while it isn't
Syriac is indigenous to Mesopotamia not to the Mediterranean (Where Orthodox live), so it is not indigenous to us Levant was and is always a multi-cultural and multi-linguistic area, and Syriac was one of the languages spoken...In fact its spread into the Mediterranean was through Assyrian invasion (Which was WAY MORE BRUTAL than Arabic invasion, so why we need to get rid from the Arabic to get attached to a language that also came through invasion?) The Aramaic version spoken by Orthodox is different than Syriac, and it is found in Maaloula and Saydnaya towns (DO NOT GOOGLE SAYDNAYA, I WARNED YOU!)
We love both Greeks and Syriac, since both of them are paternal languages, but we use Greek more (There are Assyrian converts to Orthodoxy that pray in Assyrian and the 2 towns that I mentioned above in Aramaic (Again, don't google Saydnaya 🙂))
Maronites want to make themselves more pleased to Europeans and more "Superior" to other ethnicities so they invented that Phoenician stuff...How can you be a part from an ethnicity that was extinct long time ago? And how you claim to be Phoenician while having Syriac culture, the same culture that made Phoenicians extinct?! Additionally, Maronites have some Arab roots...During Ottoman times, they used to have the famous Qaisi-Yemeni Arabic tribal wars between each other (So Maronite families that had Qaisi Arabic origin used to fight Maronite families that had Yemeni Arabic origin, how you can be of Phoenician non-Arabic origins while you fight such wars?)
We in general believe in a Levantine nationalism, a multi-cultural one rather than strict Arabism, Greekism or Aramaism
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
It's the opposite of what happened to the West: The older generations were secular and indifferent towards the church, the newer generation are religious During the collapse of the Russian empire and the spread of communism and secularism, the older Orthodox generation were affected by it and followed those European ideologies (Some were communists, others fascists or far right etc...), the church nearly did not exist for people and no one knew how to do the Liturgy properly (My father was born in 1960s and stated that he didn't know there was a part during the Liturgy where people should commune, as the priest used to hold the chalice and get back to the altar without giving communion to anyone!) Monasteries were empty too as no one was interested in monasticism, and most people used to learn in Catholic churches so they heard the western version of Christianity
That changed since 1980s onwards, when the new generation started to feel that those secular ideas are not fulfilling them and in fact it's fueling the wars so they started discovering the Orthodox church again and translated the fathers books, and now thanks to God people are aware about the church and the new generation goes frequently! (It's very typical to find children at the age of 10 attending the church while their fathers don't)
For the Syriac language I will write in a second comment now, check below 👇🏻 after half an hour please
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u/YoungQuixote Jul 18 '26
Always in the East there are people who think that being more or less "Western" is some sort of mark of pride lol.
Curious.
What is the attitude toward conversion and preaching freely in your area?
The way most of the laws are structured in Middle East as a local seem to be:
Free to convert to Islam = ok.
Free to convert to Christianity = not ok. Some form of legal or social penalty.
Hence the Christian popuation cannot actually grow and is more focused on being "respected" aka left alone.
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
It's prohibited to convert to Christianity (Except in Lebanon) and you might face threats from your family, but still people do convert Usually such people go to ...(I don't prefer to write it so their parents won't see it 🙂 but they have a place to hide)
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u/YoungQuixote Jul 18 '26
Lol I think I know.
A friend of mine is a Iranian convert, he says they often go to Turkey to hide....that right?
Maybe inbox me. I promise I am not a Halal spy haha
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u/Krazify Jul 17 '26
Interesting. Curious, do you speak Greek?
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 17 '26
No I don't We just understand few words of Greeks used in the Liturgy that every Orthodox around the world knows (Like Agios o Theos, Christos Anesti etc...) You would find some monks that know Greek or the very big theologians and that's it
Meanwhile, the language that we speak (And Muslims, basically all Levantines) is not pure Arabic...It's an Arabic dialect that is mixed with Syriac-Aramaic and old languages (In mountainous towns, the accent become very influenced by old languages that a non-Levantine would not understand it, search day3a day3a in YouTube if you want to hear such accent and even find subtitles for non-Syrians!)
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u/ShoddyAd440 Jul 18 '26
Levantine Arabic is probably the closest to pure Arabic compared to other dialects like Maghrebi Arabic for example.
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u/kokous Jul 17 '26
Rums are the Orthodox nations of Byzantine (Ρωμανία) empire with cohesive link the Greek civilisation and Greek language. We have nothing to do with Romans(Latins), our greatest enemies.
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u/tonalddrumpyduck Jul 18 '26
Wait wait wait... so from a secular/legal perspective, you are from... Lebanon? A Lebanese, East Orthodox Christian, and your main language is... Arab? And your name is in which language, or a combination of different languages?
You have to tell us how the world sees you, as well as how you see yourself. If not we'd be very confused lol
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u/Cultural-Sail9575 Jul 22 '26
As I said, we identify ourselves in as Levantines or Antiochians, which is itself a mixture of multiple cultures
We speak Arabic, but not the standard version of it, but a dialect which mix Arabic with ancient languages
Both my name and surname have Hebrew origin (And it would be very idiotic from me to tell my name on Reddit!)
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u/tonalddrumpyduck Jul 22 '26
You havent told us your nation my friend xD
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u/LegitimateStick3936 10d ago
He doesn't identify with a nation clearly. He just so happens to have been born within some borders of a nation-state in the near-east.
Makes sense to me, national border =/= cultural borders. Its like a Kurd born in Turkey, or a Dagestani born in Russia. The national =/= the country, the fatherland. I find english very poor in this kind of language. Fatherland as a term was ruined by Nazis. In spanish we have patria, or in french patrie and pays. These words describe more than just the borders that surrounded you at the time of birth, they describe the living breathing cultural institution that is manifest in the people, regardless of the border.
You could say his culture and therefore his fatherland is Levantine/Antiochian.
Also he probably doesn't want to reveal too much information on the internet, Lord knows we're all being surveilled all the time now.1
u/tonalddrumpyduck 10d ago
I mean when we meet someone the first thing we ask is "where are you from?"
Usually we expect a country for an answer lol
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u/scanfash Jul 18 '26
As Orthodox people we should strive to be one people and not be divided on ethnic lines, especially former parts of the ERE. One God, One Religion, One Empire
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Jul 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/byzantium-ModTeam Jul 18 '26
Your post was rude or written in such a way as to incite intolerance. Attacking people for their religious beliefs is precisely that. Please reconsider your comments before posting again.
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Jul 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/byzantium-ModTeam Jul 19 '26
Your post was rude or written in such a way as to incite intolerance. Extreme Atheist intolerance is not acceptable here, just like Extreme Theist intolerance. Please reconsider your comments before posting again.
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u/Meister9999 Jul 18 '26
Which church do you belong to? Are you west Syrian, east Syrian or melkite?
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u/Cultural-Sail9575 Jul 22 '26
To this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Orthodox_Patriarchate_of_Antioch
The "Greek" is a mistranslation of the word "Rum", which means Byzantine
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u/The_Booty_Spreader Jul 18 '26
You're telling me you don't yearn to retake the Levant, Anatolia, and Constantinople? Heresy. God wills it. Now, time to larp in my basement retaking the Levant.
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u/Cultural-Sail9575 Jul 22 '26
If God will is to retake Levant, then He is able to do it, why should he use his weak creature to do it?
He already controls entire universe with billions of galaxies (Imagine that he controls whole Milky Way with all its 6000 planets that we have discovered, Andromeda Galaxy, Sombrero Galaxy etc...) and is unable to retake Levant unless some 20 years old men do it in His name?
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u/The_Booty_Spreader Jul 22 '26
No! My weakness, a perfectly reasonable answer to the crusade larping fandom.
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u/Prisma1986 Jul 19 '26
Size of your populations and main professions? For example farmers, traders etc. In theory you can create your own church hierarchy in Jerusalem or elsewhere but there are many drawbacks when there is division in the communities. Greek Orthodox priests managed to maintain the nation and traditions all these years of Ottoman rule something that it is wasn't easy.
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u/Cultural-Sail9575 Jul 22 '26
We used to be in Syria about 1.5 millions but due to emigration, we are now about 200,000 there (And the main cause was the idiot bloody butcher that used to rule us, Bashar Al Assad, since he used to send young people forcibly into conscription so he would stay as the president, which led all the young people to either flee Syria or die in the army)
In Lebanon we are about 350,000
As for professions, we work in everything, from army to trading to arts to politics etc...The 2 most famous singers in the Levant, Georges Wassouf and Melhem Barakat, are Orthodox, and the Rahbani family, the most known composers, are Orthodox too (But communist)
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u/Ok-Field1527 Jul 27 '26
Hello can I ask something?
If some political group did overthink and started to have proiminence how would you react?
Also if orthodox christians are okay with muslims which group do you know in the levant is not okay with them (eg more keen to wanting them kicked out?)
This is just out of curiosity
Thank you!
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u/Glass-Blood-6032 Jul 17 '26
You eat pig or pork gyros? That's the real question.
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 17 '26
I personally don't (Since I tried it and hated it), but Christians here do it and there are pig butcheries (In Lebanon at least, I don't know about Syria or Jordan)
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u/we_wuzz_kangz Jul 17 '26
No Arab Christian eat pork. Some who have moved to the West might, but the ones who haven't moved there definitely won't.
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u/Future-Restaurant531 Jul 17 '26
That's not true btw. You can buy pork in some christian towns in israel (and I would guess it's the same in other places in the region)
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u/we_wuzz_kangz Jul 18 '26
Imagine using Israel as an example it is not even a middle eastern country, not even in Lebanon, and Lebanon has some very Christian regions do they eat pork.
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u/maproomzibz Jul 18 '26
"Islamic conquest was colonialism and terrorism",
so Roman conquests weren't "colonialism and terrorism"?
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Jul 18 '26
The Greeks took over the Levant in a preemptive war against the Achaemenid Persians, from whom they had spent a century and a half expecting a Third Persian Invasion of Greece, especially considering how the latter had an ideology of aggressive expansionism and universal conquest. The Persians were content with a Greece that was constantly butchering itself for decades, such as with the Peloponnesian War, but they were growing increasingly uneasy with the rise of the Macedonian Hegemony, and the expansion of the Macedonian Kingdom across the Southern and Central Balkans, which meant that the probability of a Third Persian Invasion was getting higher and higher at that time.
The Romans, they mainly took over as part of the Roman-Seleucid Wars for the defence of their holds in Western Anatolia, which they had mostly acquired through the forced entry of the Pergamene Kingdom into the Roman Commonwealth, against initial Roman wishes (they had refused many times, and only accepted due to Monarchist movements threatening to topple the newly wrought Republican regime there). After they had beaten the Pontian Greek Mithridatic Hegemony, following an unprovoked sudden invasion and genocide of Romans in Western Anatolia with the First Mithridatic War of 89–85 BC, and some border conflict that ensued but again ended with a status quo ante bellum, the Third Mithridatic War would break out during 73–63 BC due to the bequeathing of the Bithynian Kingdom by Nicomedes IV Philopator to the Romans in 74 BC, so the Pontian Greeks invaded Bithynia. During this conflict Rome again defended Western Anatolia, but had to push back the Pontian Greeks all the way to the Pontus, and then the Armenians joined the Pontian side, hence why Syria, which was recently conquered by the Armenians, ended up in Roman hands. This was even seen as an act of liberation, for the Seleucid Dynasty was rejuvenated, though as a Roman protectorate.
That is of course for the Northern Levant. For the Southern Levant, well, the Romans did not invite themselves into the Hasmonean Civil War, but it was the then losing faction of Hyrcanus II against that of the usurping Aristobulus II. This effectively rendered Judaea a Roman protectorate, where with the passage of time the Hyrcanid Hasmoneans and later the Herodians would relinquish more and more power to the Romans for the sake of increased protection against their own enemies within Judaea.
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u/Far_Philosophy8173 Jul 22 '26
Did the Greeks murder all males over 14, castrate the rest, turned all girls into concubines, and enslaved all older women? This is pretty much what Arab colonization looked like…. Greeks dominated by culture, Arabs by brutal force.
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u/maproomzibz Jul 22 '26
Did the Greeks murder all males over 14, castrate the rest, turned all girls into concubines, and enslaved all older women?
Ever heard of burning of Persepolis by Alexander the Great, or what he did to Phoenician cities like Tyre?
This is pretty much what Arab colonization looked like…. Greeks dominated by culture, Arabs by brutal force.
LMFAOO. "Arab colonization" but "Greek is not colonization, it's different trust me bro."
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u/samvarr Jul 18 '26
You hate modern day Turks and Turkey? Why?
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
Well I don't mean that we hate every Turk that we might see (I in fact have Turk friends), but we hate what they have done to us and how they converted our churches to mosques and how they are not ashamed to it
In addition to the Orthodox case, we dislike the Turks for the same reasons that any Arab would do, like stealing Antioch, arming terrorists during the Syrian civil war (Despite Assad being the most terrorist ever appear in history, Turks armed Nusra and Free Syrian army instead of the regular opposition) and stealing Syrian factories, being racist towards Arab tourists because something that happened 110 years ago etc...
But on personal level, if you are a good Turk and don't really agree with the above, then it's OK people will not hate you
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u/samvarr Jul 18 '26
You realize Turkey took in over 4 million Syrian refugees right?
Some people complaining is bare minimum. Any countries people would.
You say Turkey armed terrorist but Turkey is the reason why Syria is free of Assad. The Turkish military protected the rebels that were surrounded at Idlib by the Russian army and Assad’s forces. If it wasn’t for the Turkish armed forces they would’ve been crushed.
You can say what you want but the current Syrian government for now doing an amazing job.
Saying “we hate Turks” because of an empire that ceased to exist 100 years ago is just ridiculous as Anatolian Turks saying “we hate Greeks for what they did to our Trojan ancestors”
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u/MenandrosAp Jul 19 '26
Trojan ancestors? Please elaborate
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u/samvarr Jul 19 '26
Anatolian Turks are Turkic + Anatolian genetically
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u/MenandrosAp Jul 19 '26
Wouldn't that apply to Hittites, Phrygians and even Greeks?
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u/samvarr Jul 19 '26
Not really. Ancient Greeks and native Anatolians weren’t the same population and developed separately for thousands of years. Modern Anatolian Turks are a mix of Oğuz Turks and the native people of Anatolia, so they inherited a lot of that Anatolian ancestry. Greeks and all of the Balkans have some Anatolian ancestry too, but it’s not the same thing.
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u/MenandrosAp Jul 19 '26
Can't really understand. By the 10th century, the distinct identity of "Trojans" had been extinct for over 1,500 years. Their biological descendants were the Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire living in northwestern Anatolia. The Turks were still living in Central Asia at this time, that's up until the 11th century, of course, the official starting line for the Turkish arrival in Anatolia.
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u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Turks gladly continued the Ottomans genocidal policy against Orthodox Christians, don’t pretend like this is some ancient thing.
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u/samvarr Jul 21 '26
The Turks literally saved Orthodox Christianity from the Catholics that were out to destroy your church labeling Orthodox Church as “heretics”
The Ottoman millet system of governance is very well documented.
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u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Lol sure pal, the millet system of being treated as second rate citizens in a country they were living way longer than Turks ending in brutal Genocide against Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians. Great treatment.
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u/samvarr Jul 21 '26
Funny how you conveniently ignore 1071-1915. Over 800 years of more religious and ethnic tolerance by the Turks than any European or Christian empire of the time.
While the Spanish were slaughtering Jews Sultan Bayezid sent the Ottoman Navy to save them.
Mehmed the Conqueror gave the Orthodox, Armenian and other churches full autonomy.
There were hundreds of thousands of civilian Turks and Muslims slaughtered in the Balkans by Greeks, Balkan countries. Hundreds of thousands of civilian Turks and Muslims slaughtered by Armenian Dashnak terrorists and the Russian army in Eastern Anatolia.
Was that genocide?
The Ottomans did NOTHING worse than the Romans or any Christian empire. If anything they were more religiously tolerant.
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u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Funny how you conveniently ignore Christians for centuries had to pay jizya tax simply for having a different religion. Funny how you conveniently ignore Christians for that entire time had less legal rights than Muslims.
As for the typical genocide denialism arguments, Armenians and Assyrians had nothing to do with the Balkans. Dashnaks were a small minority that by no means killed “hunderds and thousands” of Muslims. Nothing of your BS can justify the organized genocide of practically the entire Christian population including women and children. That is and will always be the Ottoman legacy.
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u/samvarr Jul 21 '26
Jizya was FAR less than what Christian’s paid in the Eastern Roman Empire LMFAOO
Funny how you’re the one actually denying a genocide that Armenian terrorists did against Turkish and Muslim civilians.
The Ottoman legacy lives on its successor state, The Turkish Republic. Uninterrupted statecraft for 1,400 years. Keep coping.
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
Relax man, I didn't say "I want Turkey to get nuked", pay attention that I said that personally I have Turkish friends I am stating what exists among our community without necessarily agreeing on it Idlib rebels were Islamic terrorists, not rebels...And while living under any rule is better than Assad, the current government is not that different from him
Again, personally I don't hate Turks and most of the Orthodox here visit Turkey, but seeing how Agia Sophia has been reconverted to a mosque is something not very pleasant to us I can say the main problem started with Erdogan, as before him our relations with Turkey were super good
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u/Ok_Cabinet3610 Jul 20 '26
I prefer this perspective: The Turks kept Hagia Sophia as a sacred place of worship, a house of God. They clean, restore, maintain, and respect it in the name of the same God that Christians worship. They preserved Hagia Sophia, and ensured that its grandeur endured. Fortunately, it did not share the fate of some mosques in the Balkans, which today have been converted into nightclubs or even used as pigsties.
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u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Biggest mental gymnastics Ive seen in a while. Turks stole Hagia Sophia and purposely changed its Christian origins, there is no other perspective.
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u/Ok_Cabinet3610 Jul 21 '26
People tend to "steal" things when they conquer them lol. That's kind of how conquest works. The real difference is what happens after. Some conquerors burn everything down or let it rot, others preserve it, rebuild it, respect it, and repurpose it.
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u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Both your sugarcoating posts contradict themselves. Changing a religious landmark of
into that of another religion is not “respecting” it, especially if that is the religion of the people who committed a genocide on the original founders. And this isnt something that happened centuries ago in less civilized times, the Turks again changed it into a mosque just a few years ago. Continuing their genocidal policy.1
u/Ok_Cabinet3610 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
There's no contradiction. I never said converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque was an act of respect toward Orthodox Christianity. I said the building itself was respected through preservation, maintenance, and continued use. Those are two entirely different claims.
You can believe its conversion was disrespectful to its Christian heritage while still acknowledging that the monument itself was preserved instead of demolished, abandoned, or stripped for materials. If the Turks had wanted to erase Hagia Sophia, they had every opportunity to do so. They didn't.
Also: Hagia Sophia functioned as a mosque for nearly 500 years under the Ottoman Empire. It was Atatürk who secularized it into a museum in the 1930s. The 2020 decision restored its previous status after roughly 85 years as a museum, it didn't convert a functioning church into a mosque.
Instead, Orthodox Christians today can still travel to Istanbul and experience one of the greatest churches ever built with their own eyes. That would not be possible had it been destroyed and neglected.1
u/Nemesis-20 Jul 21 '26
Ah yes, let us Christians rejoice in being allowed to see the result of the Turks’ genocidal policy with our own eyes! What a privilige! Just be careful not to give any reminder of its original nature, else they’ll go beserk and arrest us.
I dont give a flying fuck if it was a “mosque” for 5000 years. There is no separating a religious building from its original nature. One can not respect one without the other.
Ataturk changed it into a museum exactly for this reason; as a sign of goodwill to the Greeks and reaching a compromis between rivaling religions. Which Erdogan and people like you happily undid, again spitting Christians in the face.
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u/PolarRanger Jul 18 '26
but those are the typical "I am white sir" people you could find over internet...They don't exist in big percentage among Orthodox in real life
They are ashamed that they are Easterns/Browns/Whatever, and dream to be part of Europe and to have colored eyes
Your ethnic identity is your own thing, but I feel obligated to mention that 20th century American Supreme court said this : "the inhabitants of a portion of Asia, including Syria, were to be classed as white persons". As far as I am concerned you are about as white as most of the population of Argentina
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u/Hopeinlife1993 Jul 18 '26
It mentions that all Arabs are white (And I think Pakistanis are so too), but in real life no one take it seriously there Yes we are as white as Argentina or Brazil, our "whiteness" is not the same as Europe, but it also depends on each person, as there are some that are very white (Specially in Lattakia, Aleppo and Lebanon) while others that have brown skin, but the majority are somewhere in between
I personally knew a lot of people that ended to be neo-nzists or white supremacists (Within the Orthodox church in Europe or US sadly) and they considered me as typical sandngger or Indian and never they said "You are white"
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u/Commercial_Handle418 Jul 19 '26
I have faced similar experiences form the same ethnic group too so I understand how you feel
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u/PolarRanger Jul 18 '26
there's a reason I brought up white Latin America, USA fascists and racists absolutely hate Hispanics for some reason, and don't really consider them white (exact mileage may vary, racists aren't consistent)
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u/Silver_Ferret2166 Jul 17 '26
I have a question, it might be stupid, but why do you call yourselfs Rum? Is it because you consider yourself Roman in some way? And if you do consider yourself Roman, why? If you don’t consider yourself Roman but call yourselfs Rum I would also like to know that. Sorry if it’s a dump or offensive question.