ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the process of identity construction among the Syriac Orthodox, starting from the fourth century, when no distinct group was visible, up to the thirteenth century, when the group had most of the features of an ethnic community. It seemed to me that there was room to study this problem again, the more so since the social sciences had given us new tools and more precise definitions of such core terms as ethnicity, nation and identity. The chapter presents some of our main results, relating them in particular to the ideas on the formation of people, ethnogenesis', as expressed by the Vienna School. One's ethnicity was considered something one inherited from one's parents; it was an immutable personal identity. It is crucial, he argued, that the circumstances in which terms such as community, people, identity, nation and ethnicity are used are studied first. Here the chapter focuses on the issue of the carriers of the tradition.
