ABSTRACT
The Apostolic Church of the East first surfaces in ecclesiastical and dogmatic history only in the fifth-century debates in the Roman empire over orthodox Christology. In nearly all reference books one finds information about this branch of Christianity under the heading “Nestorian Church.” Thus a heresy is attributed to the East Syriac Church, a heresy the church itself has rejected as incorrect since at least the sixth century. In 1298 the distinguished East Syriac theologian and canonist Abdisho bar Brika († 1318) wrote in his Book of the Pearl (Margarita) that East Syriac Christians “never changed their faith and preserved it as they had received it from the apostles, and they are called Nestorians unjustly, especially since Nestorius was not their patriarch, and they did not understand his language.”
