Who are the Palestinian Christians?

Faculty Publication: why do some Muslims convert to Christianity?

Alex Miller, lecturer in church history and theology for NETS, has recently published an article analyzing studies on the reasons given by individuals from Muslim backgrounds regarding why they convert to Christianity.

The article can be found HERE, and was published in the Journal of Asian Mission.

Who are the Arab Evangelicals in the Holy Land?

Here is the second video for the Holy Land Connection (HLC), with our seminary president Azar Ajaj and hosted by Rani Espanioly.

Who are the Arab Christians?

Alex Miller, lecturer in Church History and Theology, recently discussed the question of who are the Arab Christians with Rani Espanioly for his ministry SALAM in the Holy Land. Here is the video:

Azar Ajaj on the Van Dyck translation of the Bible into Arabic

Azar Ajaj, our seminary president, has recently published his article titled "The Van Dyck Translation: The American Mission Board and the Translation of the Bible into Arabic" in Volume 11:1 of St Francis Magazine.

The article is about how the main Arabic-language Bible, still in wide use today, came into being.

Click HERE for the article.

Faculty Publication: The Bricolage of Global Anglicanism

This church review by Alex Miller of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in San Antonio, Texas, was published in Anglican and Episcopal History in March of 2014.

Holy Trinity is a church belonging to the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, itself a member of both the Church of Nigeria (Anglican) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which calls itself a province-in-formation.

Read about the origins of this parish as it hived from Christ Episcopal Church (San Antonio) and incorporated multiple different Anglican influences into its worship.

Download the PDF from academia.edu or click here: Miller_AEH_San_Antonio-libre.

Moh-Christophe Bilek on being a Berber Christian and convert from Islam

Alex Miller recently interviewed Moh-Christophe Bilek. Mr. Bilek is a native of Algeria and of Berber background, as opposed to Arab background. Bilek is also involved in Internet-based outreach and apologetics.

Miller and Bilek's interview was recently published in French (here) and then translated into English for Global Missiology (here). Here is one of Miller's questions with Bilek's response:

Miller: One of the classes I teach here in Nazareth is on Early Church History, and North Africa had some very important churches like Carthage and Hippo, and great saints like Augustine, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Cyprian. Yet indigenous Christianity was almost entirely absent from the region for centuries. Do you feel like that early history means much to the new Christians today? Or is it just an interesting but unimportant historical footnote?

Bilek: The discovery of the African saints, and mainly the greatest of them, Augustine of Thagaste [traditionaly known as Augustine of Hippo], is always vivifying and almost blissful: If my distant ancestors were Christians, then there is no shame in being one, more than one convert has said to himself. Some have declared after their baptism, I came back to the religion of my fathers! But more generally speaking, ancient Christianity enables oneself to ask the question of freedom of choice. If my distant ancestors chose Islam freely, then I can make the same choice myself; but if this religion was imposed on him bi seif (by sword), then I do not commit a treason toward my tribe if I quit this religion.

Around the Galilee with NETS

During the month of November, Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary and Galilee Bible College organized three day trips in and around the Galilee Region. These were led by the Rev Dr Kamal Farah, an Anglican minister who is an expert in the biblical history and the geography of the Holy Land.

The trips were organized to include students, pastors and leaders, and 40 of them took part in the trips. Pastor Kamal gave some very interesting insights from his vast knowledge of the history of the Holy Land, and also led devotional Bible Studies relevant to each site.

The first trip was a visit to the Biblical sites around Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, including Tabgha, Capernaum and the Mount of Beatitudes. This trip covered the teaching and ministry of Jesus described in Mathew 5-12. Visiting the places where Jesus spent days in prayer, fed the crowds, healed the sick, taught and preached was very much inspiring.

The second trip was a local visit to Nazareth churches, recalling the story of the Annunciation and parts of Jesus’ ministry in Nazareth. From there we drove to Mount Precipice, a place that overlooks several Biblical sites from both Old and New Testaments. This was followed by a visit to the Wedding Church at Cana. We then went to the archaeological site of Sepphoris, the city that Herod Antipas was building during the childhood of Jesus, and which according to tradition is the hometown of the Virgin Mary.

The third trip was a visit to the dramatic cliffs of Mount Arbel, to the recently excavated site of Magdala, both by the Sea of Galilee, and finally to Banias – the site of Caesarea Philippi. We managed to combine this trip with a visit to the local Druze market to buy their fruit and produce.

Many of those who attended really enjoyed this combination of teaching, prayer, visiting the sites, some of which were situated in National Parks, and of learning new things about these special places.

Azar Ajaj on the history of Arab evangelicals in Israel-Palestine

At the annual general meeting (Winter of 2013) of Evangelical Alliance of Israel, Azar Ajaj, president of Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary, presented this talk on the roots of evangelicalism among Arabs in Israel-Palestine.

To listen to the lecture click HERE.

Baptist Beginnings in Lebanon: 1893-1956, by Julia Graham

Our seminary is happy to make this rare text available in PDF format.

Baptist Beginnings in Lebanon: 1893-1956 is a series of texts written by and compiled by Julia Graham, and is dated 1986. The text, it appears, was type-written and lists no place of publication or publisher.

Because of the large size of the scanned material, the book (202 pages long) is available in four PDF files:

Part 1 (Cover through page 51)
Part 2 (pp 52-103)
Part 3 (pp 104-150)
Part 4 (pp 151-202)

If anyone knows additional information about the author or the text please leave that in the comment section. If for any reason those links are not working the files are also available on Scribd:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

This is a good place to remind readers that we previously made available a scanned version of a rare 1925 text from the Palestine National Christian Council which provides insights on Anglicans/Episcopalians here after World War 1. For more information on that text click here.

Book Review of "A Muslim who became a Christian: The Story of John Avetaranian"

Alex Miller has recently published a book review of the following book:

A Muslim who became a Christian: The Story of John Avetaranian (born Muhammad Shukri Effendi), second edition, by John Avetaranian, translated by John Bechard (Sandy, UK: AuthorsOnline 2003)

Here is a section of the review:

Born Muhammad Shukri Efendi, as the complete title indicates, this writer and subject of the book lived from 1861 through 1919. Born into the prestigious Ottoman effendi class, Shukri was a descendent of the Prophet himself. He spent much of his early years traveling around with his odd and peripatetic father—a mystic who could not settle down. 

The review of this book has recently been published in the International Journal of Frontier Missiology, Vol 30:1, Spring 2013. The review can be downloaded from their website. 

A history of our seminary's first six years

This article, by our seminary president, Azar Ajaj, is his recollection of the founding of our seminary by Bryson Arthur (and others) and our first six years of life (2007-2013). Anyone interested in Christian higher education or evangelical Christianity in Israel will find this of interest.

Mary's Well Occasional Papers, Vol 2:2: "Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary: The First Six Years" by Azar Ajaj (September 2013).

Previous occasional papers are accessible through the blog menu on the right hand side of the browser.

Faculty Publication: article on the Episcopal church in Nazareth

This was published last year but it had not been posted to this blog yet. This brief article includes a historical sketch for the Christ Church (Episcopal/Anglican) in Nazareth, and a description of the liturgy as it presently exists.

Miller, Duane Alexander. 2012. "The First Church of the Diocese of Jerusalem: a work in progress--or maybe not?" in Anglican and Episcopal History Vol 81:2, June.

Other articles by the author on the Episcopal/Anglican community in the region are:

Church of the Redemer, in Amman in Anglican and Episcopal History
Cathedral of St George the Martyr, in Jerusalem in Anglican and Episcopal History
"Identity, Liturgy and Mission: the Episcopal Church in Jordan" in Journal of Anglican Studies

Christianity in Palestine: Lecture 6, Constantine and Helena

Lecture 6_Constantine and Helena

Constantine, a controversial figure, was influential for the development of Christianity after the 4th Century. In relation to Palestinian Christianity, Helena, his mother, was equally important but in a different way, as the one whose mission to the Holy Land would lay out the basic map of holy places for all future generations, including ours.

Lecturer: Duane Alexander Miller Botero

Assigned Reading: St Constantine the Great: an Orthodox perspective by Marina Shelley Havach