Cappadocia

[martha hananian]

Who can tell me about the caves in Cappadocia?On a recent public TV program I caught part of a prgram on Cappadocia in Turkey.

 

What I heard was - early Christians lived in these caves, thousands of them. The setup was something - early engineering achievement.

 

Early Christians were mentioned, but who were they??

[bellthecat]

They were Greeks, and they were not "early Christians". The documentary probably used that phrase simply to avoid explaining why there are no Christians left there (i.e. the genocide and expulsion of the Greek inhabitants in 1922).

[THOTH]

There is quite a lot of variety in Cappadocia. On one hand you have the traditional fairy tale Tufa spires (think Bryce Canyon Utah) where communal cave dwelings and beautiful churches carved into the rock were built. In other places there are stream valleys lined with sheer cliffs where other types of cave and surface dwellings were built (very similar to the Anazazi Indian dwellings in the Americah Southwest. And then there are the remains of once large underground cities - some miles accross and up to 8 (known) stories deep - with the ability to (temporarily...for months perhaps) house (tens of)thousands. All of these places are truly impressive (very worthwhile to visit) - and all of them pre-date Christianity by thousands of years. Even the Christian era lasted from prior to 300 AD/CE to 1922. And yes,from what I know, I think that these people were basically Greeks. Their art (Icons) certainly strongly resemble the Byzantine.

[Caucasian]

The peri bacalari are geographic shapes. And the stones area are getting large to the east. I can see the caves in south of Kayseri

[yalpa]

What timeframe are we talking about here? If it is the first centuries after Christ then it is very likely that they were not Greeks in the modern sense, if in any sense. 'Christians' is probably the best term to use in this case.

 

t.

[Arpa]

You mean this?

http://community.webshots.com/album/87363927dRVeth

[Arpa]

Not to forget that Grigor the so called Lusavorich learned about that new fangled religion in those caves.

I see no traces of his stay there, of course at that time Mesrop had not yet invented our Ayb Ben Gim and Grigor, true to the Armenian spirit chose alien culture to ours. Why did he not invent a new and improved religion by us and for us?

Not to forget that Grigor was not from us, by us or for us.

[yalpa]

What makes the early Christian groups of Cappadocia Greeks? Were they really Greeks? I will approach this problem from two different directions. On the one hand, I will look at what the term Hellenes and/or Hellas meant to the Byzantines and/or Christians during this time. On the other hand, I will also try to see if there were other ethnic and/or linguistic groups that might have existed in this area.

 

It is generally agreed that the Byzantines used neither the term Hellenes nor the Byzantines to identify themselves. They were Romans, and they stayed as such until the 13th century (Chanaris, 1963:107; Vacalopoulos, 1970:27-28). It was around this time that the use of the term Hellenes by some Romans started appearing and gaining some popularity. On the other hand, according to the Pope and the rest of the Europeans, they were generally known as Greeks after the coronation of Charlemagne sometime around 800 AD(Chanaris, 1963:106). As far as the Byzantine state was concerned, identification with Hellenes was a very late development, one that occurred much later than the 4th century.

 

Likewise, the newly emerged Christianity was not very sympathetic to the term Hellenes, as this term represented the pagan beliefs against which the Church was in a very serious struggle. With the recognition of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire came the destruction of the ancient Greek temples, statues and various works of art (Vacalopoulos,1970:19; Mıtchell,1993:67). The term Hellenes was identical with pagans at this time (Chanaris, 1953:619). At some point, even the Saracens [Muslims] were called Hellenes (Chanaris, 620). Therefore, adds Chanaris, the terms Helladikoi and Graikoi were devised for the people of Greece (not for the people of Asia Minor, Anatolia), and the latter term was used in a derogatory sense on occasions. It seems that at least in the beginning, during the time when Christianity was fighting against in pagan beliefs, Hellenes were those who practiced these pagan beliefs. How could they identify themselves as Hellenes?

 

It is necessary at this point to tell that I am talking mostly about Cappadocia until and around the fourth century AD, as this would be the period of the Early Christians. This detail is important, since hellenization of Asia Minor was not complete until the 7th century AD, although there were certainly ex-Hellenes among the early Christians (Chanaris, 1959:28). Neither culturally nor linguistically, the Byzantine Empire can be called Hellene or Greek until the 7th century. Even then it is not easy to conclude that the inhabitants of the empire referred to themselves as Greeks or Hellenes, though predominantly Greek both in culture and language after this time.

 

As mentioned above, there were certainly ex-Hellenes among the early Christians in Cappadocia. Who were these ex-Hellenes? Were they ex-Hellenes because of race (genetics), colonization or cultural assimilation?

 

“Further east the linguistic situation in Cappadocia may have been still more complicated. Even sophisticated Cappadocians spoke Greek with a thick accent, but their less privileged fellow countrymen spoke other languages which were known to the fourth-century fathers of Cappadocian Church and even supplied an argument for contemporary Christological debate. Further, Cappadocia had long contained pockets of Iranian settlement, and Basil in the 370s provided a detailed description of the fire-worshipping Magusaioi who doubtless still spoke in their own tongue at least for ritual purposes” (Mitchell, 1993:174).

 

According to Chanaris (1959:9), Phrygian, which went through “a true renaissance” in the first three centuries in AD, still existed in the 6th century. The situation was the same with Lycanoian. Celtic was still being heard in the 4th century. Linguistically, Cappadocia was a very mixed environment in the 4th century and seems to have housed a variety of cultures. On the other hand, it is true that it was the official Church, in addition to the administration, the army and the schools, which was the major driving force behind the process of hellenization in Central Anatolia (Chanaris, 1959:28). But, the Church was probably in no position to take the lead in this process, for it was busy with hellenizing itself at this time. “…when the time came to give Christianity an intellectual content, it was from Greek that its technical terms and phrases were drawn and it was in Greek, of course, that the new thought, replete with Greek ideas, was expressed. This process begun by the great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, in the late second and early third centuries, had been virtually completed by the end of the fourth century largely through the work of the great Cappadocians, who in addition, drawing from the traditions of Greek paedia, formulated the intellectual content of that of the Christians and, as a consequence, of Byzantium” (Chanaris, 1963:108).

 

Up against the massacres and persecutions in the hands of pagans, the early Christians were in no position to be Hellenes, even though some of them could have been previously, before they accepted the new faith. One of the requirements of becoming a Christian was to deny the gods and rituals of Hellenes. Once Christianity was in power and had removed the danger of pagan rituals, there was no reason not to take advantage of the Hellen heritage in other ways. Still, the completion of hellenization had to wait until the 7th century, as more and more Greek speakers start arriving in Anatolia following the loss of territories in Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

 

To sum it up, using the term “early Christians” does not have much to do with trying to avoid the term Greeks. They were early Christians. Neither culturally nor linguistically Cappadocia was Ionia until six or seven centuries AD. It is a very common mistake to think that Anatolia or Asia Minor was Greek all throughout history, until 1922.