MAALOULA, Syria (AP) — Church bells echoed across the rocky slopes of this ancient Syrian town on a cold Sunday morning. But few families remained. Maaloula is one of the world’s few places where ...

What do these three locales have in common: a remote village in Syria; Sydney, Australia; and the Old City of Jerusalem? The answer is: Aramaic, a dominant language in the ancient world. Now, Jews, ...

Aramaic is easily recognizable in the lowest line, below the Greek inscription. It is dated to 129 AD. In the following article I will address three issues: How have Assyrians retained Aramaic into ...

MAALOULA Ilyana Barqil wears skinny jeans, boots and a fur-lined jacket, handy for keeping out the cold in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus. She likes TV quiz shows and American films and ...

As the news broke last week that a fragment of what could be the earliest copy of the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and central to the ...

"The Quran is part of a larger discussion, it's not just a holy book. It's a book of world heritage and world history," said Emran El-Badawi, director of the Arab Studies Program and assistant ...