according to their own judgment as an autocephalous Church.
The creed that was put before them was the original Nicene,[1] including the anathemas. But Assyrians of to-day do not use it in the precise conciliar form, any more than Westerns do; and in each case the story of the growth of the form used from the form sanctioned is an extremely difficult one to trace. Of the two crucial technical terms in the creed, ὁμοουσίος is rendered by ܒܪ ܐܝܬܘܬܐ;[2] a different and (to the writer's thinking) much better rendering of the Greek than the ܒܪ ܟܝܢܐ[3] which is in use to-day. ὑποστασις in the third anathema is rendered by ܩܢܘܡܐ[4], a fact which was important in future doctrinal controversy. The Greek term, as is obvious, is here equivalent to οὐσία or the Syriac ܐܝܬܘܬܐ;[5] and ܩܢܘܡܐ[6] has therefore the same force. Unfortunately, under the influence of the Cappadocian fathers, ὑποστάσις was already being used in the West in the different (and very artificial) sense of Person; so that the Assyrian Church—just when effort was being made to link their thought to the West—adopted an important technical term in a sense which the Westerns were just then abandoning. This was to be fruitful of misunderstanding, and a principal cause of separation.
In the remaining canons the tone is that of the substitution of law for tolerated indiscipline; and the large majority of them concern themselves with the position and duties of the various ranks of the hierarchy, from the Catholicos and his metropolitans to the sub-deacon. Certain things are for
