Swapna Sundari
(First Draft.)
Tripoli 5
The stained glass in the
church of the Copts
was magnificent
The blue pieces indescribable
But our love
its blue
like the shimmering translucence of the waves
of the unfathomable ocean
was even more so
as though they destroyed it
our love remains
You are my church of the Grecians, Ethiopians and Copts
no Orthodoxy can beat, destroy or take away mine or yours -
this burning lifetime of love;
my love for you and yours for me
our Orthodoxy of love
with its doxology and our love - made rites and rituals
and its angelic sounding liturgy - of Love
in you and me now it lives and cannot be destroyed
St. Mark the Evangelist -- Emmanuel Tzanes Bounialis
Ṭarabulus (Tripoli) was founded in the 7th century BCE by the Phoenicians, who named it gave it Oea (or Wy't), then passed to the Greek colony of Kyrenaike until it was conquered by the Carthaginianians and then the Romans. The Copts (Niremenkīmi Enkhristianos) are the largest Christian community in Libya (1% of the population), where they have three churches (including St. Mark’s in Tripoli). The English word “Copt” was coined in the 17th century from the New Latin “Coptus.” (New Latin was developed between 1375-1900 and is primarily used for scholarly and technical nomenclature.) “Coptus” was from the Arabic “qubṭ”or “qufti,” an Arabization of the Coptic “kubti,”an adaptation of the Greek term for the indigenous people of Egypt, Aigýptios. from the Middle Egyptian “ḥwt-k3-ptḥ” (Hut-ka-Ptah), literally "Estate (or 'House') of the Spirit of Ptah." The church traces its origin back to Markos ("hammer,” St. Mark the Evangelist), who was born in Kyrene and founded the Church of Alexandria in 49. He may have been the Yochanon (John, "The Kindness of God") who traveled with his cousin Barnabus on his missionary activity in Cyprus and Perga in Pamphylia with St. Paul; according to Titus Flavius Josephus, he was also the cousin of Philon of Alexandria (a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who used philosophical allegory to harmonize Jewish scripture with Greek philosophy and whose concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology; he may also have been related to St. Thomas the Apostle, who evangelized Kerala in India in 52, founding the church of the MarThoma Nazranis. Markos’ mother, one of Jesus’ earliest followers, had a large house in Jerusalem to which Peter fled after escaping prison (he had been arrested in 41 by king Herod Agrippa I of Judea but rescued by angels), and Markos then traveled with him through Asia Minor en route to Roma, writing down Peter’s sermons (which became the basis of the Gospel according to Mark). He was martyred in 68 when the natives placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets. His home was the first church, where he hosted the disciples in his house after Jesus' death, where the resurrected Jesus went, and where the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples at Pentecost. His first convert was his father, a cousin of Peter’s wife; en route to Jordan they encountered two lions, and his father urged to escape while he himself was being devoured, but Markus prayed to Jesus to save them and the lions perished. By the beginning of the 3rd century Christians constituted the majority of Egypt’s population, and the Church of Alexandria was second in prestige only to the Church of Rome. The Copts created the tradition of Christian monasticism. The Coptic patriarchs begin their tenures by getting blessed by his tomb, holding his skull, and dressing it with a new garment.
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