Dating for separated christians

Since this date the local Church has been entirely gentile in composition.

It was also one and undivided, until the early Ecumenical Councils.

Throughout the 19th century and during and immediately after World War I, the local Armenian community grew with the absorption of survivors of the Anatolian massacres, particularly those of 1915.

Before 1939 the community numbered more than 15,000, and was the third largest Christian group.

The Non-Chalcedonian churches are churches of the East - Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syrian - that rejected the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (451) on the double (divine and human) nature of Christ.

Historically, this Church developed from the Churches of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire.

The communities may be divided into four basic categories - Orthodox, Non-Chalcedonian (Monophysite), Catholic (Latin and Uniate) and Protestant - consisting of some 20 ancient and indigenous churches, and another 30, primarily Protestant, denominational groups.

Except for national churches, such as the Armenian, the indigenous communities are predominantly Arabic-speaking; most of them, very likely, descendants of the early Christian communities of the Byzantine period.

After his death the early Apostolic Church, at least that in and around Jerusalem, remained Judeo-Christian until the rebuilding of Jerusalem (c.

130 CE) by Hadrian as the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina.

Two other historic Orthodox national churches also have representation in the country: the Russian and the Rumanian.