Abstract
Metropolitan Archbishop Anania Japaridze (1949-present) is a member of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in Georgia and has served as a bishop in that church since 1991. He has published several books, mainly on the history of the Orthodox Church in Georgia, but also books on how Georgians have been converted to other Christian denominations or religions, and, thereby “converted” to other ethnicities. The thesis of one such book is that Georgian converts to Islam in the northwest part of historical Georgian territories lost their Georgian language and national identity and became Abkhazians. (Apʻxazetʻi: kʻartʻveltʻa "gaapʻxazeba" = Abkhazia: Georgians becoming Abkhazian) His history writing is not critical and tends to be what Professor Robert Thomson (1934-2018), who wrote extensively about Christianity in the South Caucasus, referred to as “received history,” i.e., history that tends to repeat, in this case, what the institutional church has passed down and that uses sources that have not been critically assessed.
Recommended Citation
Crego, Paul
(2019)
"Book Review: A Short History of the Georgian Church [Sakʻartʻvelos eklesiis mokle istoria],"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 39
:
Iss.
6
, Article 6.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol39/iss6/6