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Biblical basis

The prophet Jonah appears in 2 Kings aka 4 Kings and is therefore thought to have been active around 786–746 BC.² The biblical text of Jonah 3 holds that after the prophet Jonah warned those inhabiting Nineveh for the second time, its inhabitants repented, fasting from food and water, along with wearing ashes and sackcloth.³ For this reason, God spared the Ninevites according to the text.⁴

According to John Boardman, a possible scenario which facilitated the acceptance of Jonah's preaching to the Ninevites is that the reign of Ashur-dan III saw a plague break out in 765 BC, revolt from 763-759 BC and another plague at the end of the revolt. These documented events suggest that Jonah's words were given credibility and adhered to, with everyone fasting from food and water, including animals and children.⁵

History

Church of the East

As the patriarch Joseph (552–556/567 AD) (Classical Syriac: ܝܘܣܦ) had been deposed, Ezekiel (Classical Syriac: ܚܙܩܝܐܝܠ) was selected to replace him in the Church of the East, much to the joy of the emperor Khusrow Anushirwan who loved him and held him in high esteem.⁶ A mighty plague devastated Mesopotamia with the Sassanian authorities unable to curb its spread and the dead littered the streets, in particular the imperial capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon (Classical Syriac: ܣܠܝܩ ܩܛܝܣܦܘܢ) The metropolitans of the East Syriac ecclesiastical provinces of Adiabene (Classical Syriac: ܚܕܝܐܒ "Ḥdāyaḇ", encompassing Arbil, Nineveh, Hakkari and Adhorbayjan) and Beth Garmaï (Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܓܪ̈ܡܝ "Bēṯ Garmai", encompassing Kirkuk and the surrounding region) called for services of prayer, fasting and penitence to be held in all the churches under their jurisdiction, as was believed to have been done by the Ninevites following the preaching of the prophet Jonah.

Following its success, the tradition has been strictly adhered to every year by the descendants of the Church of the East (Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the others). Patriarchs of the Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church also called for extra fasts[when?] in an effort to alleviate the suffering and affliction of those persecuted by ISIS in the region of Nineveh and the rest of the Middle East.

Other Churches

Although the fast of the Ninevites was originally observed in the Church of the East, Marutha of Tikrit is known to have imposed the Fast of Nineveh in the West Syriac Church, and served as Maphrian of the Syriac Orthodox Maphrianate of the East until his death on 2 May 649.⁷

In the days of Pope Abraham of Alexandria (who was ethnically Syrian), the Coptic Orthodox Church adopted the fast, from which it spread to the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, all of which still retain its observance.

References

1. "Three Day Fast of Nineveh". Syrian Orthodox Church (retrieved from the Internet Archive). Archived from the original on 2011-02-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20110213054543/http://syrianorthodoxchurch.org/news/2011/02/10/three-day-fast-of-nineveh/ ↩

2. 2 Kings 14:25 https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt09b14.htm#25 ↩

3. Bromiley, Geoffrey William (1979). The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 1115–1116. ISBN 978-0-8028-3782-0. 978-0-8028-3782-0 ↩

4. Bromiley, Geoffrey William (1979). The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 1115–1116. ISBN 978-0-8028-3782-0. 978-0-8028-3782-0 ↩

5. Boardman, John (1982). The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. III Part I: The Prehistory of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries BC. Cambridge University Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0521224963. Retrieved 19 October 2013. 978-0521224963 ↩

6. Chronicle of Seert, ii. 100–101 ↩

7. Barsoum, Ignatius Aphrem I (2003). Matti Moosa, ed. The Scattered Pearls: The History of Syriac Literature and Sciences Archived 2021-10-23 at the Wayback Machine/1.jpg /wiki/Ignatius_Aphrem_I_Barsoum ↩