Abraham Mitrie Rihbany (1869-1944; sometimes spelled Ribhany) was an Eastern Mediterranean Arab immigrant to America who wrote on matters of religion and politics. "In debt and nearly penniless on his arrival in New York, he went on to become a respected clergyman and nationally recognized community leader." His best-known book, The Syrian Christ (1916), was highly influential in its time in explaining the cultural background to some situations a...
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Abraham Mitrie Rihbany (1869-1944; sometimes spelled Ribhany) was an Eastern Mediterranean Arab immigrant to America who wrote on matters of religion and politics. "In debt and nearly penniless on his arrival in New York, he went on to become a respected clergyman and nationally recognized community leader." His best-known book, The Syrian Christ (1916), was highly influential in its time in explaining the cultural background to some situations and modes of expression to be found in the Gospels. It is still cited in both Biblical Studies and Sociolinguistics.
Rihbany was born in Shweir, Mount Lebanon, a part of Ottoman Syria that is now in Lebanon. At 9 years old he was apprenticed to a stone-cutter, but at the age of 17 he managed to attend the Presbyterian School in Souk El Gharb, catching up on his secondary education in two years of study and briefly becoming a teacher himself. It was here that he became a Presbyterian, in spite of his family's long adherence to the Greek Orthodox...
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