THE Syrian Protestant College is the child of the Syria Mission, and but for the misison work done in Syria from 1820 to 1860, it could not have existed. The American preachers and teachers who had founded the native evangelical church and trained a native ministry, planned and proposed a literary institution which should control the higher education of the future in the Orient in the interests of religion and the Bible. The exclusion of the English language from the Abeih Seminary in Lebanon, and the girls' boarding-school of Beirut, and confining all instruction to the vernacular Arabic, had begun as early, as 1858 to lead prominent fam...

What is religion? This question has puzzled theologians throughout human history. But how did religion start in the first place? Why did it start? In order to understand some of these issues, let us have a look at the etymology of the word “religion” itself, and see that when and where this word was used for the very first time in the human history.

The word religion was used for the very first time in the Latin language. The actual word used in Latin was “religio”, which changed into religion when came into English. The roots of the Arabic word “Mazhab” or “Deen” can also be traced back to “religio”. In the Latin language, the word “religio” had three basic meanings; which are Faith, Trust & Belief.

If you further analyse these three words, faith, trust and belief; then you realize that there are actually three different characteristics