The city of Antioch was founded three hundred years before the birth of Christ by Seleucus, one of the princely successors of Alexander the Great, and named after his father Antiochus. The Church in Antioch dates back to the days of the foremost apostles, SS. Peter and Paul, as is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Scripture refers to

Antioch as the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were first called "Christians" (Acts 11.26), and records that Nicholas, one of the original seven deacons, was from that city -- and may have been its first convert (Acts 6.5). Located near the mouth of the Orontes River in north western Syria, at the juncture of three important trade routes, it was a large and sophisticated city when Christianity began. According to one of the oldest and strongest of traditions, St. Peter was the actual founder of the Christian church in Antioch, carrying out there his first mission among the Gentiles. He stayed three years, and returned twice more, the last time on his way to Rome and eventual martyrdom.
At the first Ecumenical Council, convened in the year 325 by Emperor Constantine the Great, the primacy of the bishop (patriarch) of Antioch over all bishops of the civil Diocese of the East was formally sanctioned. The Great Schism of 1054 resulted in the separation of Rome, seat of the Patriarchate of the West, from the four Eastern Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. During the reign of the Egyptian Mamelukes, conquerors of Syria in the 13th century, the Patriarchal residence was transferred to the ancient city of Damascus, where a Christian community had flourished since apostolic times (Acts 9), and which had succeeded earthquake-prone Antioch as the civil capital of Syria. The headquarters of the Patriarchate, which has jurisdiction over all dioceses within its ancient geographic boundaries (Syria and Lebanon) as well as others in Western Europe, America and Australia are located in Damascus

The Orthodox Church is the first Christian Church. Incredible as it seems, for nineteen and a half centuries she has continued in her undiminished and unaltered faith and practice.  Today, her apostolic doctrine, worship, and structure remain intact.  The Orthodox Church maintains that the Church is the living Body of Jesus Christ.