Numbers of Christians in the Near East, however, rejected the work of Chalcedon. They held that instead of the divine and human natures joining to form one person in Jesus, he possessed but one nature in which divine life and human were indistinguishable. This monophysite (one nature) teaching was an important factor contributing to the breaking away of the Monophysite Churches from the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Coupled with the decline of the Byzantine power in the outlying areas of the Eastern Empire, monophysite doctrine led to the Coptic Church, the largest Christian body in Egypt today,
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