Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/37

 eminence as its proto-type, perhaps because Origen's influence turned its activities into a direction too highly specialised in textual criticism, but it prompted a development which ultimately played an important part in the history of the Syrian church where, for some time to come, theological activity mainly centered in these schools which had their imitators amongst the Zoroastrians and the Muslims. The first such school in Syria was founded at Antioch by Malchion about 270 A.D. and deliberately copied the pattern set at Alexandria and ultimately became its rival.

About fifty years later a school was established at Nisibis, the modern Nasibin on the Mygdonius river, in the midst of a Syriac speaking community. The church had spread inland from the Mediterranean shores and had by this time many converts in the hinterland who were accustomed to use Syriac and not Greek. For the benefit of these the work at Nisibis was done in Syriac, Syriac versions were prepared of the theological works studied at Antioch, and the Greek language was taught so that the Syriac speaking Christians were brought into closer touch with the life of the Church at large.

The acquiescence of the Church in the Alexandrian philosophy had far-reaching consequences. The Church did not officially adopt the neo-Platonic philosophy in its entirety, but it had to adjust itself to an atmosphere in which the neo-Platonic system was accepted as the last word in scientific enquiry and