Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/863

 2D-4TH CENT.] SYRIAC LITERATURE of these apocrypha are extant in Arabic, but the Syriac originals have not yet been recovered. To these may be added such works as the Didascalia Apostolorum, edited (anonymously) by P. de Lagarde in 1854 ; extracts from the Constitution's Apostolorum, ascribed to Clement, in the same editor's Reliquia Juris Eccles. Antiq., pp. 2-32, 44-60 ; and the Doctrina Apostolorum, in Cureton's Ancient Syriac Documents, pp. 24-35, and in JKeliquise Juris Eccles. Antiq. (under the title of Doctrina Addsei), pp. 32-44. Service- Into a description of the service-books of the Syrian Church in books. its different sects Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, and Malkites we cannot here enter. 1 The bare enumeration of the various psalters, lectionaries, missals, &c., would far exceed our present limits. The oldest Syriac psalter in our European collections is not earlier than 600 (Brit. Mus. Add. 17110), and the series of lection- aries commences with the 9th century. Of anaphoras or liturgies it would be easy to specify some sixty. 2 The oldest of all is a fragment of the anaphora of Diodorus of Tarsus (in the British Museum, Add. 14699, ff. 20, 21), of the 6th century, which has been edited and translated by Bickell. 3 Besides the versions of Holy Writ and other works enumerated above, the literature of Syria comprises a vast amount of matter, interesting not merely to the Orientalist but also to the classical scholar, the theologian, and the historian. Some portions of this literature we must now endeavour to pass under review. Barde- The long series of Syrian writers is headed by the name of Bar- saues. Daisan or Bardesanes, "the last of the Gnostics." 4 He was born at Edessa on llth July 154, 5 and seems to have been the son of heathen parents of rank. Of the manner of his conversion to Christianity, and how he came to deviate from orthodoxy, we are uninformed. Part of his life he spent at the court of Edessa ; then he betook himself as a missionary to the rude mountaineers of Armenia, and finally settled down in the fortress of Aniuni, where he prob- ably remained till his death in 222. 6 He wrote, we are told, a History of Armenia, which Moses of Chorene used in a Greek trans- lation ; Hypomnemata Indica, compiled from the oral information which he obtained from an Indian embassy passing through Edessa on its way to the Roman court ; and polemical treatises against the polytheism of the heathens and the dualism of Marcion. He and his son Harmonius were poets, and their hymns were greatly admired and imitated. Even Ephraim could not help admitting their merits, whilst he reviled them. 7 Of these works, however, only a few fragments have been preserved by later writers. 8 The famous dialogue Ufpl elpup^v^ or De Fato, which the voice of antiquity has unanimously ascribed to Bardesanes, was in reality composed by his disciple Philip, and doubtless presents us with an accurate account of his master's teaching. The Syriac title is KUhdbhd dM-Ndmose dh' Athrawdthd (The Book of the Laws of the Countries). 9 Simeon Of Simeon bar Sabba'e ("the Dyers' Son"), bishop of Seleucia bar Sab- and Ctesiphon, and Milles, bishop of Susa, we know little beyond ba'e and the fact of their martyrdom in the great persecution of the Chris- Milles. tians by Shabhor or Sapor II., which began in 339-340. 10 Simeon is said by 'Abhd-Tsho' " to have written "epistles," 12 which seem to be no longer extant. To him are also ascribed sundry hymns, 13 and a work entitled KUhdbha dh'Abhdhdthd (The Book of the Fathers), which, according to Sachau, treats of the heavenly and earthly hierarchy. 14 The writings of Milles are stated by 'Abhd- and by Perkins, Journal of the American Oriental Society, viii. p. 182 sq. ; re- printed in the Journal of Sacred Literature, January 1865, p. 372 sq. 1 The reader is referred to the following works : J. A. Assemani, Codex Liturg. Ecclesiee Universse, 13 vols., Rome, 1749-66 ; Renaudot, Liturgiarum Orient. Col- lectio, 2 vols., Paris, 1716; Etheridge, The Syrian Churches, their Early History, Liturgies, and Literature, London, 1846; Badger, The Nestorians and their Rituals, 2 vols., London, 1852 ; Howard, The Christians of St Thomas and their Liturgies, Oxford, 1864; Denzinger, Ritus Orientalium, Coptorum, Syrorum, et Armenorum in administrandis sacramentis, 2 vols., Wiirzburg, 1863-64; J. Morinus, Comment, de Sacris Eccles. Ordinationibus, &c., Paris, 1655, Antwerp, 1695 ; Bickell, Conspectus Rei Syrorum Literarix, chaps, vii.-x. 2 See a complete list in Bickell's Conspectus, pp. 65-68 ; comp. also Neale and Littledale's Liturgies of SS. Mark, James, &c., 2d ed., 1869, p. 146, and Appendix i. 3 See his Conspectus, pp. 63, 71-72. The Syriac text is given in 2.D.Af.G.,xxvii. (1873), pp. 608-013. Gnostiker, 1864 ; Hahn, Bardesanes Gnosticus Syrorum primus Hymnologus, 1819. 5 So the Chronicon Edessenum, in Assemani, B.O., i. 389, and Bar-Hebrseus, Chron. Eccles., i. 47 ; but Elias of Xisibis, as cited by Abbeloos in his notes on Bar-Hebraeus, loc. cit., places his birth in 134. 6 Bar-Hebrseus, Chron. Eccles., i. 47. 7 E.g., Opera Syr., ii. 439 D, 553 F, last line. 8 Compare the hymn in the Syriac Acts of St Thomas (Wright, Apocryphal Acts, p. 274) ; Lipsius, Die Apocryphen-Apostelgeschichten und -Apostellegenden, i. 292 sq. 9 It was first edited by Cureton, with an English translation, in his Spici- legium Syriacum ; see also T. &, T. Clark's Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xxii. p. 85 sq., and Merx, op. cit., p. 25 sq. 10 See S. E. Assemani, Ada Sanctorum Martyrum, i. 10 sq., 66 sq. 11 Or 'Ebedh-yeshu', bishop of Nisibis, whose bibliographical Catalogue has been edited by Abraham Ecchellensis, Rome, 1653, and by J. S. Assemani in his B.O., iii. 1. There is an English translation of it by Badger, The Nestorians, ii. 361-379. 12 B.O., iii. 1, 51. 13 Assemani, Acta Sanctorum Martyrum, i. 5 ; Rosen, Catalogue, p. 14, col. 2, aa ; Overbeck, S. Ephraemi, <fec., Opera Selecta, p. 424. 1* Kurzes Verzeichniss der Sachau'schen Sammlung syrischer Handschriften, Berlin, 1S85, p. x. and No. 108, 3. isho' (loc. cit.) to have been "epistles and discourses (memre) on various subjects " ; but of these time has also robbed us. The name of Jacob (or St James) of Nisibis 15 is far more widely Jacob of known. As bishop of that city he was present at the council of Nisibis. Nicsea. He lived to witness the outbreak of war between the Romans and the Persians, and is said to have delivered the city by his prayers from the latter power. He died in the same year (338). 16 To him has been ascribed, on the authority of Gennadius of Marseilles 17 and of the ancient Armenian version, 18 a collection of homilies, the Syriac text of which has only been recovered and published within the last few years. George, bishop of the Arab tribes, writing to a friend in the year 714, is aware that the author was a certain "Persian sage," liakklmd Phdrsdyd, and discusses his date and position in the church, 19 but does not think of identi- fying him with Jacob of Nisibis. Later writers are better informed. Bar-Hebrreus knows the name of Pharhadh as the author 20 ; Aphra- 'Abhd-isho' gives the older form of Aphrahat or 'A^pocinjs 2I ; and ates. he is also cited by name by Elias of Nisibis '(llth century) in his Chronicle. The real author of the twenty-two alphabetical Homi- lies and the separate homily "On the Cluster" is now, therefore, known to have been Aphraates, a Persian Christian, who took the name of Jacob, and was subsequently famous as " the Persian sage." He was probably bishop of the convent of Mar Matthew near Mosul, and composed his works, as he himself tells us, in the years 337, 344, and 345, during the great persecution under Sapor II. 23 A junior contemporary of Aphraates was Ephraim, 24 commonly Ephraim called Ephraem Syrus, "the prophet of the Syrians," the mostSyrus. celebrated father of the Syrian Church and certainly one of its most voluminous and widely read writers. He was born of heathen parents at Nisibis, but became the pupil of the bishop Jacob, and finished his education at Edessa. The incidents of his career are too well known to need recapitulation here. 25 His death toek place in June 373. 2S His works have been largely translated into Greek, 27 Armenian, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic. 28 They consist of commentaries on the Scriptures, expository sermons, and a vast mass of metrical homilies and hymns on every variety of theologi- cal subject. 29 Many of these last are composed in his favourite seven-syllable metre, in stanzas of different length ; but he fre- quently used other metres and mixed strophic arrangements. 30 Of Ephraim's commentaries on the Old Testament but little has reached us in the original Syriac. 31 Most of what has been pub- lished in Ephraemi Opera Syr., vols. i. and ii., is derived from a large Catena Patrum, compiled by one Severus, a monk of Edessa, in 861. 32 Of his commentary on the Dia-tcssaron, preserved only in an early Armenian translation, we have spoken above (p. 825). In the same language there is extant a translation of his commentary on the Pauline epistles. 33 Vol. ii. of the Roman edition contains some exegetical discourses (pp. 316-395), the number of which has been largely increased by Overbeck (S. Ephraemi Syri, &c., Opera Selecta, pp. 74-104). In the same work will be found two of the discourses against early heresies addressed to Hypatius and Domnus (pp. 21-73 ; comp. Wright, CataL, p. 766, col. 2), two tracts on the love of the Most High (pp. 103-112), and the epistle to the 15 Ko.i 'Zvpiys irtoov elda /coi fiorea irdvTa, NiVijSa', 'Evtjipa.Triv diafids ; Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, i. 480. 16 This date is given by the Chronic. Edess. (B.O., i. 395), by Dionysius of Tell- Mahre (ibid,, p. 17), by the so-called Liber Chaliphiirum (iti Land, Anecd. Syr., i. 4), by Elias of Nisibis (see Abbeloos's note in Bar-Hebrseus, Chron. Eccles., ii. 31), and inferentially by Ephraim (Bickell, S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, p. 20). 17 In his De Viris Illustribus, written before 496. is Published by N. Antonelli (Rome, 1756) with a Latin translation, and re- printed in Gallandius, Bibl. Vet. Patrum, vol. v. The mistake has passed (no doubt through the Arabic) to the Ethiopic translation of the fifth homily ; see Zotenberg, Catal. des MSS. Ethiopiens de la Bibl. Nat., p. 248, col. 2, No. 17. is See De Lagarde, Anal. Syr., p. 108 ; The Homilies of Aphraates, ed. Wright, p. 19 ; Ryssel, Ein Brief Georgs, Bischofs der Araber, 1883. 20 Chron. Eccles., ii. 34. 21' B.O., iii. 1, 85. 22 See Wright, Aphraates, p. 38. 23 Wright, Aphraates, pp. 440 and 507 ; comp. Sasse, Prolegomena in Aphr. Sap. Pers. Sermones Homileticos, 1878 ; J. Forget, De Vita et Scriptis Aphr., Sap. Persee, 1882; Bickell in Thalhofer, Bibliothek der Kirchenvdter, 102 and 103, where eight of the homilies are translated. 24 More correctly Aphrein. 25 See the Acta S. Ephraemi in the Roman ed. of his works by Peter Mobarak (Petrus Benedictus) and the Assemanis, pp. xxiii.-lxiii. ; and comp. Bickell, Conspectus, p. 26, note 11. 6 See the various authorities cited by Assemani, B.O., i. 54, note; Bickell, Carmina Nisibena, p. 9, note ; Gabriel Cardahi, Liber Thesauri de Arte Poetica Syrorum, 1875, pp. 9-13. 27 Even Photius speaks with respect of the rhetorical talent of Ephraim, so far as he could judge of it from these imperfect translations (ed. Bekkcr, p. 160). 28 See B.O., i. 149 sq. & Ibid., i. 63-149 ; iii. 1, 61. 30 Compare, for instance, Biekell, Carm. Nisib., Introd., p. 31. The Syrian line consists of a certain fixed number of syllables, four, five, six, seven, eight, twelve, &c. In the older writers there is no intentional rime, which first appears, we believe, among the Westerns, in Antonius Rhetor (9th century). Real metres, like those of the Greeks and Arabs, coupled in the latter case with rime, were wholly unknown to the Syrians. Hebrew poetry barely rises, as regards outward form, beyond the level of Arabic rimed prose ; the Syrians, whilst destitute of rime, at least imposed upon themselves the restraint of a limited but fixed number of syllables. 31 Genesis and Exodus in Cod. Vat. ex., and five leaves of Genesis m Cod. Vat. cxx. (see Assemani, Catal., iii. p. 125). 32 Cod. Vat. ciii., Brit. Mus. Add. 12144. Severus used for Genesis a com- mentary different from that in Cod. Vat. ex. ; see Bickell, Consjiectus, p. 19 ; comp. Pohlmann, S. Ephraemi Syri Commentariorum in s. scripturam textus in, codd. vatt. manuscriptus et in edit. Rom. impressus, 2 parts, 1862-64. 33 See Bickell, Conspectus, p. 20.
 * See Merx, Bardesanes von Edessa, 1863 ; Hilgenfeld, Bardesanes, der letzte