Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/870

 834 SYRIAC LITERATURE [GTII CENT. Paul of Callim- pupil Theodore, afterwards Nestorian bishop of Mani or Merv (see p. 837 infra). 1 What remains of Sergius's labours is mostly contained in a single MS. of the 7th century (Brit. Mus. Add. 14658). 2 Of translations from the Greek we find in this volume the Isagoge of Porphyry, followed by the so-called Tabula PorphyrO,* the Categories of Aristotle, 4 the llepi KOCT/J.OV TT/WS 'AXe^avdpov, 3 and a treatise on the soul, not the well-known lle/>l iftirxijs, but a wholly different tractate in five short sections. It also contains Sergius's own treatise on logic, addressed to Theodore, which is unfortunately imperfect ; a tract on negation and affirmation ; a treatise, likewise addressed to Theodore, On the Causes of the Uni- verse, according to the views of Aristotle, showing how it is a circle ; a tract On Genus, Species, and Individuality ; and a third tract addressed to Theodore, On the Action and: Influence of the Moon, explanatory and illustrative of Galen's Hepl icpi.a'i.[j.uv i]fj.fpui>, bk. iii., 6 with a short appendix "On the Motion of the Sun." Here too we find part (sections 11, 12) of his version of the Ars Gram- matica of Dionysius Thrax, a larger portion (sections 11-20) being contained in Brit. Mus. Add. 14620 (Wright, CataL, p. 802). 7 There is a scholion of Sergius on the term ffx^a- in Brit. Mus. Add. 14660 (see Wright, CataL, p. 1162). In his capacity of physician, Sergius translated part of the works of Galen. Brit. Mus. Add. 14661 contains books vi.-viii. of the treatise De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis ac Facultatihus (Wright, CataL, p. 1187), 8 addressed to Theodore ; and in Brit. Mus. Add. 17156 there are three leaves, two of which contain fragments of the Ars Mcdica, and one of the treatise De Alimentorum Facultatibus (Wright, CataL, p. 1188). 9 As one of the clergy, he wasted his time in making a translation of the works which passed under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. 10 Brit. Mus. Add. 12151 u con- tains this version with the introduction and notes of Phocas bar Sergius of Edessa, 12 a writer of the 8th century, as appears from his citing Athanasius II. and Jacob of Edessa. In Brit. Mus. Add. 22370 1:J we find Sergius's own introduction and the commentary of a later writer, Theodore bar Zarudl. 14 If Sergius was the Probus of the Monophysites, their Ma'na was Paul, bishop of Callinicus (ar-Rakkah), 15 who, being expelled from his see in 519, betook himself to Edessa and there devoted himself to the task of translating the works of Severus into Syriac. We know for certain 16 that he edited versions of the correspondence of Severus and Julian of Halicarnassus OH the corruptibility or incorruptibility of the body of Christ, with a discourse of Severus against Julian 17 ; of the treatise against the Additions or Appendices of Julian, 13 and against the last apology of Julian 19 ; of that against residing at the Persian court, where lie translated into Greek a history of the kings of Persia ; see S.O., iii. 1, 87, note 3 ; Renan, De Philosophia Peripiitcticn, apud Syros, 1S5-2, pp. 24-25. 1 B.O., iii. 1, 147 ; Renan, op. cit., p. 29. 2 Wright, CataL, p. 1154 si/.; comp. Renan, op. cit., p. 25 sq.; Journ. Asiat., 1852, 4th series, vol. xix. p. 319 sq. 3 There is a fragment of the Isagoge also in Brit. Mus. Add. 1618 (Wright, CataL, p. 738). 4 In the Vatican MS. clviii. (CataL, iii. 306, No. vi.) this translation is wrongly ascribed to Jacob of Edessa, who could hardly have been more than a boy at the time when the MS. in the British Museum was transcribed. Besides,the ver- sion is not in his style. The Paris MS. Ancien fonds 161 naturally repeats this mistake (Zotenberg, CataL, p. 202). In CataL Hill. PalaL Medic., cod. cxcvi., it is likewise erroneously attributed to Honain ibn Ishak (comp. Renan, De Philos. Peripat. ap. Syros, p. 34, note 3). The Berlin MS. Alt. Best. 36 contains as No. 7 a treatise of Sergius on the Categories addressed to Philotheus. 5 Edited by Lagarde, Anal. Syr., p. 134 sq.; see V. Ryssel, Ucber den text- kritischen Werth d. Syr. Uebersetzungen griechischer Klassiker, part i. 1880, part ii. 1881. In part i. p. 4 Professor Ryssel speaks of this version as " ein Meister- werk der Uebersetzungskunst" ; and in part ii. p. 10 he says: "Die Ueber- setzung der Schrift irepl K&<?fj.ov schliesst sich aufs engste an den Text des griechischen Originates an. Dass wir deshalb diese Uebersetzung als eine im only a mediocre translator, and that his work needed revision by the later Honain ibn Ishfik. 6 gee Sachau, Inedita Syr., pp. 101-126. 7 This identification is due to Merx ; see Dionysii Thracis Ars Grammatica, ed. Uhlig, p. xliv. sq. Merx has treated of an old, but independent, Armenian version in the same book, p. Ivii. sq. 8 See Merx's article in Z.D.M.G., xxxix. (1885), p. 237 sq. 9 See Sachau, Ined. Syr., pp. 88-94. 1 See Frothingham, Stephen bar Sitdaili, p. 3. H See Wright, Gated., p. 493. 12 B.O., i. 408. Assemani erroneously places him before Jacob of Edessa. J13 See Wright, Catal., p. 500. 14 There are also old MSS. of Sergius's version in the Vatican ; CataL, iii. Nos. cvii. (p. 56), ccliv. (p. 542). Bar-Hebrseus states (Hist. Dynast., p. 158 ; transl., p. 99) that Sergius translated into Syriac the Syntagma, of the Alexandrian priest and physician Aaron, and added to it two books ; but Steinschneider (Al-Fardbi, p. 166, note 2) says that this is a mistake, and that the real author of the two additional books was the Arabic translator Masarjawailii or Mfisarjis. The translator of the Geoponica, Al-Faldhah ar-Rumiyah (Leyden, cod. 414 Warn. ; Catal., iii. 211) and joint translator of the MeydXij (TiWafis of Ptolemy (Leyden, cod. C80 Warn.; CataL, iii. 80), by name Serjis or Serjfm (Sergius or Sergona) ibn ar-Rumi, seeins to be a quite different person of later date. 1! > B.O., ii. 46. He is to be distinguished from his namesake and contemporary, Paul, bishop of Edessa, who was banished to Enchaita in 522 (B.O., i. 409-411), restored to his see in 526 (ibid., p. 413), and died in the following year ; whereas Paul of Callinicus was working at Edessa in 528 (see p. 838 infra). i Thanks in part to a note at the end of Cod. Vat. cxl. (CataL, iii. 223 ; comp. .0., loc. cit.). 17 Completed in 528 ; Cod. Vat. cxl. ; Brit. Mus. Add. 17200 (Wright, CataL, p. 554). is Cod. Vat. cxl.; Brit. Mus. Add. 12158 (Wright, CataL, p. 556), dated 588. 19 Brit. Mus. Add. 12158. the Manichees ; and of the Philalcthcs.^ Probably by him are tho older translation of the Homilisz Cathcdrales' 21 and that of the corre- spondence of Sergius Grammaticus and Severus regarding the doc- trine of the two natures in Christ, 2 - possibly, too, the translation of the treatise against John Grammaticus of Ctesarea- 3 and of somo other works which are known to us only by a few scattered cita- tions.- 4 Hence he is called by the Jacobites MephasJishekdnd dlta- khethdbhe, "the Translator of Books." 25 This seems the proper place to make mention of a most important Civil though anonymous work, the translation of the so-called Civil Laws of Laws of the Emperors Constantine, Theodosius, and Leo, which lies the Em- at the root of all subsequent Christian Oriental legislation in ecclesi-^mws. astical, judicial, and private matters. 26 The Syriac version, made from a Greek original, exists in two manuscripts, 27 the older of which undeniably belongs to the earlier part of the 6th century. The work itself appears, according to the researches of Bruns (op. cit., pp. 318-319), to date from the time of the emperor Basiliscus (Brit. Mus. Add. 475-477), who was a favourer of the Monophysites ; the Syriac translation is ascribed to a Monophysite monk of Mabbdgh or Hierapolis (ibid., p. 155). The Paris MS. probably represents a Nestorian revision of the 9th or 10th century at (Baghdad) Bagh- dadh (ibid., p. 166). The oldest MS. of the secondary Arabic version is dated 1352 (ibid., p. 164), but it has been traced back to the time of the Nestorian lawyer Abu '1-Faraj 'Abdallah ibn a'- Taiyib (who died 1043), whether made by him or not (ibid., p. 177). it belongs to the same class as the London Syriac, but is based on a better text, such as that of the fragment in Brit. Mus. Add. 18295 (ibid., p. 172). 28 Of the secondary Armenian translation the same is to be said as of the Arabic. The oldest MS. of it dates from 1328, but it probably goes as far back as the end of the 12th century (ibid., p. 164). The Georgian version, of which there is a MS. at St Petersburg, is most likely an offshoot of the Armenian. Another scholar, besides Sergius, whom 'Abhd-isho' wrongly claims Alm- as a Nestorian is Ahu-dh'emmeh, metropolitan of Taghrith (Tekrit). dh'emme! He appears, on the contrary, to have been the head of the Mono- physites in the Persian territory. According to Bar-Hebra-us, 29 he was appointed by Christopher, catholicus of the Armenians, to be bishop of Beth 'Arbaye, 30 but was promoted by Jacob Burde'anfi in 559 to the see of Taghrith, where he ordained many priests and founded two monasteries. Among his numerous converts from heathenism was a youthful member of the royal family of Persia, whom he baptized by the name of George. This excited the anger of Khosrau I. Andsharwiin, who ordered the bishop to be beheaded (2d August 575). As a writer Ahu-dh'emmeh seems to have been more of a philosopher than a theologian. 31 He wrote against the Persian priesthood and against the Greek philosophers, a book of definitions, a treatise on logic, on freewill in two discourses, on the soul and on man as the microcosm, and a treatise on the com- position of man as consisting of soul and body. 32 He is also men- tioned by later authors as a writer on grammar. 33 Somewhat before this time a monk of Edessa, whose name is rm- Anony- known to us, tried his hand at the composition of a tripartite his- motis torical romance, 34 a history of Constantine and his three HJUS ; an historical account of Eusebius, bishop of Rome, and his sufferings at the hands romances of Julian the Apostate ; and a history of Jovian or, as the Orientals usually call him, Jovinian, under Julian and during his own reign. The whole purports to be written by one Aplorls or Aplolaiis (Apol- linarius ?), an official at the court of Jovian, at the request of 'Abhdel, abbot of Sndrun (?) Mahdza, with a view to the conversion of the heathens. All three parts contain but a very small quantity of historical facts or dates, and deal in the grossest exaggerations and inventions. Yet the Syriac style is pure, and we gain from the book a good idea of the way in which the author's countrymen thought and spoke and acted. This romance has been published by Hoffmann, 35 and Noldeke has given a full account of it, with an abridged translation, in Z.D.M. G., xxviii. p. 263 sq. He places the time of composition between 502 and 532. It is curious to find that this romance must have been known in an Arabic translation to the 20 There is a long extract from this work in Cod. Va'u. cxl. (CataL, iii. 232). 21 Brit. Mus. Add. 14599, dated 509 ; Cod. Vat. cxlii., dated 576 ; cxliii., dated 563 ; cclvi. 22 Brit. Mus. Add. 17154. 23 Brit. Mus. Add. 17210-11, 12157. 24 Compare, for example, Wright, CataL, p. 1323. The translation of the Octoechus is the work, not of Paul of Callinicus, but of an abbot Paul, who exe- cuted it in the island of Cyprus (see p. 838 infra). 25 The passage quoted by Assemani (B.O., i. 409, note 2) seems, however, to confound him with his namesake of Edessa. 26 B.O., iii. 1, 207, note 6, 278, 338 339, 351 col. 2 ; comp. Bruns and Sachau, Syrisch-Romisches Ilechtsbvcli, 1880, pp. 175-180. 27 Brit. Mus. Add. 14528 (Wright, CataL, p. 177), and Paris, Suppl. 38 (Zoten- berg, CataL, p. 75, col. 1, No. 46). The text of the former was first published by Land (Anecd. Syr., i. 30-f>4), with a Latin translation. Both have been edited and translated, along with the Arabic and Armeninu versions, with translations and a learned apparatus, by Bruns and Sachau, o-p. cit. 28 Wright, Catal., p. 1184. 29 Chron. Eccles., ii. 99 ; comp. B.O., ii. 414, iii. 1, 192, note 3. 30 Ba-'arbaya, the district between Nisibis and the Tigris. 31 jj.o., iii. 1, 192. 32 Of this last part is extant in Brit. Mus. Add. 14620 (Wright, CataL, p. 802). 33 See B.O., iii. 1, 256, note 2. 34 Contained in Brit. Mus. Add. 14641, ff. 1-131, a MS. of the 6th century. 35 Julianas der Abtriinnige, 1880.