Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/495

Rh After a period of persecution, during which they were cut off from contact with their brethren on the western side of the desert, the Syrian Christians of Edessa came for a time under the influence of the Greek Church at Antioch. This was owing to the Roman reconquest of their country and temporary absorption of it into the empire in the year 210. On the restoration of communication with Antioch which followed, Serapion, then the bishop of that city, feeling some concern for the isolation of the Syrians and some fear lest they should drift away from the main current of Catholic life, its customs and its beliefs, ordained them a bishop in full sympathy with the Greek Church of Antioch, in the person of Palut—previously mentioned in connection with the early legends—who proceeded to Edessa and took up the succession of the episcopate, which seems to have been interrupted by the persecution. His followers were called "Palutians," a significant fact which indicated a division in the Church, and points to the fact that this interference on the part of Antioch was not at first welcomed by the Syrians. But while the followers of Bardaisan necessarily stood aloof, as did the Marcionites who were also to be found in Mesopotamia now or later, the main body of the Church was soon reconciled. The Palutians, who represented the orthodox Greek Church at Edessa, came to be fused with the rest of the Church, and thus the connection with Antioch generally recognised.

There is no evidence that Serapion had any fault to find with the doctrine taught in this church. He disliked the use of Tatian's Harmony in the public worship, not however because he held it to be a heretical perversion of the Gospels, nor because it came from the hand of a heretic, but simply because it was a compilation, and not the Gospels in their original form as these were used in other churches. Hitherto this was all the people of Edessa knew of the New Testament. They had the Old Testament in Syriac, probably the version of the Old Testament now contained in the Peshitta, which seems to have been a Jewish translation made prior to the founding of a