-¦¦-.-

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

EARLY EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

EARLY
EASTERN CHRISTIANITY
ST. MARGARETS LECTURES
1904
ON THE SYRIAC-SPEAKING
CHURCH
BY F. CRAWFORD BURKITT
' v t>* ¦ • I
IJECTURER IN PAL/EOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE' , '

NEW YORK
E, P. DUTTON & COMPANY
1904

Printed in Great Britain

TO the memory of
WILLIAM CURETON, D.D.,
CANON OF WESTMINSTER FROM 1 849 TO 1 864
AND RECTOR OF S. MARGARET'S
THIS book is dedicated

PREFACE
" Early Eastern Christianity," the title which
I have given to these six Lectures, may possibly
be held to be a misleading name. My Lectures
are an attempt to sketch the leading character
istics of the ancient Church of Edessa and the
Euphrates Valley from the earliest times to the
Council of Chalcedon. The "Eastern Church"
in popular usage generally means something
geographically wider. We think of Greeks and
of Russians, of Alexandria and Constantinople.
But compared with the Church about which I
have written these names belong to the West,
to the great Church within the Roman Empire.
It is the unique distinction of the Church ofthe
Euphrates Valley, that alone among the develop
ments of Christianity in the ante-Nicene age it
had some of its roots in a realm outside the
Roman Empire, and that the language of its
learning and its aspirations was a tongue akin to
that of Palestine.
It would have been possible to trace out some

Vill preface
of those elements in the Grseco- Roman Church
which were most akin to the ideas and practices
which flourished at Edessa. To name but one
notable example, it would be extremely interesting
to compare in detail the theological and ethical
standpoint of the newly discovered Acts of Paul
with that of Serapion of Antioch and his disciple
Palut. But apart from considerations of space it
seemed to me better to let Syriac Christianity
speak for itself. It is a far-away tale of a
vanished civilisation, but an excursion into this
remote region may give us a new point of view
from which to look at our own ideals and beliefs.
It only remains to say that the photographs of
Edessa in this volume were very kindly taken for
me by Fr. Raphael of the Capuchin Mission at
Urfa. The two great Columns in the Frontis
piece were set up in the days of paganism, and
fragments of their Dedication Inscription are still
legible upon one of them. Below this may be
seen a few letters containing the Moslem pro
fession of faith cut in an early Arabic character.
Between the period covered by these two Inscrip
tions must be placed the rise of Christianity in
Edessa and its slow decline.

CONTENTS.

I. THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
II. THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC.
III. EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY .
IV. MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
V. BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES .
VI. THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS AND THE HYMN OF
THE SOUL 

PAGE I
39
79
118 155
193

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TWO GREAT COLUMNS ON THE CITADEL
OF edessa  Frontispiece
The view taken looks very nearly N.E.
edessa  To face page 39
View looking S.S. W.
EDESSA  • . „ „ 79
View looking W.S. W., with the Citadel of Abgar
and the two great Columns in the background.
The hill on the right was where ShamSna and
Guria were martyred a.d. 297.
EDESSA  i, » r55
View looking W.N. W.
EDESSA  » i) x93
View looking N.N. W.

" S. Chrysostome that lived in S. Hieromes time, giveth evidence
with him: The doctrine of S. John {saith he) did not in such sort
(as the Philosophers did) vanish away : but the Syrians, Egyptians,
Indians, Persians, Ethiopians, and infinite other nations being
barbarous people, translated it into their (mother) tongue, and
have learned to be (true) Philosophers, he meaneth Christians."
— Preface to the Authorised Version, ante med.

LECTURE I
THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
When I was asked by Canon Henson to deliver
the S. Margaret's Lectures for 1904 upon the
early history of the Syriac-speaking Church, I
quite understood that what was required would
be something rather different from a regular
academical course. The study of antiquity is a
fascinating pursuit to the student, but the great
mass of Englishmen are not students, nor do they
wish to become students. Most of us have some
thing else to do, and time is limited for all of us.
We have no time to follow the expert in his in
vestigations, and very little even to listen to the
declaration of the results which he has attained
when his investigations are ended. This is the
case, not because we wish to belittle the value
of the study of antiquity in general or of oriental
antiquity in particular, but because there is so
much demanding our attention which is nearer
in time and place. I feel, therefore, that I must
begin by giving some reasons why any one

2 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
beyond professed students should give their
attention at all to this comparatively out-of-the-
way subject.
The historical method of studying our religion,
as opposed to the philosophical method, needs
little defence, at least to those who belong to the
Church of England. The Christianity we profess
is not a formal theory but an organic growth, the
result of a long historical process. The appeal to
the "continuity ofthe Church" and the "historic
episcopate" — to name two familiar catchwords-
is a witness to the importance of a historical
presentation of Anglican Christianity. In other
words, the well-instructed Christian ought to have
a clear general view of the development of the
organisation of which he is a member.
The controversies which at various times have
agitated the Church sometimes appear after the
lapse of ages to be battles of words and names.
Neither the orthodox nor the heterodox party
seem at first to be fighting for the great questions
which interest us. When we study more carefully
we learn, as it were, the language of the con
troversy, we gain an insight into the principles
at stake, and in very many cases we see that
the orthodox side was fighting for the cause of
real progress. I do not mean that they were
fighting for the " Rights of Man " or the principles

THE ANCIENT CONTROVERSIES 3
of the Constitution of the United States of
America, or for any of the platforms which at
present are advocated by any existing party.
But given the conditions of the time, the orthodox
decision was generally the solution which made
the development of the Church possible, and
protected it best from the ever-recurring danger
of relapse into heathenism. Thus it may be
argued, with very great probability, that Arianism
meant the re-introduction of the Pantheon and
the Hierarchy of the Gods into the official
religion of the Empire, that the various forms
of Gnosticism practically involved the denial
of the real humanity of our Lord, that the
struggle of the Church with Montanism was the
fight of Order against Anarchy, and, to come
to a later time, that the development of the
mediaeval Papacy was necessary to keep the
Church together in the face of the disintegrating
effects of the barbarian conquests.
Yet this way of looking at Church History is
not quite satisfactory. It is not really scientific,
because it is not experimental. We only know,
as a matter of fact, how the Church did develop
upon the one line. What would have happened
had the Church become Arian or Sabellian or
Montanist we do not know. It is all a matter
for conjecture, because it did not really happen.

4 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
We can, it is true, compare the development of
those parts of Western Christendom which split
off into separate organic life at the time of the
Reformation with the development of that portion
which remained obedient to Rome. But this
is altogether too late for our purpose. Moreover,
the Catholic may always say that these separated
bodies, whatever sacramental graces they may
have carried off with them, are schismatics,
separated from the true Body of Christ.
The Church we are about to consider in these
Lectures is not open to any of thesel strictures.
It believed itself to have had an apostolic origin,
and the great Church within the Roman Empire
admitted the claim. It was in full communion
with all the chief centres of Christianity. The
Saints of the Syriac-speaking Church are Saints
of the Church universal, so far as their fame
reached the West. Nevertheless there is a real
difference between the Church of Edessa and
the Church of Antioch and of Rome. They were
divided by one of the greatest of all divisions
between man and man — the barrier of language.
During the years we shall chiefly consider this
barrier simply acted as a partition, as a dividing-
line. It did not estrange the Syriac-speaking
Christians from their brethren over the border,
but it separated them, so that the Church of

SYRIAC AND GREEK CHRISTIANITY 5
which they were members grew up to some
extent under influences different from those
which helped to mould the Grseco - Roman
Church of the Empire.
In this lies the importance for us of Early
Syriac-speaking Christianity. It is the nearest
thing we can get to an experiment in Church
History, to a history of the Church as it might
have been, had its environment been different.
We shall not expect therefore that the value of
our study will consist chiefly in noting improve
ments in the fabric of our own Church which
we can adopt from the Syrians. Such direct
importations are not likely to .fit themselves
organically into our Western conditions of life
and thought, though here and there hints for
the Indian Churchman may, perhaps, be stored
up. I would rather suggest that our study will
help us to modify our view of the ancient
Church. We shall learn how difficult it is to
apply the test quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus. We shall learn that it was possible
for an orthodox Christianity to grow up, which
had in some respects a different theory of the
Christian community and of social life from that
which prevailed in the West. We shall learn,
above all, the great lesson that a living
Christianity is not tied down to a set of forms

6 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
imposed from without. The century that saw
Syriac-speaking Christendom unified in externals
with the West by men who saw the power and
the influence of external unity, saw also the
permanent dismemberment of that branch of the
Church into dissenting and hostile sects. I trust
that what are called "our unhappy divisions " may
never be healed over in this unreal fashion.
The early history of the Syriac - speaking
Church is to a certain extent a matter of con
jecture and inference. The historical sources
are scanty, and most of the accounts of the
earlier periods that we possess are compilations
in which at least two inconsistent historical
traditions have been blended. But if we are to
understand the Syriac Christianity of the fourth
and fifth centuries, we ought to have some idea
of the early development of the Church in
Edessa, the first centre of Christianity in the
Syriac-speaking world.
Edessa was the capital of a small principality
east of the Euphrates. The town had been
refounded by the Greeks and called by them
Edessa, but the Aramaic-speaking inhabitants of
the place continued to call it Urhai, a name
of uncertain meaning, from which the Greeks

EDESSA AND ITS INHABITANTS 7
formed Osrhoene (or Orrhoene) for the name of
the district, and from which comes the modern
name Urfa for the town. It lies on one of
the great trade routes to the East, that, namely,
which passes between the great Syrian desert
on the South and the mountains of Armenia on
the North. The inhabitants of the city and the
district spoke a dialect of Aramaic akin to, but
not identical with, that spoken in Palestine by
our Lord and His apostles. The town must
have been a centre of literary culture long
before the coming of Christianity to it, and the
earliest surviving writings have an ease and
fluidity which seem to reflect traces of Greek
influence. The princes of Osrhoene appear to have had
Arab blood in their veins, as was the case with
most of the rulers of the little states on the eastern
borders of the Roman Empire. A familiar
instance is Aretas of Damascus, mentioned by
S. Paul, whose name is spelt Hdritha by his
fellow-countrymen. Similarly, we find among
the princes of Edessa names which are almost
certainly of Arab origin, like Maz'ur and Wa'el,
and probably this is the case also with Abgar
and Ma'nu. These were the favourite names
among the Edessene princes ; out of the whole
thirty, eleven were called Abgar and nine Ma'nu.

8 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
It is not quite certain what the names really
mean. The external history of Edessa follows the
usual fortunes of a border state. The realm
that had belonged to the House of Seleucus was
divided between the Romans and the Parthians,
and Osrhoene lay on the frontier. Until the
end of the second century of our era Edessa
was outside the Roman Empire, and con
sequently within the Parthian suzerainty. In
the wars of Trajan it suffered severely, being
stormed and sacked by the Roman general,
Lusius Quietus.1 This took place in the August
of 1 1 6. For a time the state kept its independ
ence, but the end was inevitable. "The feeble
sovereigns of Osrhoene," to quote the words
of Gibbon, "placed on the dangerous verge of
two contending empires, were attached from in
clination to the Parthian cause ; but the superior
power of Rome exacted from them a reluctant
homage, which is still attested by their medals.
After the conclusion of the Parthian war under
Marcus, it was judged prudent to secure some
substantial pledges of their doubtful fidelity.
Forts were constructed in several parts of the
country, and a Roman garrison was fixed in
1 Dion Cassius lxviii 30 (ap. Xiphilin) : Aoimot Se . . . rty N/trt/Siv
d>^Xaj3e, ripi re "ESeirirav i^eT6\t6pKt]<re tal SUipBetpe Kal tviTpyrer.

EDESSA AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE 9
the strong town of Nisibis. During the troubles
that followed the death of Commodus, the princes
of Osrhoene attempted to shake off the yoke ;
but the stern policy of Severus confirmed their
independence, and the perfidy of Caracalla com
pleted the easy conquest. Abgarus [i.e. Abgar
IX], the last King of Edessa, was sent in chains
to Rome, his dominions reduced into a province,
and his capital dignified with the rank of colony ;
and thus the Romans, about ten years before
the fall of the Parthian monarchy, obtained a
firm and permanent establishment beyond the
Euphrates." 1
The Romans took possession of Edessa in
216 A.D., just a hundred years after the city had
been sacked and burnt by Lusius Quietus. It
is during that hundred years that Christianity
was planted in Edessa, and if I have delayed
somewhat over matters of profane history it is
in the belief that it is essential for us to study
the early history of Syriac-speaking Christianity
with a clear perception of the general course
of events during this period. It will enable us
to estimate the true historical value of the
legends about the foundation of the Church in
Edessa, and, at the same time, it will help to
explain some of the features which distinguish
1 Gibbon i 207 I

10 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
the Christianity of the Euphrates Valley from
the Christianity of the Mediterranean cities.
The establishment of a Christian community
at Edessa is an event of real importance in the
history of the Church. Edessa was the only
centre of early Christian life where the language
of the Christian community was other than
Greek. Christianity, the child of Judaism, was
nursed by the Greek civilisation of the Roman
Empire, for the primitive Semitic Christianity of
Palestine came to an end in the great cata
strophe of the Jewish War. Christianity survived
among the Greek-speaking population of the
great towns of the Levant and the ^-Egean, and
in cosmopolitan Rome. The Church of Antioch
in Syria, one of the oldest of these communities,
was, so far as we know, wholly Greek. The
country districts, where there was a Semitic-
speaking population, seem to have remained
unevangelised. Where the Jews had settled
the new Jewish Heresy followed, but the country
side remained pagan.
When Christianity took root in Edessa, a
Syriac-speaking city with a native dynasty and
culture, the whole atmosphere was different.
The Syriac language was used in place of
Greek, and the Church developed a national

ADDAI AND KING ABGAR II
spirit. It was not long before Edessa claimed
the special protection of our Lord. It was
believed that the city had been evangelised
by Addai, one of the seventy-two disciples,
that he had been sent there from Palestine in
response to a letter from King Abgar to our
Lord : nay more, that our Lord Himself had
answered Abgar with a promise that Edessa
should be blessed, and that no enemy should
ever have dominion over it.
The story of Addai and King Abgar was
received by Eusebius arid incorporated into
his Ecclesiastical History. It is intimately
connected with the various legends of the
finding of the True Cross and of the True
Likeness of Christ, and its reception forms a
curious chapter in the history of human
credulity. But this legend, as contained in
the book called the Doctrine of Addai, is also
a source of real value for the historian. Un
doubtedly it grew up at Edessa itself, attaining
its present shape by the end of the fourth
century, or at any rate before the reforms of
Rabbula. The author's chronology is faulty, and
his grasp of history, secular and ecclesiastical,
is feeble. But he knew the place he is describing.
The memory of the reign of native princes was
still fresh when he wrote, and the names of

12 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
his personages are genuine survivals of the
ancient pagan nomenclature. Moreover he is
comparatively so near to the events that his
narrative contains unassimilated fragments from
an older, more historical, account of the rise of
Christianity in Edessa. These fragments fit in
badly enough into the main story, but for that
very reason we may be sure that they were
not invented by the author of the Doctrine of
Addai. Let me put before you the general outlines of
this ancient tale. Abgar Ukkama — that is, Abgar
the Black, who died in 50 a.d. after a long reign
— sent an embassy to Sabinus, the deputy of
the Emperor Tiberius, at Eleutheropolis in
Palestine. We may remark in passing that
Eleutheropolis was first so called by Septimius
Severus in the year 200 a.d., and that its
importance as a centre of government dates
from that period. The nobles Mariyabh and
Shamshagram, who with a notary called Hannan
comprise the embassy of Abgar, pass over against
Jerusalem on their way home and hear from
travellers of the fame of Jesus the Messiah. They
decide to go themselves to Jerusalem, and "when
they had entered Jerusalem, they saw the
Messiah and rejoiced with the multitudes who
were joined to Him, and they saw also the Jews

THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST TO ABGAR 1 3
standing in groups and considering what they
should do to Him, for they were disturbed to
see a number of their people confessing Him.
And they were there in Jerusalem ten days,
and Hannan the notary wrote down everything
which he saw that the Messiah did. " 1 So they
returned to King Abgar, and when Abgar
heard he wished to go himself to Palestine,
but was afraid to pass through the Roman
dominions. He therefore sent a letter to Jesus
by the hand of Hannan the notary, and Hannan
found Jesus in the house of Gamaliel, the chief
of the Jews. The letter, which begins " Abgar
Ukkama to Jesus the Good Physician " 2 declares
that Abgar has come to the conclusion either
that Jesus is God come down from heaven or
that He is the Son of God, and goes on to
invite Him to come to Edessa, to live there,
and to cure the disease from which he, Abgar,
is suffering.
When Jesus received this letter, He replied to
Hannan the notary : "Go and say to thy Lord
that sent thee unto me ' Happy art thou, that

1 Doctrine of Addai, p. 2 f.
2 "Good Physician" is the reading of the Syriac (p. 4), but
in Eusebius (HE i 13) and on the ancient lintel at Ephesus we
find "Good Saviour." This passage of the Doctrine of Addai
appears to be the earliest instance in which the title Good
Physician is given to our Lord.

14 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
though thou hast not seen me, thou hast believed
in me; for it is written of me that they which
see me will not believe in me, and they which
see me not — they will believe in me. Now as
to what thou hast written to me, that I should
come unto thee, — that for which I was sent
hither hath now come to an end, and I go up
unto my Father that sent me ; but when I have
gone up unto Him, I will send thee one of my
disciples, that whatever disease thou hast he may
heal and cure. And all that are with thee he
shall turn to life eternal, and thy town shall be
blessed and no enemy again shall have dominion
over it for ever.'"
Such is the famous letter of Christ to Abgar.
It had a curious after-history. The story seems
very early to have been translated into Greek,
and the whole letter, with the significant excep
tion of the last clauses, was inserted by Eusebius
into his great Ecclesiastical History. Eusebius
knew the actual course of events too well to
allow the promise of the impregnability of
Edessa to stand in his book. So learned a
historian could not forget the sack of Edessa
by Lusius Quietus under Trajan, and the
absorption of the province of Osrhoene into the
Empire a hundred years later. The whole
correspondence is very properly branded as

THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST TO ABGAR 15
apocryphal in the .fifth century Gelasian decree.
But it had enjoyed, and indeed still continued
to enjoy, a great popularity. The Bodleian
possesses some fragments of Greek papyrus,
dating from the fourth or fifth century, which
contained it, and three years ago a lintel was
found at Ephesus with the letters of Abgar
to Christ and Christ to Abgar inscribed on it
in Greek characters almost contemporary with
Eusebius himself;1 both these documents give
the promise to the city of Abgar. The letter
of Christ was regarded as a charm, and pious
folk in England in the time of the Heptarchy
still copied it out and wore it for a preservative
"against lightning and hail and perils by sea
and land, by day and by night and in dark
places."2 To return to the Doctrine of Addai. After
receiving the message to King Abgar, Hannan
the notary painted a likeness of our Lord "in
choice colours " and brought it to Edessa, where
Abgar set it in a place of honour.3 At a later
period this portrait was the subject of many
wonderful tales : it was believed to have been

1

See the Daily Express for May 2, 1900.
2 See B. M. Royal 2 A xx, fol. 12, printed in Dom Kuypers's
Book of Cerne, p. 205.
3 Doctrine of Addai, p. 5.

16 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
miraculously painted without human hands, and
it is intimately connected with the well-known
tale of Veronica. But these developments
belong to a further stage of legend, and the
Doctrine of Addai goes on at once to tell us
how after the Ascension the apostle Judas
Thomas sent Addai, one of the seventy-two,
to King Abgar. We may pass rapidly over
the greater part of the preaching of Addai, but
certain details demand our attention here.
When Addai comes to Edessa he lodges at
the house of Tobias, son of one Tobias a
Palestinian Jew, who introduces Addai to
Abgar.1 Of course Abgar is immediately
healed and converted to Christianity, with large
numbers of his subjects, amongst whom were
a merchant community of Jews.2 The Jews
of Palestine who crucified our Lord are
naturally held up to obloquy, but it is remarkable
that the Jews of Edessa are represented as
friendly to the new teaching.
The religion of Edessa, according to the
Doctrine of Addai, was a worship of the
Heavenly Bodies.3 The references to Bel and
Nebo come, I fear, from the Old Testament and

1 Doctrine of Addai, p. 6.
2 Ibid., p. 32 f.
3 Ibid., p. 24 f.

RELIGION IN HEATHEN EDESSA 1 7
not from historical reminiscence, but we may
accept the statement that the people of Mabbog-
Hierapolis worshipped Tar'atha, and that the
people of Harran worshipped a deity called Bath
Nikal. Quite lately Dr Rendel Harris has
collected some striking evidence to prove that
heathen Edessa was especially devoted to the
Heavenly Twins, and that it is in their honour
that stars appear upon the Edessene coinage.
The Doctrine of Addai does not, however, directly
speak of the Twins, but it mentions the worship
of the Sun and the Moon and Venus, and of
the influence believed to be exerted by the
signs of the Zodiac generally. It is also re
markable that the Doctrine makes no reference
to the two great columns. on the citadel which
still form so striking a feature in the Urfa of
to-day. The passages which speak about the early
Syriac Canon of the Old and New Testaments,
and about the manner of life practised by the
converts, we shall consider in subsequent lectures.
But for the main question we are now consider
ing, the question of the general course of the
history of the Edessene Church, the most im
portant part of the Doctrine is its conclusion.
We are told, in itself a remarkable statement,
that Addai died in peace and honour during the

1 8 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
lifetime of the believing King Abgar, and that
he was succeeded by his disciple Aggai.1 Some
very late authorities make Addai gain the honour
of martyrdom, but the peaceful end here given
to him is one of the indications that a real
historical element is contained in our main docu
ment. Aggai, on the other hand, was martyred.
Ma'nu, one of the sons of Abgar, was an un
believer, and when Aggai refused to make him
a heathen diadem, such as in old days he had
made for Abgar his father, this Ma'nu sent and
broke Aggai's legs as he was sitting in the
Church. So Aggai died, and was buried in the
Church between the places for the men and for
the women. And because he died thus suddenly
he had no time to ordain his successor Palut, so
that Palut was obliged to go to Antioch for
ordination, where he was ordained by Serapion,
Bishop of Antioch.
Here is an evident anachronism, an ana
chronism so glaring that it must be more than
a mere mistake. Serapion of Antioch is a
personage known to us from the Ecclesiastical
History of Eusebius as an orthodox writer and
a champion of the Four Canonical Gospels, as
strict as was S. Irenaeus, his contemporary.
Serapion became Bishop of Antioch in the year
1 Doctrine qf Addai, p. 46 f.

SERAPION OF ANTIOCH 19
190 and held the See for about twenty-one
years. If, therefore, Serapion ordained Palut,
Palut could not have been converted to
Christianity by one of the seventy-two Disciples,
nor could the King Abgar, in whose reign
he lived, have been contemporary with our
Lord. We are thus confronted in the Doctrine of
Addai with two theories of the rise of
Christianity in Edessa. On the one theory,
which is that maintained in the body of the
work, Christianity was planted there in the first
century of our era : on the other, which is that
of the epilogue, the third president of the
Christian Society at Edessa was not ordained
bishop till about 200 a.d., and Christianity itself
cannot have reached the district much before the
middle of the second century.
The story of the Doctrine of Addai is
practically continued in a pair of documents
called the Acts of Skarbil and the Martyrdom
of Barsamya. Barsamya is mentioned in the
Doctrine of Addai,1 and we learn that he became
Bishop of Edessa in succession to 'Abshelama
who succeeded Palut.2 Barsamya, the Christian
bishop, converts Sharbel, the chief priest of Bel
1 Doctrine of Addai, p. 33.
a Cureton's Ancient Syriac Documents, p. 71.

20 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
and Nebo : Sharb&l and Barsamya are both
arrested, and the former, after cruel tortures, is
put to death. Barsamya is about to undergo the
same fate, when a decree of toleration arrives
from the Emperors (sic), and he is dismissed in
peace. In the Martyrdom of Barsamya we find
again the statement that Palut was ordained by
Serapion, and in accordance with this we are
told that Barsamya lived in the days of Pope
Fabian I., who was martyred in a.d. 250 during
the Decian persecution.1 But elsewhere in these
documents the Emperor is called Trajan, and
the persecuting judge who appears as supreme
ruler in Edessa is called Lysania or Lusianus,
although a heathen King Abgar is also men
tioned.2 The view that makes Trajan the
persecuting Emperor prevailed in later times,
and so the late chronicler Michael the Syrian,
Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch in the twelfth
century, assigns the martyrdom of Sharbel and
Barsamya to his reign.3 Yet even Michael'
introduces an inconsistency, for he adds that
at the same time Euphemia of Chalcedon
suffered martyrdom, an event which took place
in 307 during the Diocletian persecution. It

1 Cureton's Ancient Syriac Documents, pp. 61, 71,
2 Ibid., p. 42.
3 J. B. Chabot, Michel le Syrien, p. 175 b.

THE EARLY MARTYRDOMS 21
will be well to bear in mind this glaring ana
chronism when we come to Michael's account of
Bardaisan. ^
The details of the story of Sharbel and
Barsamya do not commend themselves as
historical on a close survey. Sharbel, the con
verted heathen priest, not only reviles the
(Greek) gods of paganism after the manner of
professional Christian Apologists, but also quotes
the Psalms and the Prophets as if he had been
long familiar with the Scriptures. The tortures
to which he is put are absurdly severe, but
they are utterly unable to prevent him from
haranguing the judge with considerable prolixity.
Finally we are told that the persecution ceased
because of the earthquakes which took place at
Rome when the exiled Christians were taking
away with them the bones of S. Peter and
S. Paul. When the people of Rome saw the
earthquake, they besought the Christians to stay ;
so the earthquake ceased, and they all, both
Jews and Pagans, confessed Christ.1 It is
obvious that not much reliance can be placed
on a document which contains such perversions
of fact.
We pass on a few years and emerge at last
into the light of real history. In the ancient
1 Cureton, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. 61.

22 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
Syriac Kalendar, edited by Dr Wright from a
MS. written in the year 41 1, we find on the 15th
of November the commemoration of Shamdna
and Guria, and on the 2nd of September the com
memoration of Habbib the Deacon. This
ancient Kalendar, or rather Martyrology, knows
nothing of Sharbel and Barsamya, or of Aggai,
a circumstance which tends to show that the
cult of these early martyrs at Edessa did not
rest on continuous historical tradition. It is
different with Sham6na, Guria and Habbib ;
their memory was never forgotten by the Syriac-
speaking Church. Shamdna and Guria were
beheaded at the beginning of Diocletian's per
secution in 297, and Habbib was burned alive
-under Licinius in 309, a couple of years before
the edicts of toleration. During this period the
Bishop of Edessa was named Q6na. He died in
313, after the persecutions had come to an end,
and the only act assigned to him by chroniclers
is the laying of the foundations of the great
Church, which was finished by his successor
Sa'ad who died in 324. How Q6na escaped
during the persecution we do not know. He
may have been in hiding, or possibly the govern
ing officials may have been unwilling to arrest
persons of distinction for fear of a riot. It is in
any case noteworthy that he is neither praised

EDESSA IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 23
nor blamed by the writer of the martyrdoms,
himself a contemporary.
From the time of Q6na onwards the names
of the bishops of Edessa are carefully recorded
in the document called the Chronicum Edessenum.
Between Q6na and Rabbula the See of Edessa
was held by nine bishops. Of these, Aitalaha,
the successor of Sa'ad, was one of the members
of the great Council of Nicaea in 325 a.d. The
next but one to Aitalaha was Barses, who was
exiled by the Arians. Rabbula, who was bishop
from 412 to 435, will be considered in following
lectures. His episcopate is the great landmark
in the history of the Syriac-speaking Church.
It was while Rabbula was bishop that the older
heretics came to an end, and the new parties
of Monophysites and Nestorians first became
defined. In ritual and discipline also his rule
marks the end of the old and the beginning of
the new.
One great event in general history during the
fourth century must be briefly noticed here.
The invasion of Mesopotamia by the Huns from
the North in the year 395 was a public calamity
and is mentioned in some Christian hymns.
But it had no influence on the general develop
ment of the Church, and it fell with equal force on
all classes of the community. The great Persian

24 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
War belonged to a very different order of things.
It has a real bearing on theology and on Church
history. It lasted with intermissions from 337 to
363, and ended disastrously for the Roman cause
after the defeat and death of Julian. The Empire
gave up Nisibis with all the provinces beyond
Osrhoene, and we can still hear in S. Ephraim's
discourses echoes of the dismay with which the
Christian population of the East received the
disgraceful tidings. " Grief compels me to
speak," he writes, "order commands me to be
silent " ; and I regret to say he goes on to im
prove the occasion by exhorting his hearers at
Edessa to take warning by the fate of Nisibis,
which had no doubt perished because of the
thoughtlessness and luxury of its inhabitants and
their immodest dancing shoes.
We should, however, obtain a very imperfect
representation of the history of the Church of
England if we had to re-construct it merely from
"published sermons. To the Christian subjects
of the Sasanid monarch the war meant much
more than an occasion which might be turned
to good account in the pulpit. To many of them,
indeed, it was literally a matter of life and death.
For the Persian War of the fourth century was
the first great political event in which the Church
found itself taking a side. The Empire of thp

THE PERSIAN WAR ^5
Sasanids was definitely national, Persian, Zoroas
trian, opposed to Christianity ; and so, from the
time that the Roman Empire became Christian,
to be a Persian Christian was, in the eyes of the
King of Kings and his government, not very
different from being a Persian traitor. It was
almost as difficult to be a Persian Christian under
Sapor as to be a Catholic under Elizabeth, or an
Anglican under Cromwell.
I do not intend to trace the rise and decay
of Christianity in the Sasanid Empire. To-day
1 must be content with mentioning the fact of
the great war and its general bearing on
the theology of the Syriac-speaking Church,
before going back to the outline of the earlier
period. The names of bishops are the dry bones
of Church History, and in making up the chain
of episcopal successions we are at best only
re-constructing a skeleton. But the re-construction
of this skeleton is a necessary preliminary to
enduing the dry bones with nerves and spirit:
at least, to drop the metaphor, there is no surer
way of detecting a break in the continuity of
the history of a Church than by a break in the
succession of its chief ministers. And it is to
the great break in the succession of Edessa that
I must now once more draw your attention.
What is the real meaning, we ask, of the

26 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
statement that Palut was not ordained by Aggai,
but by Serapion of Antioch? The documents
that make this statement, viz. the Doctrine of
Addai and the Martyrdom of Barsamya, go on
to tell us that Serapion himself was ordained by
Zephyrinus of Rome, who was ordained by his
predecessor, and so on up to S. Peter. The
general ecclesiastical meaning is, of course, quite
clear. It means that Palut was an accredited
missionary of the great Church of the Roman
Empire.1 Palut was a child of Peter : no such
claim is made for Addai and Aggai, his prede
cessors at Edessa.
J But the form of the statement we are con
sidering is curiously unhistorical. Serapion was
Bishop of Antioch from 189 or 192 to 209.
Zephyrinus was Bishop of Rome from 202 to 218,
and certainly did not consecrate Serapion. There
must be, therefore, a special reason for the mention
of Zephyrinus, who was a comparatively undistin
guished occupant of S. Peter's chair. (_ I venture
to suggest that this special reason is to be found
in the fact that Zephyrinus was bishop at the
time when Abgar IX made his famous visit
to Rome. All the indications converge to show
1 In the well-known words of S. Irenaeus (Haer. iii i): "Ad
hanc enim [sc. Romanam] ecclesiam propter potiorem principali-
tatem necesse est omnem conuenire ecclesiam, hoc est eos qui sunt
undique fideles."

SERAPION AND PALUT 27
that the King Abgar who was converted to
Christianity, or at least showed himself favour
able to the new religion, was Abgar IX. Abgar
IX. is the only ruler of Edessa who would ever
have had occasion to send an embassy to
Eleutheropolis in Palestine, as related in the
Doctrine of Addai: he is said to have had
Bardaisan for a friend, so that he was exposed
to Christian influence ; he was the only one
ol the later kings of his name who reigned long
enough for legends to form about his personality.
We need not strain our imaginations to invent
an interview between the Roman Pope and
the Asiatic King, but if Abgar IX were only
half a Christian it is at least almost certain that
his retinue would include members of the
Edessene Church, who would carry back to the
East, on their return, the name of the chief
ecclesiastic in the capital of the world. That
in sober truth a church then existed at Edessa
we know from the graphic description of the
great flood of 201 a.d. which is embedded in the
Edessene Chronicle, when amongst much other
damage the "Church of the Christians" was
destroyed by the river Daisan.
It is, of course, possible that the intercourse
between Abgar and Septimius Severus may have
turned the attention of the ecclesiastics of Rome

28 THE EAfeLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
and Antioch to the Christian community of
Edessa, but it is more likely that the impulse
came the other way, and that Palut's career
represents a movement among Syriac-speak
ing Christians for closer communion with the
Churches of the West. We do not know, and
our sources are not likely to tell us, how far
Palut with his Antiochene Orders represented
at the time the main stream of Edessene
Christianity. Yet it is difficult to repress the
suspicion that at first the Catholics, as we
may call them, were in the minority. We
learn from Jacob of Edessa that S. Ephraim,
in a controversial homily, now lost or badly
edited, complains that the orthodox are called
" Palutians " ; the Church, he says, ought not to
be called after any man's name, but only after
Christ Himself. S. Ephraim's argument, that .
it is the dissenting sects which are called after
their founder's names, is historically accurate, but
the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the
name Palutian is that the Catholic Church in
Edessa was a dissenting sect founded by Palut.
A somewhat similar conclusion is perhaps to
be drawn from the list of prelates who have filled
the office of Catholicus or Primate of the East,
the head of the Church within the Persian
dominions. This list is to be found in the Book

CHRONICLE OF MICHAEL THE SYRIAN 29
of the Bee compiled by Solomon of El-Basra, and
in one or two similar collections of historical
matter. It begins with Addai. Then comes his
disciple Mari ; but Ambrose and Abraham, the
next in order, are distinguished in the list as
being "ofthe consecration of Antioch." Here,
again, Addai is claimed as the founder of the
Church, but the link is soon broken, and the
succession goes back to Antioch.
One important piece of evidence remains to
be considered before we sum up our historical
results. The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian,
Patriarch ofthe Monophysites, who died in 1199,
is a compilation from various sources. The value
of such a work, when it describes events which
happened a thousand years before the writer's
day, obviously depends on the excellence of the
sources he used, and not upon his own critical
judgment. For the main part of his work in
the first three centuries of Christianity he is
dependent on Eusebius, but for the history of
Edessa he has other material. Most of it is
familiar to us already ; for Addai and Aggai he
uses the Doctrine of Addai, for Barsamya and
Sharbel the heathen priest he uses the Syriac
Acta} Curiously enough, he passes over
Habbib, Shamdna and Guria, the genuine local
1 Chabot's Michel le Syrien, p. [105] 6.

30 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
heroes of Edessa. But in compensation he gives
us the fullest biography of Bardaisan that has
survived, a biography which in part, at least, must
have been derived from a source considerably
older than Michael himself.
He tells us1 that in the year 154 a.d. Bardaisan
was born at Edessa, where his parents had taken
refuge (apparently from the Parthians), and that
he was brought up at Hierapolis-Mabbog by a
heathen priest. At the age of twenty-five years,
i.e. in 179 a.d., he went to Edessa on some
business, and when passing by the Church built
by Addai he heard the voice of Hystasp explain
ing the Scriptures to the people. This Hystasp
is he that succeeded to Izani2 as Bishop of
Edessa. Bardaisan was pleased with the dis
course, and desired to be initiated into the
Christian mysteries ; and when the bishop heard
this he taught him and baptized him and made
him a deacon. Then follows some account of
the astronomical and astrological heresies of
Bardaisan, and at the end we are told that
'Aqai, the successor of Hystasp, having failed
to convince Bardaisan of his errors, finally
1 Chabot, p. [no] a. The MS. has 475 A.s. = f64 A.D., by error.
The year 154 is given correctly in the much earlier and more
trustworthy Chronicum Edessenum, and is demanded by Bardaisan's
death in 222 at the age of sixty-eight.
3 Or Yaznai,

MICHAEL'S LIST OF EDESSENE BISHOPS 3 1
anathematised him, and he died in 222 a.d. at
the age of sixty-eight. " May his memory be
cursed, Amen ! " adds our chronicler at the end
of the tale.
We shall come back to Bardaisan in a
subsequent Lecture. What we must here notice
is that this account supplies us with three new
names of bishops of Edessa, of the succession
of Addai. No other source tells us of Izani, of
Hystasp, or of 'Aqai, and we have now to
consider whether we are to accept these names,
and if so, where we are to insert them in our
list. Perhaps, however, the best way is first to
consider whence Michael our chronicler himself
took the names.
This last question resolves itself into an
inquiry whether Michael's list of Edessene
bishops has any independent value, or whether
it be merely his own compilation from the various
sources of which he has made use. For Michael,
if we may accept his statements, gives us definite
information. He puts Addai, Aggai and Palut
in the days ofthe apostles ; then ' Abshelama ; then
Barsamya in the days of Trajan ; then follow
Tiridat, Bozni, Shalula, another slave; Guria,
another slave ; and then Izani, Hystasp and 'Aqai.1
What Michael means by "another slave" I do
1 Chabot, p. [110] b.

32 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
not know : the whole list is extremely confused,
and no name is given between 'Aqai, who was
bishop before 222 A.D., and Q6na, who was bishop
under Diocletian in 297. These confusions and
imperfections make it unlikely that our chronicler
Michael composed the list of Edessene bishops
himself; but they do not help to commend the
list to us as a serious historical document. It is
noteworthy that no numbers are put before the
bishops in the list, as in the lists of bishops of
Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, and
I venture to think that we may transpose the
three names which have to do with Bardaisan to
a place before Palut.
The ordination of Palut by Serapion of Antioch,
which is the central fact of the Edessene succes
sion, is passed over altogether by Michael. When
we take account of this fact we see that the three
bishops who come into the story of Bardaisan
have been inserted far too late. The story itself
mentions Addai, but Palut's name does not occur.
I think we shall do best to reject Michael's order
altogether. We have seen that there was some
evidence to suggest that Palut, with his
Antiochene consecration, occupied the position
in Edessa of a dissenter from the main body of
Christians. The latest tradition makes him the
direct successor of Aggai; the earlier tradition

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY 33
makes him a disciple of Aggai, but consecrated
bishop by Serapion ; in actual fact he may have
been a rival to the direct successor of Addai and
Aggai. Bishop Hystasp, who converted Bardaisan,
must have been some years senior to Palut, but
' Aqai, who anathematised the great Astrologer,
seems to have been Palut's contemporary, or at
most only a little his senior. Yet after all our
sources know nothing of rival bishops in Edessa
till the time of the Arians, and I should like to
believe that the account given at the end of the
Doctrine of Addai is in essentials true, namely,
that the succession of the bishops of Edessa was
broken mainly because of heathen persecution.
The early history of the Edessene Church is
derived from sources for the most part unfamiliar.
Much of our material is late, much of it is mixed
up with unhistorical legend and fable. To
give a re-construction of the history without
setting the documents before you would have
been unsatisfactory, while a mere quotation of
the conflicting accounts which have come down
to us would have led to confusion. I have
therefore given you the chief data from the
documents, with a certain amount of accompany
ing criticism, in order to enable you to pass
judgment as to their value. I shall now go on,

34 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
by way of recapitulation, to state what I conceive
to have been the main outlines of that history to
which our fragmentary sources bear witness.
The beginnings, then, of Christianity in Edessa
started among the Jews. Christianity was first
preached there by Addai, a Jew from Palestine,
probably before the middle of the second century,
and the first Christian community in Edessa con
tained a large Jewish element. At the same time
the new religion came to be favourably received
by some of the noble and cultivated pagan in
habitants, though it did not become the State
religion till after the end of the second century.
Addai died in peace at Edessa, but his successor
Aggai was martyred. The Christian ^community,
however, continued to prosper after his decease
under Hystasp, for I suspect that the Izani of
the Syriac Chronicle may be a miswriting of
Aggai. Be this as it may, in the time of
Hystasp the Church gained the adherence of
Bardaisan, a fact which in itself shows the
growing attraction of Christianity for the heathen
world. Bardaisan was of noble birth, and he
became a distinguished writer : it is a grave
count against the Church in Edessa under 'Aqai,
the successor of Hystasp, that it failed both in
authority and attractiveness to retain the chief
representative of Syriac philosophy within its

FROM ADDAI TO PALUT 35
fold. But the old order of things in Edessa
about 200 a.d., both in Church and in State, was
coming to an end : the State came under the
dominion of the Romans, and the Church was
renewed by a mission which derived its authority
and its orders through the Bishop of Antioch.
Palut, the new bishop, had been ordained by
Serapion of Antioch, but though those outside
might at first call his followers Palutians, as if
they were a new sect, he or his immediate suc
cessors soon became the undisputed presidents
of the Catholic Church in Edessa, and later ages
remembered Palut as the disciple of Aggai him
self. The followers of Bardaisan remained with
out the pale of the Church, and continued to the
fifth century. It is not known at what time the
Marcionites first established themselves in Edessa.
They also remained till the time of Rabbula, in
spite of the opposition both of the Catholics "and
the school of Bardaisan. In Syriac, as in Greek
Christian literature, we have to lament the total
loss of the writings of these profoundly interesting
people. After Palut's successor 'Abshelama came
Barsamya, another martyr, whom we may
suppose to have suffered either under Decius
or Valerian (250-260 a.d.). About thirty years
later the Bishop of Edessa is called Q6na, a

36 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
personage who lived to see the end of the
heathen persecutions without the disgrace of
sacrificing to idols or the glory of a public con
fession of the Faith. But during his episcopate
Edessa furnished at least three martyrs to the
roll of those who suffered under Diocletian and
Licinius, and the memory of their trial and
execution was still fresh when the Church
arrived at power and could commemorate her
heroes in public. The story of Addai and the
martyrdom of Barsamya are professedly taken
from the public records : in other words, they
were artificially composed and drawn up as
learned works of history, but the author of
the martyrdoms of Shamdna and Guria, and of
Habbib, speaks at least partly from personal
knowledge and reminiscence. The burning fire,
the terrible sea and the merciless mines are only
too vividly imprinted in his memory. I think it
not improbable that he was one of the guard
of soldiers that accompanied Shamdna and Guria
outside Edessa to the place of execution, and it
was their constancy which made him from that
moment a secret Christian.
I need not now continue the story of the
Church in Edessa through the century of
the Arian controversy. We shall hear more of
the theological disputes of the fourth and fifth

SEMITES AND GREEKS 37
centuries later on. To-day we have been
occupied with scaffolding. The names of
bishops and the order of their succession are
facts which only become of importance to us
when they are intimately bound up with a
knowledge of the ideas which the men re
present, and when the order of the names
suggests the development or the conflict of the
ideas. The early bishops of Edessa must remain to
us shadowy personages. Of most of them we
only know their names ; and for the rest, the words
that are put into their mouths in the Doctrine of
Addai and the Acts of Barsamya represent the
taste and the beliefs of a later age. We can do
little more than repeat that the names of Addai
and Aggai represent the original Christianity of
Edessa, a Christianity detached in spirit from
that of the Greek-speaking Christians of the
Roman Empire ; and that, on the other hand,
with the name of Palut is associated the ideas of
episcopal succession and the feeling for the unity
of the Church which is symbolised by the primacy
of S. Peter.
All through the history of the Syriac-speaking
Church we find this double strain. Sometimes the
national, independent element strikes the Western
inquirer ; in other departments or other times we

38 THE EARLY BISHOPS OF EDESSA
see more prominently the effort to keep pace with
the Greeks in theology, in ritual, in superstition.
At last there comes a great disruption. The
national elements crystallise into Nestorianism,
forming a body hostile to Constantinople within
the Persian dominions. For a time it had a
wonderful life, and extended its missions to
Samarkand and Tibet, and even to China and
to Southern India. ! The elements more in
sympathy with later Greek theology, after driv
ing out their brethren from the Roman dominions,
were themselves unable to march for long with the
inspired decisions of the Byzantine Emperors.
The Syrians rejected the decrees of the
Council of Chalcedon, and found themselves
also involved in formal heresy. When there
fore the deluge came, and the barbarian followers
of a new prophet overran Syria and Mesopotamia,
the Christian population had little enthusiasm for
the Greek dominion. The Monophysites pre
ferred toleration under Mohammedan Caliphs to
persecution under the Orthodox rule.

LECTURE II
THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
The various translations of the Bible into Syriac
are of the utmost interest and value to the student
of Christian antiquities. In the first place, the
earlier Syriac Versions are of great weight as
critical "authorities," as documents by the aid of
which modern scholars are enabled to re-construct
the text of the Old and New Testaments in the
original languages where the transmitted text is
faulty, or to defend it where the transmitted text
is sound. In the four Gospels especially the
earliest Syriac version is one of our best
authorities. But the various forms of the Bible
in Syriac have a historical interest of their own
apart from their critical value. They form as
it were a commentary upon the history and
development of the Syriac - speaking Church.
The history of the Church will help us to
understand and appreciate the character of the
Biblical translations, and where the direct
historical information is scanty the character of

40 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
the Biblical translations will, to some extent,
enable us to re-construct and illustrate the history.
The same thing, let us remind ourselves in
passing, may be done with English Church
History. We can very well illustrate the course
of the English Reformation from the history of
the English Bible. In Tyndale we have the
Protestant reformer translating for the first time
the Scriptures from the original languages into
the vernacular, and in his work we catch the
unmistakeable echoes of current controversies
when we find the "church" appearing as the
"congregation," and priests as "seniors."
The various more or less official versions,
culminating in the Authorised Version of 1611,
mark the peculiar progress of Reformation
principles in England : the irresponsible
Protestant version of Tyndale was burnt by
authority, but it was nevertheless used as
the basis of subsequent Bibles in which the
ecclesiastical vocabulary had been more or less
restored. It is unnecessary to work out the parallel in
detail. The impression I wish to leave on your
minds is that for studying the history of the
earliest Syriac-speaking Church we are in much
the same position as if we had to re-construct
the course of the Reformation in England from

the peshitta 41
a series of English Bibles, together with a few
tales taken out of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. We
need to use both courage and caution if our
results are to be of value.
The place that is occupied among English-
speaking Christians by the Authorised Version
is occupied in the Syriac Churches by the
Peshitta. What is known to us as the Peshitta
is a Syriac version of the Canonical Scriptures
of the Old and New Testaments as received by
the Syriac-speaking Church. The Peshitta is
the only version in ecclesiastical use. It is the
Bible equally of the Nestorians, the Jacobites,
the Malkites, the Maronites, and that it occupies
this position is in itself proof sufficient that it is
older than the latter half of the fifth century, the
period when the Syriac-speaking Church began
to split up into exclusive and hostile communities.
The name Peshitta is not so old. The word
p'shittd means "simple," and was originally
applied to the current Syriac version at some
period between the seventh and the ninth century
to distinguish it from a revised version prepared
by the Monophysite scholars, Thomas of Heraclea
and Paul of Telia. This revised version was
written in a pedantic semi-Greek jargon, and was
provided with a complicated apparatus of critical
signs embodied in the text : compared with this

42 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
learned work the older translation appeared to
the Syrians to be "simple." But the name
Peshitta to denote the Syriac Vulgate is so con
venient and distinctive a term that we shall do
well to retain it.
The first point about the Peshitta to which I
wish to draw your attention is the fixed character
of its text. The range of variation found in the
extant MSS. is very small, considerably smaller
even than the range of variation in the MSS.
of the Latin Vulgate. The variations them
selves are for the most part of the most trifling
description, matters of orthography, slips of
writing, and such like. This is all the more
noteworthy, seeing that our Peshitta MSS. date
from the fifth century onwards. The whole Bible
— Old and New Testaments, with the Apocrypha
— is extant in Syriac MSS. of the sixth century,
a state of things which cannot be paralleled in
any other language but Greek, and our Greek
MSS. of that age are full of startling variation
from later copies.
At once some interesting problems suggest
themselves. We have in the Peshitta a monu
ment of ecclesiastical authority ; what is its value ?
What does it tell us of the history of the Bible
in the Church? What books were included in
the early Syriac Canon? And what was the

THE ARAMAIC OF EDESSA 43
state of the text in those MSS. from which the
translation was made ?
When the New Testament in the Peshitta
version was first published in the year 1555, the
editor, Chancellor John Albert Widmanstatter,
claimed that the Syriac of the Peshitta was the
language of Palestine, the vernacular dialect used
by our Lord and His apostles. This is not the
case ; the Syriac of the Peshitta is akin to the
Aramaic of Palestine, but it is very far from
being the same dialect. Syriac is the name
given to the dialect of Aramaic which was
spoken in the Euphrates Valley and the ad
joining districts. The dialects formerly spoken
in Palestine and in its neighbourhood as far
north as Palmyra were also dialects of Aramaic,
but distinct from Syriac. These Western
Aramaic dialects differ from Syriac in the use
of what may be called the article, in the con
jugation and formation of the verb, and in
vocabulary. The " Aramaic of Palestine " is
known to us from the Aramaic portions of the
Old Testament, from the Targums and other
Jewish literature, from the Samaritan Liturgies
and Targum, from Nabatsean and Palmyrene
inscriptions ; and it is not the language of the
Peshitta. It is necessary to insist on this point,

44 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
because erroneous views about the connexion of
Syriac-speaking Christianity with the primitive
Christianity of Palestine were formerly current,
and even now are not wholly eradicated.
Nothing, for instance, can be more misleading
than the account of the Peshitta given in the
late Dr Westcott's well-known book on the
Canon of the New Testament. It is true that
this work was first published so long ago as
1855, but in the 7th edition, issued in 1896, and
brought up to date by a distinguished scholar,
we still read " The dialect of the Peshitta, even
as it stands now, represents in part at least
that form of Aramaic which was current in
Palestine,"1 and "The Peshitta is the earliest
monument of Catholic Christianity."2 It is true
that Dr Westcott clearly recognised that the
text of the New Testament Peshitta had under
gone "a decisive revision in the fourth century."3
But stress is laid on the assumed Palestinian
origin of the Peshitta, and the present Canon of
the Peshitta is distinctly asserted to be that of
the earliest times. Neither of these assertions
are tenable in the light of the evidence we now
possess.

1 Ed. of 1896, p. 241.
3 Ibid., p. 250, side note.
3 Ibid., p. 242, note.

ANTIOCH A GREEK CITY 45
It may be as well, before we go any further,
once more to remind ourselves that Antioch "in
Syria" was a centre, not of Syriac-speaking
culture, but of Greek culture. After Christianity
became the established religion of the Roman
Empire, monasteries of Syriac-speaking com
munities were established within or near the
walls of Antioch, but it was essentially a Greek
city. The condition of things in the Roman
Province of Syria and the regions beyond was
not very much unlike that with which we have
become familiar in South Africa. Just as in
South Africa the great towns are predominantly
English, while nearly the whole country-side is
Dutch in language and civilisation, both within
and without the old political boundaries, so in
Western Asia only the great cities were Greek,
while the villages were peopled by Aramaic-
speaking races. The importance of the establish
ment of Christianity in Edessa, which formed
the subject of last Lecture, lies in this, that it
was a Syriac-speaking city. Until a Syriac-
speaking Christianity was planted in Edessa,
the influence of the Church in Syria did not
penetrate much beyond the Greek-speaking towns
on the Mediterranean coast.
To come back to the history of the Bible
in Syriac, I have already drawn your attention

46 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
to the remarkable fact that our many ancient
MSS. of the Peshitta all present practically the
same text. Mr Gwilliam has lately edited the
Gospels in the Peshitta version. He has collated
over forty MSS., some of them as old as the
latter half of the fifth century, and yet the
variations are practically confined to questions
of spelling. The text approved by ecclesiastical
authority was therefore very carefully preserved
in later times ; is it, we ask, the original text ?
It is all the more necessary to ask this question,
because the magnificent series of Peshitta MSS.
do not entirely occupy the field. In 1858 Dr
Cureton, then Keeper of the Oriental MSS. in
the British Museum, published some fragments
of another Syriac translation of the Gospels
from a MS. at least as ancient as any of the
MSS. of the Peshitta. This translation was
long called the "Curetonian Syriac," after the
name of its discoverer and editor. It was
evidently akin to the Peshitta, though differing
in many important particulars, and the question
arose which of the two more nearly represented
the original Syriac translation. Cureton's MS.
was very defective, but in 1893 another MS.
of the same Syriac translation was discovered
in the Convent of S. Catherine on Mount
Sinai. This MS. is a palimpsest, i.e. the writing

THE DIATESSARON 47
had been more or less washed out and another
book written on the vellum, but the original
can still in great part be made out. The Sinai
Palimpsest is a very ancient MS., older even
than Cureton's MS., and it differs a good deal
from it both in language and in the readings
of the Greek which it supports. But the two
MSS. often agree in the most striking way
against the Peshitta. Both MSS. describe them
selves as being the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi,
a title which will be discussed below.
During the last half century the controversy
between the rival claims of the "Curetonian"
and the Peshitta has gone on. Meanwhile
evidence has been accumulating that neither the
one nor the other was the form in which the
Gospel was most read in early times among
Syriac-speaking Christians. In original Syriac
works earlier than the fifth century, as distinct
from translations, the separate Gospels are never
quoted by name, and the text of the quotations
is generally composed of phrases taken from
various Gospels. The reason of this is that
the early Syriac-speaking Church used not our
Four Gospels, but Tatian's Diatessaron. This
Diatessaron was a harmony of our Four Gospels,
made into one narrative by combining, rather
than by selecting, the words of Matthew, Mark,

48 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
Luke and John. Unfortunately it fell under
ecclesiastical censure, and no MS. of it in its
original form has survived.
No Syriac MS. of the Acts or Epistles has
yet come to light which can be supposed to
preserve an earlier form of the version than
the official Peshitta. There are, indeed, indica
tions that such an earlier form did once exist,
but its representatives appear to have all perished.
Our knowledge of the earliest Syriac New Testa
ment outside the Gospels has to be gathered
mainly from the quotations of Aphraates and the
Commentary of S. Ephraim on the Pauline
Epistles. This Commentary is only extant
in an Armenian translation.
The time will doubtless come when we shall
be able to write the history of the Bible in
Syriac as a continuous narrative arranged in
chronological order. But there are still great
gaps in our knowledge, and we must start
from some fixed point where we have clear
and trustworthy evidence about the texts current
in the Syriac-speaking Church. There can be,
I venture to think, very little doubt as to what
that starting-point ought to be. Our oldest
MSS. of the Peshitta date from about the
middle of the fifth century, and the earliest
piece of contemporary biography which ws>

RABBULA 49
possess is the life of Rabbula. Let us therefore
start from the episcopate of Rabbula, Bishop
of Edessa from 411 to 435 a.d. We shall see
presently that this period has special claims to
be regarded as a critical point in the history
of the Syriac Bible. In other matters also it
forms a parting of the ways. It is the last
moment when the Church in the East was
nominally united. The Arians and the older
heretics had been routed, while Nestorius was
not yet condemned.
From 411 to 435, then, Rabbula was Bishop
of Edessa. This great ecclesiastic has not yet
received from modern scholars the recognition
which is his due. He was a native of Qinnesrin
("Eagles' Nest"), a town perhaps better known
to us as Chalcis in Syria ; his father was a
heathen priest who had sacrificed in the presence
of Julian the Apostate, but his mother was a
Christian. He was converted to Christianity
by Eusebius, Bishop of Qinnesrin, and Acacius,
Bishop of Aleppo. After his conversion, Rabbula
went to Jerusalem and was baptized in the Jordan
where Jesus had been baptized by John, and the
story runs that, as the future bishop came up from
the water, men saw the white sheet that covered
him flash blood-red. On returning to his native
place Rabbula distributed his property to the

SO THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
poor, freed his slaves, forsook his wife, and en
trusted his little sons and daughters to convent
schools. He himself went from austerity to
austerity, living for a time as a hermit in the
desert in the hope of being killed by the wild
Arabs, and then going with his friend Eusebius
to Baalbek in order to obtain the crown of
martyrdom by raising a disturbance in the great
Temple — somewhat after the fashion of the late
Mr Kensit.1 But the crown of martyrdom was
not destined for Rabbula, and the two enthusiasts
only succeeded in getting themselves thrown
down the temple steps.
These exploits hardly appeal to us, but they
. recommended Rabbula in the eyes of his con
temporaries, and soon afterwards he was ap
pointed Bishop of Edessa, a post which he filled
for twenty-four years till his death in 435. He
was evidently a most successful ruler and
organiser, a strict disciplinarian while running
with the stream in the matter of doctrine. At
first he seems to have sided with the Nestorians,
but in the end he joined the opposite party and
became the friend and correspondent of Cyril
of Alexandria, whose views he supported at the

1 Overbeck, Exploits of Mar Rabbitla, p. 196, last line. I believe
•this to be the earliest surviving mention of Baalbek by name ; cf.
Bury's Gibbon, v 431.

RABBULA 5 1
council of Edessa in 431. He even burned the
writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and earned
from Nestorians the name of "the tyrant of
Edessa." Other things occupied Rabbula's attention
besides questions of religious philosophy. He
was generous to the poor, kind to the sick,
unremitting in personal austerity. But his
importance to us is that he stands as the great
enforcer of ecclesiastical order. He regulated
the ritual of divine service, the discipline of the
professed celibates, the customs observed by the
monastic communities. And though he occupied
an ambiguous position with regard to those
doctrines about which the Church had not
already pronounced a decision, he was unceasing
in the fight against heretics and heathen. He
attacked the Marcionites and the Manichees
with some success, and actually persuaded the
remnant of the Bardesanians to come into the
orthodox fold.
Shortly after Rabbula's death in 435 his
exploits were chronicled by an enthusiastic
disciple. A MS. of this work survives in the
British Museum, which has been edited in
Overbeck's well - known collection of ancient
Syriac writings, pp. 159-210. In the course of
his narrative Rabbula's biographer has occasion

52 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
to quote the New Testament several times, and
each time the quotations are in marked accord
with the text of the Peshitta. I need here only
call attention to the phrase lahmd isunqdrih8n
"bread of their need" (Overbeck 168A,1 from
which it is evident that the text of the Lord's
Prayer familiar to the writer agreed with the
Peshitta, which has "bread of our need," and
not with the old Syriac version, which has
" constant bread " as its rendering of rbv aprov
ij/iwv rbv eiriovortov.
Thus at the time of Rabbula's death, in the
circle especially attached to his memory and his
policy, we find the New Testament Peshitta
fully established. From that time onwards the
Peshitta has remained in continuous possession.
The Peshitta is quoted by Syriac writers of every
class, and used liturgically by every Syriac-speak
ing sect. The Monophysites, indeed, were not
entirely satisfied, and Thomas of Heraclea, a
Monophysite scholar, prepared a pedantically
literal revised version, which was regarded as a
critical authority and here and there actually
brought into liturgical use. But even among

1 The sentence runs " Grace sent them (i.e. Rabbula and his
companions) at sunset the bread of their need." Another clear
instance of the biographer's use of the Peshitta is to be found in
his quotation of Joh. i 14 (Overbeck 19720).

BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS IN SYRIAC WRITERS S3
Monophysites the Peshitta was never really
supplanted, and the Nestorians were unswerving
in their attachment to it. Besides all this, we
have, as I have already told you, the testimony
of a series of extant Peshitta MSS. dating from
the latter half of the fifth century till after the in
vention of printing. All these present essentially
the same type of text.
There are very few instances known to me
where quotations from the Gospel in original
Syriac writings later than 430 a.d. are based
on versions older than the Peshitta. One of
these is the pair of Gospel allusions in the
romance of Julian the Apostate ; in the light
of other evidence it is probable that the trifling
differences from the Peshitta found in these
allusions are due to a reminiscence of the
Diatessaron rather than to chance variation or
a slip of memory. The other is in Jacob of
Serug's still unpublished homily on the Lord's
Prayer, in which he renders the petition about
daily bread by "And give us the constant
bread of the day " in accordance with the old
Syriac rendering, and (I may add), that familiar
to S. Ephraim.1 It is, of course, in the text
of the Lord's Prayer that we may expect to
find the last traces of older versions : in this

1 See Lamy iii 53.

54 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
very passage the Roman Church has retained
the panem cotidianum of the Old Latin in her
liturgy, although the Vulgate text of Matt, vi 1 1
has panem supersubstantialem.
When we work backwards from the episcopate
of Rabbula we find a wholly different state of
things. The direct evidence of MSS. here fails
us, for it is doubtful whether any surviving
Biblical MS. can be placed in the fourth century.
I am inclined to believe that the Sinai Palimpsest
MS. of the Gospels is as old as the fourth century,
but the MS. is not dated, and the evidence
therefore is wholly palEeographical and so open
to some doubt. On the other hand, there is a
considerable body of patristic evidence in Syriac
older than 400 a.d. We have the Acts of Judas
Thomas, the Doctrine of Addai, the Edessene
Canons published by Cureton, the Homilies of
Aphraates, the Homilies of Cyrillona, and last
but by no means least, the genuine works of
S. Ephraim. All these make up a very consider
able body of writing, and many quotations from
the Old and New Testaments are found in
them. But while the quotations from the Old
Testament agree very largely with the text of
the Peshitta Old Testament, the quotations from
the New Testament do not agree with the text
of the Peshitta New Testament.

QUOTATIONS OF S. EPHRAIM 55
Nor is this difference the result of mere
carelessness of quotation, for a great majority
of the quotations present marked resemblances
to the texts of Cureton's MS. and the Sinai
Palimpsest, the two surviving MSS. of the
EvangeliSn da - Mepharreshi, and also to the
extant fragments of the Diatessaron. I need
hardly trouble you here with examples : the
fact is patent to any one who will compare the
quotations for themselves, and would have long
ago been unquestioned if the evidence of S.
Ephraim had not been misrepresented. Let
me hasten to add that there is no question of
denying the authenticity of works assigned to
an ancient Father merely on some d priori
ground. The works of S. Ephraim are very
well preserved in ancient MSS. in London and
Rome. Above 400 metrical hymns and homilies,
and some 250 pages of prose, survive in volumes
older than the time of the Mohammedan
invasions in the seventh century. All these may
be accepted without question as genuine, and it
is surely enough for determining the character
of the Biblical text that S. Ephraim used. But
the Roman edition of S. Ephraim, which dates
from the middle of the eighteenth century, in
cluded a quantity of pieces taken from late MSS.
and catenee, many of which are clearly the

56 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
work of authors who lived generations after
S. Ephraim's day. Indeed, some of them are
expressly assigned to other Syriac writers in
older MSS. These later writings, when they
contain quotations from Scripture, use not the
text S. Ephraim used but the current version,
and thus it appeared that S. Ephraim himself
quoted from the Peshitta. Now, when the
spurious pieces are taken away from S. Ephraim
and assigned to their rightful owners, no instance
remains where S. Ephraim is clearly using the
Peshitta, while on the other hand there are
many points of agreement in his quotations
with the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi and with
the Diatessaron. This is indeed what might
have been expected, for S. Ephraim wrote a
Commentary on the Diatessaron, but there is
no evidence to suggest that he ever made a
Commentary on the Four Gospels.
To come back to Rabbula. Before the
episcopate of Rabbula the quotations of Syriac
writers do not agree with the Peshitta New
Testament, and they do very largely agree
with the Diatessaron and the surviving MSS.
of the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi; after the
episcopate of Rabbula they agree with the
Peshitta, and do not agree with the Diatessaron
and the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi. The

RABBULA AND THE DIATESSARON 57
inference is obvious that Rabbula had himself
a chief share in the publication of the Peshitta.
This inference becomes to my mind something
very like a certainty when we read that at the
beginning of his episcopate "he translated by
the wisdom of God that was in him the New
Testament from Greek into Syriac, because of
its variations, exactly as it was" (Overbeck 172).
As we have seen, he was just the man to favour
such a revision, and just the man to carry it
through successfully. His feeling for ecclesi
astical uniformity would be shocked by variations
between codex and codex, and by the marked
way that such codices as Cureton's or the Sinai
Palimpsest differed from the Greek text as he,
Rabbula, knew it. But above all, the use of
the Diatessaron would be intolerable to one who
desired to assimilate the system of the Syriac-
speaking Church to the universal order. The
Diatessaron was the work of a heretic; it had
nothing but custom to recommend it, and else
where than among Syriac-speaking Christians
there was no such custom in the churches of
God. And who could carry through the reform
so well as Rabbula? He had no official rivals,
no organised opposition to deal with ; the
Bardesanians, who of all folk most represented
native Syriac Christianity, were actually being

58 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
absorbed into the main body under Rabbula's
influence. For these reasons, therefore, I identify the
" translation " spoken of by Rabbula's biographer
with the Peshitta itself. I regard it as a re
vision prepared by him or under his immediate
direction, and I understand the use of it to have
been enforced by him during his tenure of the
See of Edessa.
We must now consider some objections to this
theory, objections not I think irremovable, but
which certainly require to be put out of the way
before the theory can be firmly established. In
the first place, I can imagine that the incomplete
ness of the Peshitta canon might be used as an
argument against dating the version so late as
the time of Rabbula. As is well known, the
Apocalypse and the four shorter Catholic Epistles
are not included. But these are the very books
that are passed over in the quotations of
S. Chrysostom and Theodoret. Moreover, the
canon of the Peshitta, which includes James,
i Peter and i John, is really a nearer approxi
mation to the full Greek canon than anything
that can be traced earlier in Syriac. Neither
in Aphraates nor in the genuine works of
S. Ephraim is there a single clear reference to

THE CANON OF THE PESHITTA 59
any of the Catholic Epistles, and the Doctrine of
Addai says expressly : " The Law and the
Prophets and the Gospel . . . and the Epistles
of Paul . . . and the Acts of the Twelve
Apostles . . . These books read ye in the
Church of God, and with these read not others."
This is the ancient canon of the Syriac-speaking
Church. The canon of the Peshitta, so far from
being, in the late Bishop Westcott's unfortunate
phrase, "the earliest monument of Catholic
Christianity," is only a half-way stage, which
represents the custom of Antioch at the begin
ning of the fifth century, both by what it includes
and by what it leaves out.
Another objection to regarding the Peshitta
as the work of Rabbula is the acceptance of it
by the Nestorians. How should the Nestorians
accept a revision set forth by the "tyrant of
Edessa " ? This would, indeed, be a grave diffi
culty if in the time of Rabbula the Nestorians
had been, what they afterwards became, a definite
sect of Syriac-speaking Christians. But at the
epoch we are now considering, the Greek
Nestorians were as prominent as those who
spoke Syriac, and it was not till 449, fifteen
years after the death of Rabbula, that Nestorian
doctrines were formally condemned. The pro-
Nestorian school, as much as their opponents,

60 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
derived their doctrine from Greek theologians,
and would be as anxious as any other party to
possess a translation of the Bible which agreed
with the Greek. As a matter of fact very few
"various readings" favour Nestorianism against
its opponents, or vice versd; the chief exception
is Hebrews ii 9, and in that verse the variation
between x^'s 0€<™ and x"/°m 0*°* ls actually re
flected in the MSS. of the Peshitta. MSS.
of Nestorian origin support x"V"s 0«"> in agree
ment with Theodore of Mopsuestia, while
Jacobite MSS. have " God in His grace," a
strange rendering which possibly represents
\dptri 6e6s.
As regards the most striking feature of differ
ence between the Peshitta and the ancient
custom of Syriac-speaking Christians, the heads
of the Nestorian party were at one with Rabbula
in their anxiety to substitute the Four Gospels
for the Diatessaron. Rabbula ordered that in
every Church there should be a copy of the
separated Gospels, and that it should be read,
while Theodoret, the partisan of Nestorius, tells
us how he himself withdrew over 200 copies of
the Diatessaron from circulation in his diocese,
and substituted in their place the Gospels of the
four Evangelists. Indeed Rabbula's change of
front with regard to the doctrine of our Lord's

NESTORIANS AND MONOPHYSITES 6l
Nature may have helped to spread the version
that he recommended, for if the Nestorian party
had been persuaded to give up the Diatessaron
before Rabbula went over to their adversaries,
they would not return to its use after he left
them. A body of Christians in the fifth century
who had given up the Diatessaron in favour of
the Four Gospels would hardly revert to their
heretical Harmony. Meanwhile, Rabbula's defec
tion to the anti- Nestorian party (as we may call
the Orthodox and the future Monophysites)
must have helped to recommend his Biblical
policy to these also. Clear traces of the Peshitta
appear in the Biblical quotations and allusions of
Isaac of Antioch, who died about 460 a.d. after a
long literary career. It is, however, noteworthy
that Monophysite scholars appear to have been
less satisfied with the Peshitta than those of the
other party. The fact that all later attempts at
revision of the Syriac Bible, such as the Harclean
version, were the work of Monophysites may,
perhaps, be taken as an indication that they
had not adopted the Peshitta so early as other
divisions of Syriac-speaking Christians.
The ordinance of Rabbula mentioned above,
which commands the separate Gospels to be
read, demands some attention. It runs as
follows : " Let the priests and deacons take care

62 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
that in all the churches there shall be a copy
of the separated Gospels and that it be read."
The Syriac expression here rendered "a copy
of the separated Gospels," is EvangeliSn da-
Mepharreshi, i.e. "The Gospel of (or, according
to) the separated ones." What exactly is meant
by EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi ?
It will probably be clearer, even if it be not
more logical, at once to give my conclusions. I
believe that EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi meant
the Four Gospels as opposed to the Diatessaron,
but not the Four Gospels in the Curetonian
version as opposed to the Peshitta. In fact, I
know of no term in Syriac which was used to
distinguish a copy of the Curetonian version from
a copy of the Peshitta. All the places where
the term EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi is used can
be referred back to the time when there was a
conscious opposition between the two classes o
Gospel MSS. in Syriac, viz. those which had
the Gospel arranged in one continuous narrative,
and those which had the Gospel arranged in four
separate books. The term is equally applicable
to the Peshitta and to the Curetonian as opposed
to the Diatessaron, but except in Rabbula's
Canon, quoted above, it was never applied to
the Peshitta, because the Peshitta at once
ousted the Diatessaron. The Curetonian and

THE EVANGEL/ON DA-MEPHARR&SHE 63
the Diatessaron had lived in rivalry side by
side, but in the generation that succeeded
Rabbula the Diatessaron had become a mere
literary curiosity ; there was no longer any more
reason to speak of the separated Gospels than
of the separated Epistles of S. Paul.
There is, indeed, one passage that seems at
first to speak of the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi
as a recension of the text in contra-distinction to
the Peshitta. Barsalibi in commenting upon
Matt, xxvii 16, 17, says with reference to
Barabbas : "Jesus was His name, for so it is
written in the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi." The
Curetonian MS. is defective at this point, but
Barsalibi's statement has been confirmed by the
discovery of the Sinai Palimpsest. The Sinai
Palimpsest has Jesus Bar Abba, while the
Peshitta, in harmony with the ordinary text,
has Bar Abba alone. But Barsalibi did not get
his information from a collation of MSS. He
was a mere compiler from earlier scholars, and
this very statement is found word for word in
the Lexicon of Bar Bahlul. The common source
of Barsalibi and Bar Bahlul is at present
unknown ; it does not appear to have been the
Commentary of S. Ephraim on the Diatessaron,
but it may very well date from a time when the
Diatessaron was current. Now the Diatessaron

64 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
contained many of the peculiarities of text which
make Cureton's MS. and the Sinai Palimpsest
such interesting documents, but it is a curious
fact that no trace of the reading Jesus Barabba
is found in our Diatessaron authorities. I venture,
therefore, to suppose that the passage repeated
by Barsalibi and by Bar Bahlul is an excerpt
from some commentary on the Diatessaron, or
from some discourse upon Barabbas in which
the Diatessaron was used as the basis of the
narrative. In this case the compiler of the note
does not contrast the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi
with the Peshitta, but with the Diatessaron.
One point remains to be noticed. If my con
jecture be correct that Rabbula in ordering the
use of the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi had really
in view the substitution of the Peshitta for the
Diatessaron, it follows that the Diatessaron was
the only serious rival that the Peshitta had to
face at the time of its publication. That the
"Old Syriac" version ofthe New Testament (if
I may employ the question-begging term) had
had a long and complicated literary history is
proved by the extensive variation between the
texts of the two surviving MSS. of the Gospels
in that version. The Sinai Palimpsest and
Cureton's MS. are clearly representatives of one
and the same translation, but they differ in some

ABSENCE OF MIXED TEXTS 65
places very widely from each other, almost as
widely in fact as MSS. of the Old Latin version
of the Gospels. But the Patristic evidence does
not suggest that the version to which the Sinai
Palimpsest and Cureton's MS. belong enjoyed a
wide circulation in the Church during the fourth
and fifth centuries. Whatever may have been
the state of things with regard to the Acts and
Epistles, about which we know little or nothing,
it is evident that when Rabbula became Bishop
of Edessa the form in which the Gospel was
practically known to Syriac-speaking Christians
was Tatian's Harmony. This explains the
success of Rabbula's efforts, and the absence of
Gospel MSS. containing the Peshitta text mixed
with readings derived from the "Old Syriac."
The Latin MSS. with mixed texts are descended
from Old Latin MSS. corrected, but not quite,
thoroughly, to the official Vulgate. But you
cannot correct a copy of the Diatessaron into
a copy of the four Gospels. It was not a
question of changing the readings, but of sub
stituting one book for another. Wherever, there
fore, the change was made, and we learn from
Theodoret that the change was made wholesale,
no mixture of texts took place. The Diatessaron
codex was taken away, and a copy of the Peshitta
was put in its place. E

66 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
Meanwhile the copies of the unrevised
EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi remained where they
were. The two which survive contain no
liturgical marks in the margins as is generally
the case with books intended for service. They
are, so to speak, library volumes. To us they
are inestimably precious as survivals from a
previous age, relics of the time before the
Syriac-speaking Church became the servile
imitator of Greek Christianity. But to the
contemporaries of Rabbula, who allowed them
to rest undisturbed on their shelves, they were
neither recommended to be used nor condemned
to be suppressed by Church authority ; they
were simply old-fashioned books to be left alone
and forgotten. Thus it has come to pass that
two MSS. of the Old Syriac Gospels have
survived, while not one single copy of the once
popular Syriac Diatessaron has reached the hand
of modern scholars.
We may now leave the Peshitta on one side.
We have seen that the establishment of the
Peshitta New Testament marks the coming of
a new order of things almost as definitely
as the adoption of the English Bible marks
the English Reformation. Now we have to
peer into the dark years of the earlier period,
and see whether the earlier history of the

DATE OF THE SYRIAC DIATESSARON 6f
Bible in Syriac can tell us anything of the
development of the early Syriac-speaking Church.
The three documents that we have to consider
are the Old Testament Peshitta, the Diatessaron
and the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi. What are
the dates of these documents, and with what
stages of development in the Syriac-speaking
Church are they connected?
Of the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi, the Old
Syriac version of the Four Gospels, we have
two copies, viz. the Sinai Palimpsest and
Cureton's MS. The Old Testament Peshitta
is represented by many MSS., all having in
essentials the same text. The Diatessaron is
not represented in its original form by any
surviving MS., but we can form a fairly clear
idea of the character of the Gospel text from
which Tatian's Harmony was compiled by collect
ing the quotations from it in S. Ephraim's com
mentary (itself only preserved in an Armenian
translation) and supplementing these by the
quotations in the other genuine works of S.
Ephraim and the homilies of Aphraates.
One thing we do know about the Diatessaron.
We know within narrow limits its date ; it cannot
be later than 172 or 173 a.d. Tatian, who made
this Harmony from the Four Gospels, came back
to his native Mesopotamia from Rome about that

68 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
time, that is to say a few years before Hystasp
the bishop of the Christians converted Bardaisan,
according to the story we discussed in the last
lecture. A few years later, according to Syrian
ecclesiastical tradition, Palut is ordained Bishop
of Edessa by Serapion of Antioch. Now
Serapion was not only a pillar of orthodoxy :
his activity, we learn from Eusebius, was
especially directed towards the discouragement"
of the reading of rivals to the canonical Gospels.
It is not likely that he would have approved of
the Diatessaron, itself a substitute for the Four
Gospels, and the work of a man who held
heretical opinions. Our first conclusion there
fore must be that we can only connect the
mission of Palut with the use of Tatian's
Harmony by way of opposition. It is conceiv
able that Palut or his .successors may have
sanctioned the use of the Diatessaron. It is
inconceivable that Palut, as Serapion's missionary,
would himself have introduced it.
But some one may say, does not the missionary
work of Tatian and the subsequent use of the
Diatessaron in the Syriac - speaking Church
suggest an easy explanation of the rise of
Christianity in the Euphrates Valley ? You have
shown us, it may be urged, that the legendary
accounts of the evangelisation of Edessa are

THE WORK OF TATIAN 6g
full of contradictions. May not Tatian himself
and his companions have been the original
evangelists ? To carry on the work Tatian may
have prepared a Syriac Harmony of the Gospels.
This then was the form in which the Gospel
originally reached Edessa. Palut may have
brought with him the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi,
the Old Syriac version of the four separate
Gospels. But the Diatessaron was already
endeared to Syriac-speaking Christians, and the
orthodox bishops purchased the obedience of
their flock by allowing the heretic's Harmony
to be read in Church.
Part of this, I may say at once, I believe to be a
true account of what took place. I have come to
believe that the Diatessaron must have preceded
the Old Syriac version of the Gospels at Edessa.
Even the Doctrine of Addai tells us that at
the preaching of Addai the people assembled
day by day for the daily service and for the
Old Testament and the New of the Diatessaron}
And on general grounds it is very difficult to
think that a Harmony could anywhere have
usurped the place of the four canonical Gospels,
so late as the last quarter of the second century.
The air was full of the theories which had just
found formal expression in S. Irenaeus.
1 Doctrine of Addai, p. 34.

JO THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
But without going any further at present on
this question, let us come back to the third
document, whose origin also we must explain
before we can write the literary history of the
beginnings of Christianity in Edessa. The
Peshitta version of the Old Testament was not
revised by Rabbula. We have argued that
the New Testament Peshitta was first published
in Rabbula's time, because the quotations in
Syriac writers earlier than Rabbula do not
agree with its text. The same argument proves
that the Old Testament Peshitta existed long
before the fifth century. The quotations of
Ephraim and of Aphraates, the allusions in the
Acts of Thomas, all agree substantially with the
text as preserved in our ancient MSS. I do
not say there are no variations, but they are
surprisingly few in number. We are carried
back to the end of the second century as the latest
date to which we can assign the existing version
of the Old Testament in Syriac. Thus it is at
least contemporary with Palut and with Tatian,
and we ask how they stand one to the other ?
Here, again, part of the answer is clear. The
Old Testament in Syriac cannot have been
the work of Tatian. Nothing that we know
about Tatian, his opinions, life, or writings,
would suggest that he had any knowledge of

THE OLD TESTAMENT PESHITTA 7 1
Hebrew. But the Old Testament in Syriac
is mainly a translation direct from the Hebrew.
This is one of the central facts which we have
to take into account in constructing our history
of the rise of Christianity in Edessa. All
through the Old Testament, but especially in
the Pentateuch, the Peshitta reveals itself as
the handiwork of one who had a good know
ledge of Hebrew, and a still more intimate
acquaintance with some branches of Jewish
tradition. I do not forget that the influence of
the Greek Bible, especially in Isaiah, often
makes itself felt ; that element I shall notice
later. But the main point is clear. Whatever
revision the version may have received at later
times, it is almost impossible to conceive the
elements in the Peshitta which betray Hebrew
knowledge as the work of Christian Syrians.
The Old Testament Peshitta must have been,
in the first instance, the work of Jews. To give
but one instance out of many, what but know
ledge of Jewish Aramaic nomenclature could
have induced the Syriac Bible to call the land
of Bashan (which the Greeks call Batanaea)
by the name Mathnin?1 It is not likely that
the good folk of Edessa had a special nomen
clature for the petty districts east of the Jordan.
1 E.g. Nahum i 4 ; i Chr. v 16, etc.

72 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
You remember that when Addai came from
Palestine to Edessa, according to the story, he
found there a community of trading Jews. He
himself lodged with one Tobia, son of Tobia,
a Jew of Palestine. According to the story,
again, Addai's preaching was successful among
the Jews. What does this mean, but that
Edessa was a centre of Jewish life before it
was a centre of Christianity, and that when
Christianity came, it made, as at Corinth in
S. Paul's time, many converts from among the
Jewish community? Thus we may infer that
the Old Testament in Syriac was originally a
vernacular rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures
made by Jews for Jews resident at Edessa and
speaking the language of the country.
Several indications seem to me to confirm
this theory. The date is appropriate. With the
loss of the national life in Palestine it became
increasingly necessary to give the Scriptures in
the tongue of the local community. Possibly
also the favour which Josephus tells us that
the royal house of Adiabene displayed for some
time towards the Jewish religion may have
given an impulse towards translating the Law
and the Prophets into the vernacular of the
Euphrates Valley. The Peshitta, moreover,
appears to have been used as the basis of the

TRACES OF JEWISH INFLUENCE 73
existing Jewish Aramaic Targum on the Book
of Proverbs. But if we regard the Peshitta as
a Jewish work, we must at the same time confess
that we cannot claim to have the translation quite
in its original form. In the Prophets it is evident
that the Syriac has been here and there revised
to make it agree with the Greek, i.e. with the
Church's Bible. And here again I seem to trace
the hand of Palut, or perhaps it would be more
scientific here, as elsewhere, to say the mission
from Antioch which is associated with the names
of Palut and Serapion.
One thing I venture to think certain with
regard to the Old Syriac version of the Gospels,
and that is, that it was later than the Old
Testament Peshitta. This is clear from the
accurate way in which the Old Testament
names are spelt. To go no further than
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it requires some
antiquarian knowledge to re-transcribe into Semitic
letters the Greek words 'A/fyaa/t, 'Io-aa*, 'IaKw/3.
Each of these names is spelt with a different
guttural in Hebrew, and the spelling is correctly
preserved in the Old Testament Peshitta, as is
natural in a translation from the original. But
the Syriac Gospels are, of course, a translation
from the Greek, and in the Greek the Semitic
gutturals are unrepresented. The fact that the

74 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
Old Syriac Gospels preserve the names of the
Patriarchs correctly is in itself very strong
evidence that the translator of the Old Syriac
Gospels was familiar with the Old Testament
in Syriac.
The same argument suggests the priority of
the Old Testament Peshitta to the Diatessaron,
though in the Diatessaron the proper names do
not appear to have been so carefully equated to
their Hebrew equivalents. The mutual relations
of the Old Syriac Gospels and the Diatessaron
— I use the term advisedly, for the text of these
works were undoubtedly modified the one from
the other during their long history — their mutual
relations can only be adequately discussed in
detail, and textual detail is eminently unsuited
to Lectures such as these. But I venture to
assert that the main textual characteristics of the
Diatessaron and the EvangeliSn da-Mepharreshi,
i.e. the Old Syriac version of the Four Gospels,
can be distinguished in a general way. The two
works often agree in language in the most curious
and intimate fashion. Again and again we find
the Diatessaron agreeing in turns of expression or
remarkable renderings with the Sinai Palimpsest
or Cureton's MS. But in questions of real
various readings in the underlying Greek text
the agreement is not so pronounced. In text

THE OLD SYRIAC AND THE DIATESSARON 75
the Diatessaron agrees, much more than the
Old Syriac does, with Codex Bezae and the
Old Latin version. In a word, it came from
the West, from Rome, and it agrees with the
Western and Roman text. I have a strong
suspicion that much of what is thought to be
specially " Western " in the Old Syriac Gospels
is derived through the Diatessaron from the text
current in Rome in the middle of the second
century. As I have said, demonstration of these textual
affinities is wearisome and unconvincing, except
for those prepared to weigh a large mass of
technical evidence, and to consider a number of
the minor problems on their own merits. I shall
not attempt such a demonstration here. In its
place I shall venture to set before you a picture
of the conclusions to which I have arrived. Such
a picture cannot claim to be more than a con
sistent explanation of the historical data; the
demonstration of its general truth, if you accept
it, must be sought for in its agreement with the
course of history.
First, then, we are to suppose a Jewish colony
settled at Edessa, who have provided themselves
with a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, in
cluding some non-canonical writings such as the
Wisdom of Ben Sira. To this colony comes

76 THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC
a Christian missionary, Addai by name. The
mission, as at Corinth, is successful. The
majority of the Jews join the new movement,
together with a number of the Gentile natives
of the place. The date of this movement can
only be conjectured. Doubtless it was later than
the time of the sack of Edessa during the wars
of Trajan. A likely date, I venture to think, is
the period of Bar Cochba's rebellion, about 135.
That period was a parting of the ways for many
Jews ; and those who disapproved of the policy of
political revolt and ofthe theology of Aqiba might
more likely then than at a later period accept the
solution offered by the Christian religion.
The first Christian community at Edessa
probably had no New Testament. The Law
and the Prophets, as interpreted in the new light,
sufficed for them. But about a generation after
Christianity first appeared in Edessa, Tatian the
philosopher, returning to end his days in his
native Mesopotamia, supplied the want by
publishing a Syriac translation of his Harmony
of the Gospels. The circumstance that on Syriac
ground it had no rivals made the Syriac
Diatessaron an instant and assured success.
Elsewhere it was a literary curiosity, but among
Syriac-speaking Christians it was the Evangelic
record. Finally, about 200 a.d., after a persecu-

SUMMARY TJ
tion had disorganised the Church in Edessa, it
was re-established, on the basis of closer union
with the Catholic Church inside the Roman
Empire, under Palut, a bishop who brought in a
version of the New Testament — i.e. the Four
Gospels, Acts, and the fourteen Pauline Epistles
— together with an edition of the Old Testament,
slightly revised from the Greek, especially in
Isaiah and the Psalms, and enlarged by versions
from the Greek of the Old Testament Apocrypha.
Palut at first was regarded by some as the
leader of a sect, but he or his immediate suc
cessors reconciled the great majority of the
Christians in Edessa and the Euphrates Valley
to the Catholic organisation. One point, however,
was yielded to custom. The Four Gospels were
received and studied by scholars, but the
Diatessaron continued to be read in Church,
and to be the form in which the Gospel was
familiarly known to Syriac-speaking Christians
down to the episcopate of Rabbula early in
the fifth century. Rabbula suppressed the
Diatessaron and substituted in its place a
revision of the Old Syriac version of the Four
Gospels, in which both the readings and the
renderings were brought into much closer con
formity with the Greek text as read in Antioch
in the fifth century. At the same time, also in

EDESSA.
View looking W.S. W., with the Citadel oj Abgar and the two great Columns in the background. The hill on the right was
where Shamdna and Guria were martyred a.d. 297. \To face p. 79.

LECTURE III
EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
It has ever been the wisdom of the Church of
England to recite on the greater Feasts of the
ecclesiastical year the Latin profession of faith
known to us as the Athanasian Creed. That
venerable document is now unpopular. It is
argumentative and unsentimental. But there
is one sentence of the Athanasian Creed which
puts the essence of the great controversies of
the fourth and fifth centuries so tersely that
I have ventured to use it as a sort of text for
my discourse this afternoon. As you all know,
the Athanasian Creed teaches us to say : ' ' For
like as we are compelled by the Christian verity
to acknowledge every Person by himself to be
God and Lord ; so are we forbidden by the
Catholick Religion to say, There be three Gods,
or three Lords."1
1 In the original the words are : Quia sicut singillatim unam-
quamque personam etDeum et Dominum confiteri christianaueritate
compellimur, ita tres Deos aut Dominos dicere catholica religione
irohibemur. IB

80 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
The Catholick Religion is the living and
continuous tradition of the doctrine once com
mitted to the saints by revelation, the Christian
verity is the logical development by Christian
thinkers of the devotion of the faithful to their
Lord, as interpreted in the light of Greek
philosophy. Here at last we reach what for
Christians is not necessarily sacred. It is a real
and serious question, how much of the expression
of our religion is conditioned not by Divine
revelation, but by the effort to fit it in to the
philosophical ideas current at the time when
Christian theology became articulate. To-day
I shall attempt to throw a sidelight on the great
theological controversies by examining what was
thought of some fundamental articles of the
Christian religion by Syriac-speaking Churchmen
who lived apart from the atmosphere of Greek
and Latin thought.
We must not take the sermons in the Doctrine
of Addai as the earliest expression of Syriac
theology, for we have seen that this work
contains some late elements, and it is only likely
that the redactor of an apocryphal work writing
at the very end of the fourth century would put
into Addai's mouth phrases which were never
current until they were coined in the stress of
controversy. As a matter of fact, that excellent

APHRAATES 8l
scholar the Abbe Tixeront, who has very care
fully examined the theological statements in the
Doctrine of Addai, comes to the conclusion that
the phraseology is post-Nicene in thought as well
as in date. But if we cannot use the Doctrine of
Addai as a starting-point, we have an excellent
substitute in the work commonly known as the
Homilies of Aphraates. This work is admirably
fitted, both from the scope of its contents and the
personality of the writer, to serve as our intro
duction to the theology of the early Syriac-
speaking Church.
Aphraates, or more accurately Afrahat,
commonly known as the Persian Sage, flourished
in the first half of the fourth century. The first
ten of his twenty-two Homilies were composed
in the year 337, the remaining twelve in 344, and
the additional Homily On the Cluster is dated
345 a.d. He was a monk and a bishop. One
rather late tradition claims him for the head of
the Convent of S. Matthew near Mosul. It is
certain that he had a seat in a Synod held in
the year 344, and that he was selected to draw
up the encyclical letter of the Synod addressed
to the Metropolitan diocese of Seleucia and
Ctesiphon. This letter he subsequently published
as "No. 14 ofthe Homilies.
The plan of Aphraates' great work is
F

82 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
admirably fitted to give us a general survey of
Syriac theology. We speak of the " Homilies "
of Aphraates, but the volume of discourses which
goes by this name is not a collection of occasional
sermons. On the contrary, it is a full and ordered
exposition ofthe Christian Faith in answer to a
request for information from an inquirer. The
twenty-two Homilies correspond to the twenty-
two'letters of the Semitic alphabet, and the first
word of each Homily begins with the correspond
ing letter of the alphabet in order, the first with
Alaph, the second with Beth, and so right through.
This is not a mere fanciful quip, but a serious
plan for preserving the true order of the discourses.
It is difficult to interpolate or mutilate an acrostic
without immediate discovery. And as if the
acrostic arrangement were not enough, Aphraates
enumerates the series in order at the end of the
twenty-second Homily.
It is necessary to emphasise beforehand the
official position and the unblemished repute
of Aphraates, if we are to appreciate the
significance of what he has to say. Later
generations of Syriac writers have very little
to tell us about him beyond what we learn from
his writings, but all alike, both Nestorians and
Monophysites, testify to the orthodoxy of this
.fourth century Father.

THE HOMILY ON FAITH 83
Let us begin with Homily I. On Faith.1 Out
of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh
and in a doctrinal treatise that which is put first is
in the eyes of the writer fundamental. Faith,
according to Aphraates, is like a building made
of various materials of various colours. But
the foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ, the
Rock upon which the whole is built, as said
the prophets (§ 2). First, a man believes, then
loves, then hopes, then is justified and perfected,
and he becomes a Temple for the Messiah to
dwell in, as Jeremiah said : The Temple of the
Lord, the Temple of the Lord — ye are the Temple
of the Lord, if ye will make fair your ways and
your works,2 and as said our Lord Himself
Ye are in Me, and I am in you (§ 3). The man
who has Faith will study to make himself worthy
of being a dwelling - place for the Spirit of the
Messiah. There must be Fasting, Prayer, Love,
Alms, Humility, Virginity, Continence, Wisdom,
Hospitality, Simplicity, Patience, Gentleness,
Sadness,3 Purity : Faith asks for all these
1 This Homily is translated in full by Dr Gwynn, Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, vol. xiii, pp. 345-352. It has also been translated
by Dr'Budge in his edition of Philoxenus, vol. ii, pp. clxxv-clxxxvii.
The analysis here given, together with much of the material of the
present lecture, is taken out of my own little book Early Christianity
outside the Roman Empire.
2 Jer. vii 4, 5 (Pesh.).
s A technical term for the monastic life.

84 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
ornaments (§ 4). Christ is both the foundation
and the inhabitant of the House of Faith :
Jeremiah says men are the Temples of God,
and the Apostles said : The Spirit of Christ
dwelleth in you. This comes to the same thing
for the Lord said : I and my Father are one (§ 5).
The Messiah is spoken of by the prophets as
a Stone or Rock (§§ 6-9), and as a Light (§§ 10-
11). He is the only foundation that can stand
the fire (§§ 12, 13). Such Faith the Saints of
old time had (§§ 14-16), and those also who
were benefited by our Lord on earth (§ 17).
Faith carries us up to heaven, saves us from
the Deluge, looses the prisoners, quenches the
fire, feeds the hungry, brings back from the
grave, stops the mouths of lions, humbles the
proud, exalts the meek (§ 18).
Aphraates does not leave us in vague gener
alities. After the praise of Faith he goes on
to define it.
" For this," he says (§ 19), " is Faith : —
When a man shall believe in God, the Lord of all,
That made the heavens and the earth and the seas
and all that in them is,
Who made Adam in His image,
Who gave the Law to Moses.
Who sent of His Spirit in the Prophets,
Who sent His Messiah into the world ;
And that a man should believe in the bringing to life of
the dead,

THE CREED OF APHRAATES 85
And believe also in the mystery of Baptism :
This is the Faith of the Church of God.
And that a man should separate himself
from observing hours and sabbaths and months and
seasons,
and enchantments and divinations and astrology
and magic,
and from fornication and from revelling and from
vain doctrines, the weapons of the Evil One, and
from the blandishment of honeyed words, and
from blasphemy and from adultery,
And that no man should bear false witness,
and that none should speak with double tongues :
These are the works of the Faith that is laid on
the true Rock, which is the Messiah,
upon whom all the building doth rise."
Such is the Creed of Aphraates. To him
Christianity was the revelation of a Divine
Spirit dwelling in man and fighting against
moral evil, not first and foremost a tissue of
philosophical speculation about the nature of
the Divinity in itself. But this is wholly alien
to the temper of Greek and Latin Christianity,
as it manifests itself from the fourth century
onward. About 150 years after Aphraates wrote,
Philoxenus, Bishop of Hierapolis, a distinguished
Syriac scholar and theologian, wrote his Dis
courses on the Christian Life and Character.
He also began with Christian Faith and he
also thought well to define it. This is what

86 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
he says.1 "All these things by Faith thou
hast heard concerning God : that He is from
everlasting and world without end, and that
He existeth in His own essence, and that He
hath not come into being from anything else ;
and that He is not One Person, but an essential
substance that is believed and confessed in Three
Persons. And, moreover, concerning the Persons
the word of Faith teacheth thee to affirm that
He Who begot hath not been divided, and that
He Who was begotten hath not been separated,
but the Father existeth with His Son essentially
and everlastingly, together with the Holy Spirit
consubstantial with Them." And so on, and
so on, for as much again as I have read, followed
by a disquisition upon the nature of the Cherubim,
and what is of Faith concerning their spiritual
constitution. In Philoxenus the Faith has ceased
to vivify the whole personality ; it has become
a matter of the head and not of the heart, a
matter of theological adhesion rather than of
moral allegiance. With the Syrians, as with us,
the philosophy of the Greeks was an alien mode
of thought, and a Faith which expresses itself
in a foreign or an outworn philosophy tends to
become fundamentally artificial.
It must not be supposed that Aphraates did
1 Budge's Philoxenus i 32 (Eng. Tr. ii 29).

TRINITARIAN TEACHING IN APHRAATES 87
not acknowledge the Trinity. We learn from
him that the Syriac-speaking Church, like the
rest of the Christian world, baptized in the
Triple Name, and his evidence is confirmed by
the Doctrine of Addai and other early Syriac
documents. "The Head of the Man," says
Aphraates (xxiii 63= Wright 500), "is the
Messiah. O thou that swearest by thy head
and that falsely, if thou dost affirm the three
great and glorious Names invoked upon thy
head, the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, when thou didst receive the seal of thy
life, in a word, if Baptism be affirmed by thee
swear not by thy head!" Or again (xxiii 60
= Wright 496), " Above the heavens, what is
there, who doth suffice to tell ? Beneath the
earth, what is laid, there is none to say ! The
firmament, upon what is it stretched out? or the
heavens, upon what are they hung ? The earth,
on what is it pillowed ? or the deep, in what
is it fixed ? We are of Adam, and here with
our senses we perceive little. Only this we
know: that God is one, and His Messiah one,
and one the Spirit, and one the Faith, and one
Baptism. More than thus far it does not help
us to speak ; if we say more we fall short, and
if we investigate we are helpless." I need
hardly remind you that the "investigation" which

88 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
Aphraates has in mind is speculation and
empirical analogy, not the patient and humble
co-ordination of ascertainable facts.
I must not omit to point out one remarkable
feature of Aphraates's doctrine of the Spirit.
When we speak in the Creed of "the Lord,
the Giver of Life," we are obliged to assign
a sex to the Holy Spirit. We have to choose
between Lord and Lady. The Greek 7n/«fyia is of
course neuter. But in Semitic languages there
is no neuter, and Rilh, the word for wind or
spirit, is feminine ; in the older Syriac literature,
therefore, before the influence of Greek theology
made itself felt, the Holy Spirit also is feminine.
Thus in the old Syriac version of John xiv 26
we actually read The Spirit, the Paraclete, she
shall teach you everything} Thus it is only
in accordance with the earliest usage that in
a doxology (xxiii 63 = Wright 498) Aphraates
ascribes "glory and honour to the Father and
to His Son and to His Spirit, the living and
holy," where living and holy are feminine
adjectives in the older MS. But he goes
further : it is not a question only of grammatical

1 In the Peshitta she (or it) is changed to he. Another place
where the feminine seemed too heterodox to stand is Lk. xii 12.
But in many passages the feminine is retained even in the Peshitta,
e.g. Lk. iv 1 ; Joh. vii 39.

THE HOLY SPIRIT FEMININE 89
nicety with Aphraates. In the treatise On
Virginity against the Jews (xviii 10= Wright
354) he says : " We have heard from the law
that a man will leave his father and his mother
and will cleave to his wife, and they will be
one flesh ; and truly a prophecy great and
excellent is this. What father and mother
doth he forsake that taketh a wife? This is
the meaning: that when a man not yet hath
taken a wife, he loveth and honoureth God his
Father, and the Holy Spirit his Mother, and
he hath no other love. But when a man taketh
a wife he forsaketh his Father and his Mother,
those namely that are signified above, and his
mind is united with this world ; and his mind
and his heart and his thought is dragged away
from God into the midst of the world, and
he loveth and cherisheth it, as a man loveth
the wife of his youth, and the love of her
is different from that of his Father and of his
Mother." We shall come across this view of the Holy
Spirit again when we consider the Acts of
Thomas} Here I must remind you that there
is very early Christian authority for it. In the

1 Cf. also Philoxenus's Prologue, p. 17 (E. Trans.), a passage
which is probably an echo either of Aphraates or ofthe Hymn of
the Soul itself.

90 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
ancient Gospel according to the Hebrews, as
quoted by Origen and S. Jerome, our Lord
Himself speaks of the Holy Spirit as His
Mother. Origen (in Joann. ii 12), who is
concerned to show that all things, including
the Holy Spirit, came into existence through
the Logos, does not reject this saying as
"apocryphal," but explains it away. He argues
that the Holy Spirit does the will of the Father,
and therefore may rightly be described as the
Mother of Christ, in accordance with Matt, xii
50. Perhaps it was inevitable that the thought
of the Holy Spirit as the Queen of Heaven
should be eliminated from Christian theology,
but before we condemn the doctrine altogether
let us remember that the theology of the age
which followed its final disappearance, at the
bidding of popular sentiment, by a false applica
tion of logic to Divine affairs, degraded the
Christian vocabulary with the word 6«>tokos.
To come back to Aphraates. His doctrine of
the Person of Christ is also very far removed in
expression from what was usual in later times.
But just as Aphraates' doctrine of the Spirit is
nothing new, but a survival of one of the most
primitive Christian beliefs, so too Homily XVII,
entitled Of the Messiah that He is the Son of
God, is an echo of one of the most remarkable.

THE HOMILY ON THE MESSIAH 91
sayings in S. John's Gospel.1 This Homily,
like so many that Aphraates wrote, is directed
against the Jews, who complained that Christians
worshipped a man whom they called Son of God,
in defiance of God's own word / am God and
there is none beside Me (§ i). Aphraates sets
himself the task of defending the Christian
practice, even if he should concede to the Jews
that Jesus whom the Christians call God was
only a man. " Though," he continues, " we do
affirm that Jesus our Lord is God the Son of
God, and the King the Son of the King, Light
from Light, Son 2 and Counsellor and Guide and
Way and Saviour and Shepherd and Gatherer
and Door and Pearl and Lamp ; and by many
Names is He called. But now we will show
that He is the Son of God, and that He is God
who from God hath come " (§ 2). For the name
of divinity has been given to just men, as for
instance to Moses, who was made a God not to
Pharaoh only but also to Aaron 3 (§ 3) ; and
though the Jews say God has no son, yet He
called Israel His First-born,4 and Solomon His

1 Joh. x 33-36. The Homily is translated in full by Dr Gwynn
PP- 387-392.
2 Sic : cf. Isaiah ix 6, and also § 9.
3 Exod. vi 1 ; vii 1.
' Exod. iv 22, 23.

92 EARLY SYRIAC THfiOLOGV
son.1 David also says of them : / have said, Ye
are Gods and sons of the Highest all of you 2 (§ 4).
God gives the most exalted titles to whom He
will : He called impious Nebuchadnezzar King
of Kings. For man was formed by Him in His
own image to be a Temple for Him to dwell in,
and therefore He gives to man honours which
He denies to the Sun and the Moon and the
host of Heaven3 (§§ 5, 6). Man of all creatures
was first conceived in God's mind,4 though he
was not placed in the world till it was ready for
him (§ 7). Why should we not worship Jesus,
through whom we know God, Jesus who turned
away our mind from vain superstitions and taught
us to adore the One God, our Father and Maker,
and to serve Him? Is it not better to do this
than to worship the kings and emperors of this
world, who not only are apostates themselves
but drive others also to apostasy? (§ 8). Our
Messiah was spoken of in the prophets even to
the details of the Crucifixion (§§ 9, 10). We
therefore will continue to worship before the
Majesty of His Father, who has turned our
worship unto Him. We call Him God, like

1 2 Sam. vii 14 ; cf. Heb. i 5.
2 Ps. lxxxii (lxxxi) 6.
3 Deut. iv 17.
i Ps. xc (Ixxxix) 1, 2.

THE CHRISTOLOGY OF APHRAATES 93
Moses ; First-born and Son, like Israel ; Jesus
like Joshua, the son of Nun ; Priest, like Aaron ;
King, like David; the great Prophet, like all
the prophets ; Shepherd, like the shepherds
who tended and ruled Israel. And us, adds
Aphraates, has He called Sons, making us His
Brothers, and we have become His Friends
(§§ IX> 12)-
Nothing less than this full abstract does justice
to Aphraates' style and method. It is surely most
surprising and instructive to meet with work
animated by this spirit in the middle of the
fourth century. It is not exactly what we are
accustomed to read in the Fathers, but it follows
too closely the lines of our Lord's answer to the
Jews for us to brand it as unorthodox. The
Persian sage lived outside the Roman Empire
and was educated in a culture but little touched
by Greek philosophy. He did not feel that
necessity for logical subordination, for the due
relation of the parts to the whole, which the
Greeks were the first of mankind to strive after.
To me, I confess, the efforts of Aphraates after
a tenable Christology evokes a more sympathetic
echo than the confident metaphysics of the
" restless wits of the Grecians," to use the phrase
of Hooker. He seems to have been aware that
it is impossible for man to construct a logical

94 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
scheme of the universe. But he held the two
main positions of Christian belief as strongly as
the author of the Quicunque vult. On the one
hand, he was wholly penetrated by the mono
theism of the " Catholick Religion " ; on the other,
his loyalty and devotion to his Lord assured him
that no title or homage was too exalted for
Christians to give to Jesus Christ, through whom
they had union with the Divine Nature. It is
upon the simultaneous holding of these two
positions that Christian theology rests, not upon
the form in which they were co-ordinated by
the metaphysical science of the Graeco- Roman
Church. " The highest place that Heav'n affords
Is His, is His by right."
This cry voices the demand of the Christian
conscience ; it rests with the theologians and
the metaphysicians to determine how Heaven
differs from Olympus or Nirvana.
The importance of Aphraates in the Christo-
logical Problem, which still, as M. Loisy has
been justly reminding us, demands the serious
consideration of Churchmen,1 is that he shows

1 Le Christ est Dieu pour la foi. Mais les gens nous demandent
maintenant de leur expliquer Dieu et le Christ, parce que nos
definitions sont concues en partie dans une autre langue que la
leur. Une traduction s'impose. Ainsi entendu, le probleme
christologique est encore actuel" {Aittour d'un petit Livre, p. 155)

S. EPHRAIM 95
us that it was possible to hold the Christian
position with different watchwords from those
which the Church borrowed from her refractory
sons Tertullian and Origen.
We come now to the personage who of all
the sons of the Syriac-speaking Church is best
known by name to the western world. Ephraim,
commonly called Ephraem Syrus, died at Edessa
in the year 373, in the reign of the Arian
Emperor Valens. His earlier home had been
Nisibis, where he lived until it was abandoned
to the Persians in 363 by Jovian, after the
defeat and death of Julian the Apostate. At
Edessa Ephraim lived as an anchorite or solitary
in a cell outside the city, but his fame as an
expositor and as a champion against heresy was
great even during his lifetime. He is said to
have paid a visit to S. Basil of Ca^sarea in
Cappadocia, and to have been ordained by him
a Deacon. What has given S. Ephraim his magnificent
reputation it is hard to say. According to his
biographer he is to be accredited with the
honour of having invented the Controversial
Hymn, a rather melancholy addition to public
worship. His interest to modern scholars arises
from the fact that a Syriac writer of the fourth

96 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
century, whose works are excessively voluminous
and well preserved, cannot help affording us
many curious glimpses into the life and thought
of the Church to which he belongs. But it is
a weary task, gleaning the grains of wheat
among the chaff. Ephraim is extraordinarily
prolix, he repeats himself again and again, and
for all the immense mass of material there seems
very little to take hold of. His style is as
allusive and unnatural as if the thought was
really deep and subtle, and yet when the thought
is unravelled it is generally commonplace. Take
for instance the 13th of the Nisibene Hymns,
inscribed Concerning S. Jacob and his Com
panions} S. Jacob, it should be premised,
had been Bishop of Nisibis ; he was succeeded
by Babu, and Babu was succeeded by Walgesh
or Vologeses, who was still alive when the
poem was composed.

I.
Three illustrious Priests,
In the type of the two great Lights,
Transmitted and delivered to one another,
Throne and Hand and Flock :
To us, whose grief was great for the two,
The last was wholly consolation.
To Thee be glory, Who didst choose them !

1 Bickell's Carmina Nisibena, p. 20 ; translated by Gwynn, p. 180.

THE NISIBENE HYMNS 97

II.

He Who created the two great Lights,
Chose for Himself the three great Lights,
And set them in the three
Cloistered darknesses that came to pass.
When the pair of Lights were quenched
The last was altogether radiant.
To Thee be glory, &c.
III.
The three Priests were treasurers
Who held in their integrity
The key of the Trinity ;
Three doors did they open to us,
Each one of them with his key
In his time 1 was opening his door.
To Thee be glory, &c.
IV.
With the first had been opened the door
To the war of the two hosts,
With the middle one had been opened the door
To the Kings of the two winds,
With the third had been opened the door
Of the ambassadors. of the two sides.
(From this stanza the reader is supposed to
learn that during the episcopate of Jacob the
war broke out between the Romans from
the West and the Persians on the East, that
the war continued during the episcopate of Babu,
and that an armistice was concluded during
1 Read b'zafineh instead of bazb'zeh. a

98 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
the episcopate of Vologeses. I omit a dozen
stanzas similar to those I have quoted to you
and come to No. XVIII). XVIII.
Nisibis planted on the waters,
Waters concealed and exposed !
Living founts within her,
A noble river without her !
The river outside deceived her,
The fountain within preserved her.
XIX.
The first Priest was her vine-dresser,
Her branches he increased to the heavens ;
Lo, when dead and buried within her
He has become fruit in her bosom !
For all that the pruners came,
The fruit within her kept her safe.
XX.
The time of her pruning had arrived,
It entered and took away her vine-dresser,
That she should not have an intercessor ;
She hasted, and in her subtlety
Laid in her bosom her vine-dresser,
That she might be delivered by her vine-dresser.
XXI.
Imitate, ye sensible ones,
Daughters of Nisibis, imitate Nisibis,
That laid a Body within her
And it became a Wall without her !
Lay in you a living Body,
That it may be a Wall for your life,

THE POETRY OF S. EPHRAIM 99
The meaning of these latter stanzas is that
S. Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis, protected the city
during his life by his prayers, and that, now
he was dead and buried within the city, his
relics were equally efficacious in keeping out
the Persians.
I have quoted this specimen of the poetry of
S. Ephraim, not because I think it beautiful
or inspiring, but because it is eminently char
acteristic. Of course it sounds somewhat less
bald in the original Syriac, because the original
Syriac is in metre. But so far as I can see it
has no merit either of simplicity or of subtlety
in the choice of words ; the main thought, the
protection afforded by the dead bishop's bones,
is set forth in the most unattractive fashion.
And you must remember that the whole poem
extends to twenty-one stanzas, of which I have
only read you eight. Judged by any canons
that we apply to religious literature, it is poor
stuff. We must therefore remind ourselves
once more of the great and lasting reputation
of the author. This sort of thing was evidently
what the Church wanted in the fourth century ;
and if it shows a lamentable standard of public
taste, that is only our affair to the extent that we
allow ourselves to be influenced by the judgments
of that age in other departments of thought.

100 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
On one little matter we ought to do S.
Ephraim justice. His humility is quite genuine.
We have seen his belief in the value of relics.
But he adjures his disciples in the curious piece
known as his Testament or Will that they
should not bury him in a Church under the
altar, or among the ancient Martyrs and
Confessors, but that he should be laid, wrapped
in his old cloak, in the common cemetery among
the strangers.
This is not the place to enter upon a general
discussion of the works of S. Ephraim or to
examine the genuineness of the enormous mass
of material which has at various times been
published under his name. But a word of
warning on one point may not be out of place.
I have already mentioned in the previous Lecture
that a good deal of what has been printed as
Ephraim's is not his, and you have seen from
the specimen that I have just given that his
genuine style does not readily lend itself to
precise statements, suitable for illustrating his
dogmatic position. It is always therefore most
necessary when opinions or phrases are quoted
as S. Ephraim's, or as illustrating the dogmatic
beliefs of his age and country, to see whether
they have been taken from works of undoubted
genuineness. As an example of what I mean, I

GENUINE WORKS OF S. EPHRAIM 101
may mention that of five quotations intended to
illustrate S. Ephraim's doctrine of the Eucharist,
extracted by the late Dr Moberly from Dr
Pusey's well-known collection, not one is taken
from any of Ephraim's certainly authenticated
writings, and I doubt if all of them are, as
a matter of fact, really from his pen,1 though
very likely similar sentiments might be culled
from his genuine works.
Let us therefore content ourselves with the
certainly genuine works of this voluminous
writer. You have probably had already enough
of his poetry, and in what follows I shall chiefly
confine myself to his prose. It is a curious
fact that S. Ephraim is much more readable
in his prose than in his verse. We are not
continually fatigued with a series of those
strained conceits which seem to have been as
much admired by his contemporaries as the
quaintnesses of Donne and Quarles were admired
by the literary world of the time of James I.
The genuine theology of S. Ephraim is best
studied from the work called Sermo de Domino
nostro, edited by Lamy.2 This is, in fact, a
treatise on the Incarnation, and extracts from

1 See Journal of Theol. Studies ii, p. 341.
2 Lamy i 145-274 ; see also the Preface to Vol. ii. The Homily
is translated by A. E. Johnston in Gwynn, pp. 305-330.

102 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
it are quoted by later writers such as Philoxenus,
as from an acknowledged theological authority.
To the Syrians it was known by the opening
words : " Grace hath drawn near to blaspheming
mouths and hath made them praise-giving harps.
Wherefore let all mouths give praise to Him
that withheld from them blasphemous discourse.
To Thee be praise, that didst depart from one
abode and dwell in another, to come and make
us an abode for Him that sent Thee! The
Only-begotten departed from the Divine Essence
and dwelt in the Virgin, that by common birth
the Only-begotten might become the Brother of
many. And it was He that departed from
Sheol and dwelt in the kingdom, that He might
search out a way from Sheol the all-oppressing
to that kingdom which is all-recompensing. For
our Lord gave His resurrection as a pledge to
mortal men, that He would remove them from
Sheol that receives the dead without distinction
to the kingdom that admits them that are
invited with distinction, that from the place
which treats alike the bodies of all men within
it they may go to that which distinguishes the
works of men within it." And again, he goes
on to say : "He, the First-born, that had been
born according to His own [Divine] Nature
was born with another, a [human] birth beyond

THE DISCOURSE ON THE INCARNATION 103
that which was natural to Him, that we in our
turn might know that after our natural birth
there is required for us another birth beyond
what is natural to us. For He, as a spiritual
being, until He came to material birth could not
become material ; and so also material beings,
except they be born with another birth, cannot
become spiritual." "Our Lord Himself," says
Ephraim, " was born from the Godhead accord
ing to His own Nature ; He was born from man
contrary to His own Nature [that is, by miracle] ;
and He was born from Baptism extra-ordinarily ;
and the reason of this was that we might be
born from man according to our nature, and
from the Godhead contrary to our nature, and
from the Spirit extra-ordinarily." "To Thee
be praise," he says again, " who didst make of
Thy Cross a bridge over Death, that souls might
pass over it from the House of Death to the
House of Life."
In these extracts you have, I think, most of
the main ideas which underlie S. Ephraim's
treatise. According to S. Ephraim, the object
of the Incarnation, the taking of the Manhood
into God, was that Christians might incorporate
the Divine into their Manhood. We may
notice that in Ephraim's view the doctrine of
Christ's Nature and the doctrine of the Sacra-

104 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
ments are inextricably intertwined. Jesus Christ
receives the Spirit in baptism that we may also
be born of the Spirit. He is the "Drug of
Life" which Death swallowed1 and could not
retain — in other words, the <t>dpfiaKov d9avaa-ias of
which Ignatius speaks (ad Eph. xx) ; thereby
the gates of Sheol were opened, and the
patriarchs of the Old Covenant were liberated.
Yet Ephraim also applies the phrase meta
phorically : "Our Lord," he says, "did not
mingle with the eaters and drinkers for pleasure,
as the Pharisees supposed, but that with the
very food of mortal men He might mix His
teaching as a Drug of Life."
It is really very difficult to extract from S.
Ephraim any clear exposition of his views. He
goes on from symbol to symbol, and the points
he emphasises are sometimes striking, sometimes
preposterous, but always fanciful. " Our Lord,"
he says,2 "spat on His fingers and laid them
in the ears of the deaf man and formed clay
from His spittle and smeared it on the eyes of
the blind man, that we might learn that by the
leaven from the Body of Him who perfects all
things hath what is lacking in our frame been

1 Lamy i 155 ; the same idea is elaborated by Aphraates (Hom.
xxii = Wright, p. 422).
2 Lamy i 171 ; cf. Mk. vii 33 (in the Diatessaron) and Joh. ix 9.

EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE 105
supplied. , It would not have been right for our
Lord to cut off anything from His Body to fill
up the imperfections of other bodies ; but it was
with what might be taken without loss from
Him that He filled up the imperfections of the
imperfect, even as with what can be eaten
mortal men eat Him. Thus He filled up what
was lacking and made alive what was dead,
that we might know that from the Body in
which true Fulness dwelt hath the imperfections
of the imperfect been filled up, and from that
same Body in which dwelt true Vitality hath
life been given to mortal men." Thus the
Eucharistic doctrine taught by Ephraim is that
to come into real contact with and to absorb
the Lord brings true life and true health to the
Christian, just as physical contact with Him
brought speech to the deaf and sight to the
blind. The characteristic looseness of Ephraim's
diction makes it always possible to hold that
after all the words might be meant of spiritual
feeding and absorbing, but the nature of the
comparison of the Eucharistic bread with
physical spittle makes it only too likely that
Ephraim had chiefly in view the mere eating of
the consecrated elements.
Another feature of S. Ephraim's Christology
is his curious doctrine of what we may call the

106 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
Charismata, the spiritual privileges which had
been as it were lent to Israel and were one by
one resumed on earth by the Christ, their true
Possessor. The early Christian theologians were
fully convinced of the validity of Israel's hierarchy.
The Jewish king was the Lord's Anointed, the
Jewish priest was God's legitimate Minister, the
Jewish prophet was the mouthpiece of the Holy
Spirit. How then did our Lord give the priestly
power to the disciples? From whom had He
received the keys of the kingdom of Heaven
which He gave to S. Peter.1 It is curious to find
S. Ephraim wondering, if only for a moment,
whether Orders conferred by Christ were valid.
The answer is equally strange. S. Ephraim tells
us that the gift of Priesthood was given to our
Lord in the Temple when Simeon took Him in
his arms, or rather that the Lord then received
back His own from Simeon, who having resigned
the gift which had been committed to him was
ready to depart in peace. " Thus," he continues,
"each of the gifts that had been kept for the
Son did He gather from their true tree. For
He took away Baptism from the Jordan, though
John afterwards still was baptizing; and He took
the Priesthood from the Temple, though Hannan
the High Priest still officiated therein ; and He
1 The question is actually asked in Lamy i 267,

CHRIST AND THE CHARISMATA 107
took Prophecy that was being handed down
among the just, though Caiaphas for a moment
wove by means of it a crown for our Lord ; and
He took the kingdom from the house of David,
even though Herod had been made his vice
gerent. He it was, even our Lord, who flew
down from on high ; and when all these Gifts
that He had given to them of old time saw
Him, they flew and came from every side and
alighted on Him their Giver, gathering them
selves together from every side to come and
engraft themselves on their true parent stem. . . .
But when our Lord had taken His Priesthood
from Israel, He hallowed with it all nations ; and
when He took away His Prophecy, He revealed
by it His promises to all peoples; and when He
bound on His Crown He fettered the strong
man who took all captive and divided his spoils.
These Gifts were useless to the Barren Fig-tree,
so barren of fruit as to make barren even endow
ments like these : wherefore it was cut down
without fruit, that these Gifts might go away
and bring forth much fruit in all nations."
" Moreover," says Ephraim in conclusion,
"from all local abodes hath He passed away,
Who came to make our bodies into abodes for
Him to dwell in. Let us therefore each one
of us become dwelling-places, for, saith He,

108 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
whoso loveth Me, unto him will We come and
an abode with him will We make. This is the
Godhead, for which, though all created things
do not contain it, yet a lowly and humble mind
doth suffice."1
The touch of piety and mysticism in this
informal peroration should incline us, I think,
to judge leniently of S. Ephraim's feeble
philosophy and fanciful argumentation. But
the philosophy is indeed very feeble, and the
argumentation excessively fanciful. Aphraates
sometimes makes us wish that the Church had
been content to retain the simpler theology of
earlier times ; S. Ephraim shows us that the
official expression of the belief of the Church
needed co-ordination and precision. Without the
Creeds I cannot help fearing that the theology of
Ephraim might have led the Syriac-speaking
Church into Tritheism. " Man," says he,2 " is not
left defenceless. The Father clothes him with
armour, the Son makes him grasp the shield,
the Spirit helps him in the contest." Sentences
such as this may not be heretical ; but they are
worse. They are rhetorical, and rhetoric in
theology leads direct to superstition. The
theory of God's Nature as expressed by men in
1 The MS. has 'dhddn (not 'dkddn) for "contain."
2 Ed. Rom. v 319 c.

THE FANCIFULNESS OF S. EPHRAIM 109
human language must be at the best an im
perfect presentiment, and the only value of the
doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's Divine
and Human Personality is to help us less in
adequately to realise the relations between
ourselves and the mysterious Power outside us
that rules the world, a Power which nevertheless
we have been taught through Jesus Christ to
call our Father. Doctrines such as these are
things to be reverenced, or to be resolutely
rejected ; but for those who receive them they
are not to be played with. They o,ccupy a
department of thought where "pretty fancies"
are out of place, and S. Ephraim is full of pretty
fancies. At the beginning of each of the six
volumes of the Roman edition of his works is
a charming copperplate in the style of the
eighteenth century, showing the Saint seated
under a spreading tree, with little winged amoretti
hastening down with scrolls of inspiration direct
from Heaven. The saint receives them with
humility, while a couple of his disciples in the
background look on in astonishment at the
miracle. It is all very nice, and its only fault is
that it is totally unlike the facts of the case.
So it is with Ephraim's theology. It is out of
touch with reality; it gives us neither the
historical Christ, nor the Christianity of the

IIO EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
early Church, nor yet the clearly defined doctrines
of post-Nicene times. In a word, S. Ephraim
represents the transitional age to which he
belonged. His fatal want of intellectual serious
ness helps to explain to us why his Church
became strongly orthodox under Rabbula, and
yet sank permanently a hundred years later into
heterodoxy and schism.
The intellectual atmosphere of Rabbula is
indeed very different from that of S. Ephraim.
Both men were ascetics, but there the re
semblance comes to an end. Rabbula is the
very incarnation of clear-cut and regulated
ecclesiasticism. I do not know that I can
illustrate his position better than by the sermon
he is said to have preached at Constantinople
in the open church while Nestorius was still
Patriarch.1 " Two are the chief commandments,
my beloved brethren," he says "those in which
the law and the prophets are exhausted. The
first is that thou shalt love the Lord thy God from
all thy heart. He therefore that loveth doth not
investigate but obeys, and he doth not scrutinise
but believes. For not by words is God loved

1 Overbeck, p. 198, 1. 21 ff. The quotation is taken from Overbeck,
p. 241 f. The sermon itself seems to have been delivered in Syriac
(p. 241, 1. 12).

RABBULA AT CONSTANTINOPLE III
but by deeds, for (saith He) He that loveth Me
keepeth My commandments. The other of the
two that is like to it is that thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. He that loveth doth not
kill, doth not steal, doth not commit adultery,
neither doth he lie or covet, for that which he
doth not wish to be done to him by anyone he
himself doth not to others, but as he would that
men should do to him, he also so doth to them
seeing that he loveth them. These things are
the profitable doctrines for our souls, my brethren,
and are what is useful for the building of the
whole Church of the Messiah. Wherefore unto
them must we direct our attention at all times in
our works, for these alone form the good store
of our true righteousness." All this is quite in
the style of Aphraates himself. *" But," continues
Rabbula, "because I know your ears and your
attention are expecting to hear our word and
our faith, and are desirous to know our truth in
the Messiah, we are compelled out of love for
you to speak before you the things which in the
silence only of faith, should be honoured. The
inquiry, therefore, of your request is this:
'Whether the Virgin Mary be the Mother of
God in truth, or is called so in name only, or
whether she ought not to be so named ? ' Now
we," said Rabbula, "in what we are sure of have

112 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
hoped, for it is our life, and with confidence we
have believed, for it is indeed our boast ; and we
say with uplifted voice without deception, that
Mary is the Mother of God, and with justice her
name should be so heralded, for she became on
earth Mother to God the Word by His Will,1
even to Him who according to the course of nature
had no Mother in heaven. For God sent His
Son and He was born of a woman crieth the
Apostle. Now if anyone dare to say that
according to the course of nature she gave birth
to God the Word, not only doth he not say well,
but wrongly doth he make confession. For
' Mother of God ' we call the holy Virgin, not
because according to the course of nature she
gave birth to the Godhead, but because God the
Word was born from her when He became a
man. For lo, it saith, the Virgin shall conceive
and shall bear a son, and His name shall be called
Immanuel, which is interpreted1 Our God with us.'
But this does not mean that from the blessed
Virgin our Lord obtained His first beginning,
for the Word was in the beginning with the
Father, as John testifies ; but that from her
appeared the Messiah in the flesh through His
loving-kindness, who Himself is God over all
according to the course of nature."
1 Read leh not l&h in Overbeck, p. 242, line i&

RABBULA AND HIS PREDECESSORS 113
This long extract I have given in full, not to
criticise its theology from a modern standpoint,
but to compare its tone with what I have
previously read from Aphraates and from
Ephraim. I think you will all be sensible of
the difference. What we have heard from
Aphraates and from Ephraim is the natural
utterance of the East : what we have heard from
Rabbula is the voice of Greek philosophy, arguing,
from data furnished by texts taken from Canonical
writings, about Substance and Nature and other
figments of the philosophical mind.
To criticise adequately such an utterance as
this of Rabbula's would need not only more
philosophical knowledge but also more sympathy
with the course of fifth century controversy than
I possess. There can, I venture to think, be little
doubt that it is genuine, for it accurately represents
the ecclesiastical position of the great Bishop of
Edessa. That he should ultimately take the
anti- Nestorian side is not surprising when we
read S. Ephraim's Hymns on the Nativity. But
Rabbula may very well have been sincere, when
he deprecated discussion upon the precise degree
of honour which was to be paid to the Virgin.
For Rabbula she was truly Theotokos, but he
would have preferred not to discuss the question,
as the people of Constantinople were accustomed
H

114 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
to discuss such questions, in the Hippodrome or
in the Theatre, as interesting points for disputa
tion. Rabbula's mind was severely practical.
He disapproved of the Theatre and the Circus,
and "the disgusting spectacle of wild beasts
shedding human blood in the Stadium he alto
gether suppressed by his authoritative command "
( Life, Overbeck, 1 79). To such a one the atmos
phere of Constantinople must have been pro
foundly distasteful, and no doubt his visit confirmed
him in his opposition to the then popular religion
of the capital.
What Rabbula loved above all other things
was Order. The force of popular sentiment
induced him to choose the anti- Nestorian side,
but in either case he would have taken care
to regularise the ordinances of his diocese.
Practically this meant the assimilation of what
he found in Edessa to what was done in
Antioch and the other great centres of the
Greek-speaking Church. So far as in him
lay Edessa, and with it the rest of Syriac-
speaking Christianity, ceased to be cut off
by its Bible, its Liturgy, its Doctrine, its party
Watchwords, from the other Churches of the
Empire. But for this his Church paid a heavy penalty.
It ceased to have any independent life or

THE GREAT COLLAPSE 115
thought. From the fifth century onwards
Syriac-speaking Christianity is wholly derivative
and secondary. The Greek theology does
not sit well on the Syriac mind, nor does it
sound well in the Syriac language. Nor again,
as I have already remarked, were the Syrians
able to keep step with Constantinople. Judged
by the standard of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy they
all fell into error. Fifty years after Rabbula's
death in 435 you would hardly have been able
to find a Syriac-speaking Christian community
which was in full communion with the Byzantine
Church. Those who lived within the Persian
dominions were almost all Nestorians ; those
who lived within the Roman Empire were
almost all Monophysites. The edifice which
Rabbula had reared was ruined in the hands
of his successors, and the external unity of the
Christian Church of the East came to pieces,
never again to be welded together.
In the next Lecture we shall consider the
view of the Christian Life and Sacraments
which prevailed in the early Syriac-speaking
Church, a part of our subject where far more
individuality was shown by the Syrians than in
the Christological disputes. To-day I would end
by quoting to you the peroration of S. Ephraim's

Il6 EARLY SYRIAC THEOLOGY
Commentary on the Book of Genesis, a passage
eminently characteristic of his thought and style.
It is orthodox, and yet it retains in its doxology
the earlier form of invocation ; it is fanciful and
out of touch with the view of the older Hebrew
literature with which modern criticism has made
us familiar, and yet in its expression of a general
purpose animating ancient history it forms a not
undignified conclusion to a detailed exposition.
" Now to God," says Ephraim (Ed. Rom. iv
115), "Who through His Son created all
creatures out of nothing, and wrote not this
Book of Genesis at the beginning, because
these things had come within the cognisance
of Adam, and each generation delivered them
to that which came after, as it had learnt from
that which had gone before ; but seeing that
all had strayed from God and God's creative
work had been forgotten by all, He wrote these
things through Moses for the people of the
Hebrews after they had changed Nature, that
He might bear witness to the creation of Nature
— to Him, I say, that wrote in the desert the
things that had been manifested in the mind of
Adam while yet in Paradise, from the ancient
peoples that without book had known these
things, and from the intermediate people of
the Hebrews that through the book heard

DOXOLOGY OF S. EPHRAIM 117
and believed them, and from us the latter
peoples that have entered into the possession
of their book, yea, from those that yet have
remained in the rebellion of their heathen
sacrifices, to Him and to His Messiah and
to His Holy Spirit be glory and honour now
and at all times and for ever and ever, Amen
and Amen."

LECTURE IV
MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
The very earliest Christianity was not ascetic.
John the Baptist had come in the way of
righteousness, but our Lord's way of life was
in the eyes of His contemporaries lax. He
lived among men and with men, and the call
to renunciation which He made upon His
more immediate followers was brought out
rather by the course of events than by the
normal fitness of things. Sympathy with the
poor and abstinence from selfish anxiety was
always the teaching of Jesus Christ, but the
wickedness of enjoyment in itself was not part
of His Gospel ; His Beatitude is " Blessed
are the hungry," not " Blessed are the fasting."
The opposition between the Galilean Prophet
and the leaders of the Jewish world, both political
and religious, grew rapidly more acute, and it
was with the certainty of temporal failure that
our Lord went up to His last Passover at
Jerusalem. He was profoundly unwilling that

CHRIST AND ASCETICISM 119
any one of His followers should accompany Him
without counting the cost. It was to no earthly
triumph that He was leading them, and so He
tells them again and again on the journey that
those who come with Him must be prepared to
lose everything. Yet even on this journey His
first reply to the rich young man who asked
what he ought to do, was simply that he should
keep the Ten Commandments ; in other words,
our Lord's general counsels remained what they
had always been. He was willing further to accept
the young man as a personal follower if he felt him
self equal to the strain, but wealth and respectability
were at that crisis useless encumbrances.
It is quite in accordance with all this that we
find Jesus asserting at this very same time the
inviolability of marriage, and that among all the
many possessions which the disciples are praised
for having cheerfully forsaken — house, brethren,
sisters, mother, father, children, lands, — the wife
is conspicuously absent.1 Grant that the Wife is
practically implied in the House, the fact remains
that according to the earliest Gospel and the
best authority our Lord deliberately refrained
from praising a man for forsaking his wife, even
to follow Him.

1 Both in Mark x 29 and Matt, xix 29 the evidence for the
omission of ¦>) yvvaiKa is overwhelming.

120 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
A very different tendency soon showed itself
in parts at least of the Christian community.
The married state was thought of as being
incompatible with the highest life, and this view
actually shows itself in the form of words ascribed
to Christ. This is quite markedly the case in
the Gospel according to S. Luke. In this
Gospel the words " or wife " is supplied after
"house,"1 and the reply of Jesus to the
Sadducees is so worded as to make it appear
that those that are worthy to attain the resurrec
tion from the dead do not marry like the ordinary
inhabitants of this world. According to S. Mark
our Lord says "when they shall rise from the
dead they neither marry nor are given in
marriage," but in S. Luke the words of the
answer are : " The sons of this world marry
and are given in marriage ; but they that are
accounted worthy to attain to that world and the
resurrection from the dead neither marry nor
are given in marriage."2
It is a far cry from S. Luke to Aphraates, a
gap of some two hundred and forty years. But
after all the writings of Aphraates form the earliest
Syriac authority of any considerable extent, of

1 Luke xviii 29.
8 Luke xx 34, 35 ; cf. Luke xvi 8. In this Gospel the Resurrec
tion is only a "resurrection of the just" (Luke xiv 14).

THE CHURCH OF APHRAATES 121
which we know the date and can trust the
authenticity. It will be convenient, therefore,
to begin with Aphraates once more, and work
backwards and forwards from him.
The Church of which Aphraates was a leader
offered many features which to us are quite
familiar. It had Bishops, Priests and Deacons.
Much of the teaching which we find in Aphraates
about the Sacraments is just what might have
been expected from a leading ecclesiastic ofthe
fourth century. But this cannot be said of
everything that we find in his writings. As in
the case of his doctrine of the Trinity and of
the person of Christ, it is not so much the
orthodoxy or the heterodoxy as the independence
of Aphraates which strikes the modern reader.
The good bishop goes on in his easy simple
style with a tone of assured authority and un
consciousness of serious opposition, and it is
only when we pause and try to fit his utterances
into the schemes of doctrine and practice with
which we are familiar that we realise that we
are moving in another world. The Church of
Aphraates, like the Church of S. Athanasius, is
the legitimate child of second century Christianity,
but it has come by another line of descent, and
the cousins have not all things in common.
With regard to the Lord's Supper Aphraates

122 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
tells us that in the Eucharist the faithful partake
of the Body and Blood of the Christ. It must
be taken fasting, and the fast must be such as
was once for all prescribed by Isaiah, " for always
is fasting from evil things better than fasting
from bread and water."1 The fasting of Abel
and Enoch, of innocent Noah, of faithful
Abraham, of unrevengeful Joseph are to be our
models. "If purity of heart be absent, the fast
is not accepted. And remember and see, my
beloved, that it is well that a man should cleanse
his heart and keep his tongue and cleanse his
hands of evil ; for it is not fitting to mix honey
and wormwood. For if a man would fast from
bread and water, let him not mix with his fasting
abuse and curses. Thou hast but one door to
thy house, that house which is a Temple of
God ; it doth not beseem thee, O man, that by
the door where the King doth enter in should
come forth filth and dirt! For when a man will
fast from all that is abominable and will take
the Body and Blood of the Messiah, let him
take heed to his mouth whereby the King's
Son doth enter in. Thou hast no right, O man,
through that same mouth to give out unclean
words ! Hear what our Saviour saith : That
which entereth into a man doth not defile him;
1 m 8,

EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE IN APHRAATES 1 23
but that which cometh forth from the mouth,
that defileth him'." x The fast here prescribed
is metaphorical, but there can be no doubt that
Aphraates teaches the doctrine that Jesus Christ
is really present in the consecrated elements.
The view of the Eucharist taken by Aphraates
may further be illustrated from his singular and
fanciful explanation of the three days and three
nights among the dead which our Lord had
predicted for Himself. In the discourse on the
Passover2 he says that our Lord gave His Body
and Blood to the disciples at the Last Supper.
But, he argues, he whose body is eaten.3 and
blood drunk must be already counted among
the dead. The three days and three nights are
to be reckoned from the time of the Supper,
and, as Aphraates puts the three hours' darkness
as one whole night and the ensuing time of light
on Good Friday afternoon as one whole day,
he has no difficulty in making up the required
number. Thus Christ both celebrates the Jewish
Passover with His disciples and is yet Himself
the Paschal Lamb. Moreover, adds Aphraates,
this is why He kept silence before Pilate and

1 in 1.
2 xn 6, 7.
3 In xn 9 (Wright, p. 222, line 3) we must read 'axil: the MS.
has 'exal (or 'dxSl). \

124 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
the Jews, for it was not fitting that one who is
counted among the dead should speak. These
things, however, belong to the curiosities of
exegesis. Their chief bearing upon the history
of Christian Doctrine is that this whole chain of
fanciful reasoning assumes quite crudely the real
presence of Christ in what He gave to the
Twelve at the Supper.
But it is in the theory of Baptism as held
by Aphraates that we come definitely in touch
with the view of Christian life to which I
referred at the beginning of this Lecture.
The majority of the references to Baptism
in Aphraates contain little that is startling.
Christian baptism is the true circumcision ; 1 it
is administered in the Names of the Three
Persons of the Trinity ; 2 by baptism regenera
tion is conferred, sins are washed away,8 and
the body is preserved in the Day of Judgment.4
" From baptism do we receive the Spirit of the
Messiah. For in the same hour that the
priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and
it cometh 'down and broodeth upon the waters,
and they that are baptized are clothed with it.
For from all that are born of the body the

1 xn 9. 2 xxiii 63: see above, p. 87.
3 iv 19. « vi 14.

BAPTISM FOR CELIBATES ONLY 125
Spirit is far away, until they come to the
Birth by water, and then they receive the Holy
Spirit."1 In accordance with ancient custom the
rite of baptism is performed at Easter.2
All this is normal and regular, almost common
place. It is when we go on to inquire who
were the recipients of baptism that we find
ourselves in another world. In Aphraates,
Baptism is not the common seal of every
Christian's faith, but a privilege reserved for
celibates. The passage where this amazing view is most
clearly enforced is so important for our under
standing of early oriental Christianity that I
give it at length. In the Discourse on Penitents,
after reciting the story of Gideon, who prefigured
the mystery of Baptism when by the trial of
water he picked out his three hundred from
ten thousand men, and after quoting our Lord's
words that many are called but few chosen,
Aphraates goes on to say:8 "Wherefore thus
should the trumpeters, the heralds of the Church
cry and warn all the Society of God before the
Baptism — them, I say, that have offered them
selves for virginity and for holiness, youths and
maidens holy — them shall the heralds warn.
1 vi 14 : cf. Gwynn, p. 371. 2 XII 13.
3 VII 20 ( Wright, p. 147 f.).

126 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
And they shall say : 'He whose heart is set
to the state of matrimony, let him marry before
baptism, lest he fall in the spiritual contest and
be killed. And he that feareth this part of the
struggle, let him turn back, lest he break his
brother's heart like his own. He also that
loveth his possessions let him turn back from
the army, lest when the battle shall wax too
fierce for him he remember his property and
turn back, and he that turneth back then is
covered with disgrace. He that hath not offered
himself and hath not yet put on his armour, if
he turn back he is not blamed ; but every one
that offereth himself and putteth on his armour,
if he turn back from the contest becometh a
laughing-stock.' "
This is a strange exhortation, strange at least
to us Westerns. Perhaps it was not so much
Constantine's fault as the fault of his spiritual
advisers that his famous baptism was so long
delayed. Those who are not yet baptized are
not blamed by Aphraates ; if they wish to marry,
let them do so, but in that case they must not
volunteer for the sacramental life.
The deliberate reservation of baptism for the
spiritual aristocracy of Christendom shows us
that we are dealing with a view of the sacraments
quite other than the Catholic view. For it

THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY CELIBATE 127
is not merely a question of the theoretical exalta
tion of the celibate above the married state,
or an exhortation to a superior morality, as
some critics of mine suggested when I first
drew attention to the doctrinal importance of
the passage in the little book called Early
Christianity outside the Roman Empire} The
important thing is that people who intend to
marry are warned off from receiving baptism
and are actually recommended to go away and
sow their wild oats, because the married life
and the life of the baptized Christian are quite
incompatible ! The Christian community, there
fore, according to Aphraates, consists of baptized
celibates, together with a body of adherents
who remain outside and are not really members
of the body.
However clear the meaning of the passage
from the Discourse on Penitents may be, I
can hardly expect it to be estimated at its full
weight without supporting this strange conception
of the Church from other Syriac sources. To
do this, it will first be necessary to come to
a clear view of the meaning of a term which
very often occurs in Syriac ecclesiastical literature.

1 P. 51. Nearly the whole of the first part of this Lecture will
be found there, and I have not seen any reason to change my views
on the subject.

128 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
This term is bar Q'ydmd, literally " Son of the
Covenant " (or, " Son of a Covenant "), but
generally rendered by " Monk." We shall not
gain any accurate idea of the early Syriac
Christian Church until we trace somewhat
precisely what was at various times denoted
by bar Q'ydmd.
The Syriac language is quite rich in words
for monks and nuns. For " coenobite," i.e. a
monk who lives in a religious community, we
have dayrdyd, a word regularly formed from
dayrd, " monastery." For " eremite " or " soli
tary" we have ihisdyd. For "anchorite" or
"recluse" we have h'pishd and h'pishdyd. A
" Stylite," like the famous Simeon, was called
estSndyd or estSndrd. And there are naturally
the corresponding terms in the feminine, to
denote the various kinds of nuns. With all
this wealth of nomenclature it is antecedently
probable that bar Q'ydmd, and in the feminine
bath' Qydmd, must not simply mean "monk"
and "nun," but must have a more definite and
specialised meaning.
The first answer that may be given, to diverge
for a moment into a brief etymological discussion,
is that bar Q'ydmd is a Canon or Regular, i.e. a
Christian who lives under a special Rule, such as
the Rule of S. Basil or of S. Benedict. Thus we

THE SONS OF THE COVENANT 1 29
find in the Syriac translation of the 15th decree
of the Synod of Laodica^a that b'nai Q'ydmd (the
plural of bar Q'ydmd) corresponds to Kavovmol
in the Greek. This is very good so far as it
goes, but it does not answer the real question.
For we shall have to go on and ask : Who
were the Regulars of the early Syriac Church ?
Under what rule did they live?
The answer to these questions I believe to be
very simple. I believe the B'nai Q'ydmd were
simply the baptized laity of the early Syriac-
speaking Church, and that in the earlier stages
of that Church's development no layman was
accepted for baptism unless he was prepared to
lead a life of strict continence and freedom
from worldly cares. This meant that, except
for the more or less exceptional case of young
devotees who felt they had a "vocation," the
average Christian looked forward to becoming a full
Church member only at a somewhat advanced
age, and as a prelude to retiring morally and
physically from the life of this world.
At a later period the theory of the Christian
life changed. When Christianity was no longer
a proscribed sect but had become in one form
or another the State religion, the mass of the
adherents of the Church wished to make the
best of both worlds. They were anxious to
1

130 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
obtain the benefits of baptism all their lives.
Parents also had their children baptized in
infancy, for whom by reason of their age
special vows were inappropriate. Thus a
Christian community sprang into existence, of
which by far the greater number, both of old
and young, were actually baptized, though only
a minority were specially addicted to religion
in the modern sense of the term. The old-
fashioned B'nai Q'ydmd still continued, but they
now became a sort of monastic order in the
community, instead of the community itself.
Living as they did among ordinary human
beings, and not like the Hermits in the desert
or the Ccenobites in a separate society, it be
came the duty of bishops like Rabbula to devise
rules for the regulation of their course of life.
I propose now to illustrate these statements
from Syriac documents of various kinds. Let
us begin with the Doctrine of Addai, a work
which, as we saw in the first of these Lectures,
cannot be used as an accurate narrative of
historical events, but can at least be taken as
giving an ideal picture of the early Christian
community at Edessa. In the Doctrine of Addai,
then, we read (p. 47) that "all the Society1 of
1 In Syriac Q'ydmd. Dr Phillips translates the word "chiefs,"
but without authority.

SHAMONA AND GURIA 13I
men and of women were modest and decorous,
and they were holy and pure and singly and
modestly were they dwelling without spot, in
the watchfulness of the ministry decorously, in
their care for the poor, in their visitations for
the sick." In the ideal picture drawn of the
Church in the time of Addai the Apostle we
hear nothing of any provision for young
Christian children, nothing of the duties of
Christian parents, no provision for Christian
schools. The next document we come to is the
Martyrdom of ShamSna and Guria. We have
seen that this document, which belongs to
the year 297, is really the earliest historical
narrative relating to the Syriac Church which
has come down to us in approximately its
original form. As such it is particularly interest
ing, and all the more so since the whole action
takes place before the Edicts of Toleration and
the accession of Constantine. In the very first
sentence of this work we meet with the B'ndth
Q'ydmd, the " Daughters of the Covenant."
We read that " in the days of Q6na, Bishop
of Edessa, the wicked Diocletian had made a
great and strong persecution against all the
Churches of the Messiah, so that the priests
and deacons with bitter afflictions were

132 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
tormented, and the b'ndth Q'ydmd and the
cloistered nuns1 in bitter exposure were stand
ing, and all the Christians were in affliction and
grief." The Martyrdom goes on to tell how Guria
and Shamdna were arrested, and how valiantly
they confessed and were martyred. Guria was
from Sargi, and Shamdna from Gannada or
Gagnada, both apparently names of villages
near Edessa. Shamdna is merely introduced as
the friend or companion of Guria, but Guria is
further distinguished by the epithet m'qadd'shd
i.e. "hallowed." Holy is used again and again
for continent in Syriac ecclesiastical literature.
Before the martyrdom, therefore, Guria was
regarded as in some way more holy than
Shamdna, and what that way was we learn at
the end of the story after their execution.
There it is casually mentioned that Shamdna
had a daughter. Thus the ascetic sentiment
is indicated most clearly : Guria, the celibate, is
"holy," Shamdna, who has a daughter, is not. ;
We now come to Aphraates himself. He has
a whole Discourse (No. VI) on the B'nai Q'ydmd,
and the position it occupies in the series of
Discourses is significant. First come the
1 Syriac DayrdydOd : these do not appear in the Armenian version
of the Martyrdom and perhaps should be omitted.

aphraates 133
Discourses on the primary duties of Faith,
Love, Fasting, and Prayer. Then a Discourse
on the burning question of the great war
between Rome and Persia then raging, a war
which seemed as if it were actually ushering
in the last times. Then come two Discourses
on the Christian Community, followed up by
three short Discourses on the Resurrection, on
Humility, and a final address "to Pastors,''
which is really a kind of peroration to the First
Book of Aphraates. The Christian Community
is divided by Aphraates for practical purposes into
two parts, the B'nai Q'ydmd and the Penitents.
And as far as I can see, these correspond to
the Baptized and the Catechumens.
Aphraates begins without preamble by a
general exhortation to the Christian life
addressed to those who have "taken up the
yoke of the Saints." He reminds them that
the Adversary is skilful, but he says:1 "All the
children of Light are without fear of him,
because the darkness flies from before the light.
The children of the Good fear not the Evil
One, for He hath given him to be trampled
by their feet. When he makes himself like
darkness unto them they become light; and

1 Wright, p. 108 ; Gwynn, p. 365, where the whole Discourse is
translated.

134 Marriage and the sacraments
when he creeps upon them like a serpent, they
become salt, whereof he cannot eat.1 . . . If he
comes in upon them in the lust of food, they
conquer him by fasting like our Saviour. And
if he wishes to contend With them by the lust
of the eyes, they lift up their eyes to the height
of heaven. ... If he wishes to come against
them by sleep, they are wakeful and vigilant and
sing psalms and pray. If he allures them by
possessions, they give them to the poor. If he
comes in as sweetness against them, they taste
it not, knowing that he is bitter. If he inflames
them with the desire of Eve, they dwell alone
and not with the daughters of Eve." 2
Then follows a list of the mischief that the
Bible tells us has been done by Eve and her
daughters. Aphraates reminds us in a passage
which I quote because it is so characteristic of
his style that " it was through Eve that Satan
came in upon Adam, and Adam was enticed
because of his inexperience. And again he
came in against Joseph through his master's
wife, but Joseph was acquainted with his
craftiness and would not afford him a hearing.
Through a woman he fought with Samson until
he took away his Nazariteship. Reuben was
1 This fanciful comparison occurs several times in Aphraates.
2 P. 365.

aphraates 135
the first-born of all his brethren, and through
his father's wife the adversary cast a blemish
upon him. Aaron was the great high-priest of
the House of Israel, and through Miriam his
sister he envied Moses. Moses was sent to
deliver the people from Egypt, and he took
with him the woman who advised him to
shameful acts, and the Lord met with Moses
and desired to slay him, till he sent back his
wife to Midian. David was victorious in all
his battles, yet by means of a daughter of Eve
there was found a blemish in him. Amnon was
beautiful and fair in countenance, yet the
adversary took him captive by desire for his
sister, and Absalom slew him on account of
the humbling of Tamar. Solomon was greater
than all the kings of the earth, yet in the
days of his old age his wives led him astray.
Through Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, the
wickedness of Ahab was increased and he
became exceedingly polluted. Furthermore the
adversary tempted Job through his children
and his possessions, and when he could not
prevail over him he went and brought against
him his panoply, and he came bringing with
him a daughter of Eve who had caused Adam
to sink, and through her mouth he said to
Job, her righteous husband, Curse God. But

136 marriage and the sacraments
Job rejected her counsel. King Asa also
conquered the Accursed-of-life, when he wished
to come in against him through his mother.
For Asa knew his craftiness and removed his
mother from her high estate and cut in pieces
her idol and cast it down. John was greater than
all the prophets, yet Herod slew him because
of the dancing of a daughter of Eve. Haman
was wealthy and third in honour from the king,
yet his wife counselled him to destroy the Jews.
Zimri was head of the tribe of Simeon, yet Cozbi,
daughter of the chiefs of Midian, overthrew him,
and because of one woman twenty-four thousand
of Israel fell in one day."
After this lengthy catalogue Aphraates goes
on to say :1 " Therefore my brethren, every man
that is a bar Q'ydmd or a saint that loves the
solitary life, and at the same time wishes that a
woman that is a bath Q'ydmd like himself should
dwell with him, in that case it were better for him
to take a wife openly and not wanton in lust ;
and a woman also in that case it behoves her,
if she depart not from a man who is a solitary,
that openly she be taken to wife. Woman with
woman ought to dwell, and man with man should
dwell. And the man too that wishes to be in
holiness, let not his wife dwell with him, lest he
1 Gwynn, p. 366; Wright, p. in.

aphraates 137
turn back to his former nature and be accounted an
adulterer. Wherefore this counsel is proper and
right and fair which I counsel unto myself and
also to you, my beloved, solitaries that take no
wives and virgins that are not taken to wife and
they that love holiness ; it is just and right and
proper that even if a man be in distress he
should be by himself, and so it becometh him to
dwell as is written in Jeremiah the prophet:
Blessed is the man that shall bear Thy yoke in
his youth, and shall sit by himself and keep silence
because he hath received Thy yoke} For so, my
beloved, it becometh him that beareth the yoke
of the Messiah that he should keep His yoke in
purity." It is scarcely necessary to add that in this
"taking to wife" and "being taken to wife"
no religious service is implied. There was no
sacrament of Holy Matrimony in Aphraates'
religious system. In the Introduction to Dom
Parisot's edition of Aphraates the learned
Benedictine finds traces of all the Catholic
sacraments except this one. The omission is
not accidental. I venture to think Aphraates
would have considered a marriage service as
irrational and unseemly as a Sacrament of Usury
or of Military Service. He only recognises two
1 Lam. iii 27, 28.

138 MARRIAGE and the sacraments
grades in the Christian ranks, the baptized
celibate (from whose ranks also the clergy are
drawn) and the unbaptized penitent. "By the
coming of the offspring of the Blessed Mary,"
he goes on to say,1 "the thorns are uprooted and
the sweat taken away, and the fig-tree cursed
and the dust made salt, and the curse is nailed
to the Cross, and the edge of the sword taken
away from before the Tree of Life and food
given to the faithful and Paradise promised to
the blessed and to virgins and saints, and the
fruits of the Tree of Life are given as food to
the faithful and to the virgins and to those that
do the will of God. . . . For those that do not
take wives are ministered by the Watchers of
Heaven ; those that keep holiness rest in the
sanctuary of the Most High ; all the solitaries
doth the Only One from the bosom of His Father
make to rejoice. There is there neither male
nor female, neither bond nor free, but all of
them are sons of the Most High. And all the
pure virgins that have been betrothed to the
Messiah, there they light their torches and with
the Bridegroom do they enter the marriage
chamber. . . . The wedding-feast of the
daughters of Eve is for seven days, but theirs
is the Bridegroom that doth not withdraw for
1 Cwynn, p. 367 ; Wright, p. 113 ff.

aphraates 139
ever. The adornment cf the daughters of Eve
is wool that wears out and perishes, but theirs is
clothing that doth not wear out. The beauty of
the daughters of Eve, old age doth wither it,
but their beauty in the time of the resurrection
is renewed."
" O virgins who have betrothed yourselves
to the Messiah," continues Aphraates, "when
one of the b'nai Q'ydmd shall say to one of you
' I will dwell with thee, and thou minister to me,'
thus shalt thou say to him : ' To a royal Husband
am I betrothed, and to Him do I minister ; and
if I leave his ministry and minister to thee, my
Betrothed will be wroth with me and will write
me a letter of divorce and will dismiss me from
His house, and while thou seekest to be honoured
by me and I to be honoured by thee, see lest
hurt come upon me and thee. Take not fire in
thy bosom lest it burn thy garments, but be thou
in honour by thyself and I will be by myself
in honour.'"
There are many other general directions given
by Aphraates in the rest of his Discourse for
the conduct of the B'nai Q'ydmd, but they do
not call for special remark here. The rule of
life which he sketches out is quiet, dignified,
and temperate, with no special features of
observance or asceticism. But I have quoted

140 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
largely from the parts which deal with his view
of the relations, or rather the absence of relations,
between man and woman, because they are of
the essence of his view of the Christian life,
and because nothing but a rather full method of
quotation would sufficiently illustrate his attitude.
And here I must once again emphasise the im
portance of the passage in the Seventh Discourse
with which I set out, where Aphraates dissuades
those who intend to marry from coming to
baptism.1 That is the decisive point which
separates these exhortations from later works
such as the Discourses of Philoxenus or S.
Benedict's rule itself. " Priests and scribes and
sages, call and say to all the people : let him
that hath betrothed a wife and doth wish to
take her, let him turn back and rejoice with his
wife,"2 says Aphraates, and the call is a call
to Baptism. The Christian community with all
its privileges and blessings is on this theory
restricted to celibates who have as much as
possible withdrawn from the world : the mass
of the people stand outside. Not only Art,
Science, and Politics, but also the Hearth and
the Home, are shut out from the province of
Religion.

1 See above, p. 126.
2 Wright, p. 146. The words are a paraphrase of Deut. xx 7.

THE MARCIONITES 14I
Before we criticise this view of life let us
remember that it is well known outside the
Catholic Church. The Buddhist Community is
essentially a Community of monks, who alone
constitute the congregation of the faithful. The
people stand by the side and honour the saints,
but they themselves do not tread the Path. And
to come to what is really nearer home, the same
state of things that is contemplated by Aphraates
actually obtained among the Marcionites during
the three hundred years and more of their
existence as an organised body. It had always
been a puzzle to me how the Marcionites main
tained their numbers, for their way of life must
have been strict or their Catholic opponents
would have accused them of vice. Doubtless
the greater number of them entered religion
late in life, forsaking their families as Rabbula
did. As with Aphraates, the followers of
Marcion admitted to baptism only those who
intended for the remainder of their days to lead
a celibate life.1 Marriage to the Marcionites
meant spiritual marriage to Christ : the con
nexions formed before baptism among Marcionite

1 Cf. Tertullian adv. Marcione?n iv 34 (on Luke xvi 18) : "Aut
si omnino negas permitti diuortium a Christo, quomodo tu nuptias
dirimis, nee coniungens marem et feminam nee alibi coniunctos ad
sacramentum baptismatis et eucharistiae admittens nisi inter se
coniurauerint aduersus fructum nuptiarum?"

142 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
adherents were not recognised by the Marcionite
Church, which consisted only of the Baptized.
It is worth notice that among the many faults
found by S. Ephraim in his polemic against
Marcion and his followers their rejection of
Christian marriage is not included.
The same system also prevailed among the
Manichees, who were divided into the "Elect"
and the "Hearers." The "Elect" were alone
fully initiated, and they also were ascetics,
celibate, and living on herbs provided for them
by the inferior class of " Hearers." Their reputed
descendants, the Albigenses in the South of
France, still continued the separation between
the ascetic Elect and the ordinary disciples, and
the rite of admission to the order of the Elect
was called by them spiritual Christian baptism. 1
To return to the Syriac-speaking Church and
the history of the B'nai Q'ydmd. Aphraates is
the last witness to the old order of things. After
his time, and perhaps before his time within the
Syriac-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire,
married persons were admitted to baptism, and
conversely baptism and the reception of the
Lord's Supper was no longer regarded as a
1 See the Ritual of Consolamentum, as given in F. C.
Conybeare's Key of Truth, Appendix vi, pp. 160-170.

THE CANONS OF RABBULA 143
bar to matrimony. At what date the Church
in the East actually came to bless the ceremony
of betrothal I have not been able to discover.
What is more easy to trace is the gradual decay
of the b'nai Q'ydmd, as shown by the rules which
Rabbula found it necessary to draw up for them.
These rules are found in a work called
Commands and Admonitions to Priests and to
Sons of the Covenant living in the country, x and
no better way could be found of getting an
accurate picture of the M esopo tamian Church
early in the fifth century than by the study of
them, both by what Rabbula commands and by
what he thinks it necessary to forbid.
1. " First of all," says Rabbula, " let the Sons of the Church
know the True Faith of Holy Church, that they be not led
astray by heretics.
2. "Let not any of the Periodeutse or the Priests and
Deacons or of the Sons of the Covenant dwell with women,
save with his mother or his sister or with his daughter, and
let them not make households for these women outside
their own establishment and let them persevere in living
with these women."
Apparently therefore the ecclesiastic was not
to live with a married sister, or to live with one
sister after another.
3. " Let not Priests and Deacons and Sons of the Covenant

1 Overbeck, pp. 215-221.

144 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
compel the Daughters of the Covenant to weave garments
for them against their will.
4. "Let not Priests and Deacons be ministered to by
women, and specially by the Daughters of the Covenant.
5. "Let not Priests and Deacons and Periodeutse take a
bribe from anyone, and specially from those who are bringing
a suit [before them]."
The Periodeutes was a sort of Visitor, some
thing between a Suffragan Bishop and a Rural
Dean. 6. " Let not Priests and Deacons make collections either
from the Sons of the Covenant or from laymen, even if
commanded by those of the city, but let the needs of the
Church be filled by him who gives of his own free will.
7. " When the Bishop comes to a village, let them not
make collections from laymen in the Bishop's name; but
if there be anything in the Church let them pay what suffices
from the Church's funds, and if there be nothing in the Church
let them not give anything.
9. " Let not Priests and Deacons and Sons of the Covenant
and Daughters of the Covenant demand interest or usury or
any trades of filthy lucre.
10. " Let not the Sons of the Covenant or the Daughters
of the Covenant allow their Priests to dwell with laymen
save with their relatives only, or with one another.
11. "Let all the Sons of the Church persevere in fasting
and be instant in prayer : let them have care for the poor
and require justice for the oppressed without respect of
persons. 12. "Let all the Priests in the villages have care for the
poor that betake themselves to them, and especially those
that are Sons of the Covenant.
16, "In every Church there is, let a bouse be known in

THE CANONS OF RABBULA I45
which the poor that betake themselves thither can rest; but
diviners and wizards and those who write charms and anoint
men and women under the pretence of making cures drive
out from every place, and exact from them promises that they
will not invade our dominions.
17. "Let not the Daughters of the Covenant ba allowed
to come or go to Church alone by night, but if possible
let them dwell with one another ; and so also with the Sons
of the Covenant.
18. "If there be any of the Sons of the Covenant or of
the Daughters of the Covenant in need, let the Priests or
Deacons of their villages take care of them; but if he is
not able to do so, let him inform us that we may provide
for them, lest because of their need they may be compelled
to do something that is not suitable."
It is evident from this that it was the exception
for a Son or Daughter of the Covenant to be in
actual want : evidently they took no express
vow of poverty.
19. " Let the Sons of the Covenant learn the Psalms and
the Daughters of the Covenant learn Hymns also.
20. " Let not Priests or Deacons or Sons of the Covenant
and Daughters of the Covenant pronounce the Name of
God1 and swear, neither in falsehood nor in truth, but (let
their speech be) as is commanded."
The reference, of course, is to the Sermon
on the Mount, but the phrase about not pro
nouncing the Name of God is curiously Jewish
in tone.

1 In Syriac, pdrshtn sh'md SAldhd : cf. Lev* xxiv ii.
K

146 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
21. "Let not the Periodeutse, or the Priests or Deacons,
stay in the public khans or in an inn when they enter the
city, but let them stay in the Church's guest-house, or in
the monasteries outside.
22. " Let Priests and Deacons and the Sons and Daughters
of the Covenant abstain from wine and from flesh, but if
there be any among them who is ill in body let him have
a little, as it is written; but those who are drunken or who
enter the wine-shops, let them be cast out of the Church.
23. "Let none of those who have become disciples of
Christ be covetous to get more than their need, but let them
act as stewards for the poor.
24-26. "Let not Priests and Deacons and Sons of the
Covenant become keepers of threshing-floors or vineyards
or the hired labourers of laymen, or bailiffs, or agents for
laymen, or have anything to do with the law, but they are
to keep to the Service of the Church and not to allow
the offices of prayer and of psalm - singing to cease day or
night." The phrases about the law are rather obscure.
Apparently the ecclesiastics were forbidden to
become "sheriff's officers."
27. "Anathematise and bind and send to the city for
judgment the laymen that dares to take to wife a Daughter
of the Covenant; and if she also by her own consent was
corrupted, let them send her also."
The tone of passion that still rings through
this Canon makes me think that the contem
plated event was likely to happen now and then,
and that not a few of the Daughters of the
Covenant repented of premature vows.

THE CANONS OF RABBULA 147
28. "Sons or Daughters of the Covenant that fall from
their estate send to the monasteries for penance; but if
they stay not in the monastery, let them not be received in
the Church, except they be detained with their parents for
so long a time as is right.
29. "Do not admit to instruction (or, ' discipleship ') any
woman that has a husband other than her own husband,
nor any man that has a wife other than his lawful partner,
that the Name of God be not blasphemed.
30. "Let not Priests permit those who are found in
adultery to offer the Sacrament, save by our express
permission. 31. "Let not any of the Priests or of the Deacons or any
of the Sons of the Church dare to place common vessels
side by side with the Sacramental vessels in any box or
chest." Here again we have the same tone of lofty
indignation that we noticed with regard to
appropriation of a Daughter of the Covenant,
and it is only just to Rabbula to observe that
from his point of view he would regard it as
exactly the same crime.
32. "Let no one dare to come near and give the Oblation,
except he be a Priest or Deacon.
33. "All the lords of villages hold in the honour that is
due to them, but not so that ye become servile and oppress
the poor.
36. " Let them not permit the Sons of the Covenant to go
to gatherings or other places except with Priests, nor the
Daughters of the Covenant except with Deaconesses.
37. "Let not any one of the Priests or of the Deacons or
of the Sons of the Covenant except by our command go

I48 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
away to the Imperial Army {Comitatus) or to any distant
place and leave his Church, even if it be a matter of business
for his village or his Church.
38. "Let all the Priests take care for the service of the
House of God, and let them be doing whatever is necessary
for the ordering of the House, and let them not feed beasts
in the Church, that the House of God be not brought into
contempt. x
39. "The Periodeutes or Priest or Deacon that departs
from this world, whatever he has he shall leave to the Church.
40. "Neither Priests nor Deacons nor Sons of the
Covenant shall make themselves sureties for anyone, neither
with or without a written deed.
41. "Let Priests and Deacons dwell in the Church, and
if possible the Sons of the Covenant also.
42. "Let Priests and Deacons have a care that in all
Churches a copy of the Separate Gospels (EvangeliSn da-
Mepharreshi) shall be kept and used for reading.
43. "Let the Priests read the Gospel where there is a
Priest, and not the Deacons ; Baptism also where possible
let Priests give.
44. " Let not Laymen be stewards in the Church, save
where there are no Sons of the Covenant fit for the post.
45. "Let not Sons or Daughters of the Covenant drink
wine at the funeral-feast (lit. ' after the defunct ')."
This seems to have been regarded as a heathen
rite. 47. "Let not the Sons of the Church have intercourse
with heretics, neither in word or in deed.

1 It is perhaps not out of place to mention that not a hundred
years ago there was a Westmoreland Church, part of which was
partitioned off as a fold for sheep. The parson sat in the Chancel
spinning, while he taught the day-school.

THE CANONS OF RABBULA 149
49. "The books of heretics and their receptacles seek
out in every place ; and wherever ye can, either bring them
to us or burn them in the fire.
51. "Let not Priests give the Oblation to those who are
troubled with demons, that no disgrace befall the Sacrament
in the Communion of devils.
56. " Let no man leave his wife, unless he has found her
in adultery, nor let the wife leave her husband for all sorts
of causes." Note that it does not expressly say that these
persons are assumed to be of the baptized : they
may only be among those who had become
"disciples of Christ" as in No. 23, i.e. un-
baptized Catechumens.
57. "Let no man take to wife his sister's daughter or his
brother's daughter, nor his father's sister or his mother's
sister." You will notice that the deceased wife's sister
is not included in this simple Table of prohibited
degrees. The Canons end with two further
directions for the decent ordering of the Service,
viz :
58. "Let not the Sons of the Covenant go up the altar-
steps, or bring up any food into the apse; either let the
Priest eat there, or let a man dine in the nave.1 And let
nothing be put there save the Sacramental vessels.
59. "Priests and Deacons when they give the Sacrament,
let them not receive any gift from those that take the
Sacrament." 1 The Syriac is nil'as b'haik'lA.

ISO MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
" Here end the commands and admonitions
to Priests and Sons of the Covenant," says
our document, and I think you will agree with
me that they give us a very vivid picture of
Syrian Church life in the fifth century. The
B'nai Q'ydmd, the Sons and Daughters of the
Covenant, are still the backbone of the Church.
They live separately in their own homes or in
the homes of their near relations, or else in
small informal communities such as the Clergy
House sometimes attached to a large Anglican
parish. Besides these there are " Disciples of
Christ" who may be married, but it is not
directly implied that these are in the enjoyment
of the sacraments of the Church. It is very
probable that by the time Rabbula issued his
Canons they were actually admitted to baptism
and communion, but the ideal legislator does
not always officially recognise lax customs that
have sprung up : it would be a mistake to
argue from the Anglican Bidding- Prayer that
all the Commons of the realm were in sincere
and conscientious communion with the Established
Church. I should have liked to conclude this Lecture
by giving you an account of the introduction
of the Marriage Service into the Syriac-speaking
Church. But I have not been able to discover

THE RELIGIOUS CEREMONY 151
at what period this innovation was made. The
Service actually adopted contained several picture-
esque features. There was a Benediction of the
Wedding Rings, a Benediction of the Bridegroom
and the Bride, a Benediction of their Wedding
Crowns, and a Benediction of the Groomsmen.1
No doubt a good deal of the ceremony is very
ancient, and might afford material for students
of sociology and of folk-lore. But what we are
in search of is the introduction of a religious
element into the feasting, the institution of
Holy Matrimony. In the West of course it
had been long practised, perhaps from the
beginning, certainly from the time of Tertullian.2
Among the Syriac-speaking branch of the Church,
as we have seen, it was not a native growth.
I have devoted the whole of this Lecture to
the one question of Christian Marriage, because
the attitude of a religious institution toward
matters of conduct and morality is after all more
fundamentally important than its attitude to those
high philosophical problems of theology which
are only the pursuit of a few, however much
the party watchwords may become the battle
cries of the many. And we may well rejoice

1 To be found*.^. in B.M. Add. 14493, a MS. of the tenth century.
1 Felicitatem eius matrimonii quod .... obsignat benedictio (Tert.
ad Vxorem ii 8).

152 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
that the tendency which developed in the early
Syriac-speaking branch of the Church more
strongly than elsewhere failed to become the
established law. The solemnization of weddings
by a Christian rite is a custom so familiar to
us, that we may easily come to think of it as
natural and inevitable, but the words of Aphraates
teach us that it was not always so regarded.
We cannot doubt that he would have regarded
such a ceremony with horror.
The healthier instinct of the West has
saved us from a Buddhistic organisation of
Christendom, for it is surely no light gain to
Christian society that the bridal feast has been
hallowed with the blessing of the Church.
" Holy religion of matrimony should men and
women be taught of priests by authority of
God's law, and then when they take it they
would be the more able to keep it virtuously. . . .
For through his children a man is known, faithful
or unfaithful ; faithful if he keep the honest
religion of wedlock as is before said, and un
faithful if he do the contrary." These words
from an unknown Lollard commentator on the
Psalms1 express far more nearly than anything
I have read to you from Aphraates or Rabbula
1 Quoted by Miss A. C. Paues (from B. M. Reg. 18 C 26,/ 146)
in A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version, p. xlix.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST 153
a worthy Christian view of man and wife and of
their duties to themselves and to society.
In conclusion I must remind you of the
immense part played, both in the discourage
ment of marriage and in its subsequent per
mission, by the doctrine of the Sacraments.
According to Aphraates, strict continence is the
way to secure the physical efficiency of Baptism
for a good resurrection on the last day.1 And
he uses with pleasure the unfortunate metaphor
of the Brides of Christ, who in place of a
mortal husband are betrothed to the Messiah.2
The same tone of reprobation is used by Rabbula
for the man who marries a Daughter of the
Covenant, with or without her consent, and for the
man who puts ordinary objects in the same box
with the sacramental furniture : both crimes are
an act of sacrilege against the Vessels in which
Christ is pleased locally to dwell. The way of
Life, that is to say the method of obtaining life
in the next world, was through the Sacraments ;
and when this view was clearly conceived, the
first answer of the Christian community in the
flush of its early enthusiasm was that so sacred
a means must be honoured in those who use
it by a special manner of living. This answered

1 Aphraates, Wright 125, Gwynn 372.
2 Wright 115/, Gwynn 367/

154 MARRIAGE AND THE SACRAMENTS
Well enough for the needs of the Church while
it was a comparatively small and persecuted body,
but the time came when all the world wished
to be at least nominally Christian, and a change
was inevitable. The way of Life, they said, is
through the Sacraments. Without the Sacra
ments we are doomed to eternal misery : therefore
the way of living to be required from baptized
Christians must be something compatible with
ordinary life in the world. Those who wished
for the protection of the Sacraments all their
life obviously could not promise to be monks
and nuns, and so the great change came about.
The interest of the Syriac-speaking Church for
the study of the evolution of the Christian society
lies in this, that in it this great change was not
completed till the fifth century a.d.

EDESSA.
View looking W.N. W.

[To face p. 155.

LECTURE V
BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
As Renan said long ago, and as William Wright
repeats in the opening words of his Short History
of Syriac Literature, the characteristic of the
Syrians is a certain mediocrity. They shone
neither in war, nor in the- arts, nor in science.
They lacked the poetic fire of the older Hebrews
and of the Arabs. But they were apt enough
as pupils of the Greeks ; they assimilated and
reproduced, adding little or nothing of their
own. There was no Alfarabi, no Avicenna,
no Averro'es, in the cloisters of Edessa, Qinnesrin,
or Nisibis. The Syrian Church of the fourth
and succeeding centuries failed to produce men
who rose to the level of a Eusebius, a Gregory
Nazianzen, a Basil, and a Chrysostom. "The
literature of Syria," says Dr Wright, " is, on
the whole, not an attractive one." I am not
going to challenge this severe verdict on the
general ground. Syriac Literature presents the
depressing spectacle of a steady Decline and
155

156 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
Fall, following the general collapse of civilisation
in the East. Moreover what we have of it is
a specialised department. The Syriac Literature
that has come down to us is not, like the literature
of the Greeks or Arabs, a selection of almost all
the departments of human activity. What we
have in Syriac is practically nothing more than
the contents of a very fine monastic Library.
Many departments of profane literature are but
little represented and even the ancient heretics
are rarely allowed to speak to us, except through
the imperfect medium of orthodox refutations.
What we have of Syriac Literature is, taken in
the lump, dull. But there are some indications
that outside the walls of the orthodox cloisters
there was in early times some independent life
and light, and a little has percolated through
to us. I propose in the present Lecture to
illustrate this side of Syriac Literature from the
one philosophical work of the School of Bardaisan
that has come down to us.
Bardaisan, called " The last of the Gnostics,"
a man distinguished by birth, by learning, by
intelligence, became a Christian during the last
quarter of the second century. He died in the
year 222 a.d., having by that time separated
himself from the organisation of the Church of
his native place. Later ages regarded him as

THE LAST OF THE GNOSTICS 1 57
a heretic ; and when the sect that had been
formed by his followers died out, the monastic
libraries did not greatly care to preserve even
the orthodox confutations of his doctrine. We
are therefore obliged to reconstruct from scattered
notices and the ill-informed partisan statements of
later chroniclers our picture of the only original
thinker which the Syriac Church helped to
mould. Let us first hear what Eusebius has to tell us,
writing barely a century after the death of
Bardaisan. Eusebius (HE iv 30) says that
Bardesanes (as the Greeks called Bardaisan) was
a most competent writer in his native Syriac,
and that he wrote treatises against Marcion and
other heretics, some of which had been translated
into Greek. Among these was a Dialogue on
Fate addressed to "Antoninus," by whom
Eusebius (or his source) may have meant
Caracalla, or even Elagabalus. We are told
further that Bardesanes had been a disciple of
Valentinus the Gnostic, but that he abandoned
his teaching for more orthodox views, yet
without ever quite shaking off the old slough
of heretical opinion. Eusebius gives no exact
dates, but puts Bardaisan under Pope Soter, i.e.
about 179, the traditional date of his conversion
to Christianity.

158 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
Epiphanius tells us more, but as usual it is
not safe to trust all that this amiable Father
of the Church says about a heretic. He
evidently regarded the accession of Bardaisan
to Christianity as one of the results of the
conversion of the blessed King Abgar. He
seems however to have some knowledge of
Bardaisan's works, for he tells us quite truly
that the Dialogue on Fate was written against
the doctrines of a certain 'Awida the Astrologer.1
But whereas Eusebius tells us that Bardaisan
had been a follower of Valentinus and never
quite shook off his heresy, Epiphanius makes
him become a follower of Valentinus after he
had been orthodox.
The fullest account of Bardaisan is that inserted
in the Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Great,
Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch from 1166 to 1199.
We have already had occasion to discuss this
account in the first of these Lectures when
considering the early episcopal succession to
the See of Edessa, but it may not be out of
place to remind you once again how circumspect
we ought to be in trusting to details preserved
in so late a source. Bardaisan lived a thousand
years before the Patriarch Michael compiled his
Chronicle, and we can only regard the Chronicle
1 AiietSow- rbv torpori/iov (Oehler i, pt. 2, p. 1 44, note).

THE CHRONICLE OF MICHAEL 1 59
as a serious source of historical information in
those passages where there is good reason to
believe that Michael and his predecessors have all
copied faithfully from a much older source. In
the present case we have to allow for ignorance
and prejudice : ignorance, because the learning
and the philosophy of an independent thinker
are not easily packed into the compendiums of
annalists, and prejudice, because Bardaisan's
name was chiefly known in later ages as that
of a great heretic and schismatic, and it was
assumed that he must have been immoral and
irrational. With these reservations let us take
Michael's account.
After declaring how Bardaisan was converted
in 179 a.d. by Bishop Hystasp of Edessa, and
ordained by him a Deacon ( ! ) 1 Michael mentions
that Bardaisan wrote treatises against heresies
and that he turned to the doctrines of Valentinus.
He then goes on to tell us : " Bardaisan says
that there are three chief Natures (Kydni) and
four existences (Ithyi), which are Reason and
Power and Understanding and Knowledge. The
four Powers are Fire and Water and Light and
Spirit (or Wind), and from these come the
other existences of the world2 to the number

1 Chabot, Michel le Syrien [no].
2 The MS. has "and the world."

l6o BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
of 360. And Bardaisan says that He who
spake with Moses and the Prophets was the
Chief of the Angels and not God Himself; our
Lord was clothed with the body of an Angel
and [from]1 Mary the shining Soul was clothed
which thus took form and body. Furthermore
the Upper Powers gave man his soul and the
Lower Powers gave him his limbs : the Sun
gave the brain, and the Moon and the Planets
gave the other parts." Then follow some
almost unintelligible remarks about the syzygy
of the Sun and Moon, whereby the material
world is renewed every month. Michael then
informs us that according to Bardaisan " the
Messiah, the Son of God, was born under
the planet Jupiter, crucified in the hour of Mars,
buried in the hour of Mercury, and in the time
of Jupiter He arose from the grave." Bardaisan
also said that the dead do not rise and that
dreams are true, and marriage he calls a good
purification. 2 He had three sons, Abgaron,
Hasdu, and Harmonius, who all remained true
to his doctrines.
It is difficult to extract from this confused
farrago of statements anything certain about

1 The MS. omits "from."
2 So Bar Hebraeus understands the passage from which Michael
quotes.

THE DIALOGUE ON FATE l6l
the real nature of Bardaisan's teaching. At
the same time some of the statements above
quoted are confirmed from other sources, such
as the express declaration in Ephraim's Treatise
against False Doctrines (Ad Hypatium, bk. ii,
in Overbeck, p. 63) that Bardaisan had said
that the human Soul was mixed and com
pounded of seven constituents. Unfortunately
the latter part of this valuable prose Treatise
exists only as an almost illegible palimpsest
which still awaits a decipherer. J The metrical
discourses of Ephraim against Heretics must
also be used with great caution, for the very
reason that they are written in metre. It is
difficult to quote one's adversary accurately, if
you are tied down to a verse of five syllables
to the line.
Fortunately we are not entirely obliged to
gain our knowledge of Bardaisan from refuta
tions of his opinions. The Dialogue on Fate,
mentioned by Eusebius and Epiphanius, has
been actually preserved. Like so many other
treasures of Syriac literature it was discovered

1 What Overbeck has published is only the First Book
and about half the Second There were originally Five Books,
each beginning in turn with the five letters of Ephraim's name
(A F R Y M). The palimpsest mentioned in the text is B.M. Add.
14623. L

1 62 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
by Dr Cureton, when Keeper of the Oriental
MSS. at the British Museum and also Rector
of this Church of S. Margaret's, Westminster.
A surprise meets us at the outset. This
famous Dialogue, mentioned by several Fathers
in a Greek translation, and actually in large
part incorporated into more than one ancient
Christian writing, does not profess to be the
work of Bardaisan, but of his disciple Philip.
Bardaisan himself is the chief speaker and
teaches with authority, but Philip writes in the
first person. This Philip is otherwise entirely
unknown, and the name, so common in Greek,
is rarely met with among the Syrians. Thus
the suspicion arises whether he is anything more
than a literary device. In any case there is no
reason to suppose that there is any analogy
between the parts played by Bardaisan and
Philip in the De Fato with those of Socrates
and Plato in -the Platonic Dialogues. A truer
literary analogy would be found between S.
Paul and that Tertius who wrote the Epistle
to the Romans.
A further formal difficulty is to be found in the
name of the Dialogue. The Greek writers who
know of it speak of it as a treatise On Fate, a
very suitable description. But the Syriac MS.
is headed, "The Book ofthe Laws of Countries,"

AUTHORSHIP OF THE DIALOGUE 1 63
and some modern writers have assumed that this
is the true title. I incline however to believe
that the Greeks were right, and that the Syriac
heading of our MS. is not so much the original
title as an indication of the cause of its preserva
tion. It is inconceivable that a work of the
heresiarch Bardaisan or of his immediate
disciples should have been intentionally pre
served except on a side issue. A side issue is
actually provided by the interesting descriptions
of heathen customs and laws mentioned at the
end of the Dialogue. The customs are curious
reading in themselves and they are mentioned
in illustration of the disciplinary power of
Christianity. For the sake of the mention of
these customs the Dialogue was valued in later
times, and from the description of them it
acquired this name of the " Book of the Laws
of Countries." But the work as a whole is really
about Fate, and it is more appropriate to continue
to call it the Dialogue On Fate.
The Dialogue opens with narrative : whoever
" Philip " may have been, he was certainly master
of a pleasant style and the art of arranging his
material. "A few days ago," he says, "we went
in to pay a call on our brother Shamshagram,
and there Bardaisan came and found us ; and
when he had inquired and found him well, he

1 64 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
asked us what we were talking about, 'for,' said
he, ' I heard the sound of your conversation
outside when I was coming in.' For it was his
custom, whenever he found us talking, to ask
us what it was about, that he might speak thereon
with us. And we said to him : ' Awida here was
saying to us, " If God is one, as you say, and He
constituted the race of men, and really wills what
you are commanded to do, why did He not con
stitute them so that they could not go wrong, but
always do what is good? For in that case His
will would be done." ' "
The problem is not exactly a new one, but
even after many centuries the solution is not
in our hands. Let us see how this school of
Christian Philosophers looked at the question.
Bardaisan first replies : " Tell me, my son
Awida, do you mean that there is not One who
is God over all, or do you mean that the One
God does not intend that men should conduct
themselves justly and rightly ? " Awida answers
that he asked his friends to see what they would
say first, as he was shy of asking Bardaisan
himself. Bardaisan assures him that those who
come with a sincere desire to learn the truth and
to set forth genuinely felt difficulties have no
reason to be shy ; it is the duty of the Master
to attempt to answer such difficulties when

WHY THE ONE GOD ALLOWS ERROR 1 65
they are put forth. Awida then says that his
difficulties are genuinely his own, but that
Bardaisan's disciples would not persuade him
by arguments and kept saying, "you have only
to believe and you will be able to know every
thing," and Awida on the other hand said that
he could not believe, except he was shown reason
for doing so.
Here we approach the real teaching of the
Dialogue. Bardaisan does not reply directly to
Awida, but turns to his own disciples, saying :
"It is not Awida alone who does not wish to
believe. Many others are in the same case, and
because there is no faith in them they cannot
be shown reason, but they are continually pulling
down and building up, and the end is a mere
shapeless ruin in which knowledge of truth cannot
dwell. But (he continues) since Awida says he
does nbt wish to believe, I will talk to you that
do believe about the question which he has asked,
and thus he may hear something more." So
Bardaisan begins to say : " Many men there are
who from lack of faith have difficulty even in
listening to instruction, because they have no
foundation to build on and are even in doubt
about God Himself. Such men have not that
Fear of God which delivers us from all fears,
but are at the same time timid and rash. Now as

1 66 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
to the question that Awida asks, why God has not
made us so that we could not sin and so not be
guilty before Him, I reply that if man had been
so made he would not be himself, but a machine.
Man would be like a harp on which the per
former plays : the praise and the blame, and
even the very knowledge of how the instru
ment is being used, belong to the musician and
not to the harp, But God in His kindness
did not wish to make man thus, and so He
endowed men with much greater freedom than
many things, equal in fact with the angels. For
look (said he) at the Sun and theJVloon and
the Planets, and all the rest of those things
which are so much greater than we in some
respects : to these freedom in themselves has
not been given, but they are all so fixed that
they can only move in the path marked out for
them. The Sun cannot say, ' I will not appear
at the right time,' the Moon cannot say, ' I will
not wax and wane,' the Stars must rise and set
when they are due, the Sea cannot help carrying
the ships, the Mountains and the Earth cannot
help remaining each in its place ; for all these
things are mere vehicles of the Wisdom of God
that never goes wrong. If everything was only
formed to be useful for something else, for
whose benefit would the world be made? And

MAN IS NO MACHINE 167
if everything was only formed to receive benefits,
how would the service of the world be supplied ?
As it is, no things are wholly detached one from
the "other; for an absolutely self-contained power
or thing would be an Element which has not
yet received its place in the organisation of the
universe. The things needed for human use
have been placed within the sphere of human
activity. This is what is meant when we read
in Genesis that man was made in the image of
God. Out of the Divine Kindness it was given
to man that the things needful for his life should
•be his servants during this present dispensation,
and that he should conduct himself as he pleases.
What is in his power to do, he can do if he
pleases, and can leave undone if he pleases.
He can, in a word, control himself or fail to
control himself, and the praise or blame which
his conduct deserves is really his own. See
then (continues Bardaisan) how greatly the
goodness of God has been exercised towards
men, in that so much more freedom has been
given to man than to other things, that by means
of it he may control himself, and so act the part
ofGod and be reckoned with the Angels. For
Angels also have freedom such as men have, as
we may see from the story in Genesis of those
Sons of God who mingled themselves with the

1 68 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
daughters of men. Had they not done this
they would not have fallen from their exalted
station and received their due need of punish
ment ; and similarly we may infer that those
which did not fall thus, but kept control of
themselves when exposed to temptation, were
exalted and hallowed and became the recipients
of great gifts. For every being that exists has
need of the Lord of all, and to His gifts there
is no end ; yet know this (says Bardaisan),
that even those things which are governed
by fixed laws, as I said, are nevertheless
not entirely deprived of all freedom, and
therefore at the last all of them are subject to
Judgment." Then I said: "And how are those things
judged whose movements are fixed beforehand ? "
He saith to me : " The powers of Nature, O
Philip, are not judged in respect of what they
have been made to do, but in respect of what
they have been entrusted to do. For the
Elements are not deprived of their nature when
they are assigned their place in the Universe,
but the vehemence of their peculiar properties
is lessened by the mixture of one with the other,
and moreover they are under subjection to the
power of Him who made them. Yet in so far
as they are in subjection they are not brought to

THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD FEASIBLE 169
judgment, but only in respect of what is in
their own power."
After this Awida says to Bardaisan : "All this
that you have said is excellent, but how strict
are the commandments that have been given
to men! They cannot be performed."
Bardaisan replied: "This is the utterance of
one who does not really wish to do what is good,
one who obeys the Enemy of man and is subject
to him. For nothing has been commanded to
men but what they are able to do. There are
two commandments set before us, very fit and
proper exercises for our free nature : the one
is, that we should abstain from everything that
is evil and that we hate to be done to us, and
the other, that we should do what is good and
what we like to be done to us. For what man
is physically unable to keep from stealing or
lying or adultery or malicious false witness?
All these things belong to the mind of man,
to his disposition, not to his material lot. Even
if a man be poor or diseased or old or crippled
he can abstain from doing these evil deeds ; and
just as he can abstain from these things, so also
he can love and bless and speak truth and pray
for the welfare of everyone he knows. And if
he be well and have the opportunity of giving
something of his own, he can do so ; he can use

170 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
the material force at his command for the support
of the weak. There is no one who cannot do
this. In fact, the Commandments of God are
concerned with those very matters which are
within the range of human control. We are
not commanded to carry heavy burdens of stone
or wood or anything else, which only those who
are strong of body are able to do ; 1 nor to build
towns and found cities, which only kings are able
to do ; nor to steer ships, which only sailors have
skill to manage ; nor to survey land and divide
it, which only surveyors know how to do ; nor
to practise any other of the arts, which some
can do and the rest are shut out from. To us
through God's kindness such equable command
ments have been given as every living man can
do with pleasure; for there is no one who does
not rejoice when he is doing well, and no one
who keeps himself from doing hateful deeds who

1 The same argument is curiously repeated in the Acts of
Thomas (Wright 253; E. Trans., p. 219): "For we are not
commanded to do anything which we are unable to do, nor to
take up heavy burdens, nor to build buildings, which carpenters
build for themselves with wisdom, nor to practise the art of hewing
stones, which stone-cutters know as their craft ; but we are
commanded to do something which we can do, — to refrain from
fornication, the head of all evils, and from murder, etc." The
ethical theory is the same, and I venture to suggest that both
' Philip ' and the author of the Acts of Thomas derived it from
Bardaisan. The question is important to us from its bearing
on the authorship ofthe Hymn of the Soul. See p. 199.

THE WISH TO DO WELL 171
does not feel at ease in himself — except indeed
those who have not been created for good and
who are called Tares. For the Judge of all
is not so unjust as to blame man for what he
cannot do."
Awida then said : " Do you say of these
things, O Bardaisan, that they are easy to do ? "
Bardaisan replies: "To him that wishes to do
them I said, and still say, that they are easy, for
they are the appropriate course for the mind of
a free man to take and for a soul that has not
rebelled against those who control it. But in
bodily activities many things interfere with the
ideal course, especially old age and sickness and
poverty." Awida says : " Perhaps one may keep from
doing wrong, but who among men is able to
do good ? "
This Bardaisan denies, declaring that doing
good is the natural action of man, while doing
evil is really unnatural and the work of the
Enemy ; evil, in fact, is a disease. To do good
gives real pleasure ; the pleasure we may get
from evil is as different from this as the quiet
that comes from exhaustion and despair differs
from the quiet we get in health. Desire is one
thing, Love is another ; Christian charity is not
mere good-fellowship. " The counterfeit of Love

172 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
is Desire. Desire may have satisfaction for an
hour, but it is far from being true Love, whose
satisfaction has neither corruption nor dissolution
for ever."
The writer of the Dialogue then remarks :
"Awida was saying that men do wrong from
their nature : if men had not been designed to
do wrong, they would not do wrong."
Bardaisan says : " If all men acted the same
way, and had only one set of opinions, we should
conclude that their actions were the result of
their nature, and that they had no freedom such
as I have been describing to you. But that you
may understand what is Nature and what is
Freedom, I shall go on to point out to you that
the Nature of man is to be born, to grow up,
to arrive at full age, to beget and to grow old,
eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, and
finally to die. These things, because they are
part of the Nature of man, belong to all men ;
and not to men only, but also to everything that
has life, in fact, some of them are shared even
by plants. This belongs to the sphere of the
physical constitution of everything, whereby it is
made, created, and set in the world, each according
to its own laws. Furthermore we find the laws of
Nature are uniformly observed by the various
animals. The lion eats meat by Nature, and

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR NOT UNIFORM 173
therefore all lions are eaters of meat ; the sheep
eats grass by Nature, and therefore all sheep
are eaters of grass. All bees, all ants, store up
food for themselves in the same way ; all
scorpions are ready to sting without being
attacked. All the animals keep their own laws :
the eaters of flesh do not become eaters of grass,
nor do the eaters of grass become eaters of flesh.
" But men do not behave in this way. In the
affairs of their bodies they keep the laws of their
nature like beasts, but in the affairs of their minds
they do what they will, acting as if they were
free or at least entrusted with freedom, after the
image of God. For some of them eat meat and
no bread, some of them distinguish between
various sorts of foods, and some of them eat
nothing that has had in it the breath of life.
There are some who have intercourse with their
mothers, their sisters, and their daughters ; others
keep altogether from women. There are some
who are fierce as lions and leopards ; and some
who hurt those who have done them no wrong,
like the scorpion ; and some that are driven like
sheep and do no harm to those that drag them
along. Some act with kindness, some with
justice, some with malice ; and if any one say
that he is only acting in accordance with his
Nature, a little reflection will show that this is

174 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
not the case. For there are some who used to
be adulterers and drunkards, but when a discipline
of good counsel reached them they have become
modest and temperate, and have despised the
desire of their bodies ; and there are some who
used to live modestly and temperately, but when
they neglected right discipline, they have resisted
the commands of God and of their teachers, havq
fallen from the way of truth and have become
adulterers and prodigals. And some have re
pented again, and have returned in fear to the
truth in which they stood. Which, then, is the
Nature of man? For lo, they are all different
one from the other in their way of life and in
their desires, and they that hold in a certain
opinion and way of thinking resemble each other
in their ways. Nevertheless, men who as yet
are subject to the enticements of their desires
and are led by their passions wish to lay the
faults they commit at the door of their Maker,
so that they may be considered faultless them
selves. The moral law does not apply to that
which belongs to Nature : no one is to be blamed
for being tall or short, or white or black, or for
any bodily defect, but a man deserves blame for
thieving or lying or cursing and such like.
Whence it may be seen that for the things
which are not in our power, but come to us

THE DECREES OF FATE 175
from Nature, we are not held guilty, nor can
we control them ; but for the things that belong
to our freedom, if we do well the verdict is for
us and we are deserving of praise, while if we
do evil we are guilty and deserve blame."
At this point of the Dialogue comes in the
famous disquisition on Fate. "We asked him,"
says Philip, "whether there are not some who
say that men are controlled by the decrees of
Fate, sometimes in an evil direction, sometimes
in a good direction."
Bardaisan replies : " I well know, O Philip, that
some of those men who are called Chaldaeans, and
others also, have a love for this very knowledge
of the Art, as I also once had myself, for it has
been said by me elsewhere that the mind of man
yearns to know what most folk do not know, and
this these persons think they do, holding that
all the faults they commit and all the good they
do and all that befalls them in wealth and in
poverty, in sickness and in health and in bodily
injury, come to them from the action of the so-
called Seven Stars or Planets, and are controlled
by their motions. There are others who say in
opposition to these either that this Art is all a
lie of the Chaldaeans or that there is no such
thing as Fate, and that all things both great
and small are really in men's own power, and

176 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
that diseases and bodily defects are mere matters
of chance. Others again say that everything a
man does he does of his own will through the
Freedom given to him, and that defects and
diseases and other misfortunes which befall are
a punishment from God. Now in my humble
opinion (says Bardaisan), it seems to me that
these three opinions have each of them some
thing that is true and something that is false.
They are true, inasmuch as men speak according
to what they actually see around them, and we
cannot help noticing how things turn out adversely
against us ; but they are false, inasmuch as the
Wisdom of God is richer than they, that Wisdom
which established the worlds and created man
and appointed the rulers of the various powers
of the Universe, and gave to all things a
responsibility suitable to each one of them. For
I say that the authority possessed by the various
orders of the Universe of which I have spoken
— Gods,1 Angels, Authorities, Celestial Rulers,
Elements, Men, and Beasts — the authority given
to each and all of them is partial. There is only
One who has universal authority. But the others
have authority in some matters and not in others,
as I have already said ; that in so far as they
have authority the kindness of God may appear,
1 Evidently we should read laldM, in the plural.

FATE GOVERNS THE CAREER 177
and in so far as they have no authority they may
know that they have a supreme Lord.
"There is therefore such a thing as Fate,
as the Chaldaeans say. But that not everything
happens according to our will is obvious from
this, that most men desire to be rich and powerful
and healthy and successful, and as a matter of
fact only a few are so, and that not completely
nor during all their life. Some have children
and cannot rear them, some rear them only to
prove a disgrace and a sorrow. Moreover men
are not equally fortunate in all things ; one
man is rich as he likes to be, but unhealthy
as he does not like to be, and another is
healthy as he likes to be, but poor as he does
not like tb be. Some have many things they
want and a few things they do not want, and
some have a few things they want and many
things they do not want. And thus we see
that wealth and honours and health and sick
ness and children, and the various objects of
desire are placed under Fate and not under our
authority ; but in the case of such of these
things as happen according to our wish we
accept them willingly and are pleased, and when
they happen against our wish we are compelled
to accept them whether we like or no. From
the things which happen to us against our wish
M

178 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
we see how it really stands with what we do
wish : it is not because we will them that we
get them, but they happen as they happen, and
with some of the things we are pleased and
with some of them not. And so we men are
found to be governed by Nature equally, by
Fate diversely, and by our Freedom as each
man likes.
" But now we will go on to show that
Fate and its dominion does not extend over
everything. What we call ' Fate ' is really
the arrangement of the course marked out to
the heavenly Powers and to the Elements by
God. According to this arrangement the
various faculties are assorted as they come down
into the soul and the various souls are assorted
as they come down into the bodies, and the
agency by which this sorting is done is called
the Fate and the Nativity of the congeries
out of which the individual is evolved, all to
help on that design which God in His mercy
and grace has deigned to help and continues
to do so until the consummation of all things.
"The body therefore is governed by Nature,
and the soul suffers and perceives with it, and
Fate cannot help or hinder the body against
its Nature. Fate cannot give a man or woman
children at a time when they are too young

NATURE AND FATE 1 79
or too old by Nature to have children. Nor
can Fate keep a man's body alive without
eating and drinking, nor even when a man has
food and drink can Fate keep a man so that
he shall not die, for these and many other
things belong to Nature. But when the condi
tions of Nature are complied with, within this
limited field Fate comes into play, and it makes
things to differ one with the other, sometimes
helping and sometimes hindering the ordinary
operation of Nature. Thus from Nature comes
the growth of the body and its arrival at
maturity, but apart from Nature and by Fate
come sicknesses and defects in the body. From
Nature comes the natural inclination of man and
woman, but from Fate comes repugnance and
also unnatural lusts. From Nature comes
birth and children, but from Fate comes mis
carriage and other failures. From Nature there
is sufficiency in moderation for all, but from Fate
comes on the one hand need and distress for
food, and on the other extravagance and un
necessary luxury. Nature requires that elders
should be the judges of youths, and wise men of
fools, and that the strong should rule the weak
and brave men command cowards ; but Fate
makes children to be the chiefs of elders and
fools the chiefs of wise men, and that in time of

180 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
war weak men command the strong and cowards
command the brave. Know this especially (con
tinued Bardaisan), that whenever the course of
Nature is disturbed, the disturbance comes from
this that I call Fate ; and the reason of it is
that the various Powers over which Fate is set
are contrary one to the other, and some of them
— those which we say are on the right hand
— help Nature and add to its beauty, when
the course of things is in their favour and they
are in the ascendant in the heavenly Sphere,
in their own portions ; while others — which we
say are on the left — are malignant, and when
they are in the ascendant they are opposed to
Nature, and they injure not men only, but
beasts and plants and crops from time to time,
as well as the seasons and fountains of water,
everything, in fact, that is in Nature which
is under their control. And it is because of
these divisions and contrarieties between the
Powers that some men have supposed that the
world is governed without Providence, because
they do not know that this contrariety and
division of the Powers and their consequent
conquest and defeat are the result of the free
constitution that was given them from God, that
these created things also by their own delegated
powers might either conquer or be defeated.

FATE DOES NOT GOVERN THE CHARACTER l8l
" As we have seen that Fate destroys the
work of Nature, so may we see the Freedom
of man repelling Fate and destroying its work ;
yet not in everything, just as Fate cannot in
everything repel Nature. For these three things,
Nature, Fate and Freedom, must be kept in
being, until the appointed course be fulfilled
and the measure and the number of the days
be accomplished, and all Beings and Natures
have had their full existence."
Here Bardaisan stops for a moment, having
come to a pause in his description of the forces
by which all individuals are swayed. According
to him, Nature determines the general conditions
of each individual's existence, Fate determines
the career, while the Freedom (or, as we say,
the Free-will) of the individual is chiefly active
in determining his character.
Awida now begins to be persuaded. He
confesses himself satisfied that it is not from
Nature that a man does wrong, and he sees
that all men are not equally subjected to the
same influences. Now he asks if it can be
proved that it is not from Fate that men do
wrong. " If this can be shown," he says,
"we must believe that a man really possesses
Freedom, and that by Nature he is brought to
what is good and warned against what is bad ;

1 82 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
and so he is justly liable to judgment at the last
day." Bardaisan replies : " From the fact that all
men are not equally subjected to the same
influences you are persuaded that it is not from
their common Nature that men do wrong. Well
then, you will be obliged to agree that it is not
entirely from their Fate that they act wrongly
if we can show you that the decree of the Fates
and Powers do not equally affect all men, but
that we really have some Freedom in ourselves
not to serve physical Nature and not to be
moved by the control of the heavenly Powers."
Awida says ; " Show me this and I will believe
and do whatever you tell me."
The reply of Bardaisan was in ancient times
the most famous part of the whole Dialogue, and
in a Greek dress it was borrowed wholesale by
Eusebius and by the author of the Clementine
Recognitions. But we need not linger very long
over its curious erudition, except so far as
concerns his descriptions of the "new race" of
Christians. Speaking as an astrologer to an
astrologer, Bardaisan reminds Awida that
according to the rules of the Art each in
dividual's Fate follows from the configuration
of the heavenly bodies at the time of birth.
But he runs through the nations of the earth

THE VARIED CUSTOMS OF NATIONS 1 83
from the Chinese on the east to the Britons
on the west. Each nation has its own customs
of marriage, of social life, of morals. But the
inhabitants of these various countries are not
all born at the same time, at the same con
figuration of the heavens. It is therefore not
their Fate that compels the several nations each
to keep their own customs and to avoid those
of other people. For instance,- says Bardaisan,
in the whole of Media all men when they die,
even while life is still remaining in them, are
cast to the dogs and the dogs eat the dead of
the whole of Media ; J but we cannot say that
all the Medians are born when the Moon is
in conjunction with Mars in the constellation
Cancer during the day below the Earth, as
ought to be the case by the rules of Astrology
for those who are to be eaten by dogs. The
varied customs ofthe people of the earth prove
that Fate does not act in the mechanical way
that the Astrologers believe : the customs of
the various countries, whether indigenous or
forced upon the inhabitants by foreign rulers,
are the result of human Free-will and are not

1 See Strabo xi 517, quoted by E. R. Bevan, House of Seleucus
i 290. The reason of the custom was of course to prevent the
sacred elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, from being polluted
by a dead body.

1 84 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
due to the operations of Fate. It was not Fate,
but the decree of King Abgar when he was
converted to Christianity, that stopped the
people of Edessa from mutilating themselves in
honour of Atargatis. And so Bardaisan comes
at last to his own Church.
"What then," he says, "shall we say of the
new race of us Christians, whom in every
country and in every region the Messiah esta
blished at His coming? For lo, all of us
wherever we be are called Christians by the
one Name of the Messiah ; and on one day,
the first of the week, we assemble together, and
on specified days we abstain from food. And
of these national customs, our brethren abstain
from all that are contrary to their profession.
Parthian Christians do not take two wives,
Jewish Christians are not circumcised. Our
sisters among the Bactrians do not practise
promiscuity with strangers. Our Persian
brethren do not take their daughters to wife ;
our Median brethren do not desert their dying
relatives or bury them alive or throw them to
the dogs. Nor do Christians in Edessa kill
their wives or sisters that commit fornication,
as the heathen Edessenes do, but they keep
apart from them and commit them to the
judgment of God. Nor do Christians in

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL CUSTOM 1 85
Hatra stone thieves. But in whatever place
they are, neither do the national laws separate
them from the Law of the Messiah, nor does
the Fate arranged by the Powers compel them
to make use of what is impure to them. Yet
sickness and health, and riches and poverty,
matters that are not within their Free-will,
these befall them wherever they are. For as
the Free-will of men is not regularly governed
by the compulsion of the Seven Planets, and
even when so governed is able to withstand
them, so also it remains true that man as we
see him cannot easily get free from the orders
of his governing influences, for he is a slave and
put in subjection.
" To sum up, if we were really free to do every
thing, we should be everything ; and if we were
wholly without power to act, we should be mere
machines in the hand of others. But when God
so wills, everything can happen without disturb
ance, for His great and holy Will nothing can
hinder. Those who think they can resist are
in a position not of strength, but of evil and of
error, and such a position may stand for a short
time, because He is kind and permits all Natures
to stand where they do and to be governed by
their own will, yet bound by what has been done
and by the constitution of things that was made

1 86 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
for their help. For by the order and governance
that has been given to things and the mixture
of one principle with another the vehemence of
the various Natures is weakened, so that they
do not altogether injure nor are they altogether
injured, as they used to injure and be injured
before the creation of the world. And there
will come a time when this power of injury
which still subsists in them will be brought to
an end through the doctrine which is coming to
pass at the new mixture. And in the esta
blishment of that new world, all the evil
motions will cease and all rebellions will come
to an end ; the foolish will be persuaded and
deficiencies will be filled up, and there will be
peace and tranquillity by the gift of Him who
is Lord of all Natures."
In this long abstract of the argument of the
De Fato I have purposely given a very free
translation, or rather paraphrase, because our
object has been to follow the thought more than
the actual language. It is difficult to realise
how an ancient work of this kind appeals to
other people ; but to myself, coming from the
study of ordinary Syriac ecclesiastical literature,
the first impression made is of the independence
of the writer's mind. It gives me the impression

THE MENTAL ATTITUDE OF BARDAISAN 1 87
of being the thoughts of one who had learned
to think for himself, one who had read much
and thought much, and who was not content at
the end merely to repeat the formulas of a school.
Bardaisan brings out of the storehouse of his
learning things new and old, and his imagina
tion has woven them into a new and inde
pendent pattern. Such work is of a different
order from that of men whose whole achieve
ment is to reproduce as much of the philosophy
of someone else — of Aristotle or of Proclus
— as they have been able to understand.
The next reflexion of the student of ecclesi
astical history will be that the Syriac-speaking
Church was not able to retain Bardaisan in its
communion. You have heard the argument of
the De Fato, and you are in a position to
appreciate the ideas which the School of
Bardaisan cherished " on God, on Nature, and
on human Life." That the De Fato really
comes from the School of Bardaisan is certain,
whether or no Bardaisan had a share in the
actual literary composition of it ; and I am quite
sure that it gives a far truer picture of the spirit
which animated Bardaisan and his disciples
than the spiteful polemic of S. Ephraim or the
unintelligently repeated catchwords which are
echoed by various late chroniclers. But in

1 88 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
that case we must feel it a pity that the Church
made Bardaisan into a heretic. The whole
Dialogue is pervaded by an admirable spirit.
It is marked by reverence towards the Lord of
all things and by gratitude for His benefits, by
cheerful obedience to the ordinary discipline of
the Church, by courtesy towards opponents, and
above all by a firm faith that the Judge of all
the earth will not do injustice. Less admirable
perhaps from the narrower ecclesiastical stand
point is the firm and clear determination not
to do violence to the facts of nature and of life.
The writer refuses to shut his eyes to what he
sees around him at the bidding of a theory,
and his field of vision was not limited to
Church History and the Old Testament. It
was doubtless Bardaisan's independence of mind
that led to his excommunication. We dare not
press the details of the story of how Bishop
'Aqai "warned" him, but it is easy to imagine
the scene. We may fancy the difficulties which
Bardaisan's learned theories may have caused
when caught up by ignorant brethren. We may
fancy the bishop waiting on the philosopher, a
man great both by birth and by achievement,
and requesting him to modify his views. May
we not go on to imagine that Bardaisan heard
him out, listening at first with amused courtesy,

PHILOSOPHY EXCOMMUNICATED 1 89
and then when the Churchman proved deaf
alike to explanation and to reasoning, accepting
without much searching of heart the sentence
of ostracism from the Christians' conventicle?
This is mere fancy ; but in sober fact it was a
regrettable incident. We know next to nothing
of the history of the School of Bardaisan, save
that Rabbula induced the remaining members
to submit to the Church, some century and a
quarter after. By that time the mischief had
been done. We can see how grievously the
Syriac-speaking Church suffered by failure to
attract and to bear with the best scientific
intellect of the time. It is a foolish and
cowardly policy for a Church to be tolerant to
superstition and rigid towards reverent specula
tion. The Syriac-speaking Church ultimately
sank into formal heresies, while the great mass
of the populations of the East adopted the new
faith of Islam ; I cannot help wondering how
much of the collapse may have had its roots
in intellectual cowardice.
Life and progress mean change, the rejection of
what is worn-out or unsuitable as well as mere
development; the mere "keeping one's wicket
up," to adopt the phrase championed by the
Bishop of Worcester, can only issue in
stagnation. And the story of Bardaisan is being

190 BARDAISAN AND HIS DISCIPLES
enacted over again just outside our own doors.
It has been impossible to study Bardaisan's
career without thinking of the case of the Abbe
Loisy. The parallel is all the closer if there be
anything in the tradition which puts Bardaisan
into Holy Orders. Moreover, both writers are
known for their treatises against heretics :
Bardaisan wrote against Marcion and lEvangile
et lliglise is a defence of the Catholic Church
against the Protestantism of Dr Harnack. But
the inner resemblance is independent of these
external circumstances. The essential point of
resemblance is that M. Loisy, like Bardaisan,
takes account of the Science which exists out
side the narrow bounds of ecclesiastical study.
He recognises its validity and its claim to judge
those portions of ecclesiastical tradition which
lie within its own sphere. To recognise this
is to recognise that part of the traditional
presentation of Christianity and part of its
traditional defences must be modified from time to
time if we are to retain the chief point, namely
that our philosophy of religion shail be firmly based
on observed facts and not erected on a flimsy
scaffolding to correspond with some ideal plane,
a scaffolding liable to collapse when the supports
are removed or undermined. Bardaisan was
declared a heretic, M. Loisy has been condemned

CONSTRAINING FORCE OF CHRISTIANITY 191
by the Holy Office ; may the intellectual paralysis
which overspread the Syriac Churches be averted
from our own Church and the Church of Rome !
There is one thing in conclusion upon which
I should be glad to lay stress. The Dialogue
On Fate is in form a dispute between a Christian
and an unconverted heathen : the question of
how the grace of God reaches the individual is
not discussed, nor was any opinion dealing with
this subject included among the heresies of
Bardaisan. The main question actually in
dispute between Bardaisan and Awida was
whether such a thing as Free - will in man
exists, and what was the sphere of its activity.
It is a question still discussed, though I suppose
the advocates of Free-will tend to become more
diffident. What, then, is the argument upon
which Bardaisan is not afraid to rely ? Bardaisan's
theory is that the sphere of Free-will is mainly
restricted to the building up of the individual
character, and his argument for the existence
of this moral Free-will is that the Christian
Faith produces in those who embrace it a
corresponding change of character, a change
that can be seen and known of all men. Can
we, dare we, use that argument now? I do not
propose to follow up the philosophical conclusions

LECTURE VI
THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS AND THE HYMN OF
THE SOUL
The art of telling a tale is perhaps the most
wonderful of all human inventions, and the East
has ever been famous for story-telling. We shall
therefore not be surprised to find that the most
striking and original piece of Syriac Literature
is a Novel. By a curious chance, which I suspect
would prove to be, if we knew more, less a
chance than an intimate literary connexion, this
Novel contains within it an independent Poem
which itself is the most beautiful production not
of Syriac Literature only, but I venture to assert
of all the literary activity of the early Church.
The Novel is the Acts of Judas Thomas, the
Apostle of India : the Poem is known to modern
scholars as the Hymn ofthe Soul.
The work called the Acts of Thomas in one
form or another has long been familiar to hagio-
graphers and ecclesiologists. When you see a
Stained glass window with S. Thomas5; depicted
N l»8

194 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
in it, he will probably be represented with a
spear in his hand. That is because according
to these Acts the apostle was martyred with
spears. In a sense, therefore, the story of S.
Thomas is no new discovery. But it is only
lately that it has been recovered in approxi
mately its original form, and it is only lately
that it has been recognised as a story which is
Syriac in origin. Even now the work is familiar
only to professed scholars : Wright's English
translation is out of print, and the outside world
knows very little of a tale that can challenge
comparison with the Pilgrims Progress.
It will be convenient, before entering more
into detail about the various problems suggested
by the Acts of Thomas, to give a short abstract
of the story which forms the framework of the
book.1 I. At the beginning we are told how the Twelve Apostles
divided the countries of the earth among themselves by lot,
and that the lot which fell to Judas Thomas — Judas the Twin
— was India. But Judas Thomas did not wish to go and
preach to the Indians, so our Lord appeared to an Indian
merchant named Habban, a servant of King Gundaphar, and
sold Thomas to him as a slave. Thomas and Habban go off
by sea and disembark at the town of Sandaruk. Here they

1 A complete English Translation is given in Wright's Apocry
phal Acts, vol. ii, pp. 146-298. What is given here is taken mainly
from my own book Early Christianity outside the Roman Empire,
p. 64 ff.

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 1 95
find that the King of the place is making a great feast to
celebrate his only daughter's marriage, and they go in with
the rest to the public feast. At the feast Thomas sings a
curious Hymn. He also prophecies the violent death of one
of the guests who had behaved rudely to him, an event which
comes to pass that very night. The King hears of this and
forces Thomas to go in and pray over the bride ; he does so
and then departs. But when the bride and bridegroom are
alone our Lord appears to them in the likeness of Thomas
and persuades them both to a life of virginity. In the end
the King also is converted, and the young people join S.
Thomas in India.
II. Meanwhile Thomas and Habban had gone on to King
Gundaphar in India, and Thomas is set to build a palace for
the King. To this story, which forms a complete episode by
itself, we shall return later.
III. After the palace-building episode Judas Thomas brings
back to life a youth who had been killed by a devil in the
form of a black snake. In this story, as in some of the others,
the prayers and exhortations of Thomas are given at consider
able length, so that a mere description of the action by no
means exhausts the interest of the story.
IV. Next an ass's colt, of the stock that served Balaam the
prophet, comes and speaks and directs the apostle to a certain
city. At the gate of the city the colt falls down and dies,
having performed its mission.
V. In the city Thomas delivers a beautiful woman from the
attacks of a devil. The woman is baptized and she receives
the Communion.
VI. During the ceremony a young man's hand withers and
he confesses that he had killed a woman who would not live
a life of virginity with him. On his repentance he brings Judas
Thomas to the dead woman's body, and at his prayer she is
restored to life. She then describes the torments of the un
chaste that she had. seen in hell, and the incident closes with
an exhortation from the apostle.

196 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
VII. After these things, while the Apostle is preaching in
India, the General of King Mazdai, named Sifur, comes
beseeching him to free his wife and daughter from evil and
lascivious devils. Judas Thomas leaves his converts under
the care of the deacon Xanthippus and goes with the General.
On the way the horses of their chariot break down, but four
wild asses come up to be harnessed in their stead, and with
their help the devils are driven out and the women healed.
VIII. Soon after this a noble lady, by name Mygdonia, the
wife of Karish, a kinsman of King Mazdai, is converted by
Judas Thomas to the life of virginity. Karish is in despair ;
and when his personal influence fails to move Mygdonia, he
goes and complains to the King, by whose orders Thomas is
arrested at the house of Sifur the General. The apostle is
scourged and sent to prison, where he sings that Hymn to
which we shall return further on. Mygdonia remains firm
and secretly visits Thomas in the prison with her nurse
Narqia : there he baptizes them and celebrates the Eucharist.
In the meanwhile King Mazdai and Karish, who regard the
conversion of Mygdonia as due to magic and enchantment,
agree to let Thomas go if he will tell her to be as she was
before. Thomas warns them that it will be useless, and that
neither his persuasion nor tortures would change her new
spirit. This is proved to be the case, for Mygdonia refuses
to listen to the Apostle when he pretends to counsel her to
go back to her husband. After this Thomas returns to the
house of Sifur the General and baptizes him and his family,
and gives them also the Eucharist : at the same time Mygdonia
converts Tertia, the wife of King Mazdai. Mazdai now
becomes seriously angry and drags Thomas off to prison
again, but on the way he converts Wizan, the King's son.
In the prison the Apostle makes his final address, beginning
with the Lord's Prayer, which is quoted in full. Manashar,
Wizan's wife (who has just been healed of a long sickness by
our Lord Himself, who appeared to her in the form of a youth),
joins them in the prison, and the Apostle baptizes Wiz&n,

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 1 97
Manashar, and Tertia. In the morning Thomas is brought out
and condemned to death by the King : he is taken outside the
town and after a short prayer is speared by four soldiers.
Before his death he had ordained Sifur and Wizan, and the
converts continue in the faith after having been encouraged
by a vision of the ascended Judas Thomas.
The bones of the Apostle were secretly taken away to the
" West" by one of the brethren, but a long time afterwards the
dust from the grave charms away a devil from one of King
Mazdai's sons, whereupon the King also believes and prays
Sifur and the brethren for forgiveness.
Such is the tale of S. Thomas. It is very
likely that some of the details of the legend are
older than the book of Acts, of which I have
just given a short summary. The reputed bones
of Thomas the Apostle were preserved at Edessa,
at least from the middle of the fourth century
onwards, and some story of their adventures had
doubtless grown up round the shrine.
One of the most curious features of the tale
has lately been investigated by Dr Rendel
Harris in his brilliant study of the influence
of the Heavenly Twins on Christian legend.1
We all know that Thomas means "twin," and
the Syriac tradition had it that the name of
the apostle whom we call Thomas was Judas
the Twin. Consequently the earliest Syriac
text of the Gospels calls that Judas who was
not Iscariot (Joh. xiv 22) by the same name
1 J. R. Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends, pp. 20-41.

198 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
as the hero of our tale, viz. Judas Thomas.
The surprising circumstance is that throughout
these Acts this Judas Thomas, the Apostle,
is assumed to be the twin-brother of our Lord
Himself. Not only do men and women in
these Acts mistake the one for the other, but
the very devils and wild beasts salute the
Apostle as "Twin of the Messiah."1 No
wonder that some of our MSS. have obliterated
the title !
It was this strange title and the ideas under
lying it that Dr Harris investigated, and I
venture to think we may accept his main con
clusion, which is that the Christian figures of
our Lord and S. Thomas have displaced a
heathen cult of Twins, one mortal and the
other immortal, like Castor and Pollux, like
the Evening Star that sets and disappears and
the Morning Star that remains in the sky until
the perfect day has dawned. Dr Harris goes on
to find the genesis of several curious features
in the story of S. Thomas as told in the Acta
Thomae. For instance, the hypothesis that the
Christian hero has taken over the attributes of
the Dioscuri, the Great Twin Brethren, may
be used to explain why the apostle is re
presented as a stone-cutter as well as a carpenter,
1 Wright 197, 208 (E. Transl., pp. 170, 180).

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 199
and why he appears in the legend as a tamer
of wild asses. In this connexion it is worth
notice that in a passage from the Bardesanian
Dialogue on Fate, quoted in the previous
Lecture (see p. 170), a passage which is closely
imitated in the Acts of Thomas also, certain arts
are mentioned in which Christians are not expected
as Christians to be proficient, viz. stone-cutting,
building, and navigation ; these very arts are
included among the traditional activities of the
Dioscuri. But there must at present remain much
that is doubtful and much that is still obscure in
this fascinating line of study.1
With the Acts of Thomas, as with all good
literature, it is better to let the book speak for
itself. I shall therefore tell you the tale of how
Judas Thomas the Apostle came into India
and built a Palace for the King in Heaven. 2
"And when Judas had entered into the realm of India
with the merchant Habban, Habban went to salute Gundaphar
the King of India, and he told him of the artificer whom he
had brought for him. And the King was very glad, and
ordered Judas to come into his presence. And the King
said to him : ' What art dost thou know to practise ? ' Judas

1 Especially hazardous is Dr Harris's attempt to read the
mutilated Inscription on one of the two great Columns at Edessa
as a dedication to the constellation Gemini. The two great
Columns are shown in the frontispiece to this volume, but I
could not obtain a photograph of the inscription.
2 Wright's Apocryphal Acts, English Translation, pp. 159-165.

200 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
saith to him : ' I am a carpenter, the servant of a carpenter
and architect.' He saith to him : ' What dost thou know
how to make ? ' Judas saith to him : ' In wood I know how
to make yokes and ploughs and ox-goads, and oars for barges
and ferry-boats and masts for ships; and in hewn stone,
tombstones and monuments and palaces for Kings.' The
King saith to Judas: 'And I want such an artificer.' The
King saith to him : ' Wilt thou build me a palace ? ' Judas
saith to him : ' I will build it and finish it, for I am come
to work at building and carpentering.'
"And he took him and went outside the gate of the
city, and was talking with him about the constructing of
the palace, and about its foundations how they should be
laid. And when he had reached the place where the King
wished him to build a palace for him, he said to Judas :
'Here I wish you to build for me a palace.' Judas saith
to him : 'Yes, for this is a place which is suitable for it.'
Now it was of this sort ; it was a meadow, and there was
plenty of water near it. The King saith to him : ' Begin
to build here.' Judas saith to him : ' Now I cannot build
at this time.' The King saith to him : 'And at what time
wilt thou be able to build ? ' Judas saith : ' I will begin in
Autumn and I will finish in Spring.' The King saith to
him : ' All buildings are built in summer ; and dost thou
build in winter ? ' Judas saith to him : ' Thus only is it
possible for the palace to be built.' The King saith to
him : ' Well then, trace it out for me that I may see it,
because it is a long time before I shall come hither.' And
Judas came and took a cane and began to measure; and
he left doors towards the east for light, and windows to
ward the west for air, and they made the bake-house to
the South, and the water-pipes for the service of the house
to the North, The King saith to him : ' Verily thou art
a good artificer and worthy to serve a King.' And he left
a large sum of money and departed from him, and more
silver and gold he was sending to him from time to time.

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 201
\ " But Judas was going about in the villages and in the
cities, and was ministering to the poor and was making the
afflicted comfortable, and he was saying : ' What is the
King's to the Kings shall be given, and rest there shall be for
many.' "And after a long time the King despatched messengers to
Judas and sent to him thus : ' Send me word what thou hast
done and what I shall send thee.' And Judas sent him word :
' The palace is built, but the roof is wanting to it.' Then the
King sent to Judas silver and gold, and sent him word : ' Let
the palace be roofed.' And the Apostle was glorifying our
Lord and saying : ' I thank Thee Lord, who didst die that Thou
mightest give me life ; and who didst sell me that I might be
the liberator of many.' And he did not cease to teach and to
relieve those who were afflicted, saying : ' May your Lord give
you rest, to whom alone is the glory ; for He is the nourisher
of the orphans and the provider of the widows, and He
ministers unto all those who are afflicted.'
" And when the King came to the city, he was asking every
one of his friends about the palace which Judas had built for
him ; but they say unto him : ' There is no palace built, nor
has he done anything else but going about the cities and the
villages and giving to the poor and teaching them the new
God, and also healing the sick and driving out demons and
doing many like things ; and we declare that he is a sorcerer,
but his compassion and his healing, which was done without
recompense, and his asceticism and his piety declare about
him that either he is a Magian or an Apostle of the new God.
For he fasts much and prays much and eats bread and salt
and drinks water and wears one garment, and takes nothing
from any man for himself, and whatever he has he gives to
others.' And when the King heard these things, he smote his
face with his hands and was shaking his head.
" And he sent and called Judas and the merchant who had
bought him, and said to him : ' Hast thou built me the
palace ? ' Judas saith to him : ' I have built thee the palace.'

202 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
The King saith to him : ' When can we go and look at it ? '
Judas saith to him : ' Thou canst not see it now, but when
thou hast departed from this world.' Then the King became
furious in his anger, and commanded that Thomas and the
merchant who had brought him should go in bonds to prison,
till he could question him about his doings, to whom he had
given the treasure, and then destroy him. But Judas went
rejoicing and said to the merchant : ' Fear not, but only
believe, and thou shalt be freed from this world, and shalt
receive everlasting life in the world to come.'
" And the King was considering by what death he should
kill Judas and the merchant; and he took the resolution
that he would flay him alive and burn him with the merchant
his companion. And in that very night the King's brother,
whose name was Gad, was taken ill through grief and through
the imposition which had been practised on the King. And
he sent and called the King and said to him : ' My brother,
I commend unto thee my house and my children, for I am
grieved and am dying because of the imposition that hath
been practised upon thee. If thou dost not punish that
sorcerer, thou wilt not let my soul be at peace in Sheol.' The
King saith to him : ' The whole night I have been considering
how I should kill him, and I have resolved to flay him alive
and burn him.' Then the King's brother said to him : ' And
if there be anything worse than this, do it to him ; and I give
thee charge of my house and my children.'
"And when he had said these things, his soul left him.
And the King was grieved for his brother, because he loved him
much, and he was intending to bury him in a splendid grave.
But when the soul of Gad, the King's brother, had left him,
angels took it and bore it up to heaven; and they were
showing it each place in succession, to see in which of them
it wished to be. Then, when they came to the palace which
Judas had built for the King, his brother saw it and said to
the angels : ' I beg of you, my lords, let me dwell in one of
the lower chambers of this palace.' The angels say to him :

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 203
'Thou canst not dwell in this palace.' He saith to them:
'Wherefore?' They say to him: 'This palace is the one
which the Christian hath built for thy brother.' Then he
said to them : ' I beg of you, my lords, let me go, that I may
go and buy of him this palace ; for my brother doth not under
stand the matter and he will sell it to me.'
" Then the angels let go the soul of Gad. And as his body
was being enshrouded, his soul came into him, and he said to
those who were standing before him : ' Call my brother to me
that I may make of him one request.' Then they sent word to
the King : ' Thy brother is come to life.' And the King sprang
up from his place and went into the house of his brother with
a number of people. And when he had gone in beside the
bed, he was astounded and unable to speak with him. His
brother saith to him : ' I know, my brother, that if a man had
asked thee for the half of thy kingdom thou wouldst have
given it for my sake. And now I beg of thee that thou sell
me that at which thou hast laboured.' The King saith to
him : ' Tell me, what shall I sell thee ? ' He saith to him :
'Swear unto me.' And he sware unto him that he would
grant him whatever he asked of all that he had. He saith
to him : 'Sell me the palace which thou hast in heaven.' The
King saith to him : ' Who hath given me a palace in heaven ? '
His brother saith to him : ' That which the Christian hath
built for thee.' Then the King understood, and he said to his
brother : ' That I cannot sell to thee ; but I pray and beg of
God that I may enter into it and receive it, and may be worthy
to be among its inhabitants. And thou, if thou dost really
wish to buy thyself a palace, this architect will build one for
thee which will be better than that of mine.' And the King
sent and brought out Judas and the merchant who was
imprisoned with him, and said to him : ' I beg of thee as a
man who begs a minister of God, that thou wouldst pray for
me, and beg for me from the God that thou worshippest, that
He would forgive me what I have done unto thee, and that
he would make me worthy to enter into the palace which thou

204 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
hast built for me, and that I may become a worshipper of this
God whom thou preachest.' "
Thus the King and his brother were con
verted, and presently they were baptized by
Judas Thomas and admitted to Christian
Communion. I have quoted you this story almost in full,
partly for its own sake, partly that you may
have an opportunity of comparing what is un
doubtedly an integral part of the Acts of
Thomas with the poem imbedded in these Acts
which we call the Hymn of the Soul.
The real interest of the Acts of Thomas to the
student of Eastern Christianity does not lie in
the adventures of the Apostle, but in his prayers
and sermons, in the doctrine that he teaches.
These are not mere embellishments of the
narrative, but the very essence of the book.
What the author wishes us to give our earnest
attention is the Gospel of Virginity and Poverty
and its effect on the soul. As to the intense
seriousness of the work there can be no doubt
at all : no early Christian writer, orthodox or
heterodox, would quote the Lord's Prayer in
full merely for ornament.
In treating this book of Apocryphal Acts as a
work Syriac in origin and not a translation from
the Greek, I have ventured to assume a result

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 205
which I have endeavoured elsewhere to prove.1
Many of the most cogent arguments depend on
critical details and the niceties of Syriac grammar,
the discussion of which would be quite out of
place in Lectures such as these. It will be
sufficient therefore to say that the Syriac origin
of the Acts of Thomas is now maintained by
nearly every Syriac scholar, from my friend
Dr Noldeke of Strassburg downwards. But
apart from philological argument we may point
out in passing that the whole framework of the
tale belongs to the countries washed by the
Euphrates and the Tigris. The proper names
are such as would occur to a Syriac-speaking
Christian, but they could hardly have been in
vented by a Greek, It is to Justi's Iranisches
Namenbuch and not to Pape's Griechische
Eigennamen that we have to look for their eluci
dation. Mazdai, Wezan, Manashar, are good
old-Persian names. Mygdonia is called after
the river of Nisibis, just as the Edessan
Bardaisan was called after the river of Edessa.
It is surely significant that in the only ancient
Roman deed of sale of a slave from Mesopotamia
which has found its way into a modern library

1 See Journal of Theological Studies, i 280-290, ii 429, iii 94 ;
compare Bonnet's Acta Philippi et Acta Thomae (Leipzig, 1903),
pp. xx ff.

206 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
the name of the slave is Abbanes, the same
name as that of the merchant who bought Judas
Thomas from Jesus Christ. Except Xanthippus
the deacon and Tertia the queen there is not
one European - sounding name among all the
characters of the novel.1
I have designated the Acts of Thomas as un
orthodox. This perhaps requires some justifica
tion. Judged by the ordinary Western standard
it is in many ways heretical, but the standard of
the early Syriac-speaking Church was that of
Aphraates rather than that of Athanasius. Even
in the matter of marriage and continence we
cannot at once say that he is in absolute conflict
with the teaching of his Church, for in prohibiting
his baptized converts to marry, or to live as man
and wife, he is doing no more than what Aphraates
prohibited. We have already seen that the state
of matrimony was not recognised as holy by
early Syriac Christianity. Nor again does the
unorthodoxy of these Acts rest entirely on the
elements commonly recognised as "Gnostic."
1 Dr Harris (Dioscuri, p. 27) suggests that this may have been
a recognised name of one ofthe charioteers ofthe Heavenly Twins.
Xanthippus is only mentioned in the Acts of Thomas ( Wright,
p. 204) as the person whom the Apostle leaves in charge when he
goes away. Even so did King Ptolemy Euergetes : " Ciliciam
autem amico suo Antiocho gubernandam tradidit et Xanthippo
alteri duci prouincias trans Euphraten" (Jerome on Dan xi 9,
quoted by E. R. Bevan, House of Seleucus i 189, note).

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 207
These consist of certain mystical and very im
perfectly understood expressions in the prayers
and invocations of S. Thomas. I do not wish
to minimise the interest of these curious
phrases ; obscure as they are, they present un-
mistakeable points of contact with the equally
obscure phrases of the Bardesanian hymns
quoted by S. Ephraim. It is true, moreover,
that some of these expressions have been re
moved from the Syriac text as preserved in the
British Museum MS. used by Wright, and many
more have been left out in the Sachan MS. at
Berlin used by Bedjan, and so we find them
only in the ancient Greek translation. But
some at least of the queer phrases in the Greek
are the result not of heterodox doctrine but of
the ignorance or helplessness of the translator.
Yet I venture to think that the real heresy of
the writer of the Acts of Thomas is not to be
found in his cosmogony, but in his independence
and the puritan recklessness of his attitude.
From the moment that S. Thomas starts for
India we hear no more of the other Apostles.
He is absolutely independent of every one
except his Lord. The word Church occurs
only once and that by mistake. Uncatholic
also is the want of interest in controversy
against the Jews and against idolatry. Judas

208 THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
Thomas does not bring forward unorthodox
opinions about the old dispensation or the
worship of heathen gods : he simply passes
these things by with the turn of a phrase.
Thus we read (E. Transl., p. 207) that God's
will was spoken by the Prophets, but Israel did
not obey because of their evil genius.1 Again,
the devils confess that they take pleasure in
sacrifices of wine on the altars as well as in
murder and adultery (E. Transl., p. 213).2 But
these are mere allusions by the way : it is not
so much against the gods that S. Thomas
preaches as against the evil nature in man.
Contrast this with the elaborate polemic against
the Jews in Aphraates, and the long sermons
against idolatry in the Doctrine of Addai. So
much indeed is it the rule that the "Acts" of
martyrs should contain a testimony against the
worship of idols that in the Latin version of
the Acta Thomae there is an extended interpola
tion, telling how S. Thomas refused to worship
the Sun-god when he was brought before King
Mazdai. The interest of the author of the Acts of
Thomas lay in the workings of human nature,

1 In the Syriac yasr'hSn Mskd: cf. Deut xxxi 21 and the corre
sponding Jewish doctrines.
i See also Transl., p. 198,

THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS 209
not in the conflicting claims of rival religions —
in a word, it lay in the conversion of individual
souls rather than in the establishment of a
Church. But to the Catholic writers from the
very first the case was different. To them the
Jewish question was vital, not so much for the
sake of convincing the Jews of error as to
establish their own position. There stood the
Holy Oracles, the promises of God to His
people — to whom did they apply? It was as
essential for the early Church to establish her
claim to' be the true heir of the Covenants, as
it is for the High Anglican of our day to make
out a case for the apostolical succession of the
English bishops. With the Gnostic, unless I
am mistaken, the position of things was not
quite the same. Early Christianity was a
historical religion, proved by texts out of the
Old Testament and by the events of the life of
Jesus of Nazareth : Gnosticism, on the other
hand, was more what we call natural religion,
a philosophy. The philosophy might be illus
trated from the Old Testament or the New,
but it was really independent of the Bible. It
was not the application of the old promises of
God that troubled the author of the Acts of
Thomas but the aimlessness of men's lives,
which to him appeared to be filled with care
o

2IO THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS
and sorrow about that which must quickly pass
away for ever.
In the conception of the Church — that is, the
organised body of believers, — as a thing in itself
to be worked for and fostered, lies the true point
of difference between Catholicism and Gnosticism,
between Aphraates and the Acts of Thomas. To
the convert of Judas Thomas there was literally
nothing left on this earth to live for. "Would
that the days passed swiftly over me, and that
all the hours were one," says Mygdonia, "that
I might go forth from this world ; and go and
see that Beautiful One the tale of Whom I have
heard,1 that Living One and Giver of life to
those who have believed in Him, where there
is neither day nor night, and no darkness but
light, and neither good nor bad, nor rich nor
poor, neither male nor female, nor slaves nor
freemen, nor any proud and uplifted over those
who are humble."2 The old civilisation was
doomed, but this religious Nihilism puts nothing
in its place. To the orthodox Christian, on
the other hand, the Church stood like Aaron
between the dead and the living, as a middle
term between the things of the next world and

1 Sic : Wright's text is here supported by the ancient Sinai
fragments. 2 Wright, Transl., p. 265.

CATHOLICISM AND GNOSTICISM 211
of this. It was the Body of Christ and there
fore eternal ; something worth living for and
working for. Yet it was in the world as
much as the Empire itself. The idea of the
Church thus formed an invaluable fixed point,
round which a new civilisation could slowly
crystallise. The Acts of Thomas tell us that the Apostle
was arrested at the house of Sifur after the
conversion of Mygdonia and thrown into prison
by the order of King Mazdai. In the prison,
like Paul and Silas at Philippi, he sings a Hymn ;
but the Hymn which he is said to have sung is
not in the least like anything we should have
expected to find. And indeed, although this
Hymn is contained in the ancient Greek
versions so happily discovered by Professor
Bonnet, as well as in the Syriac MS. used by
Dr Wright, it is universally agreed that it is
a distinct independent work.1 It had originally
nothing to do with the Acts of Thomas, and
most people think that it has only been inserted in

1 The original Syriac text of the Hymn is given in Wright's
Apocryphal Acts i 274-279 (E. Transl., pp. 238-245) ; the Greek
translation is edited in M. Bonnet's Acta Thomae (ed. of 1903),
pp. 219-224, and see Analecta Bollandiana xx 159-164.

212 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
its present position by an ancient editor.1 That
it is a Syriac composition is clear, not only from
the style, but also from the fact that it is written
in metre. It is arranged in lines of twelve
syllables each, divided by a pause which breaks
up the line into two half-verses of six and six
or five and seven syllables respectively, and
further the twelve-syllable lines seem to me to
fall into stanzas of five lines each. In the transla
tion which I am about to read to you, I have
tried to represent each of the twelve-syllable
lines of the Syriac by an English Hexameter.
The use of this metre is the less inappropriate
as the poem is cast in narrative form. We
call it the Hymn of the Soul, but it is not so
much a Hymn as a short Epic, telling the tale
of the Prince who went down to Egypt to
fetch the Serpent-guarded Pearl. As we travel
with the hero we are brought into unfamiliar
regions. The home of the Prince is the old
Parthian Empire, roughly corresponding to

1 I cannot help expressing a private opinion that the Hymn
was inserted by the author of the Acts himself, just as he used
the Lord's Prayer in a later prayer of Judas Thomas. That the
Hymn itself is independent of the Acts of Thomas is certain, but
it is not so clear that the Acts of Thomas is independent of the
Hymn. The great Hymn, in fact, may have become a part of the
recognised teaching of the sect to which the author of the Acts
belonged (cf. Ephraim's Commentary on 3 Corinthians, p. 119).

GEOGRAPHY OF THE HYMN 213
modern Persia. The King, his Father, lives
either in Hyrcania near the southern shores
of the Caspian Sea, or as it were in Rhages
near Teheran. The wealth of the Kingdom
is deposited in Elymais and the mountain
sanctuaries of Atropatene (the modern Adher-
baijan), or comes from over the mountains,
from the unknown lands of India. With the
tact of a poet the author does not mention the
modern cities of Ctesiphon and Seleucia ; to
the Prince all the Euphrates Valley is the
Land of Babylon, a foreign hostile region
peopled with demons. Egypt also is far from
being the land we all know so well, the granary
of the Roman Empire ; in our Hymn it is an
unclean land, the land of magic and enchant
ment from which the Chosen People of old
escaped, a land mysteriously situate beyond
the sea. But between Babylon and the sea,
where the hero strikes the plain on his way
down from his native mountains, is the district
of Maishan or Mesene, a friendly country to
some extent under his Father's dominion. The
only companion he can make in the hated land
of Egypt appears to be a merchant from Maishan,
a stranger there like himself ; and on his return
journey it is when he reaches Maishan that the
dangers of the route come to an end.

214 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
Although the narrative is never once
interrupted by preaching or philosophy, the
general scope of the Allegory is clear. In the
words of Noldeke : 1 " We have here an
ancient Gnostic hymn relating to the Soul,
which is sent from its heavenly home to the
earth, and there forgets both its origin and its
mission until it is aroused by a revelation from
on high ; thereupon it performs the task assigned
to it and returns to the upper regions, where
it is re-united to the heavenly robe, its ideal
counterpart, and enters the presence of the
highest celestial Powers." Yet it may be worth
while to point out that some of the details are
not really so strange as they appear at first
sight to us, who are accustomed to look at the
theory of our Religion only through the spectacles
of Greek Theology. The King of Kings, the
Queen of the East, and the next in rank, the
Viceroy, are the Father, Mother, and Brother of
the Soul. They seem to correspond to the
Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son. This
presentation was shocking to the Greek mind
of the fourth century, but we have already seen
that in Semitic languages Spirit or Wind is
feminine, and that Aphraates himself does not
scruple to call the Holy Spirit the Mother of
1 Quoted in A. A. Bevan's Hymn ofthe Soul, p. 2.

THE HEAVENLY ROBE 215
a man — that Mother, in fact, whom the' Scripture
declares him to forsake when he marries a wife.1
The thought of the Heavenly Robe is perhaps
even less familiar to us, though not to earlier
Christian speculation. S. Paul (2 Cor. v 2)
speaks of "earnestly desiring to be clothed
upon with our house which is from heaven."
That which S. Paul desired was no fixed
" house " or " habitation," but a Heavenly Form.
So here, too, the Robe is no article of clothing,
but a Bright Form. The Syriac word means
The Bright or The Shining thing. It is "put
off" and "put on" by the Soul, and it "spreads
itself out " like a garment ; on the other hand,
it is represented as assuming the appearance ofthe
returning Prince and even as speaking with its
Guardians. The word " body " is never used
either of it or of the Soul, " stature " being used
instead. I have kept Robe as the most satisfactory
English equivalent for this Body Celestial.
Over the Robe is cast a Tunic of royal scarlet,
and within dwells the true Soul. But when the
time comes for the Soul to be born into this
world, the Heavenly Vesture must be left
behind in the presence of the Father.2 There
1 Wright's Aphraates, p. 354 ; see above, p. 89.
a Compare Matt, xviii 10, and see the illuminating Essay by
Dr J. H. Moulton, called " It is his Angel " (Journal of Theol,
Studies, iii 514-527),

2i6 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
it grows with the growth of the Soul on earth
and suffers with its failures. At last the Soul
has done its work here; it strips off for ever
the unclean garment of the earthly body, and
it meets once more its Heavenly Frame on its
way back to the Father's Home.
There is reason to suppose that the Hymn
was composed before the overthrow of the
Parthian dynasty in 224 a.d. The whole
machinery of the poem, so far as it does not
belong to fairyland, is borrowed from the
conditions of the Parthian empire. There is
nothing to show that while their successors the
Sasanians were in power the people of Roman
Mesopotamia ever looked back to the hegemony
of the Parthians as to an ideal or golden age, or
indeed that the special features of Parthian rule
and the political geography of the Parthian
dominions were familiar at Edessa after that
rule had passed away. Thus the composition
of the Hymn falls within the lifetime of
Bardaisan, and we may indulge the pleasing
fancy that it was the work of Bardaisan himself
or of his son Harmonius. You will find the
question as adequately discussed as the paucity
ofthe evidence allows in the Introduction which
my friend Professor A. A. Bevan has prefixed
to his edition of the Hymn. Professor Bevan

DATE AND AUTHORSHIP 217
concludes with words which I take this oppor
tunity to quote:1 "Whatever may be the
ultimate verdict of scholars as to the exact date
and authorship of this composition, it will always
deserve careful study on account of the light
which it throws upon one of the most remarkable
phrases in the religious history of mankind.
Gnosticism is here displayed to us not as it
appeared to its enemies, not as a tissue of
fantastic speculations, but as it was in reality, at
least to some of its adherents, a new religion.
Though the religious conceptions of the author
are, in some respects, very closely akin to those
of the early Christians, he nowhere refers directly
to the New Testament, nor does he even allude
to the historical facts on which Christianity is
founded. Yet he does not speak doubtfully, as
one feeling after truth ; his convictions, such as
they are, respecting the realities of the unseen
world, rest upon what he believes to be a direct
revelation, symbolised by the living letter which
the King sealed with his right hand. Until this
state of mind is understood, the nature of Oriental
Gnosticism and of the struggle which it long
maintained, against Paganism on the one side
and traditional Christianity on the other, must
remain a mystery."
1 A. A. Bevan, Hymn ofthe Soul, p. 7 [Texts and Studies v 3].

2l8 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
And now we come to the Hymn itself : —

While I was yet but a little child in the House of my Father,
Brought up in luxury, well content with the life of the Palace,
Far from the East, our home, my Parents sent me to travel,
And from the royal Hoard they prepared me a load for the
journey,
Precious it was yet light, that alone I carried the burden.

II
Median gold it contained and silver from Atropatene,
Garnet and ruby from Hindostan and Bactrian agate,
Adamant harness was girded upon me stronger than iron ;
But my Robe they took off wherewith their love had adorned
me,
And the bright Tunic woven of scarlet and wrought to my
stature. Ill
For they decreed, and wrote on my heart that I should not
forget it :
" If thou go down and bring from Egypt the Pearl, the unique
one,
"Guarded there in the Sea that envelopes the loud-hissing
Serpent,
"Thou shalt be clothed again with thy Robe and the Tunic
of scarlet,
"And with thy Brother, the Prince, shalt thou inherit the
Kingdom."

THE HYMN OF THE SOUL 219
IV
So I quitted the East, two Guardians guiding me downwards,
Hard was the way for a child and a dangerous journey to
travel,
Soon I had passed Maishan, the mart of the Eastern
merchants,
Over the soil of Babylon then I hurried my footsteps,
And my companions left me within the borders of Egypt.
V
Straight to the Serpent I went and near him settled my
dwelling,
Till he should slumber and sleep, and the Pearl I could
snatch from his keeping,
I was alone, an exile under a foreign dominion,
None did I see of the free-born race of the Easterns,
Save one youth, a son of Maishan, who became my companion.
VI
He was my friend to whom I told the tale of my venture,
Warned him against the Egyptians and all their ways of
uncleanness ;
Yet in their dress I clothed myself to escape recognition,
Being afraid lest when they saw that I was a stranger
Come from afar for the Pearl, they would rouse the Serpent
against me. VII
It was from him perchance they learnt I was none of their
kindred,
And in their guile they gave me to eat of their unclean
dainties ;
Thus I forgot my race and I served the King of the country,
Nay, I forgot the Pearl for which my parents had sent me,
While from their poisonous food I sank into slumber
unconscious.

220 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL

VIII

All that had chanced my Parents knew and they grieved for
me sorely,
Through the land they proclaimed for all at our Gate to
assemble —
Parthian Princes and Kings, and all the Eastern Chieftains —
There they devised an escape that I should not perish in
Egypt,
Writing a letter signed in the name of each of the Chieftains.
IX
"From thy Father, the King of Kings, — from the Queen,
thy Mother, —
"And from thy Brother, — to thee, our Son in Egypt, be
greeting !
" Up and arise from sleep, and hear the words of our Letter !
" Thou art a son of Kings : by whom art thou held in
bondage ?
"Think of the Pearl for which thou wast sent to sojourn
in Egypt.

"Think of thy shining Robe and remember thy glorious
Tunic ;
"These thou shalt wear when thy name is enrolled in the
list of the heroes,
"And with thy Brother Viceroy thou shalt be in the
Kingdom."
This was my Letter, sealed with the King's own Seal on the
cover,
Lest it should fall in the hands of the fierce Babylonian
demons.

THE HYMN OF THE SOUL 221
XI
High it flew as the Eagle, King of the birds of the heaven,
Flew and alighted beside me, and spoke in the speech of my
country,
Then at the sound of its tones I started and rose from my
slumber ;
Taking it up I kissed and broke the Seal that was on it,
And like the words engraved on my heart were the words of
the Letter. XII
So I remembered my Royal race and my free-born nature,
So I remembered the Pearl, for which they had sent me to
Egypt,
And I began to charm the terrible loud-hissing Serpent :
Down he sank into sleep at the sound of the Name of my
Father,
And at my Brother's Name, and the Name of the Queen, my
Mother. XIII
Then I seized the Pearl and homewards started to journey,
Leaving the unclean garb I had worn in Egypt behind me ;
Straight for the East I set my course, to the light of the
home-land,
And on the way in front I found the Letter that roused me —
Once it awakened me, now it became a Light to my pathway.
XIV
For with its silken folds it shone on the road I must travel,
And with its voice and leading cheered my hurrying footsteps,
Drawing me on in love across the perilous passage,
Till I had left the land of Babylon safely behind me
And I had reached Maishan, the sea-washed haven of
merchants.

222 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL

XV

What I had worn of old, my Robe with its Tunic of scarlet, ,
Thither my Parents sent from the far Hyrcanian mountains,
Brought by the hand of the faithful warders who had it in
keeping ;
I was a child when I left it nor could its fashion remember,
But when I looked, the Robe had received my form and my
likeness.

XVI
It was myself that I saw before me as in a mirror ;
Two in number we stood, yet only one in appearance,
Not less alike than the strange twin guardian figures
Bringing my Robe, each marked with the royal Escutcheon,
Servants both of the King whose troth restored me my
Treasure.

XVII
Truly a royal Treasure appeared my Robe in its glory,
Gay it shone with beryl and gold, sardonyx and ruby,
Over its varied hues there flashed the colour of sapphire,
All its seams with stones of adamant firmly were fastened,
And upon all the King of Kings Himself was depicted.

XVIII
While I gazed it sprang into life as a sentient creature,
Even as if endowed with speech and hearing I saw it,
Then I heard the tones of its voice as it cried to the keepers :
" He, the Champion, he for whom I was reared by the Father —
"Hast thou not marked me, how my stature grew with his
labours ? "

THE HYMN OF THE SOUL 223

XIX
All the while with a kingly mien my Robe was advancing,
Flowing towards me as if impatient with those who bore it ;
I too longed for it, ran to it, grasped it, put it upon me,
Once again I was clothed in my Robe and adorned with its
beauty,
And the bright many-hued Tunic again was gathered about
me.

XX
Clad in the Robe I betook me up to the Gate of the Palace,
Bowing my head to the glorious Sign of my Father that sent
I had performed His behest and He had fulfilled what He
promised,
So in the Satraps' Court I joined the throng of the Chieftains —
He with favour received me and near Him I dwell in the
Kingdom.

Such is the Hymn of the Soul. Our MS. adds
a fragment of yet another stanza, but the faulty
metre warns us that the text has been ill pre
served. It shows us however that the Prince
who has returned to his Home looks forward
yet to a great Day, when he will present his
Pearl before the King of Kings, his Father. In
that day, to change the imagery into S. Paul's
more familiar language, God will be all in all.

224 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
It is difficult for our distant age and Western
civilisation to judge the great Hymn. We live,
so to speak, in the unclean land of Egypt, and
we cannot see the light of the East or hear the
words of the winged Letter. We are all full of
schemes for improving the world in which we
actually find ourselves, and are very sceptical
of a teaching which tells us that we are only
strangers and sojourners and that our true
home is elsewhere. This is natural enough in
an age like ours, when every decennium marks
some new discovery of the nature and action
of the wonderful forces around us which con
dition our present existence. No one longs for
next year in the early summer, much less in
the spring. The age of the author of the Hymn
and of the author of the Acts of Thomas was
very different from that in which we live.
They lived in a world that was beginning to
wear out, a Civitas Mundi that had passed its
prime. All that was best in the old civilisation
in Science, in Art, in Literature, in Philosophy,
in all that goes to make up the pageant of human
life, had already been done, and the world needed
re-birth. Thus it came to pass that to the early
Christian thinkers the life we live here seemed
only valuable for that which we may take away

THE HYMN OF THE SOUL 225
with us when we quit it : the Merchant's goods
were worth nothing in comparison with the Pearl
of great price. Happiness, satisfaction, rest,
these belonged according to their teaching
altogether to the other life. "As long as we
are in the world," says S. Thomas to his con
verts, "we are unable to speak about that
which all the believers in God are going to
receive. For if we say that He hath given us
Light, we mention something which we have
seen ; and if we say that He hath given us
Wealth, we mention something that is in the
world ; and if we speak of Clothing, we mention
something that nobles wear ; and if we speak
of dainty Meats, we mention something against
which we are warned ; and if we speak of this
temporary Rest, a chastisement is appointed
for it. But we speak of God and of our Lord
Jesus, and of Angels and Watchers and Holy
Ones, and of the New World, and of the in
corruptible food of the Tree of Life, and of the
draught of the Water of Life ; of what Eye hath
not seen, nor Ear heard, nor hath it entered into
the Heart of man to conceive, what God hath
prepared from of old for those who love Him."
It was the hope of this that sent the Saints
of Eastern Christianity into the desert, that sent
Simeon Stylites to his pillar, that induced many
p

226 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
a nameless disciple to cut himself off from all
that the State and the Family had to offer. It
is not for us to blame them. Let us rather be
thankful that our lot has been cast in an
environment where the work immediately
before us is great and worthy enough to
absorb the energies of the most generously
endowed. Our business, no doubt, is to work
while it is called to-day ; the time perhaps will
come to our civilisation also, when the night
falls and no man can work, but only dream of
a day that is to be.

THE HYMN OF THE SOUL 227

NOTE ON THE HYMN OF THE SOUL.
In view of the many difficulties which the original Syriac offers
both in text and in interpretation, it may be of interest to subjoin
the comment on it made by Niceta, Archbishop of Thessalonica,
who published a Greek Epitome of the Acts of Thomas which has
been unearthed by Professor Bonnet. The date when this Niceta
flourished is uncertain, but it must have been before the middle of
the eleventh century. After giving a paraphrase of the Hymn,
Niceta says (Analecta Bollandiana xx 163) : " Thus, if I have rightly
gauged the meaning of these parabolic words, the inspired Apostle
clearly indicates in his description the fair origin of our race in
the image of God, the incorruptible wealth of graces thence
derived, the spiritual armour wherewith we are furnished for the
fight against those who are spiritually called Egyptians and against
the Old Serpent their leader and champion. We see their plots,
their wiles, their charms, the inevitable fall of those who trust in
them, the consequent waste of divine wealth, the lingering taint of
sins, shadowed forth in the poem by sleep and torpor ; then the
compassion from on high, the help afforded by the Holy Scriptures
as if by a letter, after the arrival of which comes the turn, the
awakening, the enlightenment through baptism, whereby we re
cover the precious Pearl. And in addition to all this we see the
rejoicing which our God and Father and the Divine Powers around
Him make at the return and the recall of them that have fallen,
and finally the safe arrival of those eternal rewards which God has
prepared for those that wholly turn unto Him. Strengthening by
these words the timid and doubtful disposition of our souls and
teaching us how by means of them we are to lead a new life, dead
as we have become in sins, the Apostle Thomas left an eternal

228 THE HYMN OF THE SOUL
consolation not only for those then in the prison but also for all
faint-hearted souls throughout the ages."
It is worth noticing that Niceta does not doubt that the doctrine
of the Hymn is orthodox. In fact, the view that it is anything else
than a Christian document is the conjecture of modern scholars.

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