CHAPTER XI THE SCHOOL OF EDESSA The School of Edessa represents the Syrian Christians, who include all those Christians whose liturgical services and ordinary conversation were in the Syriac language. The classical Syriac was spoken at Edessa and was in use far and wide for literary purposes. The literature of Syriac Christianity consists in the main of homilies in prose and verse, hymns, expositions, commentaries, liturgies, and legends. The Greek that was used at first was ere long translated into Syriac, which thus became cultured and literary. This mingling of the two languages left its mark on the work known as the Pilgrimage of Silvia (Etheria), which belongs to the end of the fourth century. A bishop is represented as preaching in Greek, a presbyter meanwhile rendering the sermon into Syriac. The origins of Syriac Christianity are faintly outlined in a fourth century discourse, The Doctrine of Addai, compiled from two or three sources. Its account of the teaching of Addai, during 125-150, probably summarises the creed of the early Syrian Church. The same discourse appears elsewhere as a Homily. There is also an account of the labours of Palut, whose ordination by Serapion of Antioch in 197, connected the Syrian with the Greek Church. The so-called heretic BARDAISAN or BARDESANES, 155222, was a really original thinker, who brought a thorough knowledge of heathen religion to the discussion of Christianity. He is credited with being the author of 'many' works; among them being Dialogues against the Marcion ites; the Apology, in which he resisted the persuasion to deny that he was a Christian; and a Dialogue on Fate. This Dialogue is either the same work as The Book of the Laws of Countries, or else a copious extract from it. The Book of the Laws of Countries is the only surviving representative of Bardesanist literature. It takes the form of a discussion on the mysteries of Providence; BARDAISAN contributes to the discussion a connected speech equal to onethird of the whole, as well as many short statements. The theme under consideration is that wealth and poverty, sickness and health, death, and all things not within our own control are a work of destiny; but that the soul possesses free will. CLEMENT of Alexandria quotes from it as a writing of the "Eastern School": Destiny is a conjunction of many contrary powers, which are invisible and non-apparent, directing the motion of the stars and acting through them From the strife and conflict of these powers the Lord delivers us, and grants us peace from the battle-array of the powers and the angels. Until baptism, destiny is therefore true, but afterwards the astrologers are no longer found to speak truth. The son of BARDAISAN, HARMONIUS, f1. 150, who wrote in both Greek and Syriac, put his views into A Book of One Hundred and Fifty Hymns, prepared to be sung at the Feasts of the martyrs. The Hymns were the first adaptation of Syriac to metre and to musical accompaniment. Their success was widespread and long continued. They were in popular use until the poems of EPHREM SYRUS, about a century later, supplanted them. The most striking and original piece of Syriac literature is the Acts of Judas Thomas, really a religious novel, although most of it is composed of prayers, sermons, and eulogies of virginity and poverty. It belongs to the early part of the third century. Embedded in the Acts is a short gnostic epic poem, The Hymn of the Soul, "and we may indulge the pleasing fancy that it was the work of BARDAISAN himself or of his son HARMONIUS." It relates the adventures of the soul that goes down to Egypt to find the pearl of great price in order that it may come to its own in the kingdom of the Father. i While I was yet but a little child in the house of my Father, Precious it was yet light, that alone I carried the burden. iii 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 envelops the loud-hissing Serpent, Thou shalt be clothed again with thy Robe and the Tunic of scarlet, And with thy Brother, the Prince, thou shalt inherit the Kingdom.' xiii Then I seized the Pearl and homewards started to journey, 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 it; 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 favor received me and near Him I dwell in the Kingdom.2 The earliest historical narrative belonging to the School of Edessa, is the Martyrology of Shamona and Guria, who suffered in 297. It is not a contemporary record, and it ap 1 F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 216. 2 Ibid., pp. 218-223. pears at greater length and with more detail in a later work by THEOPHILUS, The Martyrology of Habib the Deacon, whose death took place during the first quarter of the fourth century. APHRAATES, d 350, the Persian sage, was responsible for the earliest authentic piece of Syriac Christian literature of which the date is known. His twenty Homilies give a continuous exposition of the Syriac creed, in the form of acrostics, of which the initial letters make up the alphabet. The first ten belong to the year 337, the rest were delivered on special occasions at various later dates. APHRAATES used a simple style, enriched with generous quotations from Scripture; but he was given to much digression and repetition and sometimes he misses the point of his quotation. Nevertheless his writings exercised a widespread influence. The Syrian Church used its own creed instead of that of Nicæa, and as the Discourse on Penitents shows, this tended to restrict the membership of the Church to baptised celibates only. The Edessene School found its best representative and most influential writer in EPHRAIM the Syrian, commonly called EPHREM SYRUS, 308-379, who left his home in Nisibis when it surrendered to Persia in 363, and "came to Edessa, that so splendid a sun might not be hidden in a chamber underground." As a ward and pupil of the distinguished JAMES of Nisibis, 280-338, he was early acquainted with literature and his interest in it never ceased. He became a somewhat diffuse writer of vast fertility, the master of an elegant style, with a measure of true poetic inspiration. His skill lay in his command of metre; he usually wrote in lines of seven syllables. He was fully aware of his powers and popularity: When I was a child . . I saw as in a dream that which has become a reality. From my tongue there sprang a vine-twig, which grew and reached to heaven: it brought forth fruit without end, and leaves without number. It spread, it grew, it lengthened, it expanded itself, it went round about, it stretched abroad till it reached the whole creation. All beings gathered of it, and there was no lack: yea, the more they plucked, so much the more its clusters multiplied. Those clusters were sermons, those leaves were hymns, and God was the giver. To Him be glory for His grace SOZOMEN the historian supports this testimony when he says that EPHREM wrote three hundred times ten thousand lines. As a poet, his name is given to fifty-six Hymns against Heretics, intended to refute the teaching of Marcion, Bardaisan and Mani; eighty-five Against Sceptics, eighty-five Funeral Hymns, seventy-six On Repentance, as well as to many others written for festival occasions. The Nisibene Hymns, 350-361, serve the purposes of the historian, as they are associated with the Persian invasion. The first twenty-one describe the siege of Nisibis in 350. and carry on the story of the strife until the fall of the city, 363. The Hymns 26-34 deal with schisms and strifes in Edessa and Haran, during the years 360-370. The remaining Hymns, 35-77, treat of religious subjects—the overthrow of Death and Satan; the Resurrection of the body: the consolations of religion in view of Death and the grave. EPHREM wrote Commentaries on all the books of the Bible, more than a thousand Homilies, a Treatise on False Doctrine, and some Tracts on the ascetic life. As an interpreter of Scripture he held a middle course between literalism and allegorism; he maintained that there is first the literal interpretation, and secondly the spiritual one; he therefore habitually gives both. Thus on Isaiah xxv. 7 he says, |