Burkitt - Early Xtiany Outside Roman Empire

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Early QumMtianity outsideTHE ROMANLMPIRE' E\ C. BURKITT


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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiivein 2009 witii funding from

Ontario Council of University Libraries

http://www.archive.org/details/earlychristianitOOburk


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ILonlion: C. J. CLAY and SONS,CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE.AVE MARIA LANE.

263, ARGYLE STREET.

^v^leipMg: F. A. BROCKHAUS.

(9cm gork: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Bomfaao: E. SEYMOUR HALE.


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/ dedicate this Bookto the Rev. GEORGE SALMON D.D.

Provost of Trinity College^ Dublin.,in grateful acknoujledgment

of his kindness to ?nyselfand in admiration of the unfailing acuteness

of his critical judgment.


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''JVitb matter of Heresie the West hath beetle often andmuch troubled; but the East part neuer quiet, till the deluge ofmtserie nvherein noiv they are, ouernvhelmed them. The chiefestcause -thereof doth seeme to haue lien in the restlesse luits ofthe Grecians, euermore proud of their o^jone curious and subtileinuentions, ivhich ivhen at any time they had contriued, thegreat facilitie of ibeir language serued them readily to makeall things faire and plausible to mens imderstanding. Thosegraund hereticall impieties therefore, 'which most highly andimmediatly touched God and the glorious Trinitie, q.vere all in amanner the monsters of the East.''^

Hooker. Ecdesiasticall Politie V iii.


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Early Christianity outsidethe Roman Empire

Two Lectures delivered at Trinity College^ Dublin^by F. CRAWFORD BURKITT, M.A., TrinityCollege.^ Cambridge.

CAMBRIDGE, at the University Press, 1899.


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pns^ Cambrtligr:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

All Rights reserved.


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INTRODUCTION.To the student of general history Christianity

makes its appearance as a Greek religion. Thefirst Christian communities of any considerable sizehad their home in the great Greek cities on theeastern shores of the Mediterranean. In Alexandria,in Antioch, in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Corinthallnear the sea, and in easy communication with oneanotherthe little Churches came into being anddeveloped their organisation. The whole Ecclesias-tical vocabulary is Greek. Bishops, Priests, Deacons,the Laity, Baptism, the Eucharist, all the terms areGreek in origin. It is the same with literature.From the alien religion out of which Christianityhad sprung the Church inherited her Sacred Booksin a Greek translation, and the writings of Christiansthat after a time were added on to the Canon ot

B. I


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYScripture as a New Volumethese writings werecomposed in Greek also. In a word, the Churchgrew up on Greek soil.

The life of the Greek cities reacted on thedevelopment of the Churches. The thought andactivity of small and progressive bodies must alwaysbe largely determined by the atmosphere of thegreat world outside, whether by way of protest orof assimilation. For this reason early Christianliterature, apart from the Jewish controversy, ismainly occupied with an attack upon Greek vicesand the Greek Pantheon. With these no termswere possible. But as Christianity advanced anantagonist came on the scene more honourable andtherefore more dangerous than Jupiter and hiscourt or even than the Genius of the Emperor.No Religion could establish itself in the Greek-speaking world without coming to a reckoning withGreek Philosophy. Christianity had to face theold problems of the One and the Many, of Mindand Matter, of the infinite Divine Essence and itsManifestation in time and place.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 3Not that the Church, the main body of

Christians, was in any hurry to engage in thesedifficult studies. They were forced on her fromoutside, from the borderland between Christianityand Heathendom, where thinkers such as Valentinusand Basilides attempted to unite the science andphilosophy of the then civilised world with the lifeand doctrines of the new religion. The instinct ofthe Church, rather than her logical power, rejectedthe early Gnostics and their Ogdoads, but it wasnot possible to go on for ever with mere refutation.After three centuries a system was elaborated whichthe Church was able to recognise, and the ChristianFaith was enshrined in a fixed symbol, whichremains to this day as the accepted Christianaccount of the nature of God in Himself and ofthe relations between God and man. The Creedsmark the final Concordat between Christianity andPhilosophy.

We all know that this is not the whole truth.The Church may have grown up on Greek soil,but Christianity itself is not Greek in origin.


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYThe very earliest stage of all, that stage which it ismost important for all of us to know and under-stand, is not Greek but Semitic. Our Lord wasnot sent save unto the lost sheep of the House ofIsrael. He lived the life of a Jew. He spoke inthe current dialect of Palestine to His fellow-countrymen, and His conversations with his friendsand His controversies with His foes turned on thethings which troubled or interested the Jewishcommunity of Palestine in the early part of the firstcentury of our Era. Christ came not to promul-gate a Creed, a form of words containing thequintessence of philosophical truth, but to live alife among men ; and for us to feel the true forceof His words, to appreciate the attitude He took uptowards the current hopes and beliefs of thoseamong whom He lived, we must find out andunderstand those beliefs. We must learn thelanguage that His contemporaries spoke and studytheir phraseology.

When we attempt to do this we catch a glimpseof a very different world from that of Greek


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 5Christianity. Alas, it is only a glimpse ! Thegreat catastrophe of the Jewish War, culminatingwith the sack of Jerusalem, finally separated theChurch and the Synagogue. The Jewish statecame to an end, and with it perished the primitiveSemitic Christianity. The Christians of Judaeafled to the mountains, and when the troubles wereover the survivors seem to have mingled themselveswith the Greek-speaking urban population. Thusthe one community which might have preservedthe earliest traditions was swallowed up. So far aswe can find out, Christianity ceased in the land ofits birth, save that a small colony about which weonly know the Greek names of its Bishops is saidto have struggled on in Jerusalem. The shadow oftheir names falls across the page of Eusebius, but nodeed or word is assigned to the silent figures.

Thus it has come to pass that our informationeven about the outward events of our Lord'sministry is so painfully scanty. The story of theearthly life of Jesus of Nazareth and of the firstdays of the infant community was known to the


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYChurch, and has come down to us, only throughcertain literary channels. Those events of theearly Galilean ministry which are recorded inS. Mark's narrative are known to us, but how fewothers ! The Church's acquaintance with the firststage of Christianity rested on written documents,not on living tradition : for good and for evil theGreeks did not know Christ after the flesh.

Let me remind you in passing that this is nota mere literary question of ^uellenkr'itik. On thecontrary, it is the keystone of Protestantism. Theone thing which historically justifies us in breakingwith the Catholic tradition is this breach of conti-nuity at the earliest period. We are entitled tocriticise the Greek Gospels freely, to suggest ondue evidence that phrases or figures have beenwrongly or imperfectly apprehended, in a word wehave a right privately to revise the judgments of theChurch, mainly because the Church of the secondcentury was so far removed in spirit and in know-ledge from the life of Judaea in our Lord's day.Do not let me be misunderstood. I am not


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 7maintaining that this separation was not inevitable.The work of the Church was to overcome theworld, not to furnish material for archaeologists.Still, if we could know more about the beliefs,the rites, the sacraments, of the community of' Nazarenes ' that S. Jerome mentions more thanonce with such tantalising brevity, it is my firmconviction that we should possess a key that wouldunlock many of the riddles which obstruct theEvangelic historv and darken to us the recordedsayings of Christ.

But if between the Church of the secondcentury and the Apostles there is a great gulf fixed,in what words are we to describe the differencebetween the Nicene and Post-Nicene Church andprimitive Christianity ? Here all will acknowledgethe vastness of the change. At the same time, itmay be said that the change was due to naturalgrowth : the line that it took was, as a matter offact, the historical development of Christianity.The Church of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus isundoubtedlv continuous with that of Athanasius


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYand Hilary, and that Church came to Nicaea andproceeded to Chalcedon. After all, the Creeds aremerely the formal ratification of the best theologyof the great Churchmen. The new Constitutionwas, in fact, inevitablelike the promulgation ofthe Pope's Infallibility at a later day, long after thedogma had been a pious inference in the Romancommunion.

This may indeed be so, and I for one should bevery willing to believe that the rigidity of the laterChurch was indispensable for it to withstand theshock of the Barbarian invasions which swept awaythe ancient Civilisation. But the object that I havechiefly had in view in these Lectures is to glanceat a strangely neglected branch of the Church, abranch in full communion and fellowship with therest of the Christian body and proud of its Apostolicdescent, yet cut off by political and linguistic cir-cumstances from that struggle with Greek philosophywhich so greatly influenced the Christianity of theGreek-speaking populations within the RomanEmpire.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 9I speak, of course, of the Christianity of the

Euphrates valley, of the Church whose languagewas Syriac and its metropolis Edessa. But beforewe settle down to our study of this Church weshall do well to consider how it came to pass that itis the only historical rival of the Greeks.

Let us look round the Roman Empire. Tothe north and west it is obvious that Greek- speakingChristianity could have no competitors. Marcion ofPontus to all intents and purposes counts as a Greek.The few Christians of Armenia used Syriac until the4th century. The Latin Christianity of the Westand of N. Africa is wholly the child of GreekChristianity. At a much later period it also de-veloped distinctive characteristics, but it inheritednothing pf primitive Christianity which it did notget through Greek Christianity. The language,the laws, the customs of the Latins are all utterlyforeign to Palestine and Semitic thought.

Nor does Egypt supply anything for our purpose.Christianity was early established in Alexandria, butAlexandria was less Egyptian than Gibraltar is


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYSpanish. There is little to shew that Christianityspread among the native Egyptians till the rise ofmonasticism, still less that a Christian literatureexisted in any Coptic dialect before the latter halfof the 3rd century. The vast increase of infor-mation about the condition of Egypt under theEmpire which the last fifty years has witnessed, hasserved only to confirm the familiar words of Gibbon." The progress of Christianity was for a long timeconfined within the limits of a single city, whichwas itself a foreign colony ; and, till the close of the2nd century, the predecessors of Demetrius werethe only prelates of the Christian Church Thebody of the natives, a people distinguished by asullen inflexibility of temper, entertained the newdoctrine with coldness and reluctance ; and even inthe time of Origen it was rare to meet with anEgyptian who had surmounted his early prejudicesin favour of the sacred animals of his country. Assoon, indeed, as Christianity ascended the throne,the zeal of those barbarians obeyed the prevailingimpulsion j the cities of Egypt were filled with


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. iibishops, and the deserts of Thebais swarmed withhermits ^"

The political fortunes of Edessa, the metropolisof the Syriac-spealcing Church, offer a remarkablecontrast to any other centre of early Christianity.Until A.D. 2 1 6, in the reign of Caracalla, Edessawas outside the Roman Empire. The Toparch orkinglet of the place, whose name seems always tohave been Abgar or Ma'nu, owed some allegiance tothe Parthian monarchs, but the little state enjoyedmost of the conditions favourable for independentliterary development. The language of the peoplewas also the language of the nobles and of govern-ment. The local patriotism was that of the ancientGreek states or the Italian commonwealths of alater day, and was as far as possible removed fromthe cosmopolitanism of the Empire. At the sametime the city was not cut off from a wide inter-course with surrounding communities. The Ara-maic of Edessa was more than a mere local dialect :it was the medium of commerce throughout the

' Bury's Gibbon ii 60.


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYEuphrates valley, while the Aramaic of Palmyraand of Palestine hardly differed from it more thanLowland ' Scots ' differs from the standard English.Edessa, in one word, was situated on the confines oftwo great civilisations, the Greek and the Persian,while at the same time it had not been robbed of itsown Semitic culture. The extant remains of Syriacliterature are almost wholly the product of later agesand less fortunate conditions \ it is the misfortuneof Edessa, not her fault, that she was unable tomaintain her intellectual freedom through the shockof the Persian wars. But the ease and vigour ofthe earliest surviving literature of the Syriac-speaking Church, whether prose, poetry, or philo-sophical discussion, unmistakably reflect the gloryof Edessa's three hundred years of honourableindependence.

Christianity appears to have reached theEuphrates valley about the middle of the second

century. The Bishops of Edessa trace theirsuccession to Serapion, Bishop of Antioch from190 to 203, and there is all the more reason for


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 13believing this tradition to be historically exact,because it contradicts so glaringly the alternativestory of the successful preaching of Christianity atEdessa by Addai, one of the 72 disciples. Weneed not, however, delay long over the outw^ardhistory of the Syriac-speaking Church. The sub-ject has been vv^ell worked out by the Rev. Prof.Tixeront, a French scholar of the school ofDuchesne ^ The main thing that concerns ushere is that Christianity was planted in Edessa andthe Church organisation established there while itwas yet an independent state.

For the inner character of Syriac-speakino;Christianity in its early stages we must turn fromhistory to the surviving documents. The list, alas,is miserably scanty. The later Syrians had differenttastes and a different standard of orthodoxy fromtheir forefathers and we may certainly add fromourselves. Syriac 'literature, as it has come downto us, consists for the most part of the contents of

^ Les Origines de FEglise d'Edessc-^'^x L.-J. Tixeront,Paris, 1888.


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14 EARLY CHRISTIANITYone great Monophysite library, that of the Conventof S. Mary Deipara in the Nitrian desert. Themere fact that it did not contain a MS. of theDiatessaron is enough to shew that its collection ofthe earlier Syriac writings is quite inadequate.Nevertheless, enough remains to give us some ideaof the temper of the first two centuries of SyriacChristianity in its very varied forms.

It will be convenient to give here a list of theworks which supply the materials for our investiga-tion. They may be grouped under six heads, asfollows

1. The Old Testament in Syriac, commonlycalled the Peshitta.

2. The Evangelim da-M'epharreshe or OldSyriac Version of the Gospels, and the closelyallied Diatessaron of Tatian.

3. The Doctrine of Addai and the earlyMartyrologies {^Acts of Sbarbel^ Barsamya^ etc.).

4. The Book of the Laws of Countries^ com-monly known as ' Bardesanes De Fato^ but reallycomposed by Bardaisan's disciple Philip.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 155. The Syriac Acts of Thomas.^ including the

great Gnostic Hymn which is ascribed by modernscholars to Bardaisan himself.

6. The Homilies of Aphraates.It is the two last of these, the Acts of Tho?nas

and Aphraates' Homilies.^ which more especiallyconcern us. You will notice that I have includedneither the works of Ephraim Syrus nor the revisedversion of the N.T. in Syriac which goes by thename of the Peshitta. The reason is only partlychronological. Ephraim's chief literary activity andthe publication of the N.T. Peshitta may both beplaced about the middle of the 4th century. Butthey stand apart from the list o;iven above forother reasons. Both represent that effort to keeppace with the Greeks, which ossified the Syriaclanguage and landed the Syriac-speaking Churchesin the course of a hundred years in the oppositeerrors of the Monophysites and the Nestorians.

The N.T. Peshitta is a revision of the OldSyriac, not a fresh translation. It must have beenthe work of learned and conscientious scholars : its


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i6 EARLY CHRISTIANITYgreat merit is that it left so much of the old workstanding. Accuracy and timidity are the chiefcharacteristics of the revisers, and we can still tracethe influence of Greek theology and the Greekgrammarians as well as the use of Greek Mss.^

Ephraim's excessive verbosity makes it difficultto discover his real theological position. In a timeof transition, such as he lived in, the art of sayingnothing in a great many words must have beenexceedingly useful, and the saint who preferred toglue together the pages of Apollinaris's book ratherthan attempt to confute the writer must have beenaware that argument was not his strong point.The ultimate reasons which led to the short-livedand disastrous triumph of Greek thought over thenative Syriac Christianity were political rather thantheological, and Ephraim only too well representsthe temporary and verbal complaisance of the Syriac-

^ The Word and the Spirit are treated for theological purposesas masculine, contrary to the genius of the language, and inJoh i 14 flesh is substituted for the Old Syriac body. InGrammar we may notice the consistent omission of the Semitic'and' at the beginning of the apodosis, e.g. in Lk xii 46.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 17speaking subjects of the Christianised Empire at theend of the 4th century'. It was a state of thingswhich could not last long, and in a couple ofgenerations after Ephraim hardly a single orthodoxcommunity was left in Mesopotamia. Let us notlinger now over the ill-matched union of Greek andSemitic thought, but go back to the time when theSyriac-speaking Church was still free and innocent.

The Old Testament in Svriac first claims our> attention, and chiefly because it may serve to remind

us of one most important factor among; the popula-tions of the Euphrates vallev, viz. the Jews. Theappellation Peshitta [i.e. 'simple') by which thisversion is familiarly known to us does not seem tobe older than the 9th century. It was probablygiven to distinguish it from the work of Paul ofTelia, which is a translation made from Origen'sHexapla and consequently embellished with a

' Ephraim's emancipation from the native tradition is wellillustrated by the fact that he quotes the Apocalypse by name{0pp. Syr. ii 332 c), though the book was not, and is not to thi>day, included in the Syriac Canon.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 19of the translators and of their courao;e in breakins;away from the Greek tradition. However thatmay be, the Peshitta is in itself an unanswerabledemonstration that the earliest Syriac Church con-tained a large Jewish element. This is quite inaccordance with the early traditions in the Doctrineof Addai'^^ and harmonises (as we shall see) withwhat is found in Aphraates. Thus the independentcivilisation of Edessa made a vernacular translationnecessary, while the presence of an influentialJewish factor in the infant Church secured that thetranslation of the Old Testament should be madefrom the original Hebrew,

The earliest N.T. Canon of the Syriac-speakingChurch consisted of the Gospel, the Epistles ofS. Paul, and the Acts. "The Law and theProphets and the Gospel from which ye read everyday before the people, and the Epistles of Paulwhich Simon Cephas sent us from the city ofRome, and the Acts of the Twelve Apostles which

1 Phillips, E. tr. pp. 32, 3,^.2


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYJohn the son of Zebedee sent us from Ephesus,from these writings shall ye read in the Churches ofthe Messiah and besides them nothing else shall yeread." This is the Canon of the Doctrine ofAddai'^^ and the list is confirmed by the actualpractice of Aphraates. I am not going to enter onthe difficult and disputed question of the relativepriority of the translation into Syriac of the FourGospels and of the Diatessaron^ important as it is inmany ways. The investigation would involve us ina mass of detail quite foreign to the scale of thisLecture. Speaking generally, we may say that thescanty notices in Syriac writings and the usage ofAphraates himself are most naturally interpreted ifwe assume the Diatessaron to have been first in thefield. Before the discovery of the Sinai Palimpsestof the Four Gospels in the Old Syriac versionthere was no doubt that the arguments for thepriority of the Diatessaron seemed much the stronger.But now the balance of internal evidence has veryconsiderably shifted : the more intimately we know

^ Syriac text, p. 46.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 21the Evangelion da-Mepharreihe., the more primitiveseems to have been its original form.

What concerns us now is not so much theliterary history of the Gospel in Syriac as the lightthrow^n by these early versions on the know^ledgeaccessible to the translators. The earliest retrans-lation of our Lord's vv^ords into a Semitic tonguecannot fail to contain much that is of interest forus. And we find, as might have been anticipated,a mixture of happy intuition and of helplessness.At every turn we are reminded that we are dealingwith mere translations and adaptations of the GreekGospels, yet with translations which have often therare opportunity of being more exact and morehappy than the original work. Happily also thetranslator was unhampered by pedantic methods,such as some four centuries later disfigured theeffort of Justinian's clergy to give the people ofPalestine the Scriptures in their own tongue : noversion is more idiomatic than the Old Syriac orless affected. The Proper Names are given in theoriginal forms or an approximation thereto : Halpcii.,


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYMatta'i and Malku replace A\(l)aio


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 23But exegetical help of this kind is not always to

be got out of the Syriac versions. In cases of realdifficulty we can often see that the translator isonly struggling with the unknown meaning of theGreek, and that his rendering, for all its Semiticappearance, contains no element of originality.There is one very marked instance, which willserve to illustrate what I mean. No phrase in theGospel is more characteristic or more obscure thanthe title 6 ft'o? tov dvOpwirov, the Son of Man., usedby our Lord of Himself in many very varied aspectsof His mission. To seize the full meaning, ormeanings, we must be able to retranslate the Greekwords into the original Aramaic expression. It iswell known that in some circumstances the Aramaicdialects use the phrase 'a son of man' for 'a humanbeing'; moreover, there is an undoubted connexionof some kind between our Lord's use of 'The Sonof Man' and the very similar phrase in Daniel'sVision' which itself was written in Aramaic. Formany reasons, therefore, we turn to the Syriac

1 Dan vii 13.


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24 EARLY CHRISTIANITYrenderings of 6 ui'o? rov dvOpocnrov with some justi-fiable expectation of obtaining help. As a matterof fact, we get none at all. The ordinary renderingin the Old Syriac documents, as in the PeshittaN.T., is b'reh crnashaa phrase sufficiently likebarnasha 'a human being' to sound original, butreally just as little native Syriac as 'The Son ofMan' is English. 'The Son of Man' has nonatural meaning in English : it is a mere con-ventional rendering of 6 f/o? rov avOpooTrov.Similarly, b'reh d'^n&sha has no natural meaning inSyriac. Moreover, it is not the rendering of theO.T. Peshitta in Dan vii 13, which has bar^nashin which means (if it has any real meaning)'son of some folk.' Nor is this all. B'reh d"n^sha^if not a very illuminating translation, is at leastinoffensive. But the earliest Syriac documentsgive us here and there, sometimes singly and some-times in conjunction, the amazing alternative b'reh(I'ya^r^. This is a literal, a too literal, renderingof 6 y/o? rov dvOpccirov. It means Jillus uiri, 'theSon of the man.' The fact that so inadequate a


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 25rendering is actually found can only be explainedon the supposition that it was the primitive Syriacequivalent for the Greek words. But if it could betolerated at all, there must have been an utterabsence of exegetical tradition in the Church.

Thus we come back to the point from whichwe started. The Greek-speaking Church and itsdaughters were wholly dependent for its historicalinformation about our Lord and His times on thebare letter of the Greek Gospels, and the onlyadvantage in this respect enjoyed by the Christiansof Edessa was that their native idiom was akin tothat of Palestine.

In studying the Syriac-speaking branch of theChurch, therefore, we may not hope to find anorganisation more primitive than that of JustinMartyr or Hegesippus. But we know too littleabout the Church of the second century not to begrateful for anything that promises to throw lightupon its aims and beliefs. And here the Syriacevidence is of real value. The Christianity plantedin the Euphrates valley in the latter half of the


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26 EARLY CHRISTIANITYsecond century seems to have developed more slowlyin other words, changed lessthan that of theGreeks. Two hundred years later, in the middleot the fourth century, we still hear the old watch-words in their full vigour from the mouth of amonk and bishop of the orthodox communion.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 27

THE CREED OFAPHRAATES.

To appreciate the significance of the Homilies ofAphraates we must first consider their date and thepersonality of the writer. About the date there isfortunately no doubt. Of the twenty-two Homiliesthe first ten were composed a.d. 337, and the re-maining twelve A.D. 344 : the additional HomilyOn the Cluster is dated a.d. 345. Thus thevappeared in the stormy years between the death ofConstantine and the second return of S. Athanasiusfrom exile. The author, Aphraates (or more ac-curately Afrahat), obtained from his countrymenthe name of the Persian Sage. He was a monk,and must also have been a bishop. Dr WilliamWright conjectures that he was bishop of the


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28 EARLY CHRISTIANITYConvent of S. Matthew near Mosul \ It is certainthat he had a seat in a Synod, held a.d. 344 in thediocese of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and that he wasselected to draw up the encyclical letter of theSynod. This letter he subsequently published asNo. 14 of the Homilies.

Thus Aphraates was one of the foremost leadersof the orthodox Syriac-speaking Church in thesecond quarter of the 4th century. Some of hisfellow-bishops had been to Nicaea, and he himselfis writing in the very middle of the great Ariancontroversy. His words, therefore, cannot fail toshew the temper of his time. Moreover, the planof his great work is admirably fitted to give us theinformation we are seeking. We speak of the' Homilies ' of Aphraates, but the volume of dis-courses which goes by that name is not a collection

^ Wright's Syriac Literature, p. 33, following a statement ina late MS. (B. M. Orient. 1017). A full discussion of the rankand status of Aphraates is to be found on pp. 157, 158 ofDr Gwynn's Introdtution to the translations of select works ofAphraates and Ephraim in vol. xiii of the Select Library ofNicene and post-Xicene Fathers.


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30 EARLY CHRISTIANITYbeen held not half a generation ago, the EmperorConstantine has just died, and Athanasius is in exile.The flames of the Arian controversy are consumingthe vitals of the Empire. Christianity is divided upinto rival camps, each anathematising the other,

while according to one authority the public postingsystem is quite thrown out of gear by the troops ofeager bishops hastening from synod to synod'.What then has Aphraates to say about the crisis inthe Church ?

The astonishing answer is absolutely nothing.Neither Athanasius nor Arius is even mentioned.We hear nothing of Homoousians or Homoeousians,Semiarians or Sabellians. Incidentally Aphraatesnames ' Marcion^ who doth not acknowledge ourCreator to be good ' ; he speaks of ' Valentinus^ whopreacheth that his Creators are many, and that Godin His perfection hath not been uttered by themouth, neither hath the understanding searchedHim out ' ; and he devotes a sentence of con-temptuous reprobation to the Babylonian arts of the

1 Ainmiamis Alarccllinits xxi i6, quoted by Gibbon ii 359.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 31Manichees^ But upon the controversies of his ownday he is silent. This does not come from enmityto the Greeks, for in Homily V {Of the Wars) heexpresses at length his firm conviction, based uponthe visions of Daniel, of the ultimate failure of thePersian attack upon the Empire -. Nor does itcome from w^ant of interest in theological discussion,as we may see from the very title of Homily XVII' Of the Messiah., that He is the Son of God.'' Tothis Homily we shall return presently, but we shallbest do justice to Aphraates by starting in the orderhe has so carefully indicated. Instead of pickingout the most definite or startling doctrinal passages,let us begin with Homily I On Faith'^. Out of theabundance of the heart the mouth speaketh : in adoctrinal treatise that which is put first must in theeyes of the author be fundamental.

Faith, then, according to Aphraates, is like abuilding made of various materials of various colours.

^ Ap/ir. Ill 9. - Aphr. v 6, 19, 24.' This Homily is translated in full by Dr Gwynn, pp. 345

352. It has also been translated by Dr Budge in his edition ofPhiloxenus, vol. ii, pp. clxxvclxxxvii.


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32 EARLY CHRISTIANITYBut the foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ, theRock upon which the whole is built, as said theprophets (2). First a man believes, then loves,then hopes, then is justified and perfected, and hebecomes a Temple for the Messiah to dwell in, asJeremiah said : The Te?nple of the Lord^ the Templeof the Lordye are the Temple of the Lord^ if yewill make fair your ways and your works \ and assaid our Lord Himself Te are in Me^ and I atn inyou (3). The man who has Faith will study tomake himself worthy of being a dwelling-place ofthe Spirit of the Messiah. There must be Fasting,Prayer, Love, Alms, Humility, Virginity, Con-tinence, Wisdom, Hospitality, Simplicity, Patience,Gentleness, Sadness -, Purity : Faith asks for allthese ornaments (4). Christ is both the founda-tion and the inhabitant of the House of Faith :Jeremiah says men are the Temples of God and theApostle said The Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you.This comes to the same thing, for the Lord said :

1 Jer vii 4, 5 (Pesh).- The technical term for the monastic life.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 33/ and My Father are one (5). The Messiah isspoken of by the prophets as a Stone or Rock(69), and as a Light (io, 11). He is theonly 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 onearth ( 17). Faith carries us up to heaven, savesus from the Deluge, looses the prisoners, quenchesthe fire, feeds the hungry, brings back from thegrave, stops the mouths of lions, humbles the proud,and exalts the meek ( 18).

Perhaps you may find this vague and rhetorical.But Aphraates does not leave us here. After thepraise of Faith he goes on to tell us exactly in whatit consists, and this Creed of his is so remarkable adocument that I give it in full.

"For this," he says ( 19), "is Faith :When a man shall believe in God, the Lord of all,That made the heaven 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 moreover His Messiah into the world.

B. 3


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34 EARLY CHRISTIANITYAnd that a man should believe in the coming to life of

the dead,And believe also in the mysteiy of Baptism

This is the Faith of the Church of God.And that a man should separate himselffrom observing hours and sabbaths and months and

seasons,and enchantments and divinations and Chaldaism and

magic,and from fornication and from revelling and from vain

doctrines, the weapons of the Evil One, and fromthe blandishment of honeyed words, and fromblasphemy and from adultery,

And that no man should bear false witness,and that none should speak with double tongues

These are the woi^ks of the Faith that is laid on thetrue Rock,

which is the Messiah,upon Whom all the building doth rise."You will recoo;nise at once the spirit oi this

Creed. It is familiar to us all ; it has been familiarto us for nearly twenty years, for it is the spiritwhich pervades the Didache. To AphraatesChristianity was the revelation of a Divine Spiritdwelling in man and fighting against moral evil,not first and foremost a tissue of philosophicalspeculation about the nature of the Divinity in


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 35itself. But this is wholly alien to the temper ofGreek and Latin Christianity, as it manifests itselffrom the fourth century onward. According to theCreeds which to this day we recite, the inter-relationof the Trinity and the events of the Passion con-stitute the faith of the Church. Nor is this viewconfined to formal ecclesiastical documents.

" Firmly I believe and trulyGod is Three, and God is One

And I next acknowledge dulyManhood taken by the Son."

So runs the beginning of Gerontius' dyingconfession in J. H. Newman's poem, and it onlvexpresses in modern verse what the Church of theEmpire would have us confess as the essence of theChristian Religion \

Not that Aphraates did not acknowledge the^ For a contrast to Aphraates in Syriac literature sec

I'hiloxenus, Discourse 11 32 (Budge's Eng. Tr., p. 29). Thereare, it should be noticed, traces of a (baptismal) Symbol inAphraates, e.g. " He is the First-born Son, the offspring ofMary. ..He suffered, lived again, ascended into the height. ..Heis the Judge of dead and living, who shall sit on the Throne"(XIV 39). 32


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36 EARLY CHRISTIANITYTrinity, or was anything like a modern Unitarian.The Syriac-speaking Church, in common with therest of Christendom, baptized in the Triple Name,as is commanded in Matt xxviii 19. "The Head ofthe man," says Aphraates (xxiii 63 = Wright 500),"is the Messiah. O thou that swearest by thy headand that falsely, if thou dost truly hold the threegreat and glorious Names that were invoked uponthy head, the Father and the Son and the HolySpirit, when thou didst receive the Seal of thy life,do not swear by thy head ! " Or again (xxiii(dO = Wright 496): "Above the heavens, what istherewho doth suffice to tell ? Beneath theearth, what is laid ?there is none to say ! Thefirmamentupon what is it stretched out, or theheavensupon what are they hung ? The earthon what is it pillowed, or the deepin what is itfixed ? We are of Adam, and here with our senseswe perceive little. Only this we know : that Godis one, and His Messiah one, and one the Spirit,and one the Faith, and one Baptism. More thanthus far it doth not help us to speak ; and if we


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYin a doxology (xxiii 63 = Wright 498) Aphraatesascribes, "glory and honour to the Father and toHis Son and to His Spirit, the living and holy,"where living and holy are feminine adjectives in thebetter ms. But he goes further : it is not a questionof mere grammatical niceties. In the treatise, OnVirginity against the yews (xviii \o = JVright 354),he says : " We have heard from the law that a manwill leave his father and his mother and will cleaveto his wife, and they will be one flesh ; and truly aprophecy great and excellent is this. What fatherand mother doth he forsake that taketh a wife ?This is the meaning: that when a man not yethath taken a wife, he loveth and honoureth God hisFather, and the Holy Spirit his Mother, and hehath no other love. But when a man taketh awife he forsaketh his Father and his Mother, thosenamely that are signified above, and his mind isunited with this world ; and his mind and his heartand his thought is dragged away from God into themidst of the world, and he loveth and cherisheth it,as a man loveth the wife of his youth, and the love


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 39of her is different from that of his Father and of hisMother."

We shall find still more startling developmentsof this doctrine of the Spirit when we come to theBardesanian Acts of Thomas. Here I would onlyremind you that there is very early Christianauthority for it. In the ancient Gospel according tothe Hebrews., as quoted by Origen and S. Jerome,our Lord Himself speaks of His Mother the HolySpirit ^ And before we condemn the doctrinealtogether, let us remember that the age whichfollowed its final disappearance polluted the Christianvocabulary with the word (')eoT6KO


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40 EARLY CHRISTIANITYprimitive Christian beliefs, so too Homily XVIIOf the Messiah that He is the Son of God is an echoof one of the most remarkable sayings recorded inS. John's Gospel \ The Homily, like so many thatAphraates wrote, is directed against the Jews, whocomplained that Christians worshipped a man whomthey called Son of God, in defiance of God's ownword / am God^ and there is none beside me^ {% i).Her. " The Father nods and the Son knoios ; The works by theSpirit are performed.'''' Beyond such generalities Ephraim doesnot go."Confess that the Father is; Do not confess that He can be

defined.Believe that the Son hath been ; Do not believe that He can be

seaixhed out.Affirm that the Holy Spirit is ; Do not affirm that She can be

examined.That they are One believe and And that They are Three do

affirm not doubt.Believe that the Father is first; Affirm that the Son is secondThat the Holy Spirit also is Do not doubt She is the third."(Ephr. 0pp. Syr. iii 194: the change of tense in the secondline may be due to the exigencies of metre). The chief pointinsisted on by Ephraim appears to be the impalpability of theSpirit (e.g. iii 161).

^ Joh X 3336. This Homily is translated in full byDr Gwynn, pp. 387392.- Cf. Dent xxxii 39.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 41Aphraates sets himself the task of defending theChristian practice, ev^en if he should concede to theJews that Jesus whom the Christians call God wasonly a man. " Though," he continues, " wetruly hold that Jesus our Lord is God the Son ofGod, and the King the Son of the King, Light fromLight, Son 1 and Counsellor and Guide and Wayand Saviour and Shepherd and Gatherer and Doorand Pearl and Lamp ; and by many Names is Hecalled. But now we will shew that He is the Sonof God and that He is God who from God hathcome " ( 2). For the name of divinity has beengiven to just men, as for instance to Moses, whowas made a God not to Pharaoh onlv but also toAaron- ( 3), and though the Jews say God has noson, yet He called Israel His First-born ', andSolomon His son ^. David also savs of them : / havesaid^ Te are Gods and sons of the Highest all ofyou '

^ Sic: cf. Isaiah ix 6 and also 9." Exod vi I, vii i. ^ Exod iv 22, 23.* 2 Sam vii 14 ; cf. Heb i 5.' Ps Ixxxii (Ixxxi) 6.


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42 EARLY CHRISTIANITY(4). God gives the most exalted titles to whomHe will : He called impious Nebuchadnezzar Kingof Kings. For man was formed by Him in Hisown image to be a Temple for Him to dwell in,and therefore He gives to man honours which Hedenies to the Sun and the Moon and the host ofHeaven^ (| 5, 6). Man of all creatures was firstconceived in God's mind-, though he was not placedin the world till it was ready for him ( 7 ). Whyshould not we worship Jesus, through whom weknow God, Jesus who turned away our mind fromvain superstitions and taught us to adore the OneGod, our Father and Maker, and to serve Him ?Is it not better to do this than to worship the kingsand emperors of this world, who not only areapostates themselves but drive others also to apo-stasy ? (I 8). Our Messiah has been spoken of inthe prophets even to the details of the Crucifixion^

^ Deut iv 17. - Ps xc (Ixxxix) i, 2.^ Among other more ordinary Tcstimoiiia Aphraates quotes

Zech xiv 6 {In that day there shall be cold and frost) as aprophecy of the cold day when Peter had to warm himself bythe fire (Joh xviii 18).


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 43(1 9, 10). We therefore will continue to worshipbefore the Majesty of His Father, who has turnedour worship unto Him. We call Him God, likeMoses ; First-born and Son, like Israel ; Jesus, likeJoshua the son of Nun ; Priest, like Aaron ; King,like David ; the great Prophet, like all the prophets;Shepherd, like the shepherds who tended and ruledIsrael. And us, adds Aphraates, has he called Sonsand made us His Brothers, and we have becomeHis Friends ( 11, 12).

Nothing less than the full abstract here givendoes justice to Aphraates' style and method. It issurely most surprising and instructive to meet withwork animated by this spirit in the middle of the4th century. For my own part, I feel it followstoo closely the lines of our Lord's answer to theJews for me to venture to brand it as unorthodox.

In the following chapter we shall glance at theteaching of Aphraates upon Baptism, Marriage, andAsceticism : this will lead us on to the Gnosticdoctrines found in the Jets ofTho?nas. But beforeleaving this part of the work let me once more call


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44 EARLY CHRISTIANITYattention to the absence of the Greek influence inAphraates. The Persian Sage lived outside theRoman Empire and was educated in a culture butlittle touched by Greek philosophy. He did notfeel that necessity for logical subordination, for thedue relation of the parts to the whole, which theGreeks were the first of mankind to strive after.

And dare we say that he and his Church werealtogether to be pitied ? It is unlikely that thehuman intellect can form a logical system of theUniverse: a logical Creed or 'Weltanschauung' byits very nature betrays its human parentage andtemporary value. With a most imperfect know-ledge of the constitution of the world we live in, byan uncritical use of Scripture, at a time when everyart and every science was decaying, the Greeksattempted in a form of words to define the Inde-finable. They succeeded for a while in obtainingthe allegiance of the Oriental Church, the time oftheir victory being approximately the reigns of theheathen Julian and the Arian Valens. Understress of persecution the Christians closed their


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 45ranks and unified their public confession of FaithsBut what I have brought before you to-day fromthe works of Aphraates shews clearly that there wasno inner unity between East and West. In theEast the theology of S. Athanasius and S. Basil wasa foreign graft, not a genuine natural growth : it istherefore not surprising that the Syriac-speakingChurch broke away hardly a single generation afteran orthodox Emperor was seated on the throne.The mass of the Orientals, especially those moredistant from Constantinople and Antioch, becameNestorian \ and those who remained soon foundthat their position also was untenable. It wasimpossible for the barbarians to remain at peace

with the Greeks : the Church was divided, and theway paved for the triumph of Islam.^ See Hort's Two Dissertations, pp. 128 133.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAX EMPIRE. 47but it has come bv another line of descent and thecousins have not all things in common.

With regard to the Lord's Supper Aphraatesis comparatively normal. In the Eucharist thefaithful partake of the Body and Blood of Christ.It must be taken fasting, but the fast must be suchas once for all was prescribed by Isaiah, "for alwavsis fasting from evil things better than fasting frombread and u^ater^." The fasting of Abel andEnoch, of innocent Noah, of faithful Abraham, ofunrevengeful Joseph are to be our models. "Ifpurity of heart be absent, the fast is not accepted.And remember and see, my beloved, that it is wellthat a man should cleanse his heart and keep histongue and cleanse his hands of evil \ for it is notfitting to mix honey and wormwood. For if aman would fast from bread and water, let him notmix with his fasting; abuse and cursing. Thou hastbut one door to thy housethat house which is aTemple of God \ it doth not beseem thee, O man,that by the door where the King doth enter in

1 III s.


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48 EARLY CHRISTIANITYshould come forth filth and dirt ! For when a manwill fast from all that is abominable and will takethe Body and Blood of the Messiah, let him takeheed to his mouth whereby the King doth enter in.Thou hast no right, O man, through that samemouth to give out unclean words ! Hear what ourSaviour saith : That which entereth into a man dothnot defile hi?n ; but that which cometh forth from themouthy that defileth him'^.^' The fast here enjoinedis metaphorical, but there can be no doubt thatAphraates teaches the doctrine that our Lord isphysically present in the consecrated elements.

We may pause by the way to note Aphraates'singular and picturesque explanation of the threedays and three nights among the dead whichChrist had predicted for Himself. In his dis-course on the Passover- he says that our Lord gaveHis Body and Blood to the disciples at the LastSupper. But, he argues, he whose body is eaten ^

1 III 2. 2 xn 6, 7.^ In XII 9 (Wright, p. 222, line 3) we must read ^aktl: the

MS. has 'ekal (or \ikel).


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 49and blood drunk is already counted among thedead. The three days and three nights are tobe reckoned from the time of the Supper, and, asAphraates puts the three hours' darkness as onewhole night and the ensuing time of light on GoodFriday afternoon as one whole day, he has nodifficulty in making up the required number.Moreover, he adds, this is why Christ kept silencebefore Pilate and the Jews, for it was impossiblethat one who is counted among the dead shouldspeak.

These things, however, belong to the curiositiesof exegesis : they do not have much bearing uponthe general history of Christian Doctrine. It isotherwise with the theory of Baptism as presentedto us in Discourse VII.

The majority of the references to Baptism inAphraates contain little that is especially startling.Christian baptism is the true circumcision'; it is

administered, as we have already seen, in the Namesof the Three Persons of the Trinity-; by baptism

^ xn 9. 2 xxiii 63: see above, p. 36.B. 4


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so EARLY CHRISTIANITYregeneration is conferred, sins are washed away^,and the body is preserved in the Day of Judgement"."From baptism do we receive the Spirit of theMessiah. For in the same hour that the priestsinvoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it comethdown and broodeth upon the waters, and they thatare baptized are clothed with it. For from all thatare born of the body the Spirit is far away, untilthey come to the Birth by water, and then theyreceive the Holy Spirit^." In accordance withancient custom the rite of baptism is performed atEaster ^

All this is normal, regular, almost common-place. Suddenly we are transported into a differentplanet. Baptism is not the common seal of everyChristian's faith, but a privilege reserved for monks.

The passage where this amazing view is enforcedis so important that I give it at length. In theDiscourse upon Penitents, after reciting the storyof Gideon who by the trial of water picked out his

1 IV 19. - VI 14.2 VI 14: cf. Gtvynn, p. 371. ^ >^n 13.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 51three hundred from ten thousand men, and afterquoting our Lord's words that many are called butfew chosen, Aphraates goes on to say^: "Where-fore thus should the trumpeters, the heralds of theChurch, cry and warn all the Society of Godbefore the Baptismthem, I say, that have offeredthemselves for virginity and for holiness, youths andmaidens holythem shall the heralds warn. Andthey shall say : He whose heart is set to the stateof matrimony, let him marry before baptism, lesthe fall in the spiritual contest and be killed. Andhe that feareth this part of the struggle let him turnback, lest he break his brother's heart like his own.He also that loveth his possessions let him turnback from the army, lest when the battle shall waxtoo fierce for him he may remember his propertyand turn back, and he that turneth back then iscovered with disgrace. He that hath not offeredhimself and hath not yet put on his armour, if heturn back he is not blamed ; but every one thatdoth offer himself and put on his armour, if he

1 VII 20.

42


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 53and Cathars of a later day^ So also, I suppose,Buddhism is a community of monks : the peopleare adherents, not members of the body.

It is very difficult to pass a true judgement uponAphraates' conception of the Christian life. Somuch depends on the amount of influence whichthe inner community had upon the mass of thepeople, or, looking at the matter from another pointof view, how much the unbaptised lay Christianfelt himself to be a member of Christ. Unfortu-nately we have very little evidence on these points.

One thing at least is certain. We who live ina sacramental system of Christianity, whether webe Catholics or Protestants, ought to be deeplygrateful to the true instinct which produced thesacrament of Holy Matrimony. It is not by chancethat Dom Parisot in his ingenious Introduction tothe writings of Aphraates was unable to find anyreference to this institution, for I suspect that ourPersian Sage would have recoiled from the thought

1 See especially the Cathar ritual in Mr Conybeare's Key ofTruth, pp. 160 170.


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54 EARLY CHRISTIANITYof such a ceremony with horror. We are soaccustomed to the solemnisation of weddings thatwe may easily come to think of the act as naturaland inevitable, but the words of Aphraates teach usthat it was not always so regarded. It is surely nolight gain to Christian society that the bridal feasthas been hallowed with the blessing of the Church.

With this we must take leave of Aphraates andthe orthodox circles of the Syriac Church. I hopeI have succeeded in leaving upon you a favourableimpression of the Persian Sage. As a theologian,his modesty in speculation and his abstinence fromabusive language are virtues rare in his own age andadmirable in all ages, while his independent know-ledge of the Bible has hardly been equalled amongthe Fathers ^ As a writer and as a theologian heis greatly superior to his more famous contemporaryS. Ephraim, the poverty of whose thought is scarcelymore appalling than the fecundity of his pen.

1 It must have required no small amount of courage, as wellas intelligence, to reject the application of Lam iv 20 to Christ:cf. Just. Ap. I 55; Tert. adv. Marc, in 6, etc.


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'BARDESANES' DE FATO.The philosophical dialogue known as 'Bardesanes

De Fato' is not the work of Bardaisan himself butof his disciple Philip. It was composed not longafter the Romans had taken possession of Edessa,i.e. about the middle of the 3rd century. Inform it is modelled upon the Dialogues of Plato,Bardaisan taking the place of Socrates as the chiefspeaker and the teacher of a younger generation.

I do not now propose to enter upon any fuljdiscussion of the dialogue, not because it is notinteresting in itself, but because the school out ofwhich it came exercised only an indirect influenceupon the later developments of the Syriac-speakingChurch. The disciples of Bardaisan, like theirgreat master, were tainted with heresy, and I


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56 EARLY CHRISTIANITYimagine that the De Fato owes its preservation towhat is but a side-interest, vix. the graphic de-scriptions contained in it of the varied customs ofthe nations of the earth with regard to marriage and other social observances. In fact, the title of thework in our Ms. is 'The Book of the Laws of theCountries ^'

The main object of the dialogue is to expoundthe doctrine of the three influences which are atwork upon man. These are his Nature^ his Fate^and his Free-will. By Nature men are born, theygrow to maturity and age, and they die : so far allmen are alike. By their Fate distinctions are intro-duced between them,the distinctions of wealthand poverty, beauty and ugliness, health and sick-ness. These are not wholly in our power andcome, at least partly, by Fate ; for the doctrinethat misfortunes are all sent as punishments for sinis expressly rejected-. But in addition to theirNature and their Fate men are moved by their

^ The dialogue was discovered by Cureton, and edited in hisSpicilegium Syriacum, 1855. ^ Spicilegium, p. 9.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 57Free-will, which has been given to them as a giftfrom God's bounty. It is in respect of this gift ofFree-will that man was made in the image of God'.By his Free-will a man can modify his Fate tosome extent, and with regard to his Free-will, andthat alone, will he be judged at the Last Dav.Moreover the commandments of God are such thatthey are easy, for they are independent of Fate, andonly the Will is needed to perform them. Even ifa man be poor and sick he can love and bless andspeak the truth, and can pray for the good of everyman he knows, while if he be rich and strong hecan in addition help his neighbour. Nothing canhinder us from these things : we are not commandedto do anything involving bodily strength or mentalcleverness. Nay more, when a man does well andabstains from evil he is gladevery man, that is,except those who were created not for good and arecalled tares-. The commandments of God areeasy : it is success in this life that is barred withobstacles ^^ Spicilegitim, pp. 3, 4. - Ibid. p. 5 adJin. ^ Ibid. p. 7.


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58 EARLY CHRISTIANITYThe proof of the existence of Free-will in man

is made to rest partly on the diversity of customs of various nations of men compared with the uniformityof each species of animal all over the world, andpartly on the actual observed changes of humancustoms arising from royal decrees to conqueredsubjects or now in these last days from conversionto the new race of us Christians ^

Two points in this curious and interesting workappear to me to deserve attention. The first is thestrongly religious tone by which it is marked,religious, that is, as distinct from ecclesiastical ormerely speculative. The dialogue starts with theold question why God did not make man so that heshould not sin, and the judgement to come is nottaught but assumed. It is the fear of God whichsets us free from all other fears-. At the sametime the tone of the book is singularly uneccle-siastical. The Unity of God and the Judgementare the only doctrines of the Church which presentthemselves, while but for a passing reference to the

1 Spicileg., p. 20. - Ibid. p. 2.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 59Parable of the Sower we might have supposed thatthe author was ignorant of the New Testament.But the almost Jewish tone of parts of the dialogueis of more than passing interest, when we rememberthe Jewish culture of Aphraates^ Though theform of the dialogue is borrowed from Plato, thespirit is Semitic : the hands may be the hands ofEsau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob.

The other point which I wish to notice here isthe very curious doctrine of the composition of theCosmos, a doctrine certainly rare in Christianwritings and perhaps due to Bardaisan himself.According to this doctrine the Universe is com-pounded of what the author calls Ithye or ElementalBeings. These, if not eternal, were at least pre-existent to the present order of things, and thework of creation consisted above all in arrangingthe Elements out of Chaos into an Order, wherebythe Elements could neither do serious injury to

^ Note that in Gen i 26 the dialogue says man was made ' inthe image of Elohim,^ not simply ' in the image of God ' : cf.Gen vi i Pesh.


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6o EARLY CHRISTIANITYeach other nor be seriously injured themselves.The Machine has been set going, and the Parts donot collide, as they would if they had been left tothemselves and their spheres of action not strictlylimited. Nevertheless even the Elements havesome degree of freedom, and for this they also willappear to be judged at the Last Day. But theirfreedom is but small compared with that of man's :it is in respect to his freedom that man stands atthe head of creation \

It is a picturesque conception. According toBardaisan the world was not brought into being outof nothing, nor formed of matter naturally inert,but it is a beautifully balanced combination ofindependent and often antagonistic forces. I donot think we shall do justice to the fundamentalidea unless for the Sun and the Moon, the Seaand the Winds, we substitute in thought the forcesof nature which make up our modern universe,such properties of matter I mean as Gravitationand Electricity.

1 Spicileg. , pp. 4, 2 1


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62 EARLY CHRISTIANITYTrinity to manare found in the Hymn as inother early Syriac literature. The King of Kings^the ^een of the East^ and the Viceroy^ the nextin rank, are respectively the Father, Mother andBrother of the Soul : there can be little doubt thatthey correspond to the Father, the Holy Spirit, andthe Son.


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THE ACTS OF JUDAS THOMAS.We have now come to that original and charac-

teristic product of early Syriac-speaking Christianity,the Acts of Judas Thomas, the brother of our Lordand the Apostle of India.

I am quite aware that this statement is highlycontroversial. The Acta Thornae are commonlvsupposed to be one of a series of fabulous Greektales describing the missionary adventures of all theApostles. This conception of the work I hold tobe altogether erroneous. That the stories told inthe Acts of Thomas have little or no historical basisis indeed almost self-evident, but I do not believethat it was intended to form part of a series, andI believe most firmly that it was originally composedin Syriac, not Greek. Possibly also I ought to


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64 EARLY CHRISTIANITYdefend myself for investing an admittedly fabulousnarrative with so much importance. It is not sovery long ago since students of Church historymight be divided into the credulous folk whowholly or partly believed these tales, and the wise

who neglected them altogether. But the presentgeneration is too much accustomed to the seriousreligious novel not to be in sympathy with adoctrinal work cast in narrative form. That theActs of Thoinas is the work of a man very much inearnest there can be no manner of doubt. Thestyle is simple, as becomes the narrative setting, butit is as truly a book of religious philosophy as thePilgrim'' s Progress^ and it demands from us seriousstudy.

Before indicating the main grounds upon whichI regard these Acts as a Syriac work it may be notsuperfluous to give a short abstract of the storywhich forms the framework of the book^

I. At the beginning we are told how the^ A complete English Translation is given in Wright's

Apocryphal Acts, vol. ii, pp. 146298.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 65Twelve Apostles divided the countries of the earthamong themselves by lot, and that the lot vv^hich fellto Judas ThomasJudas the Twinwas India.But Judas Thomas did not wish to go and preachto the Indians, so our Lord appeared to an Indianmerchant named Habban, a servant of KingGundaphar, and sold Thomas to him as a slave.Thomas and Habban go off by sea and disembarkat the town of Sandaruk (ar, Sanadruk). Here thevfind that the King of the place is making a greatfeast to celebrate his only daughter's marriage, andthey go in with the rest to the feast. At the feastThomas sings a curious Hymn : he also prophesiesthe violent death of one of the guests, an eventwhich comes to pass that very night. The Kinghears of this and forces Thomas to go in and prayover the bride. He does so and then departs. Butwhen the bride and bridegroom are alone our LordHimself appears to them in the likeness of Thomasand persuades them both to a life of virginity. Inthe end the King also is converted, and the youngpeople join St Thomas in India.

B. 5


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66 EARLY CHRISTIANITYII. Meanwhile Thomas and Habban had gone

on to King Gundaphar in India, and Thomasagrees to build a palace for the King. But all themoney that is given him for the palace he spendsamong the poor. When King Gundaphar discoversit he is very' angry, and casts Thomas into prisontill he shall make up his mind by what death heshall die. Now that very night Gad, the King'sbrother, dies and is taken by angels to heaven :there he sees a magnificent palace, which is the verypalace that has been built for his brother by theApostle. So Gad begs to be allowed to come backto life that he may buy the palace from the King,as he does not know its value. This is granted ;but when the King hears the tale he understandsand believes. Thomas is set free, and the Kingand his brother are both baptised in a bath-houseand receive the Eucharist.

III. After this Judas Thomas brings to Hfe ayouth who had been killed by a devil in the form ofa black snaked

1 In this story, as in some of the others, the prayers andexhortations of Thomas are given at considerable length.


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68 EARLY CHRISTIANITYXanthippus {or^ Xenophon) and goes with theGeneral. On the way the horses of their chariotbreak, down, but four wild asses come to be har-nessed in their stead, and with their help the devilsare driven out and the women healed.

VIII. Soon after this a noble lady, by nameMygdonia, the wife of Cyrus \ a kinsman of KingMazdai, is converted by Thomas to the life ofvirginity. Cyrus is in despair ; and when hispersonal influence fails to move Mygdonia, he goesand complains to the King, who sends and arrestsThomas at the house of Sifur the General. Thomasis scourged and sent to prison, where he sings aHymn of praised But Mygdonia remains firm,and secretly visits Thomas in the prison with hernurse Narqia : there he baptises them and celebratesthe Eucharist. In the meanwhile King Mazdai

' The name Cyrus, in Syriac Koresh, is preserved un-corrupted in the Sachau MS. In the British Museum MS. it ismisspelt Karish, and in the Greek cornipted to XapijLo^.

- In front of this Hymn, which is undoubtedly a genuineportion of the Acts, the British Museum Codex inserts the greatHymn of the Soul.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 69and Cyrus, who regard the conversion of Mygdoniaas due to magic and enchantment, agree to letThomas go if he will tell her to be as she wasbefore. Thomas warns them that it will be useless,and that neither his persuasion nor tortures wouldchange her new spirit : this is proved to be the case,and Mygdonia refuses to listen to the Apostle whenhe pretends to tell her to go back to her husband.After this Thomas returns to the house of Sifurthe General and baptises him and his family, andgives them also the Eucharist : at the same timeMygdonia converts Tertia, the wife of King Mazdai.Mazdai now becomes seriously angry and dragsThomas oft" to prison again, but on the way heconverts Vizan, the King's son. In the prison theApostle makes his final address, beginning with theLord's Prayer. Manashar, Vtzan's wife (who hasjust been healed of a long sickness by our LordHimself appearing to her in the form of a youth),joins them in the prison, and the Apostle baptisesVizan, Manashar, and Tertia. In the morninsiThomas is brought out and condemned to death by


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70 EARLY CHRISTIANITYthe King : he is taken outside the town and after ashort prayer is speared by four soldiers. Before hisdeath he ordains Sifur and Vizan, and the convertscontinue in the faith after being encouraged by avision of the ascended Judas Thomas.

The bones of the Apostle were secretly takenaway to the ' West ' by one of the brethren, but along time afterwards the dust from the grave charmsaway a devil from one of King Mazdai's sons,whereupon the king also believes and prays Sifurand the brethren for forgiveness.

Such is the tale of St Thomas. It is quitepossible that some of the details of the legend areolder than our Acts. The reputed bones of theApostle were preserved at Edessa, and doubtlesssome story of their adventures had grown up aroundthe shrine. But the real interest of the Acts is nothistorical, any more than the interest of Lear orHamlet is historical. The interest lies in theprayers and sermons of Judas Thomas. These arenot mere embellishments of the narrative, but the


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EARLY CHRISTIANITYelucidation. Cyrusnot in the Greek but in anapproximation to the genuine Oriental formMazdai, Vizan, Manashar, are good old Persiannames. Mygdonia is another name for Nisibis.Except Xenophon the deacon and Tertia the queenthere is not one European-sounding name amongthem.

But the main argument for regarding the ActaThomae as an original Syriac composition is inde-pendent of these general considerations. It consistsin the large number of passages where the existingGreek is either a mistranslation or a misreading ofthe Syriac. The Greek and the Syriac oftendiverge freely from one another, and there is oftenno attempt to translate literally ; but in a sufficientnumber of instances the evidence is clear enough foran induction.

A full critical discussion involves considerationsof Syriac grammar and palaeography and w^ould beout of place here : I must refer the reader tomy paper in the Journal of Theological Studiesfor October, 1899. At the same time I w'\\\


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. nindicate in a couple of examples the nature ofthe evidence.

When Judas Thomas is about to go away withSifur the General to cure his wife and daughter hebids farewell to his converts, and says to them : "Beye holding to us and looking at us as the ministersof God ; though we also, if we do not take painsthat we may be worthy of this name, punishmentwe shall receive, and for judgment and requitalit will be to us" (Wright, Syriac Text 237''"^^ =Bonnet, Jcta Thornae 48^^"^'* ). The correspondingGreek has : " Remember us, as also we rememberyou : for unless v/t fulfil the burden of the command-ments (to tmu evToXciyv (poprlov TeXecroy/jiev) weshall not be worthy heralds of the name of Christ,and moreover shall receive at the last punish?nentfor our own heads (rijv rifxcoplav . . . tt}? kavTOivK(pa\ri


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 75even in the most heretical sects. But the difficultyvanishes when we look at the Svriac, which hasnot 'this man^ but ' x\{\% deed^^ i.e. the epyov t/}?alcr')(yvri


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 77been excised altogether or some harmless platitudehas been substituted, but the general accuracy of thetext as published by Wright is attested by the veryancient palimpsest fragments at Sinai.

I have designated the work as unorthodox.This perhaps requires some justification. Judgedby an Athanasian standard it is of course quiteheretical, but the standard of the early Syriac-speaking Churches was nearer that of Aphraates.To my own mind the un-catholic note is struck inthe puritan recklessness of the writer : he neverallows for the weakness of humanity or for theeconomy of Church government. This is the noteof Tertullian, of Montanus, of the Donatiststhenote struck in our own century by Edward Irving.But more definite indications are not wanting. Inthe first place, I cannot believe that an orthodoxcircle would have developed the very remarkablebelief that Judas ThomasJudas the Twinwasthe twin-brother of our Lord Himself. Not onlydo men and women in these Jets mistake the onefor the other, but the very devils and wild beasts


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78 EARLY CHRISTIANITYsalute the Apostle as ' Twin of the Messiahs' Nowonder that some of the Mss. have obliterated thistitle !

The argument commonly relied upon for re-garding the Acta Thomae as ' Gnostic ' is theoccurrence of certain mystical and very imperfectlyunderstood expressions in the pravers and invoca-tions. Some few of these have disappeared inSyriac from the text as preserved in the BritishMuseum ms. used by Wright, and many more havebeen left out in the Sachau MS. at Berlin : but insome cases at least the queer phrases in the Greekare the result not of heterodox doctrine but of theignorance or helplessness of the writer^. Thediscussion of such points involves critical details andthe niceties of Semitic grammar : all that needs tobe pointed out here is the improbability that awriter so much in earnest as the author of the Actswould indicate an elaborate and strange cosmogonyby a few side touches.

1 Wright 197, 208.2 E.g. Bound 30' 1-13 {= Wright 209I"-"): cf. Gen i 2 in

the Peshitta.


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8o EARLY CHRISTIANITYThese Acts strike a higher, shriller, note than

that of Catholicism, but now and again it ringstrue. If we overlook the fantastic machinery ofthe tale, and remember that the author was livingin a world distracted by the indecisive yet devas-tating struggle of Greek and Persian, a worldalso where what there was of art, of science, ofphilosophy, was still wholly pagan, we shall findsomething with which to sympathise aiid evensomething to inspire. No one, save only St Francisof Assisi, has ever so whole-heartedly preached inthe spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Nowherein Christian literature do the merchant's goodsappear so little in comparison with the Pearl ofgreat price. "As long as we are in the world,"says St Thomas, " we are unable to speak aboutthat which all the believers in God are going toreceive. For if we say that He hath given usLight, we mention something which we have seen ;and if we say that He hath given us Wealth, wemention something that is in the world ; and if wespeak of Clothing, we mention something that


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 8inobles wear ; and if we speak of dainty Meats, wemention something against which we are warned ;and if we speak of this temporary Rest, a chastise-ment is appointed for it. But we speak of Godand of our Lord Jesus, and of Angels and Watchersand Holy Ones, and of the New World, and ofthe incorruptible food of the tree of Life, and of thedraught of the water of Life ; of what Eye hathnot seen, nor Ear heard, nor hath it entered intothe Heart of man to conceive,what God hathprepared from of old for those who love him'."Surely this is the language of Gnosticism at its best.It is unencumbered with irrelevant details aboutthe origin and physical constitution of the universe,it is couched in no uncouth jargon of iEons andEmanations, but it expresses as clearly as words canspeak the great doctrine that our knowledge andour terminology is and must alwavs remain relati\'eand approximate. All things are said in Figures,because the Things Eternal are the things that arenot seen, neither can they be named with a name.

1 Wright 205; Eng. Tr. 177.B. 6


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82 , EARLY CHRISTIANITYThe teaching of the Acts of Thomas contains

another feature which must not remain unnoticed.It is a feature which, though not heretical in itself,is in early documents characteristic rather of Gnosticthought than of Catholic teaching. This is thelack of interest in controversy against the Jews andagainst idolatry. Judas Thomas does not bringforward unorthodox opinions about the old dispen-sation or the worship of heathen gods : he simplypasses these things by with the turn of a phrase.Thus we read (Transl. p. 207) that God's will wasspoken by the Prophets, but Israel did not obeybecause of their evil genius ^ Again, the devilsconfess that they take pleasure in sacrifices andlibations of wine on the altars as well as in murderand adultery (Transl. p. 213)-. But these aremere allusions by the way : it is not so muchagainst the gods that St Thomas preaches as againstthe evil nature in man. Contrast this with the

1 In the Syriac, yasyhon bishd: cf. Dent xxxi 21 and thecorresponding Jewish doctrines.

'^ See also Transl. p. 198.


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 83elaborate polemic against the Jews in Aphraates,and the long sermons against idolatry in the Doctrineof Addai. So much indeed is it the rule that the'Acts' of martyrs should contain a testimonyagainst the worship of idols that in the Latinversion of the Acta Thomae there is an extendedinterpolation, telling how St Thomas refused toworship the Sun-god when he was brought beforeKing Mazdai.

The interest of the author of the Acts of Thomaslay in the workings of human nature, not in theconflicting claims of rival religionsin a word, itlay in the conversion of individual souls rather thanin the establishment of a Church. But to theCatholic writers from the very earliest period thecase was different. To them the Jewish questionwas vital, not so much for the sake of convincina;the Jews of error as to establish their own position.There stood the Holy Oracles, the promises ofGod to His peopleto whom did they apply ? Itwas as essential for the early Church to establishher claim to be the true heir of the Covenants, as

62


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84 EARLY CHRISTIANITYit is for the High Anglican of our day to make outa case for the apostolical succession of the Englishbishops. With the Gnostics, unless I am mistaken,the position of things was not quite the same.Early Catholicism was a historical religion, provedby texts out of the Old Testament and by theevents of the life of Jesus of Nazareth : Gnosticism,on the other hand, was what we call natural religion,a philosophy. The philosophy might be illustratedfrom the Old Testament or the New, but it wasreally independent of the Bible. It was not theapplication of the old promises of God that troubledthe author of the Acts of Thomas but the aimlessnessof men's lives, which to him appeared to be filledwith care and sorrow about that which must quicklypass away for ever.

In the conception of the Churchthat is, theorganised body of believers,as a thing in itself tobe worked for and fostered, lies, I think, the pointof difference between Catholicism and Gnosticism,between Aphraates and the Acts of Thomas. Tothe convert of Judas Thomas there was literally


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 87reconciling the Catholic Religion with ChristianVerity, as the Athanasian Creed puts it. In theChristian Veritythat is, Theological Science,ofthe 4th century there was much that was temporary,ignorant, Greek, as indeed there is in the science.Christian or otherwise, of our own day. I think itwill help not only the historical investigator of thehistory of dogma, but also those who are fashioningthe channel of our own beliefs to take seriousaccount of the non-Greek Church of the East.

The spirit of Asceticism touches us from anotherside. In these cold climates the ascetic ideal hasnever been a really dominant factor. It is alwaysnecessary to make so much provision for the fleshthat it is impossible to aim at forgetting its require-ments. Even at Marseilles, in Cassian's day, itprovoked merely ridicule when some of the monksattempted to live as the Egyptians lived in the warm,dry deserts. But the British Empire covers manylands and many climates, and it is the simple factthat in the land where Judas Thomas is fabled tohave lived and taught the natural instincts of the


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EARLY CHRISTIANITY.people still identify true religion with the life of thewandering mendicant. The other day a lady,the wife of a missionary who has spent manyyears with her husband at a mission station inSouthern India, told me that when Christianityreally takes possession of a native of India, when hebecomes really converted, he is frequently anxiousto take up the wandering ascetic life. I shewedmy friend the Acts of Judas Thomas^ aiid she wasinterested to find in it so much of the ethical typewhich an Indian convert would naturally be disposedto admire. These converts, remember, are Protest-ants who have heard of Christianity only throughthe stately and respectable formularies of theChurch of England or through one of the sectsof English nonconformists. O testimonium animaenaturaliterasceticae ! But if asceticism grows sonaturally and inevitably on Eastern soil it must bea fact of human nature with which we have toreckonto direct and educate, it may be, but notaltogether to repress. Even if the heathen 'ascetic'of modern India has often more points in common


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OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 89with the Friar of the later middle ages than withSt Francis of Assisi or Judas Thomas, yet herepresents an ideal not wholly alien to the teachingof the New Testament. We live in an age ofa victorious and progressive material civilisation :even if we are content to enter into life by keep-ing the commandments only, it may be well toremember the counsel of perfection which our LordHimself gave to the rich young man. To refuseto listen to the note struck so eloquently, if somonotonously, in the Acts of fudas Thomas is toneglect one of the features which distinguish menfrom the beasts that perish.


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CONTENTS.Introduction

The Creed of Aphraates .The Sacraments in Aphraates' Bardesanes ' De FatoThe Acts of "Judas Thomas

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CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.


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BT THE SAME AUTHOR,THE RULES OF TYCONIUS {Texts


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