T he literature of Syria, as known to us at the present day, is, with the exception of translations from the Greek and some other languages, a Christian literature. The writings of the Syrian heathens, such as the so-called Sābians (see Sabians) of Harrān, which were extant, at least in part, even in the 13th century, seem to have now wholly disappeared. The beginnings of this literature are lost in the darkness of the earliest ages of Christianity. It was at its best from the 4th to the 8th century, and then gradually died away, though it kept up a flickering existence till the 14th century or even later. We must own —and it is well to make the confession at the outset— that the literature of Syria is, on the whole, not an attractive one. As Renan said long ago, the characteristic of the Syrians is a certain mediocrity. They shone neither in war, nor in the arts, nor in science. They altogether lacked the poetic fire of the older—we purposely emphasize the word—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 Al-Fārābī, no Ibn Sīnā, no Ibn Rushd, in the cloisters of Edessa, Ken-neshrē, or Nisibis. Yet to the Syrians belongs the merit of having passed on the lore of ancient Greece to the Arabs, and therefore, as a matter of history, their literature must always possess a certain amount of interest in the eyes of the modern student. The Syrian Church never produced men who rose to the level of a Eusebius, a Gregory Nazianzen, a Basil, and a Chrysostom; but we may still be thankful to the plodding diligence which has preserved for us in fairly good translations many valuable works of Greek fathers which would otherwise have been lost. And even Syria’s humble chroniclers, such as John of Ephesus, Dionysius of Tell-Mahrē, and Bar-Hebraeus, deserve their meed of praise, seeing that, without their guidance, we should have known far less than we now know about the history of two important branches of the Eastern Church, besides losing much interesting information as to the political events of the periods with which their annals are occupied.

As Syriac literature commences with the Bible, we first briefly enumerate the different versions of Holy Scripture.

The most important of these is the so-called Pĕshīttā (mappaktā pĕshīttā), “the simple” or “plain version," the Syriac vulgate. This name is in use as early as the 9th or 10th century. As to the Old Testament, neither the exact time nor place of its translation is known; indeed, from certain differences of style and manner in its several parts, we may rather suppose it to be the work of different hands, extending over a considerable period of time. It would seem, however, as a whole, to have been a product of the 2d century, and not improbably a monument of the learning and zeal of the Christians of Edessa. Possibly Jewish converts, or even Jews, took a part in it, for some books (such as the Pentateuch and Job) are very literally rendered, whereas the coincidences with the LXX. (which are particularly numerous in the prophetical books) show the hand of Christian translators or revisers. That Jews should have had at any rate a consultative share in this work need not surprise us, when we remember that Syrian fathers, such as Aphraates, in the middle of the 4th century, and Jacob of Edessa, in the latter half of the 7th, had frequent recourse, like Jerome, to the scholars of the synagogue. To what extent subsequent revision may have been carried it is not easy to say; but it seems tolerably certain that alterations were made from time to time with a view to harmonizing the Syriac text with that of the LXX. Such an opportunity may, for instance, have been afforded on a considerable scale by the adoption of Lucian’s text of the LXX. at Antioch in the beginning of the 4th century (see Septuagint, vol. xxi. p. 669). On all these points, however, we know nothing for certain, and may well repeat the words of Theodore of Mopsuestia in his commentary on Zephaniah i. 6: ηρμηveυτaι Sè ταΰτα eis μev την Σύρων παρ’ 0τoυ δή πoτe' ουδέ yàp tyvωστaι μjlχpi τηs τi∣μepov oστιs πoτl ovros iστιv.

The canonical books of the Old Testament according to the Pĕshīttā are substantially those of the Hebrew Bible. In the' Massoretic MSS. (see below), whether Nestorian or Jacobite, the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are passed over, and in the Nestorian the book of Esther also. But, on the other hand, it must be noticed that all these books are cited by Aphraates, and that they all appear in the Codex Ambrosianus. Of the Chronicles there is a MS. of the 6th century in the British Museum, Add. 17104. Esther appears in a volume of equal age (Add. 14652) as one of the constituent parts of the “Book of Women,” the others being Ruth, Susanna, Judith, and the history of Thecla, the disciple of St Paul, which last is excluded from Biblical MSS. The oldest dated MS. of any portion of the Old Testament at present known to us is Add. 14425 in the British Museum (Gen., Exod., Num., Deut.), transcribed at Āmid by a deacon named John in 464. The deutero-canonical books or apocrypha, translated by different hands from the Greek, are nearly the same as in the LXX. The Codex Ambrosianus, for example, contains Wisdom, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and two Epistles of Baruch; the Song of the Three Children, Bel and the Dragon, and Susanna; Judith, Siracides or Ecclesiasticus; the Apocalypse of Baruch; the fourth book of Esdras; and five books of the Maccabees, the fourth being the history of Samona and her sons, and the fifth Josephi de Bello Judaico lib. vi . To these must be added from other MSS. the first or third book of Esdras, the book of Tobit, and the prayer of Manasses. Of the first book of the Maccabees two recensions are extant, as far as chap. xiv. 24. The book of Tobit presents the text of the LXX. as far as chap. vii. 11.

The canonical books of the New Testament are the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles (to which are annexed the three catholic epistles, viz., James, 1 Peter, and 1 John), and the fourteen epistles of St Paul. The shorter apostolic epistles, viz., 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, and Jude, and the Apocalypse of St John, were rejected by the early Syrian Church.

As to the Pĕshīttā version of the Gospels (P), a variety of critical questions arise when we consider it in connexion with two other works, the Dia-tessarδn of Tatian (T) and the Curetonian Gospels (Sc). Tatian, the friend of Justin Martyr, afterwards counted a heretic, composed out of the four Gospels a work which received the title of Τό δt,a τεσσάρων eυayyl∖ιοv, in Syriac more briefly Dia-lcssaron, or Evangelion da-Mĕḥallĕṭē, “the Gospel of the Mixed.” It is a subject of controversy whether Tatian wrote this work in Greek or in Syriac, and whether he compiled it from the Greek Gospels or from a previous Syriac version. According to Zahn and Baethgen, the author’s language was Syriac, his sources Greek. They hold that this was the only Gospel in use in the Syrian Church for nearly a century, but that about the year 250, under the influence of Western MSS. of the Greek text (see Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Introd., §§ 118, 214), a version of “the Separate Gospels,” Evangelion da-Mĕpharrĕshē, was introduced. The translator, according to Baethgen, made use of T as far as he could; and of this text Sc is, in the opinion of these scholars, the solitary survival in our days. The evidence for this view does not, however, appear to be conclusive. It seems that a Syriac version of the four Gospels, as well as of the other parts of the New Testament, must have existed in tho 2d century, perhaps even before the version of the Old Testament. From this Tatian may have compiled his Dia-tessarōn, or he may have written that work in Greek and others may have done it into Syriac. Be that as it may, T certainly gained great popularity in the early Syrian Church, and almost superseded the Separate Gospels. Aphraates quoted it; Ephraim wrote a commentary upon it; the Doctrine of Addai or Addaeus (in its present shape a work of the latter half of the 4th century) transfers it to the apostolic times; Rabbūlā, bishop of Edessa (411-435), promulgated an order that “the priests and deacons should take care that in every church there should be a copy of the Separate Gospels (Evangelion da-Mĕρharrĕshē), and that it should be read”; and Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus (423-457), swept up more than two hundred copies of it in the churches of his diocese, and introduced the four Gospels in their place: τά των τeττάpωv ευayyελιστωv ἀvισyαyοv εύαyyελιa. The result of these and similar well meant efforts is that not a single copy of T has come down to our times.-25a, Luke ii. 1-39. Ciasca’s copy is now (1887) in the hands of De Lagarde, who has published a few pages of it in Nachrichten von der königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1886, No. 4, pp. 150-158. According to De Lagarde, the text is that of the ordinary Pĕshīttā. ] Both Aphraates and Ephraim, however, made use of the Separate Gospels. The former seems to have employed a text which Baethgen calls a slightly revised form of Sc (op. cit., p. 95); we would rather speak of it as a revised form of the old Syriac Gospels of the 2d century. The latter made use of a more thorough Edessene revision, closely approaching in form to, if not identical with, P (Baethgen, p. 95; Zalin, p. 63). Our oldest MSS. of P are, however, more than a hundred years later than Ephraim’s time. We cannot, therefore, expect very important textual results from the collation of even such MSS. as Add. 14470, 14453, 14459, ff. 1-66, and 17117, in the British Museum, all of which may be safely ascribed to the latter part of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century. Early in the 5th century Rabbūlā, bishop of Edessa, the friend and correspondent of Cyril of Alexandria, occupied himself with “translating the New Testament out of the Greek into the Syriac, because of its variations, exactly as it was.” This probably means, as has been suggested by Nestle, that undertook a revision of the Syriac text according to a Greek MS. or MSS. in his possession, that is to say, still further assimilated P of that day to a Greek (possibly, from his connexion with Cyril, Alexandrian) text. We do not as yet know, however, whether this revision was merely a private effort, or what influence, if any, it exercised on the history of P; more likely it was a first step in the direction of the Philoxenian version (see below). The result of these successive revisions as regards Sc has been that it survives in but one mutilated codex, and that written at comparatively so late a date as 450-470, —a phenomenon which has its parallel in the case of the Itala codex c of the Gospels, copied in the 11th century. The greater part of this volume is in the British Museum (Add. 14451); but there are three leaves of it in the royal library at Berlin, forming the flyleaves of the MS. marked Orient. Quart. 528. Crowfoot’s attempt to retranslate Sc into Greek is a failure (Fragmenta Evangelica, 1870-72); Baethgen’s work (Evangelienfragmente, &c.) will perhaps be found more satisfactory.

The scholars of the Monophysite branch of the Syrian Church were, however, by no means satisfied even with the revised text of P, and demanded a yet more accurate reproduction of the Greek text in use among them. Accordingly Aksĕnāyā or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabbōgh (485-519), undertook to satisfy this want, and with the assistance of his chorepiscopus, Polycarp, produced a literal translation of the whole Bible in the year 508. This seems at first to have met with considerable approval; Moses of Aggēl, for example, who flourished from 550 to 570, refers to the version of the New Testament and of the Psalms evidently as the standard work of the day. But it was in its turn superseded by two later revisions, and MSS. of it are now very rare. Portions of Isaiah survive in the British Museum, Add. 17106, ff. 74-87, and the text of the Gospels in the codex A. 2, 18 of the Biblioteca Angelica at Rome, of the 11th or 12th century, and perhaps also in the Beirūt (Beyrout) MS. described by the Rev. Isaac H. Hall. At the beginning of the 7th century the work of retranslation and revision was again taken in hand by the Monophysites, the scene of their labours being the different convents in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. There, in the years 616-617, Paul, bishop of Tellā dhĕ-Mauzĕlath or Constantina, undertook a version of the hexaplar text of the LXX. at the request of the patriarch Athanasius I. Of parts of this many MSS. are extant in the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana at Milan possesses the second volume of a codex of the entire work, which has been reproduced by photo-lithography under the direction of Ceriani. This version not only exhibits the asterisks and obeli of Origen’s text of the LXX., but the marginal notes contain many readings of the other Greek translators, which have been largely utilized by Field in his noble work Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt (2 vols., Oxford, 1875). At the same time and place the New Testament of Philoxenus was thoroughly revised by Thomas of Harkel or Heraclea, bishop of Mabbogh, who, being driven from his diocese, betook himself to Alexandria and worked there in the convent of St Antony at the Enaton (or Nine-mile-village). This version comprises not only all the books contained in the Pĕshīttā but also the four shorter epistles. The lapse of another century brings us to the last attempt at a revision of the Old Testament in the Monophysite Church. Jacob, bishop of Edessa, undertook, when living in retirement in the convent of Tell-Addā or Teleda, in 704-705, to revise the text of the Pĕshīttā with the help of the Greek versions at his disposal, thus producing a curious eclectic or patchwork text. Of this work there are but five volumes extant in Europe, four of which came from the Nitrian Desert and form parts of a set which was written in the years 719-720. It would seem, therefore, never to have attained popularity.

One other version remains to be noticed, namely, that used by the Christian population of the Malkite (Greek) Church in Palestine, written in an Aramaic dialect more akin to the language of the Jewish Targums than to that of the Pĕshīttā. A lectionary containing large portions of the Gospels in this dialect was described by Assemani in the catalogue of the Vatican library, studied by Adler, and edited by Count Fr. Miniscalchi Erizzo under the title of Evangeliariwm Hierosolymitanum (2 vols., Verona, 1861-64). It was written in a convent at a place called Ābūd, not very far from Jerusalem, in the year 1030, and the scribe claims to have copied sundry other service-books for the use of his church (see Assemani, op. cit., p. 102). Fragments of other evangeliaria have been published by Land, from MSS. at London and St Petersburg, in his Anecd. Syr., iv. pp. 114-162, 213-222; of the Acts of the Apostles, p. 168; and of the Old Testament (translated from the Greek), pp. 103-110, 165-167, 222-223. According to the same authority (p. 231), the calendar in the Vatican MS. must have been drawn up about the middle of the 9th century. Few, if any, of the extant fragments appear to be of older date. Nöldeke places the origin of the version in the 4th or 5th century, certainly not later than 600 (loc. cit., p. 525).

All the above revisions of the text of the Syriac Bible according to the Greek are, as we have seen, the work of Monophysites, with the single exception of the last, which proceeded from the Malkites. The Nestorian community obstinately adhered to the old Pĕshīttā, and the solitary attempt made to introduce a revised text among them seems to have been an utter failure. Mār-abhā I., a convert from Zoroastrianism, who was catholicus from 536 to 552, went to Edessa, studied Greek there under a teacher named Thomas, and with his help translated the whole of the Old Testament into Syriac, and perhaps also the New. This statement rests on the authority of the author of the Kilāb al-Majdal (Māri ibn Sulaimän, about the middle of the 12th century, supplemented and abridged by 'Amr ibn Mattā of Tirhān, who lived towards the middle of the 14th century), of 'Abhd-īshō', bishop of Nisibis (died 1318), and of Bar-Hebraeus (died 1286); and there appears to be no reason to doubt their word.

Before quitting the subject of the versions of Holy Scripture we must devote a few words to the Massoretic MSS. of the Nestorians and Jacobites. In the year 1721 Assemani made mention in the Bibliotheca Orientalis (ii. 283), on the authority of Bar-Hebraeus in the Ausar Raze, of a “versio Karkaphensis, hoc est Montana, qua videlicet incolae montium utuntur.” About the meaning of these words scholars disputed, and some searched for MSS. of the alleged version, but in vain. At last, N. Wiseman (afterwards cardinal), guided by the light of another passage in the Bibliotheca Orientalis (ii. 499, 500, No. xxii.), recognized in Cod. Vat. eliii. a copy of what he believed to be the Karkaphensian version. Later researches, more especially those of the Abbé Martin, have corrected these errors. The MSS. of the Karkaphensian tradition, of which there are ten in our European libraries, are now known to contain a philological and grammatical tradition of the pronunciation and punctuation of Holy Writ and sometimes of other writings. Syria was rich in schools and colleges; most of its towns possessed institutions where instruction was given, more especially to students of theology, in the reading and exposition of the Greek and Syriac Scriptures and their commentators. Such were the great “Persian school” of Edessa, which was destroyed, on account of its Nestorian tendencies, in 489; the school of Nisibis; of Mahōze near Seleucia; of the monastery of Dōr-Kōni or Dair-Kunnā; of the monastery of Ken-neshre or the Eagles’ Nest, on the left bank of the Euphrates, opposite Jerābis; of the Dairā 'Ellāitā, or monastery of St Gabriel and St Abraham, at Mosul; and many others. Every such school or college had its teachers of reading and elocution, mahgĕyānê and makrĕyāne (or makeryäme), who taught their pupils to pronounce, add the vowel-points, and interpunctuate correctly, before they were passed on to the higher classes of the eskolāye' bādhoke or mallĕphāne, that is, the professors of exegesis and doctors of theology. The more difficult words and phrases of Scripture were gradually collected and written down so as to form “collectanea,” lukkāte dha-shĕmāhe, or “fasciculi,” kurrāse dha-shĕrnāhe, and the union of these composed a kĕthābhā dha-kĕrāyāthā, or “book of readings,” in which it was shown by means of vowel-points and other signs how each word was to be pronounced and accentuated. One such volume in the British Museum (Add. 12138, dated 899) represents the work of a Nestorian student in the convent of Mär Gabriel at Harrān; but the other MSS. extant in the different libraries of Europe are of Jacobite origin and have a common source, the scholastic tradition of the convent of Karkaphethā, or “the Skuli,” at the village of Maghdal or Mijdal near Resh-'ainā or Räs-'ain. Such are, for example, Cod. Vat., No. clii., now cliii., described by Assemani (Catal., iii. 287) and Wiseman 9 Horae Syr., p. 151); Cod. Paris, Ancien fonds 142, described by Zotenberg (fatal., p. 30, No. 64) and Martin (Tradition Karkaphienne, p. 36); Cod. Brit. Mus. Add. 7183, described by Rosen (Catal., p. 64, No. xlii.), and 12178, described by Wright (Catal., p. 108). From these and similar MSS., as well as from the words of BarHebraeus, it appears that the Karkephāye were the monks of the convent of Karkaphethā; that they were Westerns or Occidentals, therefore Jacobites; and that one of their chief authorities, if not the actual originator of the compilation, was Jacob bishop of Edessa. Accordingly, the marginal notes indicate various readings from Syriac MSS., from the LXX., and from the Harklensian version, as well as from different fathers and teachers. To the collection of words and phrases from...