SYRIA
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SYRIA
greater part of the world now adheres to this Truth,
yea whole cities; even if any of this evidence seems
suspect, there is no doubt regarding multitudes of
country-folk, who are innocent of guile" (pars paene
mundi iam maior huic veritati adstipulatur, urbes
integrae, aut si in his aliquid suspectum videtur,
contestatur de his etiam agrestis manus, ignara fig-
menti); and although this may reflect impressions
which he had just received in Bithynia, there was
substantial ground for the statement in the local
circumstances of Syria. The number of clergy in
303 throughout Syria is evident from Eus., H. E.,
viii, 6: "An enormous number were put in prison at
every place. The prisons, hitherto reserved for
murderers and riflers of graves, were now packed every-
where with bishops, priests, deacons, lectors, and
exorcists". Further data at our command are as
follows: (1) Acts, XV, already mentions Churches in
S>Tia besides Antioch. (2) Ignatius, apropos of
Antioch (ad Philad., 10) mentions "Churches in the
neighbourhood" which had already bishops of their
own. These certainly included Seleucia, the sea-
port of Antioch mentioned in Acts, xiii, 4. (3) Apa-
msea was a centre of the Elkesaites. (4) Dionys.
Alex, (in Eus., "H. E.", VII, v) observes that the Ro-
man Church frequently sent contributions to the
Syrian Churches. (5) The document of the Antiochene
Synod of 26S (Eus., VII, xxx) mentions, in connexion
with Antioch, "bishops of the neighbouring country
and cities".
The towns in the vicinity of Antioch, far and near, must already have had bishops, in all or nearly all cases, if country bishops were in existence. From Eus., VI, xii we learn that by about a. d. 200 there was a Christian community at Rhossus which was gravitating towards Antioch. (6) Two chorepiscopi from Ccele-Syria attended the Council of Nicrea. In Martyrol.Hieron. (Achehs, "Mart. Hieron.," p. 168) a martyrdom is noted as having occurred "in Syria provincia regione Apamea; vico Aprovavictu", but both these places are unknown. (7) Bishops from the following places in Coele-SjTia were present at Nicxa: Antioch, Seleucia, Laodicea, Apama-a, Raphanea;, Hierapolis (=Mabug, Bambyce), Germa- nicia, Samosata, Doliche, Balanete Gabula, Zeugma, Larissa, Epiphania, Arethusa, Neocjesarea, Cyrrhus, Gindron, Arbokadama, and Gabala. These towns lay in the most diverse di.stricls of this wide country, on the seaboard, in the Valley of the Orontes, in the Euphrates Valley, between the Orontes and the Eu- phrates, and in the north. Their distribution shows that Christianity was fairly uniform and fairly strong in Syria about 32.5, as is strikingly shown by the rescript of DazatoSabinus (Eus., "H. E.", IX, ix),for we must understand the experiences undergone by the Churches of Syrian Antioch and Asia Minor, when we read the emperor's words about almost all men abandoning the worship of the gods and attaching themselves to the Christian people. This remark is not one to be taken simply as a rhetorical flourish. For after speaking in one place about the first edict of Diocletian, Eusebius proceeds as follows: "Not long afterwards, as some people in the district called Melitene and in other districts throughout Syria attempted to usurp the kingdom, a royal decree went forth to the effect that the head officials of the churches everjTvhere should be put in jirison and chains" (VIII, vi, 8). Eusebius does not say it in so many words, but the context makes it quite clear that the em- peror held the Christians responsible for both of these outbreaks (that in Melitene being unknown to his- tory). This proves that the ('hristians in Melitene and Syria must have been extremely numerous, other- wise the emperor would never have met. revolution- ary outbreaks (which in Syria, and, one may con- jecture, in Melitene also, originated with the army) with edicts against the Christian clergy. The Bishop
of Rhossus was not at Nicaea (Rhossus, however,
may also be assigned to Cilicia). But, as we already
know, Rhossus did possess a Christian Church
about A. D. 200, which came under the supervision
of the Church at Antioch. There was a Jewish
Christian Church at Bercea (Aleppo) in the fourth
century. The local Gentile Christian Church cannot
have been important; cf. the experience of Juhan
there (Ep. xxvii, p. 516, ed. Hertlein).
As to Phcenicia, one of the most important provinces of SjTia, the history of Christianity there is also ob- scure. Here again, we learn from the Acts of the Apostles that Christianity reached the Phoenician cities at a very early period. When Paul was con- verted, there were already Christians at Damascus (Acts ix, 2, 10 sq., 19); for Christians in Tjtc see xxi, 4; for Ptolemais see xxi, 7; for Sidon xxvii, 3; and in general xi, 19. The metropolitan position of T)Te, which was the leading city in the East for manufac- tures and trade, made it the ecclesiastical capital of the province; but it is questionable if Tyre enjoyed this pre-eminence as early as the second century, for at the Palestinian Synod on the Eastern controversy Ca-ssius, the Bishop of Tyre, and Clarus, the Bishop of Ptolemais, took counsel with the Bishop of .-EUa and of Caesarea (Eus., "H. E.", V, xxv) to whom they seem to have been subordinate. On the other hand, Ma- rinus of Tjtc is mentioned in a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria (ibid., VII, v, 1) in such a way as to make his metropolitan dignity extremely probable. Mar- tyrs in or from Tvre, during the great persecution, are noted by Eusebius, VIII, vii, 1 (VIII, viii), VIII, xiii, 3. Origen died at Tyre and was buried there. It is curi- ous also to note that the learned Antiochene priest Dorotheus, the teacher of Eusebius, was appointed by the emperor (Diocletian, or one of his immediate predecessors) to be the director of the purple-dyeing trade in Tyre (Eus., " H. E.", VII, x-xxii). Apart icularly libellous edict issued by the Emperor Daza against the Christians is preserved by Eusebius (IX, vii) who copied it from the pillar in Tyre on which it was cut, and the historian's work reaches its climax in the great speech upon the reconstruction of the church at 'Tjtc, "by far the most beautiful in all Phcenicia" (X, iv). This speech is dedicated to Paulinus, Bishop of T>Te, in whose honour indeed the whole of the tenth book of its history is WTitten. Unfortunately we get no informa- tion whatever, in this long address, upon the Christian community at Tyre. We can onh' infer the size of the community from the size of the church building, which may have stood where the ruins of the large crusading church now astonish the traveller (cf. Baedeker's "Palestine", pp. 300 sq.). TjTe as a Christian city was to Phcenicia what Caesarea was to Palestine. It seems to have blossomed out as a manufacturing and trading centre during the imperial age, especially in the third century. A number of pas- sages in Jerome give characteristic estimates of its size and importance. In Sidon Origen stayed for some time (Horn, xiv, 2, in Josuam), while it was there that the presbyter Zenobius (Eus., "H. E.", VIII, xiii, 3) died during the great persecution, as did some Chris- t ians at Damascus (IX, v) . Eleven bishops, but no chor- episcopi, were present at the Council of Nica-a from Phoenicia; namely the bishops of Tyre, Ptolemais, Damascus, Sidon, Tripolis, Paneas, Bervtus, Palmyra, Alassus, Emesa, and Antaradus. From Eusebius we also learn that manv Jewish Christians also resided in Paneas (Eus., "H.E.", VII, x^•ii, IS). Tripolis is mentioned even before the C()un<il<>f Nicsea(in"Mart. Pal.," Ill, where a Christian named Dionysius comes from Tripolis); the Ajiostolic Constitutions (vii, 46) declare that Marthoncs was bishop of 1 his town as early as the Apostolic age; while, ])nvious to the Council of Nicoea, Ilellenicus, the local bi.-shop, opjiosed Arius (Theodoret, "H.E.", I, iv), though Gregory, Bishojjof Berytus, sided with him (loe. cit.;for Berytus, see also
