Rome, determined its changeful fortunes. Parthian predominance yielded for a time to Armenian (Tigranes, 88–86 B.C.). Then, at the time of the expeditions of Lucullus, Pompey and Crassus, Edessa was an ally of Rome, though Abgar II. Ariamnes (68–53) played an ambiguous part. In A.D. 114 Abgar VII. entertained Trajan on his way back to Syria (Dio Cass. xviii. 21); but in 116, in consequence of a general rising, his consul L. Quietus sacked the city, Abgar perhaps dying in the flames, and made the state tributary. Hadrian, however, abandoning Trajan’s forward policy in favour of a Euphrates boundary, restored it as a dependency of Rome. When L. Verus (163-165) recovered Mesopotamia from Parthia, it was not Edessa but Ḥarrān that was chosen as the site of a Roman colony, and made the metropolis by Marcus Aurelius (172).
To one of the native kings doubtless is to be ascribed the Syriac inscription[1] on one of the pair of pillars, 50 ft. high, which stood, no doubt, in front of a temple connected with some local cult. Trustworthy data for determining its nature are lacking. One or both of the pools below the citadel containing sacred fish may have been sacred to Atargatis (q.v.), an Ishtar-Venus deity; and according to the Doctrine of Addai, alongside of Venus were worshipped the sun and the moon.[2] Nergal and Sin were known as “twins,” and connected with the sign Gemini, under the name ellamme, “the youths” (cf. Zimmern, K.A.T. 363). This makes more plausible than it otherwise would be the suggestion of J. Rendel Harris that the great twin pillars were connected with the cult of the Dioscuri, and that in the Acts of Thomas is to be seen a later attempt to substitute other “twins,” viz. Jesus and Judas-Thomas (Addai), whom legend buried “in Britio Edessenorum” (explained by Harnack as the Edessan citadel: Aram. birtha).[3]
Whether it was at Edessa that a Jewish translation of the Old Testament into Syriac was made,[4] under the encouragement perhaps of the favour of the royal house of Adiabene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 19. 4), or whether that work was done in Adiabene,[5] cannot be discussed here. That the translation did not share the fate of the other non-Christian Syriac writings, which did not survive the 13th century (see Syriac Literature), is due to the fact that it was adopted (after being revised) by the Christians, and thus rescued. Although the beginnings of Christianity at Edessa are enshrouded in the mists of legend, and the first mention of Christian communities in Osrhoëne and the towns there is connected with the part they played in the paschal controversy (c. A.D. 192), it has been reasonably urged that the legends imply a fact, namely that Christianity began in the Jewish colony, perhaps by the middle of the 2nd century, although the earliest seat of the Syrian church may have been farther east, in Adiabene.[6] Parts of the New Testament were certainly translated into Syriac in the 2nd century, although whether the “Old Syriac” (so e.g. Hjelt) or the Diatessaron (so Burkitt) came first is uncertain. About the end of the 2nd century Edessene Christianity seems to have made a fresh beginning: the ordination of Palūṭ by Serapion of Antioch may mean that things ecclesiastical took a westward trend, and it is possible (so Burkitt) that the “Old Syriac” New Testament version was now introduced. A strong man offered himself in Bardaiṣān (q.v.; Bardesanes), to whom perhaps we owe the finest Syriac poem extant, the “Hymn of the Soul,” though orthodoxy rejected him. He was a contemporary of Abgar IX., at whose court Julius Africanus stayed for a while. A Syrian official record from this reign, preserved in the Edessene Chronicle, gives a somewhat detailed account of a violent flood (autumn, 201) of the Daiṣān river which did much damage, destroying amongst other things “the palace of Abgar the Great,” rebuilt as a summer palace by Abgar IX., and “the temple of the church of the Christians.” The form of this last statement shows that at the time of writing (206) the rulers had not adopted Christianity themselves. Abgar IX. is now commonly supposed to be the ruler to whom the famous legend was first attached (see Abgar); but though he visited Rome there is no proof that he ever became a Christian (Gomperz, in Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn, xix. 154-157). It was at Edessa that Caracalla, who made it a military colony under the style of Colonia Marcia Edessenorum, spent the winter of 216–217, and near there that he was murdered. The religious philosophical treatise preserved under the title of Book of the Laws of the Lands was probably produced at this time by a pupil of Bardesanes, and the Acts of Thomas in its original form may have followed not long after.
Sassanian Period.—In 226 the Parthian empire gave place to the new kingdom of the Sassanidae, whose claim to the ancient Achaemenian empire led to constant struggle with Rome in which Edessa naturally suffered. The native state was restored by Gordian in 242; but in 244 it became again directly subject to Rome. The Edessan martyrs Sharbēl and Barsamyā, whose “Acts” in legendary form have come down to us, may have perished in the Decian persecution. In 260 the city was besieged by the Persians under Shapur I., and Valerian was defeated and made prisoner by its gates. Odaenathus of Palmyra (d. 267), however, wrested Mesopotamia from the Persians; but Aurelian defeated his successor Zenobia at Emesa (273), and Carus, who died in 283 in an expedition against the Persians, and Galerius (297) carried the frontier again to the Tigris. Diocletian’s persecution secured the martyr’s crown for the Edessenes Shamōna, Guria (297), and Ḥabbīb (309), and shortly thereafter Lucian “the martyr,” who though born at Samosata received his training at Edessa; but the bishop Qōna, who laid the foundations of “the great church” by the sacred pool, somehow escaped. Edessa can claim no share in “the Persian Sage” Aphrahaṭ or Afrahaṭ (Aphraates); but Ephraem, after bewailing in Nisibis the sufferings of the great Persian war under Constantius and Julian, when Jovian in 363 ceded most of Mesopotamia to Shapur II., the persecutor of the Christians, settled in Edessa, which as the seat of his famous school (called “the Persian”) grew greatly in importance, and attracted scholars from all directions. He taught and wrote vigorously against the Arians and other heretics, and although just after his death (373) the emperor Valens banished the orthodox from Edessa, they returned on the emperor’s death in 378. Under Zenobius, disciple of Ephraem, studied the voluminous writer, Isaac of Antioch (d. circ. 460). Rabbūla perhaps owed his elevation to the see of Edessa (411–435), in the year which produced the oldest dated Syriac MS., to his asceticism, and it was to his time that the sojourn there of the “Man of God” (Alexis) was assigned; but he won from the Nestorians the title of the Tyrant of Edessa. In particular he exerted himself to stamp out the use of the Diatessaron in favour of the four Gospels, the Syriac version of which probably now took the form known as the Peshitta. When the popular Nestorianism of the Syrians was condemned at Ephesus (431) it began to gravitate eastwards, Nisibis becoming its eventual headquarters; but Edessa and the western Syrians refused to bow to the Council of Chalcedon (451) when it condemned Monophysitism. In and around Edessa the theological strife raged hotly.[7] When, however, Zeno’s edict (489) ordered the closing of the school of the Persians at Edessa, East and West drifted apart more and more; the ecclesiastical writer Narsai, “the Harp of the Holy Spirit,” fled to Nisibis about 489. Till about this time Syriac influence was strong in Armenia, and some Syriac works have survived only in Armenian translations. In the opening years of the 6th century the Persian-Roman War (502–506) found a chronicler in the anonymous Edessene history known till recently as the Chronicle of Joshua Stylites. Whether Edessa received
- ↑ The inscription, which is difficult to read, connects the structure with Shalmat the queen, daughter of Ma’nu, who cannot be identified with certainty, and refers to some image(s), which probably excited the pious vandalism of the Arabs.
- ↑ Nebo and Bel (Doctr. Addai, 31) may come from the Old Testament (Burkitt).
- ↑ S.B.A.W., 1904, 910 ff.
- ↑ So, e.g. F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, 72.
- ↑ Marquart, Ostasiat. und osteurop. Streitzüge, 292 ff.
- ↑ Marquart, op. cit.
- ↑ Some one found time, however, to produce the oldest dated MS. of a portion of the Bible in any language.
