believing this tradition to be historically exact, because it contradicts so glaringly the alternative story of the successful preaching of Christianity at Edessa by Addai, one of the 72 disciples. We need not, however, delay long over the outward history of the Syriac-speaking Church. The subject has been well worked out by the Rev. Prof. Tixeront, a French scholar of the school of Duchesne[1]. The main thing that concerns us here is that Christianity was planted in Edessa and the Church organisation established there while it was yet an independent state.
For the inner character of Syriac-speaking Christianity in its early stages we must turn from history to the surviving documents. The list, alas, is miserably scanty. The later Syrians had different tastes and a different standard of orthodoxy from their forefathers and we may certainly add from ourselves. Syriac literature, as it has come down to us, consists for the most part of the contents of
- ↑ Les Origines de l'Église d'Édesse … par L.-J. Tixeront, Paris, 1888.
