Conclusion

The succession of seventh-century military conquests that politically separated Syria from Byzantine control also effectively changed Syria’s role in our western histories, and buried the late antique period of interaction beneath centuries of perceived discontinuity and difference. Though bounded on either side by political ties that help to explain western history’s idiosyncratic treatment of eastern Syria, the history of Late Antiquity reveals Syria to have been deeply involved in the largely familiar events of Roman and Byzantine history. We cannot add Syria to these narratives of Roman history, however, without also changing those very reconstructions, so that we take into account what scholars have until now largely understood to be the decidedly unorthodox (and sometimes un-Roman) history of eastern Syria. Whether in texts from the first or the twentieth century, Syria frequently emerges as an exotic Other, tantalizingly near yet unquestionably culturally distinct from the western authors’ realm of the familiar. Late Antiquity itself, however, was a period in Syria’s history during which its peoples not only adopted much from their western neighbors but also shared much in return. The story of fourth-century Syria disallows, for example, traditional narratives of‘‘Christianity’s’’ early clear separation from ‘‘Judaism,’’ and scholars would lose vital information about fourth-century Christianity if they did not take Ephrem’s pro-Nicene writings into account alongside those of his Greek contemporaries.

Western Syria, though not the focus of this chapter, was a region that helped to connect eastern Syria with the rest of the Roman Empire. While Greek was the predominant language of the major city of Roman Antioch, the smaller towns surrounding Antioch were predominantly Syriac-speaking, as Theodoret’s visits to Syriac-speaking monks attest (Theodoret, Historia religiosa). Antioch is Greek, and therefore familiar, but it is also Syrian. Antioch served as an important point of linguistic and cultural contact as well as oftextual, conceptual, and cultural translation that should make us consider more seriously its multilingual culture. Quick generalizations that Antioch was ‘‘Greek’’ while Edessa was ‘‘Syriac’’ base too much on the differences in the majority language and degrees of Hellenization in the two cities; but such generalities veil at the same time the overlapping culture that existed in both cities. The description of those commonalities will help us to rethink both the difference and the disconnectedness of the Syriac east and the all too easy separation of Syrian Antioch from that eastern Syriac world. Antioch was, on the one hand, a religious and political center, hosting emperors and ecclesiastical councils, and evangelized by the apostle Paul. On the other hand, Antioch remained within Syria, surrounded by Syriac-speaking ascetics, and troubled by Judaizing Christians in John Chrysostom’s lifetime. By reconnecting late antique Antioch with Edessa, scholars will gain a more comprehensive image of Roman Syria, and will see better the diversity of what we call ‘‘Syrian’’ as well as the connections between what we distinguish as ‘‘Syriac’’ and ‘‘Greek.’’

Syria serves as an example of how late antique places and people were at once local and imperial. Scholars agree, for good reason, with late antique writers that the major cities of Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople were more imperially influential than Edessa, and that the influence of authors such as Rabbula was more locally confined than that of Athanasius. Nonetheless, Ephrem adopted imperial pro-Nicene rhetoric even though he wrote in Syriac, and he is therefore valuable to discussions of fourth-century imperial politics and theological controversy, just as he is as he is to discussions of Syria. Major figures like John Chrysostom and Augustine were likewise local authors influenced by their contexts, but also became spokesmen for much larger Christian communities. The Syriac voices in what are thought of as the margins of the empire remind us how fruitful it can be to think also of traditional centers as uniquely local communities with individual particularities that persisted, as in Ephrem’s Syria, despite a rhetorical veil of imperial normativity. In this sense, then, the apparent idiosyncrasies that have set Syria apart in traditional narratives become not the exception in Late Antiquity but the rule. By recognizing the ways in which Syria remained both ‘‘eastern’’ to its Greek and Latin counterparts and ‘‘western’’ in its Mediterranean connections, scholars can better reconstruct both Syria and the Roman-Byzantine Empire of which Syria was a part.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Many of the foundational works on early Roman Syria no longer reflect the most recent scholarship in the field. The following nonetheless remain important starting points: Burkitt 1904, Vcicjbus 1951, Drijvers 1980, Segal 2001, Murray 2004. The numerous translations, original scholarship, and bibliographic resources of Sebastian Brock, perhaps the most notable western scholar of early Syriac Christianity, greatly enrich the field; see, for example, Brock 1997 and his regular contributions to Hugoye-.Journal of Syriac Studies. While most of these earlier works focus on Christianity (with the exception of Drijvers), Millar 1993 and Ross 2001 present broader historical narratives.

Sidney Griffith’s influential works demonstrate Syria’s significant early ties with the Roman world (Griffith 1986, 1999b) and its later interactions with Islam (Griffith 2001). Possekel 1999 is a noteworthy contribution to the early conversation about the extent of Greek influence, linguistic and otherwise, in eastern Syria. Mimouni 1994, Rouwhorst 1997, Van Rompay 1997, and Weitzman 1999 provide influential arguments in the ongoing discussion of liturgical and scriptural connections between Jewish and Christian communities in the region. Susan Ashbrook Harvey’s work on women in early Syriac Christianity expanded the field significantly (Harvey 2005, Brock and Harvey 1987).

Recent works (Becker 2006, Harvey 2006, Shepardson 2008) use a variety of contemporary methodological approaches and actively integrate scholarship on Roman Syria into broader academic conversations on Late Antiquity. The journal Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies and the online discussion lists associated with it provide valuable, accessible forums for scholarly discussion in the field of Syriac studies.