Confronting Caricatures, Identifying Influences

The third-century end of the Edessene kingship ushered in a new era for eastern Syria, but the developments, politics, and culture of the centuries that followed have meaning most directly in relation to what had come before. Likewise, modern caricatures of eastern Syria have not appeared out of thin air, but rely on earlier texts that continue to influence scholarship. For example, the portrayal of Syriac Christianity as a persistent ‘‘Jewish Christianity’’ that derived directly from Jewish apostles in Judea continues to mislead some scholars in their reading of Syriac texts, and in the comparisons they make between Syriac Christianity and its antecedents. Any discussion oflate antique Syria, therefore, must first address some ofthe issues of earlier centuries, as they provide a necessary interpretative framework. A brief look at, first, Syria’s linguistic and political history, and second its religious history, will highlight the importance of recognizing its cultural complexity.

1 Language and politics

Edessa, the urban center of Syriac-speaking Syria, was home to the kings who governed the surrounding area for several hundred years before Roman control. Although Antioch came under Roman rule in 64 BC with the creation of the Roman province of Syria, eastern Syria maintained its local kingship for much longer.

After the end of Seleucid control in the region in the second century bc, Edessene kings ruled under loose Parthian control. By ad 166, after ongoing power struggles between the Romans and Parthians for control of Edessa, the local ruler became officially tied to the Roman emperor through a treaty. In the late second century, Abgar VIII (Abgar the Great) even adopted the Latin name Lucius Aelius Aurelius Septimius, demonstrating his allegiance to Roman forces under Septimius Severus; and Abgar’s son (Abgar IX) also added the name Severus to his own (Segal 2001: 14). Despite occasional skirmishes with Rome, especially under Trajan, and a few brief interregna, the dynasty continued to rule until ad 213/14, when Caracalla deposed Abgar IX and declared Edessa a Roman colonia. Although Rome allowed local kings to rule nominally in Edessa for a few more decades, by the ad 240s the monarchy had ended entirely, and the region remained clearly under Roman control. With its local kingship supported first by Parthia and then by Rome, Edessa lasted as a multilingual center long after the third century. In Late Antiquity it thus stood as a point of cultural interchange with lands to its east and west, with newly strengthened ties to the Roman Empire.

Other eastern Syrian towns have equally mottled political histories. Nisibis, for example, became a Roman colonia in ad 194, before the end of the Edessene kingship. As a politically significant border town between the Parthian (and then Persian) and Roman Empires, however, its affiliation was anything but stable. It was the victim of multiple sieges, including several Persian sieges under Shapur II in AD 338, 346, and 350. The death of the Roman emperor Julian in ad 363, and the consequent ceding of portions of eastern Syria to Persia, certainly did not mark the first time that Nisibis changed hands from one political power to another. So, eastern Syria of Late Antiquity inherited a complex variety of influences that set it apart from other Roman provinces. Since it was, however, the very process of establishing firm political connections with Rome that defines this part of Syria’s history, it will serve scholars well to note its connections with Rome as much as its differences.

In addition to eastern Syria’s changing political ties, its complex relationship to ‘‘Greek’’ thought and language has facilitated its isolation from studies of the Roman Empire. In the early twentieth century, F. C. Burkitt influenced decades of scholarship by describing Syriac Christianity as utterly separated from the Greek world (Burkitt 1904). While Robert Murray retracted his own similar claims, referring later to the ‘‘hybrid’’ context of Ephrem’s fourth-century Syriac world (Murray 1982), many scholars still reveled in portraying Syriac Christianity as a ‘‘pure,’’ unadulterated example of the ‘‘Semitic’’ Christianity that Jesus himself had initiated. More recently, Sebastian Brock began to temper this picture considerably, and now critical scholars such as Sidney Griffith, Ute Possekel, and Thomas Koonammakkal have argued definitively that, despite Ephrem’s denunciation of ‘‘the poison of the Greeks’’ (Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 2. 24), he and late antique Syria were significantly influenced by both the language and the concepts of Greek philosophy (Griffith 1986, 1999a, 1999b; Koonammakkal 1994; Possekel 1999). Although Syriac was the predominant language under the Edessene kings and through Late Antiquity, Latin Edessene names (e. g., Severus, Aurelius, Augustina), local inscriptions in multiple languages, and coins in Syriac and Greek show that by Late Antiquity Edessa had been strongly influenced culturally and linguistically by the empire to its west (Segal 2001). Given the multilingual nature of the region and its political ties to Rome, scholars of Syria no longer imagine that it was sharply distinct from Hellenistic and Roman society and culture. In the fourth and fifth centuries, Syriac church leaders such as Ephrem and Rabbula demonstrated that Syriac Christians could even participate fully in the rhetorical construction of imperial orthodoxy that preoccupied their western counterparts.

2 Religious variety in Roman Syria

In addition to Syria’s political separation from the west before and after Late Antiquity, much of the persistence of the otherness of eastern Syria relates to the history of Syriac Christianity, a history that in western scholarship has always provided an odd, unorthodox Other, as well as a tantalizing linguistic link to the words of Jesus. Thus, on the one hand scholars characterize Syriac Christianity as closely associated with the unorthodox followers of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan, while on the other hand they highlight its ‘‘Jewish-Christian’’ origins and hint that its Aramaic language and geographical proximity to Palestine allowed it to preserve a Christianity closer to the teachings of Jesus than those that developed in the wake of Paul and other Greek-speaking leaders. Along with strong pagan Syriac traditions surrounding such local divinities as Bel and Nebo, and a strong emphasis on the apostle Thomas, this variety has perpetuated the image of eastern Syria as radically unlike its western neighbors. While it is of course undeniable that late antique Syria had local traditions, this was true for any given locale and should not obscure utterly the ways in which Syria also shared in the religious as well as the political culture of the Eastern Roman Empire. As with its politics and language, Syrian religion displays a significant uniqueness but also provides new bridges that allow scholars to reintegrate it into the broader Roman world.

Since both Nisibis and Edessa were important cities on the major trade routes that connected the Roman Empire with India and China, people and ideas (in a variety of languages) flowed through them (Harrak 2002). Within this bustling world of commerce, the second - and third-century teachings of Marcion, Mani, and Bardaisan flourished, as even the fourth-century writings of Ephrem show. Likewise, traditional religious practices in various forms continued to be a visible presence through the fourth century (Han Drijvers 1980, 1982). The Syrian Goddess, attributed to Lucian of Samosata, describes the cult of the goddess Atargatis in nearby Hieropolis, and the Teaching of Addai notes the many pagan temples (especially to Bel and Nebo) in Edessa. Worship of these deities continued to thrive in Edessa at least until the strict fifth-century leadership of Bishop Rabbula (Blum 1969; Han Drijvers 1999).

Along with this rich mixture, eastern Syria had a significant population of Jews in Nisibis and Edessa in the early Christian period (Segal 1964; Neusner 1965; Han Drijvers 1985; Shepardson 2008). As mentioned, most scholars have, at least since the time of F. C. Baur, highlighted the continuing strength of Syrian Judaism and the ‘‘Jewish-Christian’’ nature of Syriac Christianity (Baur 1861). Using such early Christian texts as the Didascalia, the Pseudo-Clementine literature, and the legend of King

Abgar’s correspondence with Jesus, many early scholars concluded that Christianity first arrived in Edessa as Aramaic ‘‘Jewish-Christianity’’ directly from Jewish apostles of Jesus (Burkitt 1904; Danieiou 1958;Voobus 1958;Bauer 1996). More recent scholars agree that some Syriac Christian communities maintained more contact with contemporary Judaism than did many oftheir western counterparts, but also challenge earlier vocabulary and assumptions. Michael Weitzman’s discussion of the Jewish origins of the Peshitta (the Syriac translation of the Old Testament), and many scholars’ comparisons of Mesopotamian Jewish exegesis with Syriac Christian exegesis, demonstrate important points of connection (Tonneau 1955; Sed 1968; Hidal 1974; Kronholm 1978; Brock 1979, 1995; Weitzman 1992, 1999; Van Rompay 1997). Likewise, Gerard Rouwhorst’s arguments - that early Syriac Christianity retained, until the fourth-century Council of Nicaea, traces of Jewish architecture and liturgical traditions, such as the presence of a bema, regular readings from both the Torah and the Prophets during the Eucharist, and perhaps the Quartodeciman practice of celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan, the date of the Jewish Passover) - demonstrate further the permeability of the categories ‘‘Jew’’ and ‘‘Christian’’ in late antique Syria (Rouwhorst 1989, 1997). Scholars should not, however, revert to the older stereotypes and labels implied by the term ‘‘Jewish-Christianity.’’ The challenge mounted by recent scholarship against using this term in the Syrian context is persuasive, and one cannot interpret the data adduced as providing evidence that Syriac Christianity stood sharply outside the bounds of Roman Christianity. Indeed, the older terminology is inconsistent and sometimes historically inaccurate in its connotations (Taylor 1990; Mimouni 1994; Carleton Paget 1999).

Equally important, scholars have redressed another traditional argument, that at a certain moment ‘‘Christianity’’ parted ways with ‘‘Judaism’’ - a theory not only monolithic in itself, but also offering a supposedly stark contrast to the history of Syriac Christianity. As more recent work calls into question the suggested narrative of sharp and early separation (Becker and Reed 2003; Boyarin 2004), Syria’s history no longer stands apart from the history of Christianity in general. This new configuration allows scholars to make useful connections, as between Ephrem's Syriac rhetoric and John Chrysostom’s Greek anti-Judaizing texts from Antioch - a city that can hardly be characterized as ‘‘Jewish-Christian’’ or outside the bounds of orthodoxy (as Ephrem’s eastern Syria routinely has been). It also demonstrates the degree to which the Syrian evidence helps us to revise misleading narratives of imperial uniformity.