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Mar Aphrahat and Yukhanan 11:43
#1
Shlama Akhay,

In his Eighth Demonstration (Of the Resurrection of the Dead), Mar Aphrahat quotes the Peshitta reading of Yukhanan 11:43 verbatim against Old Scratch:

Mar Aphrahat Wrote:[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]rbl F rz9l[/font]

Translation - "Lazarus, come forth."

Peshitta Wrote:[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]rbl F rz9l[/font]

Translation - "Lazarus, come forth."

Old Scratch Wrote:[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]rbl F Qwp rz9l[/font]

Translation - "Lazarus, come out, come forth."
+Shamasha Paul bar-Shimun de'Beth-Younan
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#2
Hey Yuri, you out there? <!-- s:yell: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/yell.gif" alt=":yell:" title="Yell" /><!-- s:yell: -->
<font face="Estrangelo (V1.1)" size="4">
hnm Lqt4n hl ty0d wh P0 hl tyld Nmw hl Bhytn ryg hl ty0d Nm
(w4y</font>
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#3
Here is why finding direct quotes from the Peshitta in Mar Aphrahat's Demonstrations is so explosive <!-- s:bomb: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/bomb.gif" alt=":bomb:" title="The Bomb" /><!-- s:bomb: -->

The dates of composition:

Quote:The Demonstrations are twenty-two in number, after the number of the letters of the Aramaic alphabet, each of them beginning with the letter to which it corresponds in order. The first ten form a group by themselves, and are somewhat earlier in date than those which follow: they deal with Christian graces, hopes, and duties, as appears from their titles:--"Concerning Faith, Charity, Fasting, Prayer, Wars, Monks, Penitents, the Resurrection, Humility, Pastors." Of those that compose the later group, three relate to the Jews ("Concerning Circumcision, the Passover, the Sabbath"); followed by one described as "Hortatory," which seems to be a letter of rebuke addressed by Aphrahat, on behalf of a Synod of Bishops, to the clergy and people of Seleucia and Ctesiphon (Babylon); after which the Jewish series is resumed in five discourses, "Concerning Divers Meals, The Call of the Gentiles, Jesus the Messiah, Virginity, the Dispersion of Israel." The three last are of the same general character as the first ten,--"Concerning Almsgiving, Persecution, Death, and the Latter Times." To this collection is subjoined a twenty-third Demonstration, supplementary to the rest, "Concerning the Grape," under which title is signified the blessing transmitted from the beginning through Christ, in allusion to the words of Isaiah, "As the grape is found in the cluster and one saith, Destroy it not" ( lxv. 8 ). This treatise embodies a chronological disquisition of some importance.

Of the dates at which they were written, these discourses supply conclusive evidence. At the end of section 5 of Demonstr. V. (Concerning Wars), the author reckons the years from the era of Alexander (B.C. 311) to the time of his writing as 648. He wrote therefore in A.D. 337--the year of the death of Constantine the Great. Demonst. XIV. is formally dated in its last section, "in the month Shebat. in the year 655 (that is, A. D. 344). More fully, in closing the alphabetic series (XXII. 25) he informs us that the above dates apply to the two groups--the first ten being written in 337; the twelve that follow, in 344. Finally, the supplementary discourse "Concerning the Grape" was written (as stated, XXIII. 69) in July, 345. Thus the entire work was completed within nine years,--five years before the middle of the fourth century,--before the composition of the earliest work of Ephraim of which the date can be determined with certainty.

The manuscript evidence:

Quote:The oldest extant MS. of these discourses (Add. 17182 of the British Museum) contains the first ten, and is dated 474. With it is bound up (under the same number) a second, dated 512, containing the remaining thirteen. A third (Add. 14619) of the sixth century likewise, exhibits the whole series. A fourth (Orient, 1017), more recent by eight centuries, will be mentioned farther on. Of the three early MSS., the first designates the author as "the Persian Sage" merely, as does also the third: the second prefixes his name as "Mar Jacob the Persian Sage."

The witnesses:

Quote:It is not until some years after the mid-die of the tenth century, that the "Persian Sage" first appears under his proper name,--of which, though as it appears generally forgotten in the Syriac world of letters, a tradition had survived.--The Nestorian Bar-Bahlul (circ. 963) in his Syro-Arabic Lexicon, writes thus:--"Aphrahat [mentioned] in the Book of Paradise, is the Persian Sage, as they record."--So too, in the eleventh century), Elias of Nisibis (Barsinaeus, d. 1049), embodies in his Chronography, a table, compiled from Demonstr. XXIII., of the chronography from the Creation to the "Era of Alexander" (B. C. 311), which he describes as "The years of the House of Adam, according to the opinion of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage." --To the like effect, but with fuller information, the great light of the mediaeval Jacobite Church, Gregory Barhebraeus (d. 1286), in Part I. of his Ecclesiastical Chronicle, in enumerating the orthodox contemporaries of Athanasius, mentions, after Ephraim, "the Persian Sage who wrote the Book of Demonstrations;" and again in Part II., supplies his name under a slightly different form, as one who "was of note in the time of Papas the Catholicus," "the Persian Sage by name Pharhad, of whom there are extant a book of admonition [al., admonitions] in Syriac, and twenty-two Epistles according to the letters of the alphabet." Here we have not only the name and description of the personage in question, but a fairly accurate account of his works, under the titles by which the MSS. describe them, "Epistles and Demonstrations;--and moreover a sufficient indication of his date, in agreement with that which the Demonstrations claim: for one who began to write in 337 must have lived in the closing years of the life of Papas (who died in 334), and in the earlier years of the life of Ephraim. So yet again, a generation later, the learned Nestorian prelate, Ebedjesu, in his Catalogue of Syrian ecclesiastical authors, writes, "Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, composed two volumes with Homilies that are according to the alphabet." Here once more the name and designation are given unhesitatingly, and the division of the discourses into two groups is correctly noted; but the concluding words appear to distinguish these groups from the alphabetic Homilies. Either, therefore, we must take the preposition rendered "with" to mean "containing,"--or we must conclude that Ebedjesu's knowledge of the work was at second-hand and incorrect. Finally, in a very late MS., dated 1364, is found the first or chronological part of Demonstration XXIII., headed as follows:--"The Demonstration concerning the Grape, of the Sage Aphrahat, who is Jacob, Bishop of Mar Mathai." Here (though the prefix "Persian" is absent) we have the author's title of "Sage"; and the identification of the "Aphrahat" of the later authorities with the "Jacob" of the earlier is not merely implied but expressly affirmed. Here, moreover, we have what seems to account for the twofold name. As author, he is Aphrahat; as Bishop, he is Jacob--the latter name having been no doubt assumed on his elevation to the Episcopate. Such changes of name, at consecration, which in later ages of the Syrian Church became customary, were no doubt exceptional in the earlier period of which we are treating. But the fact that Aphrahat was a Persian name, bestowed on him no doubt in childhood--when he was still (as will be shown presently) outside the Christian fold--a name which is supposed to signify "Chief" or "Prefect," and which may have seemed unsuited to the humility of the sacred office--supplies a reason for the substitution in its stead of a name associated with sacred history, both of the Old and of the New Testament. Here finally we have the direct statement of what Georgius had justly inferred from the opening of Dem. XIV., that the writer was himself of the clergy, and in this Epistle writes as a cleric to clerics.

That he definitely was from the Persian Church (Church of the East):

Quote:That the author was of Persian nationality, is a point on which all the witnesses agree, except the fourteenth-century scribe of the MS. Orient. 1017, who however is merely silent about it. The name Aphrahat is, as has been already said, Persian--which fact at once confirms the tradition that he belonged to Persia, and helps to account for what seems to be the reluctance of early writers to call him by a name that was foreign, unfamiliar, unsuited to his subsequent station in the Church, and superseded by one that had sacred associations. As a Persian, he dates his writings by the years of the reign of the Persian King: the twenty-two were completed (he says) in the thirty-fifth, the twenty-third in the thirty-sixth of the reign of Sapor. --Again: as a Persian of the early fourth century, it is presumable that he was not originally a Christian. And this is apparently confirmed by the internal evidence of his own writings; for he speaks of himself as one of those "who have cast away idols, and call that a lie which our father bequeathed to us;" and again, "who ought to worship Jesus, for that He has turned away our froward minds from all superstitions of vain error, and taught us to worship one God our Father and Maker."--But it is clear that he must have lived in a frontier region where Syriac was spoken freely; or else must have removed into a Syriac-speaking country at an early age; for the language and style of his writings are completely pure, showing no trace of foreign idiom, or even of the want of ease that betrays a foreigner writing in what is not his mother-tongue. It is clear also that, at whatever age or under whatever circumstances he embraced Christianity, he must have taken the Christian Scriptures and Christian theology into his inmost heart and understanding as every page of his writings attests.

That he was bishop of Nineveh:

Quote:If we accept the late, but internally probable, statement of the Scribe of MS. Orient. 1017 (above mentioned), that "the Persian Sage" was "Bishop of the monastery of Mar Mathai," we arrive at a complete explanation of the circumstances under which this Epistle was composed. For the Bishop of Mar Mathai was Metropolitan of Nineveh, and ranked among the Bishops of "the East" only second to the Catholicus; and his province bordered on that which the Catholicus (as Metropolitan of Seleucia) held in his immediate jurisdiction. The Bishop of Mar Mathai therefore would properly preside in a Synod of the Eastern Bishops, met to consider the disorders and discussions existing in Seleucia and its suffragan sees. It thus becomes intelligible how an Epistle of such official character has found a place in a series of discourses of which the rest are written as from man to man merely. The writer addresses the Bishops, Clergy, and people of Seleucia and Ctesiphon in the name of a Synod over which he was President, a Synod probably of Bishops suffragan to Nineveh, and perhaps of those of some adjacent sees.

That he is prior to Ephraem:

Quote:In thus placing Aphrahat first as their projected series of Syriac Divines, the learned editors follow the opinion which, ever since Wright published his edition, has been adopted by Syriac scholars--that Aphrahat is prior in time to Ephraim. This is undoubtedly true (as pointed out above) in the only limited sense, that the Demonstrations are earlier by some years (the first ten by thirteen years, the remainder by five or six) than the earliest of Ephraim's writings which can be dated with certainty (namely, the first Nisibene Hymn, which belongs to 350). It is then assumed that Ephraim was born in the reign of Constantine, therefore not earlier than 306, and that Aphrahat was a man of advanced age when he wrote (of which there is no proof whatever), and must therefore have been born before the end of the third century--perhaps as early as 280. It has been shown above (p. 145) that even if we admit the authority of the Syriac Life of Ephraim, we must regard the supposed statement of his birth in Constantine's time as a mistranslation or rather perversion of the text. Thus the argument for placing Ephraim's birth so late as 306 disappears, while for placing Aphrahat's birth no argument has been advanced, but merely conjecture; and the result is, that the two may, so far as evidence goes, be regarded as contemporary. It is true that Barhebraeus, in his Ecclesiastical History, reckons Aphrahat as belonging to the time of Papas, who died 335; built is to be noted that in the very same context he mentions that letters were extant purporting to be addressed by Jacob of Nisibis and Ephraim to the same Papas,--and though he admits that some discredited the genuineness of these letters, he gives no hint that Ephraim was too young to have written them. In fact he could not do so, for in the earlier part of this History he had already named Ephraim as present at the Nicene Council in 325, and had placed his name before that of Aphrahat in including both among the contemporaries of the Great Athanasius.

That his canon is that of the Peshitta:

Quote:His New Testament Canon is apparently that of the Peshitta;--that is to say, he shows no signs of acquaintance with the four shorter Catholic Epistles, and in the one citation which seems to be from the Apocalypse, it has been shown to be probable that he is really referring to the Targum of Onkelos on Deut. xxxiii. 6.

All quotes from "JOHN GWYNN, D.D., D.C.L. -- REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN" as quoted in the book - NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS, SERIES II VOLUME XIII

There you have it, folks. The Peshitta present in Nineveh during the 330s - remarkable, seeing that Rabbula's * great-grandmother had not yet even been conceived! <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

'nuff said! <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->

(*) our modern-day imbeciles claim that Rabbula of Edessa, the 5th-century arch-enemy of the Church of the East, produced the Peshitta. How the Church of the East, his hated enemies, came to adopt a version supposedly made from his hands - only these idiots know.

P.S. - if the Peshitta was around during the 330s and quoted by a high-ranking official of the Church of the East, how much farther back in time must it have originated? The late 200s....the early 200s....the late 100s....the early 100s.....the Apostles' hands? <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->
+Shamasha Paul bar-Shimun de'Beth-Younan
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