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The many countries in which Syriac was spoken
#3
Part 3 of "The many countries in which Syriac was spoken"

{Quoting from William Norton}

It seems to be certain that in the time of the apostles the language of the Israelites in Travancore must have been Syriac. For although the language now most in use, both among the Israelites and the Christians, is the Malabar, or Malayalim, which is the vernacular language of the country, (p. 99); yet the ancient Peshito-Syriac Scriptures are still used by the Christians in worship, and they have to be "expounded to the people in the vernacular tongue," (p. 100.)
The ancient Christians of Travancore and Malabar are still called, 'The Syrian Christians of St. Thomas,' and have received that name from their use of the Peshito-Syriac Scriptures, and from the fact that their ancestors received the gospel from the lips of the apostle Thomas. Dr. Buchanan says that the apostle Thomas is said by them to have landed at Cranganore, when he first arrived from Aden in Arabia; that not far from Cranganore there is an ancient church which bears his name still; and that the tradition among these Christians is, that he afterwards went to the Coromandel Coast, and was put to death at the place still called St. Thomas' Mount. (Researches, p. 114.) When the Portuguese invaded that part of India, and had established at Goa, what even the Roman Catholic Superintendent of sixty-four R. C. churches called in the presence of Dr. Buchanan, the "horrid tribunal" of the Inquisition; that tribunal used its utmost power to bring the Christians of St. Thomas under the dominion of the Pope. By bitter persecution and condemning some of these Christians to be burnt, it obtained the possession and use of many of their church buildings. The Peshito-Syriac Scriptures which they used, like all copies of the original Peshito, did not contain 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Revelation, and some other passages contained in the Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate. The copies of these Syriac Scriptures were ordered by the Inquisition, at the Synod of Diamper, to be all conformed to the R. C. Latin, and all books containing Nestorian teaching were ordered to be burnt. (Decrees of Synod of Diamper, Dr. Michael Geddes, pp. 134, 147, 428.)
But even in the buildings which were thus obtained, the Roman Catholic Service was still conducted in Syriac instead of in Latin, as Dr. J. W. Etheridge states in his History of the Syrian Churches, 1846, p. 158.
Eusebius says that in the reign of Commodus, (A. D. 180-192) Pantaenus, a Christian who had been a philosopher, went as an evangelist from Egypt as far as India; and was said to have found there"the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew," that is, in Syriac, then called Hebrew, "among some who there knew Christ; to whom Bartholmew, one of the apostles, had proclaimed Him." Dr. Buchanan says that these Christians now possess the Peshito-Syriac Scriptures of both covenants in writing; that they believe they possessed them "before the year A. D. 325," (p. 118Wink that "they have preserved the manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures incorrupt," (p. 124); and with such care that in one written copy which he saw, "the words of every book are numbered." (p. 118.)

Syriac was the native tongue of Syria. Two territories were called Syria; one to the east, the other to the west of the Euphrates. The capital of Syria, west of the Euphrates, was Damascus. In 2 Sam. viii. 6, "The Syrians of Damascus" are mentioned. Before the ten tribes were carried captive into Assyria, the kings of Syria had reduced them to long servitude. 2 Kings viii. 12; x. 32; xiii. 4-7. Dr. Grant suggests that this tended to change the language of the ten tribes from Hebrew to Syriac. (p. 147.) Syria, to the east of the Euphrates included the important city called Edessa. Bar Hebraeus, a very learned Syrian of the thirteenth century, said, "Of the Syriac language there are three dialects. Of these the most elegant is the Aramaean spoken by the inhabitants of Edessa and Haran, and Syria the Exterior," that is, Syria in Mesopotamia. (Walton's Poly. Prol. xiii. 4; Asseman's Bibliotheca, Vol. I., p. 476.)

G. Amira, a Syrian of note, and the author of a Syriac Grammar, made a statement which tends to show how very widely the Syriac language was used. He said that "he was able to define the Syriac or Chaldaic tongue to be that which was born, and had chief rule in the East; which could alike be called Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaean, Hebrew, or Christian; since it was known by nations of those names, and used by them." (Wichelhaus on N. C. Peshito, p. 21.) Walton also, in his Polyglot, (Prol. xiii. 2) says that the language in which the books of the Old and New Covenants exist in the east, and which to-day is called Syriac, "has been called Chaldaic, Babylonian, Aramaean, Syriac, Assyriac, and even Hebrew." The dialect in which the Chaldeans spoke to the king of Babylon, Dan. ii. 4; and that in which Rabshakeh, the Assyrian, was asked by the elders of Israel to speak to them, Isa. xxxvi. 11, are both called in those passages, Aramaean, a name which includes different Syriac dialects.

Dr. J. S. Asseman, the learned author of the great work--Bibliotheca Orientalis, published in four volumes folio; a Maronite Syrian; said in the Prologue to Vol. I. p. 1, that the Syriac language formerly flourished in the immense empire of the Assyrians and that of the Chaldees, and was brought to the greatest degree of amplitude and elegance; that it was afterwards consecrated by the mouth of Deity incarnate and talking with men; that it was known familiarly by the apostles; that it was used in sacred worship every where in the East; and was made famous by being used by eminent writers of the greatest excellence. It was in this language that the gospel was diffused from Edessa and other places throughout the East, as from Antioch in Syria it was diffused by Paul in Asia Minor and in Europe. Dr. J. S. Asseman, also said in his Prologue, p. 1, "To begin from those things which were first written in Syriac, it is a tradition certain and uniform, which the marvellous agreement of all the eastern nations confirms, and which both Eusebius of Caesarea, and Jerome, deemed to be established, that Thaddaeus, or as the Syrians prefer to call him, Adaeus, either an apostle or a disciple of Christ, immediately after His ascension into heaven, went to Abgar, the Toparch of Edessa, and instructed the people of Mesopotamia in the Christian faith; and that king Abgar himself received sacred baptism. The gospel was next openly proclaimed in those places, churches were built,.......and the sacred books translated out of Hebrew into Syriac.......Very many learned men began by their word, and by their writings, to deliver the divine teaching to the people, and to confute ancient, and more recent errors by their published volumes......Frequent incursions of the Persians, Arabs, and Tartars into Mesopotamia, and the adjoining provinces of the Syrians, followed; by which, cities were overthrown to their foundations, monasteries levelled with the ground, churches consumed by fire, and volumes of the most surpassing worth taken away. If any escaped the hands of the barbarians (as it is certain that very many did) they either feed the book-worms of the desert, or are torn, cut up, and devoted to profane uses by their ignorant possessors." He afterwards refers to later times, to 1555, when the N. C. Peshito was first printed, and to the efforts which have been made to discover, and to make use of, such ancient Syriac copies, both of the Scriptures and of other works, as may still exist.
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The many countries in which Syriac was spoken - by Larry Kelsey - 02-02-2004, 02:10 AM
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Re: - by Larry Kelsey - 02-21-2004, 10:19 PM

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