A COMMENTARY TO THE PREFACE OF BISHOP JACOB EUGIN MANNA'S DICTIONARY PART II

09-06-2006
In part 1 of my study on Bishop Manna's Preface which was published in the Journal ARAM (Number 2 of the journal), the attention was drawn to the fact that both East and West Syriacs seem to accept without further examination what Bishop Manna wrote on the term Syriac.
COMMENTARY ON BISHOP EUGIN MANNA'S PREFACE PART II


by Dr. Henry Bedros Kipha (Paris/France)


THE ARAMEANS ARE CALLED SYRIACS

In part 1 of my study on Bishop Manna's Preface which was publiched in the Journal ARAM (Number 2 of the journal), the attention was drawn to the fact that both East and West Syriacs seem to accept without further examination what Bishop Manna wrote on the term Syriac.
It is a pity that the majority of the Syriac people has accepted his opinions without any examination.
Talking to people interested in Syriac history I have in vain tried to account for the many mistakes concerning the term Syriac.
I recommend the readers to read Manna's Preface once more and to study the many proofs I shall put forward in this article so that you can draw your own conclusions concerning Manna's inferences, especially the conclusion that during the first centuries of the Christian era the term Syriac came to be synonymous with Christian.

As the article is long, it is necessary to divide it into four parts. I shall first treat the historic mistakes made by Bishop Manna and then I put forward a new observation which helps us to understand what caused Bishop Manna to make the mistakes he made, and which enables us to see "why" and "when" Syriac became synonymous with Christian.

Part I) What Bishop Manna wrote about the term.
Part II) The mistakes and contradictions.
Part III) About the origin of Syria from Surus.
Part IV) What the Orientalist Quatremere wrote about the term Syria and its origin from Assyria.


PART I - What Bishop Manna wrote about the term

Bishop Manna wrote as follows in his Preface:
"The scholars have differed widely in their opinions regarding the pronunciation of Syria which gave the Syriac people its name. Some of them, especially the Europeans considered that the pronunciation is derived from Athour or Ashour. According to them, it appeared after the Assyrian kings had conquered Syria (the land of Ararn).
In his book on the history of the semitic languages, famous French Orientalist Renan wrote: "Finally, during the time of the Seleucids, the name Aram was replaced by Syria which is nothing else than an abbreviation of Assyria (I mean Athour or Athorya according to its Greek pronunciation). This name was used commonly by the Greeks and designated the whole of Inner Asia.
Despite of this, the name Aram has not ceased totally to be used but has remained in use, especially with the Aramaeans who did not become Christians as the Nabataeans and the Haranaeans. This explains why Aramaean is commonly identified with the Sabaean and the heathens."

The bishop renders still more opinions concerning the name "Syria", putting his trust in both East and West Syriac writers. But the opinions of these writers are of little scientific value as their judgments lack foundation in documents. To these writers belong:
1. Bar Ali who is the author of a famous Syriac dictionary. His opinion was that Syria comprised the whole territory from Antioch to Edessa. It was called Syria after Surus who killed his own brother to rule over Mesopotamia all by himself.
2. In his dictionary Hasan Bar Bahloul died ca 962, wrote that "the word Syria is derived from Surus, irrespective of he was alive or dead. Surus killed his brother and ruled over Mesopotamia. After his name the whole of his country was called Suriya (=Syria). The Syriacs were by the way earlier called Aramaeans".
3. Bar Salibi †1171, in his book "oru,utho". In Chapter 14 of this book, he attacked the Greeks. He wrote: "But they (the Greeks) call us Jacobites instead of Syriacs in order to make fun of us. Our answer is that the Syriac name that you deprive us of is no name of honour to us, as it is derived from the name Surus, which was the name of a king who ruled over Antioch and gave it the name Syria. While we are the sons of Aram, and were once called Aramaeans".

The bishop concludes his presentation: "Irrespective of the degree of truth of the above-mentioned opinions, there are undoubted consequences
1. Formerly, the Syriacs in general, East as well as West Syriacs, were not called Syriacs but Aramaeans - after their ancestor Aram who was the son of Sem who was the son of Noah. 2
. The origin of the term Syriacs (Syrians) dates from the fifth or sixth centuries BC.at the most.
3. The Aramaeans did not adopt the term Syriacs (Syrians) until after Christ. They adopted it from the apostles who spread the Gospel among the Aramaeans, and as all the apostles came from Syrian Palestine our ancestors who were christians wanted to confess their adherence to the name their preachers bore in order to distinguish themselves in this way from the Aramaeans who were still heathens. Therefore, the pronunciation aramaya or oromoyo became synonymous with the Sabaean and the heathens and the pronunciation Syriac (Syrian) synonymous with Christian up to our time."
If the reader scrutinizes Bishop Manna's book, he will find that the bishop has made no distinct decision on the name Syriac. He does not give a clear cut answer to the question if the word Syria is derived from Assyria according to the historian Renan or from the name of the Aramaean King Surus according to the Syriac writers.
This is undoubtedly a difficult question.
Still today, the Syriacs do not agree among themselves concerning the origin of the term.
Today, it would be possible to solve this problem, namely, if we relied on what has been written since the year 1900, especially in regard to the old historical sources. The bishop's attempt to find out the origin of the term "Syriac (Syrian)" has given us a "new problem", namely, his binding together to each other the name "Syriac (Syrians)" and the conversion of the East Aramaeans to Christianity. This was what made him and the majority of the Syriacs believe in following equation: "Syriac (Syrian) is synonymous with Christian".

PART II - The mistakes and the contradictions in Preface

The main idea that involved the bishop in various problems concerning the equation (= the term) is his opinion that in the East Syriac language (which is wrongly called Chaldean or Assyrian today) the word meant Christian. This is an opinion which is still today common among the East Syriacs.
Moreover, the bishop found that in their publications some European scholars emphasized that the term "Syriac (Syrian)" came to replace "Aramaean/Aramaic", among the newly christened Aramaeans.
This basis was taken for granted by the bishop, and he worded it in a way that can only be accepted. He wrote:
"...therefore, the pronunciation Aramaean came to be synonymous with Sabaean and heathen. The pronunciation 'Syriac' becomes synonymous with Christian up to our time".
Precisely this emphasis on "up to our time" made many educated Syriacs who were familiar with the problem believe in the bishop's equation and so in his conclusions Le. "Aramaean means pagan and Syrian means christian" .

- For, is not the word Aramaean allegorically equivalent to heathen, for instance, in the Syriac dictionaries from the eleventh century AD. ?
- Has not the name of Naaman the Aramaean in The Old Testament been transformed into Naaman the Syriac in The New Testament?
- And are there not many other similar comparisons that the Syriacs familiar with the problem, especially the clergymen, have made the most of to confirm the bishop's equation:

"Syriac = Christian"

Most Syriac ecclesiastics have stated that the term "Syriac (Syrian)" is 2000 years old. They confirm the bishop's equation, however, in an indirect way. If the name Syriacs had meant Christians, Bar Salibi would have been proud of this name. Instead he is proud of his Aramaean identity.
For the reader's part it is important to know that the Syriacs retained their Aramaean name up to the twelfth century AD.

WHEN DID THE TERM ARAMAEAN BEGIN TO MEAN HEATHEN?

The answer can be found in the following lines. It is important to note that Jacob Bar Salibi is one of the most important of the Jacobite Syriac writers. He is also known under the name of Dionosius, Bishop of Amid (†1171AD.) In his book directed against the Melchites (Syriacs that are now known as Greek Ortodox Syriacs and Greek-Catholic Syriacs)
You should know that the word "Greek" is pronounced Helinos in their language (Greek) and that Helinos means "Heathen" and Helinismos "Heathenism".
We see this clearly in Jacob of Sarog praise of Mar Ephrem, the Syriac:
"He that became the crown of the whole Aramaean nation which thanks to him was blessed with spiritual gifts".
This also applies to his words about the Virgins of Edessa, Mar Ephrem's pupils:
"The Hebrew girls sang with their tambourines, and the Aramaean girls sang praises unto God with their hymns".
If the term Aramaean had actually meant only heathen at the beginning of the sixth century A.D., Jacob of Sarog, died 521, would not describe Mar Ephrem, the Syriac, as he "who became the crown of the whole Aramean nation", and neither would he have written "...the Aramaean girls sing praises...", about Mar Ephrem's pupils. I
recommend the reader to read closely what bishop Manna wrote on Bar Salibi: "Our answer is that the Syriac name that you deprive us of is no name of honour to us".

I put the following question to the reader:
Is there anything in the previous sentence that indicates that the name Syriac means Christian?
It is clear that Bishop Manna could not use the Syriac sources to confirm his theory, because these Syriac quotations and references, which he used confirms that the word Aramaean was synonymous with Syrian/Syriac and vice versa through the whole christian era.

Bar Salibi then goes on: "
... we are the sons of Aram, and we were once called Aramaeans". I
t is known that Bar Salibi's attitude to the Greeks was very critical as they were attached to their name which meant "Heathenism". If the Aramaen name had had the same significance, he would not have been proud of being an Aramaean. I
want to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the Syriac writers always used the words Hanfo and Hanfutho when they meant heathen and heathenism.

PART III - About the origin of Syrian from Surus

We arrived at the conclusion that Bishop Manna's account of his view on the origin of the pronounciation Syria was in no way complete and reliable. He quotes several Syriac writers who claim that the pronunciation Syria is derived from the name of King Surus.

- Who is this king?
- When did he come into power?
- What historical documents on him are there?

The name Surus as well as the king Surus is a fable which the Syriacs got from andent Greek mythology after many modifications. Mythology tells us that he ruled over Mesopotamia (Gzirta). Other sources tell us that he ruled over Antioch. But we know that the town of Antioch was built by the Greeks during the third century BC.. Neither are there any archeological findings or coins that come from this king.
Puzzling over the question how a story in Greek mythology could be transformed into something real in which our ancestons believed and in which many Syriacs believe still today, drove me to enter deeply into the matter.
During my studies I got acquainted with the Syriac documents that touch up on the name of the alleged Aramaean king.
I have even written a whole article about the question, called "Surus-the Non-existing King".
There is a Syriac document with the number 12152 in the British Museum. The document is a translation of the Greek mythological story and has the title "The Wise Dioklis" (a Greek writer).
I shall translate the first chapter:
"During the time of Paleg there appeared different languages. One of Japhet's sons by the name of Aginur moved from the East towards the coast and built a town to himself there which he called 'Gnur' called Surin Syriac (On the Libanese coast). He got three sons: Surus, the firstborn; Cilicus, the second son; and Phoenicus, the youngest son. Aginur ruled for thirteen years. Immediately before his death, he divided his country and left a part of it to each one of his sons. Phoenicus got Phoenicia, Cilicus got Cilicia, and Surus got Syria" .
Further, mythology tells us that Hercules invented the red colour during the time of King Phoenicus and how this colour came to be the colour of Kings. The name Surus and the king Surus can undoubtedly be derived from the myth. We ought to resist from believing in myths. Otherwise we run the risk of getting our history crammed with myths.
Today there is, of course, no historian who believes that the word Syria is a modification of Surus.

PART IV - What the Orientalist Quatremere wrote about the term Syria and its origin from Assyria.

Bishop Manna is supposed to have taken over this idea from the French Orientalist Renan. For the text translated is in Renan's history book "Histoire Generale des Langues Semitiques".
I shall later on prove to the reader that Manna had never read this book, and that he received the text that he translated from another book.

I want to point out that Rènan began to work at his book in 1847 A.D., and that the first edition came out in 1862.
Renan wrote that he got his idea of the connection between Syria and Assyria from the Orientalist Quatremere, who used to lecture in Paris, and who wrote his famous "Thesis on the Nabataeans" in 1831. I was happy when I found an old copy of this book at the University of Sorbonne.

In his book, Quatremere maintains that the Nabataeans are Aramaeans. The important thing is, however, what he wrote about the connection between the names Aramaean/ Aramaic and Syrian/Syriac. He wrote as follows:
"It is natural to think as most historians do that the word Syria (Syrie) is only an abbreviation of Assyria (Assyrie)... When the Greeks entered upon their strong relations with the Orient, the rumours of the wars of conquest of the andent Assyrians had left deep impressions behind. The Greeks came to call the whole region, which was part of their empire, Assyria. Before long they discovered that they needed to make some distinction between the several nations that lived in the "Assyrian" state.
To achieve their end, they removed the letter A from the word Assyria and got Syria which should stand for the peoples that lived beyond the river Euphrates. This method has not always proved to be successful. On more than one occasion, the Greeks mixed up the two terms, namely, Assyrians and Syriacs (Syrians)".

Quatremere considers that it was the Greeks who called the peoples of the ancient Orient Assyrians, and the Aramaens. By removing the letter "A" from Assyria they changed Assyria into Syria, from which today's Syria has its name.
It is important to point out that Quatremere's book was printed in 1831, thus ten years before the deciphering of the cuneiform writing, and consequently the interpretation of the stories of the Assyrian kings about their wars against the Aramaean tribes.
As Quatremere relied entirely on the Greek documents in his research, he made certain mistakes. He thought that the Greeks were the first to call the whole region Assyria.
In the previous number of "Aram" I explained that it was the Persians who were the first to use the name "Assurstan" for the Middle East. The name began to be used after the Persians had crushed the Aramaean-Chaldean empire.
The Greeks in their turn got the term "Assurstan" from the Persians. It was used as a name for the fifth satrapy and not as a name for the andent Assyria.
The historians believed that in the old Persian language, it was possible to write the letter "A" without having to pronounce it, which may have caused the Greeks to make geographical mistakes. Ancient Assyria was situated on the Tigris while the common name during the fourth century and the fifth century BC. referred to today's Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq; Armenian language calls the Syriacs (Syrians) by the old Assyrian name, namely Asori. This clearly proves that the term "Assyrians" referred to the peoples of the ancient Orient disregarding their nationalities because it was an administrative name for the whole area and they did not mean only old Assyria. Likewise, it proves that the name Syria is a modification of Assyria and not of Surus.
The second important thing to note is that after the entry of the Greeks into the Orient, the word Syria Syrian, came to be geographically limited to today's Syria, and as Syria was populated by Aramaeans the word Syriac became synonymous with the word Aramaean in the third century BC.
In the second century BC, the Greek geographer Strabo wrote "Poseidonius also tells us that those who are called Syriacs (Syrians) by the Greeks call themselves Aramaeans".

To sum up, we must separate the different terms from one another:
a) The term Assyrians that refers to the inhabitants of the ancient Assyria.
b) The term Assyria that the Greeks got from the Persian Assurstan and that comprised the ancient Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia (Gzirta), Palestine, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. The Greeks called these areas ultemately Assyria and Syria.
c) The state of Syria that was founded by Alexander the Great (and that was later on assigned to Seleucus who was afterwards called "King of Syria") came to be synonymous with the land of Aram and the Aramaean people.

In my future studies I hope to be able to put forward still more proofs concerning the geographical mistakes made by the Greeks on account of their difficulty in keeping the different names apart.
It is now clear what the historian Justin meant by "the Assyrians who later came to be called Syriacs (Syrians)".
What was meant was thus the fifth Persian province and not the ancient Assyrians. The same also true of the historian Ammien Marcellin who wrote "the Assyrian language" but had the Syriac Aramaic language in view and not the Akkadian which the ancient Assyrians spoke.

The purpose of the elose research is to prove the following point.
a) That bishop Manna got his idea from Renan who in his turn got it from Quatremere.
b) That Qutremere could distinguish between the name "ancient Syria" and " Assyria". According to him, the term "Assyria" was adopted by the Greeks to denote Inner Asia or Asia Minor.
c) Quatremere believed that "Syria" is a modification of "Assyria" and that the Aramaeans came to be called Syriacs (Syrians).
d) In the text which bishop Manna borrowed from Renan it says "towards the end, during the time of seleucid kings, the name Aram has been replaced by Syria (which is nothing else than an abbreviation of Assyria) and that consequently is not Aram synonymous with Ashour, Assyria."
The meaning of the text is actually that Aram was replaced by Syria which is a modification of Assyria. Renan wrote: "It was a usual term with the Greeks, and they commonly used it for the whole of inner Asia".
Bishop Manna gave a few dozen explanations that Aram being synonymous with Syria but not a single explanation to its being synonymous with Assyria. It is true that he supposed that the ancient Assyrian tribes were Aramaean in origin but in my first study in ARAM vo1.1 I have proved that this was not the case. Same Syriacs have exploited this "text" .
They have even assigned to it wrong historical details as when they claim that Syria is a modification of Assyria and that therefore the Syriacs are Assyrians, and likewise, that the Assyrians were called Syriacs (Syrians) and that therefore the Syriacs should be Assyrians.
Renan's teacher Quatremere did not believe in this idea. He even gave several Greek geographical and historical proofs of the fact that they (the Greeks) could not distinguish between the old Assyrian name (the land of Ashur on the Tigris) and the administrative name which denoted Asia Minor.
Renan himself made a distinction between the Assyrians and the Aramaean Syriacs. Thus it is indeed a great shame that one puts Renan's name to an improper use by imputing opinions to him which he did not believe in.

Sources:
1.Dictionary of Chaldean-Arabic, Preface,p.15.
2.Mingana (A), ed., Bar Salibi in "Woodbroke Studies".V.1(1927),p.72. v 3. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum, C.S.C.O., T. 6, p.360.
4. Quatre Mere, Memoire Sur les Nabateems, 1831, p.24.
5. Ibid., p.24.
6. Strabo, Geographie I (2). 74