Why St Ephrem was called “The Syrian”?

There are hundreds of historical books and articles about St Ephrem's poetry and his understanding of the church. There is no doubt that St Ephrem played a big role in these tow areas. It is normal that Syrologues are interested in these subjects. In the future we will see more studies about St Ephrem the poet and St Ephrem the theologian.

Actually we do not know if some historian ever, studied why St Ephrem was called “The Syrian”. We believe it is important to ask this question.

Three reasons for choosing this subject

1. There are still many clergymen and educated Syrians who believe, that our Aramean forefathers was called Syrians which became synonymous with Christians and this lead to St Ephrem the Syrian means St Ephrem the Christian.
2. There are those who believe, that Syrians was a name used to cal the ancient people who spoke Aramaic-Syriac, such as Jews, Armenians, Persians and Arabs, and St Ephrem's roots maybe of those peoples.
3. Others believe that the name Syrians wasn't only used on Arameans but on all the different peoples of the east as Sumerians, Accadians and Assyrians and others. Here it becomes difficult to know the identity of St Ephrem, because the term Syrian is used without scientific proofs. Today we meet here on the 1700 years after St Ephrem's birth. We need to know why he was called “The Syrian” and what it means.

1. Does St Ephrem the Syrian mean The Christian?
2. Does St Ephrem the Syrian mean that he spoke Syriac?
3. Does St Ephrem the Syrian mean that he came from Syria (geographically)?
4. Does St Ephrem the Syrian mean the Aramean?
5. Or we simply don't know the identity of St Ephrem, because the term was used on ancient peoples who doesn't exist any more?

Finally is there some scripts in Syriac or Aramaic- as St Ephrem called his mother tongue -that he left which helps us knowing what “The Syrian” means, or we are to accept the faulty ideas who are spread among Syrians?

First the difficulties.

Unfortunately these ideas are still widely spread among the west and east Syrian clergymen although despite the fact that they are no sources to prove that. There is some difficulties to understand the term Syrian and its relation to Aramean. If a historian uses the Syriac sources it would help to explain this relation. I'll give an example from Saint Ephrem. It's known that St Ephrem mentioned Bardaisan as an “Aramean philosopher” (1). Some has interpreted it as heathen despite the fact that Bardaisan was Christian. And others believe that the term corresponds with “Beth Aramai” which is the geographical term used to name middle and southern Iraq. It's also known that Bardaisan's parents were from Babylon the land of Arameans. We have to distinguish between:

1. The land of Arameans which is the ancient name of Syria, the term was found in writings of Assyrian kings in Accadian, and in Aramaic writings from the middle of the 8^th century B.C. there we found the term “All Aram”(2) , “Higher Aram “ and “Lower Aram” . And the Torah mentioned the land of Arameans and its capitol Damascus. Likewise did the Septuaginta which was finished in the beginning of the 3^rd century B.C. was translated from Hebrew to Greek. It translated the term Aram as Syria in Greek, the king of Aram as king of Syria and Aramaic as Syriac (3) .
   
    
2. Beth Aramai which is the ancient geographic term written by the Assyrian kings, used in southern Iraq. DUPONT-SOMMER A, a French historian who believes that it replaced the older term “Land of Accad” in the 5^th century B.C.(4)

1. Beth Nahrin: there is a big difference between the old term “Bet Nahrin” as a historical, geographic and national term and the new meaning of it. “Beth Nahrin” meaning Mesopotamia is situated between Euphrates and Blekh, but is know wider reaching Tigris. Beth Nahrin in Accadian sources was pointing to Jazira (5). In my research (6) I mentioned Syriac sources which proves that Beth Nahrin is Jazira. And the term MESOPOTAMIA in meaning Iraq is both historically and geographically wrong (7).

Two Syriac documents were found near by Euphrates which were published by the historian JAVIER TEIXIDOR (8) in them it was written “Urhoy the big city, the mother of all cities in Beth Nahrin” that doesn't allow us to state that Urhoy is the mother of cities of Iraq. We should be loyal to the historical names of Beth Nahrin.

 Observation: The Jews started writing the Torah in the beginning of the 6^th century B.C. and they used the term “Aram Nahrin” (Genesis 24.10) instead of the old Accadian term “Birit Narim”. There is no doubt that the concentrated presence of the Arameans melted the rests of other ancient peoples who existed before them such as the Meteans, Horeans and Hitheans who were Indo-Europeans. It’s really difficult to know what the meaning of Aramean Bardaisan is.

• Does Aramean mean heathen?
• Does Aramean mean a person from Beth Aramai (Southern and middle Iraq)?
• Does Aramean mean a person from the land of Arameans or Syria?
• Does Aramean mean a person from Beth Nahrin or Aram Nahrin?
• Does Aramean simply mean a person who belongs to Arameans?

Second, some criticism about the wrong theories which are spread among both east and west Syrians about the term “Aramean”.

In the 19^th century, a theory was spread among east and west Syrians about the Aramean term which stated that the term was used on Arameans who converted to Christianity, perhaps Bishop Iqlimis Daoud was among the firsts to publish this in his dictionary (9) 1896. He stated in the preface on p 13 “And when the Arameans converted to Christianity they forgot about their (Aramaic) name, and were called Syrians distinguishing them from the heathen Arameans. The name Syrians wasn’t a national name but a name for their religion”. We see that the Bishop Touma Odow he too wrote in his Dictionary’s preface “ The term Syrians was used on those who came to believe in Jesus”. But Bishop Augin Manna stated in his dictionary’s preface that the term Syrians became synonymous to Christians since early generations (10). If we study these prefaces in detail we see:

1. That those were linguists not historians. Despite that they loved their own Aramean culture, they didn’t use the Syriac texts well.
2. They did mention a Syriac text from the book of the French historian RENAN which they reviewed from the dictionary PAYNE SMITH without checking the proofs that RENAN himself had mentioned to strengthen his idea.
3. That those tree bishops stated that the term Syrians was used on Arameans in the meaning Christians.
4. Unfortunately those three bishops who were linguists in Syriac didn’t find proofs to support their new theory in Syriac texts. We cal this theory “QUATREMERE” because we’ll see later that it was his theory.
5. The three bishops never studied history. Despite the fact that they were linguists they didn’t notice the Syrian expressions “Hanfo” and “Hanfutho” for Atheist and Heathen, and “Christonoyo”, “Mshihoyo”, “Mhaymno” for Christian, Christian and Believer. So the term Aramean became heathen in the 10^th century and the east Syrians uses the term Syrian in meaning Christian in modern times.

The theory about the Christian meaning of the term Syrian is a new theory which doesn’t exist in old scripts. We believe that Renan borrowed this theory from QUATREMERE who published his report 1831 about Nebtians and stated: “This Aramean people were used to be later called Syrians, when they should reject it because it was foreign name. These people were willing to leave and forget their real name “Arameans” the name of their forefathers”.

“How can we then explain the use of the name Syria and Syrians on peoples who lived behind the river Euphrates? If I’m not mistaken, it’s because of the Christian religion for the language of the bible was Greek. This convinced the Arameans that they had to became one people in all manners and that they had to leave their old name. This thing (leaving their old Aramaic name) is shown- if I’m not mistaken when something of big importance happened namely the word Aramean in Syriac is only one sign different from old word Armean which mean Heathen. In this way came the name Syrians to Arameans” (11).

QUATREMERE was the first one who stated that our Aramean forefathers left their old name when they became Christians, but the proof given by QUATREMERE is very weak, those two word and the difference between them was taken from the dictionaries of Iben Bahloul and Iben Ali from the 10^th century and had nothing to do with Arameans who became Christians.

The problem is that the Syrian scientists, especially the clergymen believed this theory because it’s written in those dictionaries which they use to study their mother tongue. This theory was spread among Syrians in the 20^th century.

Bishop Ishak Saka (12) borrowed literary some sentences from the preface of Augin Manna such as ” And so the word Syriac and Syrian became Christian or synonymous to it until this day” and he extracts from the theory of Manna/QUATREMERE “ The name Syrian was never ever used as a term of nation but only as a name of religion”. This is of course wrong and contradict what he wrote in the beginning of his paper “The Syrians were called Arameans, after Aram, before the Christ”

His highness Bishop George Saliba went further than so and wrote (13) “And the Syriac name took the place of the Aramaic name after the Christ, because Syrian became synonymous to Christian and the lowest common dominator of those who belongs to Arameans such as Accadians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Phoenicians… and became a name and sigil if Christianity”.

Bishop Sarhad Jammo stated in his lecture two years ago about Syrians in Iraq that “The term Syrian means Christian and it hasn’t any national meaning” .

Fader Dr Yousef Hebby published an article in Aram Magazine in which he wrote “ Lets us concentrate on Aramaity not Arameans, because we want the scientists to avoid any mixing of the national Arameans and those who speak Aramaic it not the same. The national Arameans are moving tribes who came originally from southern Syria whereas those who speak Aramaic are the heritors of the ancient eastern civilizations”(14) and in page 80 he wrote “Syrian became synonymous to eastern Christianity”.

It’s unfortunate that many tries to use the faulty theory of QUATREMERE to drain the term Syrian of its historical and national meaning. Does naming Saint Ephrem “The Syrian” help us understand the scientific meaning of the term Syrian?

Third, Saint Ephrem and the Syrian name

We don’t know if St Ephrem used the term Syrian in his writings? The lack of time will not allow me to go deeply in details. I hope to hear the other scientists in this matter. It’s more probable that St Ephrem himself didn’t use the term Syrian but used Aramean. I’ll mention some texts where Aramean occurred:

1. In the song Carmina Nisibena published by Beck and was translated to German:

ܡܶܢ ܥܶܒܪܳܝܳܐ ܘܐܳܪܳܡܳܝܳܐ ܐܳܦ ܡܶܢ ܥܝܪܐ.

Beck translated the term Aramean as heathen (15). But NAVARRE Claude and Fhegali P translated it as Arameans.

1. In the song of virgins ܐܳܪ̈ܡܳܝܶܐ ܒܣܽܘܟܳܝܗܽܘܢ ܫܰܒܚܘܽܗܝ This time Beck translates it as “Die Aramaer” the Arameans But Murray translates it as heathens (18).
   In the footnote nr 4 Murray explains to us “The pagans gave him praise with their branches” pagans is literally Arameans. But we don’t agree to his explanation, because the Syrians held on to their Aramean name and are proud of it even hundreds of years after the death of St Ephrem.
2. The term Aramean has occurred several times in St Ephrem’s poetry and he called our language “Aramaic” (19): ܐܰܝܟ ܕܰ ܟܬܺܝܒ ܒܳܐܪܳܡܳܝܳܐ likewise in a for Arameans very important text:

"ܟܰܕ ܡܶܬܪܓܶܫ ܒܪܶܥܝܳܢܳܐ ܓܽܘܚܟܳܐ ܕܶܝܢ ܥܒܰܕ ܢܰܦܫܶܗ ܒܶܝܬ ܐܳܪ̈ܡܳܝܶܐ ܘ ܝܰܘܢܳܝܶܐ ܦܺܝܠܽܘܣܳܦܐ ܕܐܳܪ̈ܡܳܝܶܐ"

Mitcell (20) translated it as “But the philosopher of the Syrians (i.e. Bardaisan) made himself a laughing-stock among Syrians and Greeks”.

It was better to translate the term Aramean as Aramean in respect to St Ephrem who did not use the term “Syrians”. It’s also clear here that it is impossible to translate Arameans as Pagans and to state that the Aramean Bardaisan was a Christian.

Fourth: if St Ephrem was Aramean, then why was he called Syrian

  It’s natural that St Ephrem belonged to the Arameans because he was borne and lived in an Aramaic country which was Aramaic 1000 years B.C. some of the stories about him tells us that his nationality was Syrian and the term Syrian the didn’t mean Christian nor Syriac speaking person of course it doesn’t mean Christian today either.

What’s the relation between the term Syrian and Aramean?
Eusebius wrote (22) that “Bardaisan the Syrian” has many scripts in his national language which he called “the language of Syrians” . We saw earlier that St Ephrem called Bardaisan “the Aramean” and he called our language “Aramaic”.

Is St Ephrem’s Aramaic different from Bardaisan’s Syriac?

Wasn’t the Syriac term synonymous to the Aramaic?

I’ll mention some Syriac texts to show that the Syrian researchers did use the two terms as two synonymous national names.

1. Nau F published a text of Saura Sabokht in the 17^th century where we could read the following “But some of the Syrians who had entered deeply I Christianity (i.e. Bardaisan) who was known as The Aramean Philosopher”. Here the term Aramean is synonymous to Syrian not Christian (23).
2. Jacob of Urhoy (633-708) mentioned:

"ܘ ܐܳܦ ܠܽܘܬܢ ܐܪ̈ܡܳܝܶܐ ... ܗܳܟܰܢܳܐ ܐܶܬܶܩܪܺܝܬ ܡܶܢ ܥܰܬܺܝܩܳܐ ܒܢܰܝ ܐܳܪܳܡ"

Meaning “and among us Arameans … and so was it called by the ancestors sons of Aram” (24).

And as it was written in one of his poems (25)

" ܗܘ ܗܟܘܬ ܐܳܦ ܚܢܢ ܐܪ̈ܡܳܝܶܐ ܐܘ ܟܺܝܬ ܣܘܪ̈̈ܝܳܝܶܐ "

Meaning “and among us Arameans or Syrians”

1. Amar J.P. (26) translated and published a poem of St Jacob of Saroug about St Ephrem where the to Synonymous terms occur:

" ܗܳܢܳܐ ܕܰ ܗܘܐ ܟـܠܺܝܠܳܐ ܠܟـܽܠܗ ܐܳܪܳܡܳܝܘܬܐ
ܗܳܢܳܐ ܕܰ ܗܘܐ ܪܗܝܛܪܐ ܪܰܒܳܐ ܒܝܬ ܣܘܪ̈̈ܝܳܝܶܐ "

“He who became wreath to hole the Aramean nation

He who became a big pleader among the Syrians”

Amar translated Aramean nation as “Syrian nation”.

According to these texts and to St Ephrem’s texts. I would like to emphasize that his title St Ephrem “The Syrian” means that he belongs to the Arameans. The title didn’t mean that he was a neither Christian nor Syriac-speaking.

Finally, Mannas/Quatremer-theory discusses our Aramean forefathers not ancient people.

I hope that I by this humble research encourage researchers to be more interested of St Ephrem the human and his environment. He is belonging to the Arameans my helps us to understand his poetry and stand points better. His writings saved our forefathers from heresy, will it save the ancestors from getting lost.

Henry Bedros Kipha

Paris

Notes

  1 - EPHREM 'S PROSE REFUTATIONS OF C.W MITCHELL , .SAINT Mani, Marcion and Bardaisan (2 vols.; London & Oxford: Williams & Norgate, 1912 & 1921), vol. II, page 7

2 - STEVEN GROSBY 'RM KLH AND THE WORSHIP OF HADAD: A NATION OF ARAM ? in ARAM OXFORD V- 7 ( 1995 ) pp337 - 352

3 - J .W WEVERS, ARAM AND ARAMAEAN IN THE SEPTUAGINT. in The World of the Aramaeans . p 237- 251 .

4 - DUPONT-SOMMER A , Les Araméens . PARIS 1949. P 76

5 - FINKELSTEIN J J , MESOPOTAMIA, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies V 21 ( 1962 ) p 78

6 - Henri BEDROS KIFA , BETH NAHRIN , in ARAM STOCKHOLM V 6 ( 1993 ) pp 59 - 62 the same article is published in www.freesuryoyo.org

-7 نتمنى على ألمؤرخين SYROLOGUES أن يدافعوا عن تسمية بيت نهرين ألتاريخية . مؤرخو ألشرق ألقديم ASSYROLOGUES يستخدمون تسمية MESOPOTAMIA كأنها تسمية تاريخية علمية أطلقت على سكان ألعراق ألقدامى. هذا مخالف للمعنى ألحقيقي للتسمية .

8 - TEIXIDOR J , DEUX DOCUMENTS SYRIAQUES DU III e SIECLE APRES J . -C., PROVENANT DU MOYEN EUPHRATE in, COMPTES RENDUS DES INSCRIPTIONS & BELLES-LETTRES 1990 PAGE 147

9 - GRAMMAIRE DE LA LANGUE ARAM2ENNE, MOSSOUL 1896 Duxième Edition

10 -DICTIONARY OF BISHOP MANNA, p 17

11 -QUATREMERE , Memoire sur les Nabatéens PARIS 1831. p 95

12 – Bishop Ishak Saka, My Syian Church, Damascus 1985, p 23.

13 –Bishop George Saliba, The Table of Anteoch, Bierut, p 42.

14 - Fader Dr Yousef HEBBY, in ARAM MAGAZINE STOCKHOLM V 3/4 ( 1992), p 78

15 - BECK E , CARMINA NISIBENA in C.S.C.O VOL 240/241 p 96

16 - SAINT EPHREM , LES CHANTS DE NISIBE Traduction de FHEGALI P et de NAVARRE C, PARIS 1989, p 215

17 - BECK E in C.S.C.O, V 223, p 70

18 - MURRAY R , SYMBOLS OF CHURCH AND KINGDOM ( 1975 ) . p 46

19 - C.W. Mitchell, S. Ephraim's Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion and Bardaisan . v 1 p 122

20 - MITCHELL V 2 P 7

21 - MITCHELL V 2 TRAD. P 3

22 - EUSEBIUS , Ecclesiastical History IV , 30

23 - NAU F , NOTES D'ASTRONOMIE SYRIENNE . DANS JOURNAL ASIATIQUE 1910 p 10

24 - 1888 ABBE MARTIN HEXAMERON DE JACQUES D EDESSE, p 69

25 - JACQUES D'EDESSE, Scolie , dans Patrologie Orientalis , T-29 , 196., P-196

26 - AMAR J . P , a metrical homily on holy mar Ephrem by mar Jacob of Saroug . in PATROLOGIA ORIENTALIS V 47 ( 1995 ). p 64