SIRIA

SYRIA — The ruins of the medieval cathedral of Târtus.

Names (collective, pejorative, etc.) were also used in the formation of the so-called unit nouns. Evidence of this remains, e.g., zēbattā “once” from zabnā “time,” nēfētā “a breath” from nēfētā “breathing,” bētā “egg, etc.” whose masculine plurals now replace the collective singular form. This ending -at also serves to form abstracts from verbal adjectives, e.g., zēbintā “purchase” from zēbintā “purchased,” hēfiktā “ruin” from hēfiktā “destroyed,” “spoiled.” The feminine ending -aj was also used to form abstracts. Thus verbal nouns (maṣdar) arise such as tu'jaj “error,” tu'jaj “hiding.” The Arabic nharaj “another” corresponds to ohrē from the ancient Aramaic, whose ē is preserved in Syriac hētā.

As for numbers, only certain numeral forms (two, twenty, two hundred) remain of the dual. As in this case, so too in the plural the ending formation (-aj, -in, -ē; -āt, -ā, -ātā) prevails without restriction. Nevertheless, traces remain of the broken plural types so frequent in South Semitic, e.g., qurjā “countries” (qutl), Arabic quran (though before suffixes and in the construct state the ending -aj is already found); hemrā “herd of donkeys” is of the qitāl type. To the broken plural types qaṭal, qiṭāl, qaṭāl is also added the plural ending, e.g., bātē “houses,” 'ammē “peoples,” galtē “waves.” The forms henkē “palates” and guntē “robberies,” as appears from the mute spirant, are qitāl and qaṭal. There do not seem to be any vestiges remaining of the plurals of small quantities (pluralia paucitatis), while it has been suggested that in such difficult forms as rā'actāda “shepherds,” plural dā'ja (qāṯī of 3rd jīv) there is an ancient plural of a plural, formed with -at the plural of the form ru'āt (qaṭal type, Arabic broken plural of qātil of 3rd jīv), though the first vowel is changed according to the singular. It is certain that in rawrebīn “great” the repetition of the base, which mostly expresses a distributive, is used for the expression of the plural. The close connection of abstract forms with the plural (as in Hebrew zēqānīm “see chiaia,” bēhūrīm “youth”) appears, e.g., in hērūrē “liberation,” mēkūrē “marriage.” For the transition of an abstract (maqdar, nomen verbi) to a concrete sense, so widespread throughout Semitism, the example of talmīdā “disciple” (literally “the learning,” “the habituating,” from lēmūd “accustomed”) suffices, which corresponds in Hebrew to limmūdī; both types, namely taqtil and qittūl respectively in Aramaic and in Hebrew, express a verbal noun of the intensive theme.

In syntax, it should be noted that the absolute state of participles and verbal adjectives expresses the predicate of the sentence. The syntax of the period departs greatly from the purely Semitic type. The nominal sentence is rare; there do not exist only apparently independent phrases that are in fact subordinate, such as hāl phrases, conditional phrases without conjunction, etc.; instead, subordinating conjunctions abound.

Word order is very free, and no other Semitic language has assimilated as many foreign words as Syriac: Akkadian (Sumerian), Hebrew, Persian, Greek, and even Latin through Greek. The very Greek particles dē and γάρ have been imitated, though using Semitic roots.

Syriac is the least Semitic of all Semitic languages and the most subject to Hellenistic influence.

Raymond Köbert

VI. THE SYRIAC RITE

Also called Syro-Antiochene, Syro-Western, Syro-Palestinian, this rite is used today in the Syriac patriarchates (Catholic and dissident) after 1653, and in the Malankara dioceses (q.v.) of India; the Maronite rite (q.v.) is connected with II. Until the formation of a separate Monophysite Church in Syria in the 6th century, the Syriac rite did not differ from the Antiochene rite (q.v.) of the Orthodox.

After the separation, it developed its own character, determined more by the elimination of the Greek language than of Greek elements. In fact, it presents itself as a happy combination of Syriac and Greek elements: alongside ancient Greek anaphoras, there is a Syriac anaphora; together with biblical readings taken from the Peshitta, others are read from the Harklean version; besides Syriac hymns, those of the Eye of Severus of Antioch are used; to the Syriac enjānē are mixed Greek canons; and alongside the mēmrē of Syriac authors, homilies of Greek Fathers are read. This development lasted beyond the 9th century, and new anaphoras were composed until the 15th century. The Arabic language, which was used little before the 10th century, then took on an increasingly important role (cf. for Catholics Synodus Sciarfensis... anni 1888, Rome 1896, p. 34 ff.); in the 19th century, the Turkish language was also admitted in some regions; the script remained always Syriac.

See BAPTISM; HYMNOGRAPHY; MASS; ORDER AND ORDINATION; PENANCE; DIVINE OFFICE.

VII. LITERATURE

The Syriac language, already in use among the Christians of ancient Syria, Osroene, and Mesopotamia, constitutes, together with the language of the Babylonian Talmud, the Eastern Aramaic. Syriac literature, whose earliest writings begin in the 3rd century, flourished especially from the 4th to the 7th century, an epoch in which it began to be replaced by Arabic literature. There are three branches of Syriac literature: Orthodox authors, from the beginnings until the 5th century; from then until the second millennium, there are in parallel Jacobite (q.v.) and Nestorian (q.V. NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANISM) authors. In the first period the estrangelo script is used, while the Jacobites add small Greek vowels (serto script) and the Nestorians (Nestorian script) a system of vocalization by means of dots.

Here are the main characteristics of Syriac literature: 1) it comprises almost exclusively ecclesiastical writings; 2) except for the earliest Persian authors, the others depend on the Greeks, as is seen from the abundance of translations; 3) it demonstrates a profound religious sense and a predilection for poetry. This consists in the fact that the verses have a certain number of syllables.

On the Syriac versions of Holy Scripture see below. The Syrians have preserved many Greek writings whose originals

VIII. SYRIAC VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE

These are important from various points of view: they reflect the daily life of those Christians, the political and religious upheavals (heresies) of those regions. They were preserved and handed down with tenacious fidelity. With regard to the New Testament, the Syriac version is the oldest of all, and was made in a language close to that used by Jesus. Their history shows the ever-increasing Hellenization of a Christianity originally Semitic. Although much useful research has been done, the desirable working tools have not yet been created, especially critical editions that also incorporate the well-vetted biblical quotations from all Syriac literature. Hence it is that in many questions one can arrive at nothing more than probabilities or hypotheses. Moreover, the origins and vicissitudes of the Syriac Christian communities are shrouded in obscurity, owing to the loss of historical sources (v. ARBELA, CRONACA di).

Many scholars prefer to see a Jewish rather than a Jewish-Christian origin for the most essential parts of the Peshitta of the Old Testament, which follows the Palestinian canon (v.), with the exception of Chronicles, *Ezra-Nehemiah*, and Esther, and in which there is a strong influence of the Targums (v.), especially that of ‘Onqelôs.

As for the Gospels, even for the New Testament one might suppose the existence of some Aramaic Gospel (the original Matthew, or the Gospel of the Nazarenes or of the Hebrews?), which would explain the influence of some Aramaic apocryphal Gospel on the *Diatessaron* (v.) of Tatian (v.), which in any case was the first New Testament of the Syriac Church, composed before 172, according to recent scholars, in a Syriac language of great expressive and stylistic qualities, and which had such influence on the history of both Eastern and even Western versions (C. Peters, S. Lyonnet, G. Messina, A. Vööbus). Yet earlier scholars tended to believe that the original text was composed in Greek. Hence they cite a fragment found at Dura Europos. But this, together with the Berlin Papyrus 1638 (published by O. Stegmüller), was analyzed by A. Baumstark, whose results are accepted by competent modern Syriac scholars (C. Peters, A. Vööbus). Tatian, a man of great gifts, probably knew how to write equally well in Greek as in his native tongue. In any case, the *Diatessaron* became the beloved Bible of the Syriac Church for several centuries. The Syriac name of the *Diatessaron* is *Evangeliôn damêhallê*, “Gospel of the mixed (texts).”

Yet soon afterwards, perhaps first for theological study, this was opposed by an *Evangeliôn damêpharrêsê*, the “Gospel of the separated (texts),” i.e., our *Matthew, Mark, Luke, John* (excluding the apocryphal), and reworked according to style, even if a strong influence of the Syriac *Diatessaron* remained. Moreover, there existed an irreducible plurality of such versions, made by various persons at different times and places. They took several opposing forms, one of which is preserved in the very ancient palimpsest discovered in 1892 by Agnes Smith Lewis in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and for that reason called the Syrosinaïtic; it is a codex of the 4th or 5th century. Already 50 years earlier, H. Tattam had brought to Europe another precious codex from the monastery of Our Lady, Mother of God, in the Nitrian Desert of Egypt, later edited by W. Cureton (London 1858), and called the Syrcuretonian. These two Gospel codices are independent of each other; they are more or less close to the *Diatessaron*; there also existed other forms of the Syriac text of the Gospels, e.g., Bostra (v.).

The diversity of New Testament texts and the incompleteness and inaccuracies of the Old Testament in the 4th and 5th centuries called for a revision; on this the Greek *Vulgate* text of Antioch had great influence, where many priests and future bishops of the Syriac Church studied. The “harmonistic” readings caused by Tatian were eliminated, other interpolations removed, omissions restored, and the whole stylistically conformed to the Greek text of Antioch. Yet it is unknown who the revisers were; given the differences among the individual books, they were many, perhaps not of the same generation or period.

In the end, this Bible was also introduced by ecclesiastical law; Theodoret of Cyrus (v.) and Rabbûlâ of Edessa waged a fierce struggle to uproot from their flock the use of the *Diatessaron*, already venerable and more practical, e.g., for itinerant monks. Thus, not without struggle and delay, this revision became the Bible of the Syriac Church, practically down to the present day. The name by which it is transmitted to us first by Môsê bar Kêfâ (d. 913) is *Peshittâ*, a term which, taken in context, means rather the “simple” than the “vulgate,” and stands in opposition to versions made later in a more scientific manner according to Greek texts, whose influence was increasing. Originally, besides the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, the books *2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude* were lacking, but they were inserted in manuscripts of the 11th century, and the Apocalypse, inserted in manuscripts of the 13th century.

There are mainly four recensions of the Peshitta: the Nestorian, the Jacobite, the Melkite, and the Maronite. The first edition of SIMONIA (v.) in 1645 in the Paris Polyglot, later reproduced by Brian Walton in the London Polyglot of 1657, which, however, was based on one of the worst manuscripts and was emended and treated freely by the editors, not without typographical blunders. Walton, however, in vol. VI gives the results of a collation of manuscripts made by Herbert Thorndike, likewise containing less accurate material, but not therefore negligible since no other critical apparatus exists for the entire Peshitta. The 19th century produced three editions, none of them, however, of critical value. That of Samuel Lee (1823) is essentially a reprint of the Polyglot. The Urmi edition, published in 1852 in Urmi (Iran) by the American Protestant Missionary Society, is based on some Nestorian manuscripts and provides punctuation for the complete text, yet it depends heavily on S. Lee. That edited by the Dominican Fathers of Mosul in 1887–91, hence called the Mosul edition, is the most complete, beautiful, and convenient; its origin is described by J. M. Vosté in Misc. card. Mercati, I (Città del Vaticano 1946), pp. 59–94, though it does not state from which manuscripts the biblical text was taken. Along with P. Bedjan and A. Vaccari, it may be considered “the best of all” (repr., Beirut 1951; it is the only one in commerce). The urgent problem remains of a critical edition of the entire Peshitta, beyond the existing partial critical editions (Pentateuch, Psalms, Isaiah, Chronicles, and others).

SYRIA - Title page of the Syriac-language Bible from the Mosul edition, 1886 (Catholic). Copy in the Biblical Institute, Rome.

More scientific versions were always made according to the Greek text in the 6th and 7th centuries. The first was produced by the chorepiscopus Policarpo at the behest of his bishop Philoxenus of Mabbûg (v.) in 508; it encompassed the entire Bible, including the deuterocanonical epistles and the Apocalypse; unfortunately, only fragments of the New Testament and the Psalms remain, giving rise to much debate, such as the recent question of whether it was based on a Lucianic codex from Antioch (J. Schildenberger) or an Euthalian one from Caesarea in Palestine, with a certain critical apparatus (G. Zuntz); Zuntz may be correct in that it stands midway between the freedom of the Peshitta and the slavish adherence to the Greek text of the Harklean version. The latter comprises only the New Testament and includes, beyond the text, a critical apparatus; however, it is disputed whether the base text was the Philoxenian, to which Thomas, bishop of Mabbûg (Harqel), in the years 615–16, while collating manuscripts in the Ennatum monastery near Alexandria in Egypt, added the apparatus incorporating the results of his collations according to the Alexandrian technique, or whether he rather revised and modified the text; several manuscripts of this text survive. For the Old Testament, in 617–18, Paul, bishop of Tella (near Edessa, under the mandate of Athanasius, the schismatic patriarch of Antioch), did something similar. He took the fifth column in Origen’s Hexapla (v.) and translated it faithfully into Syriac, retaining the signs of textual criticism, such as asterisks, obeli, etc., and the marginal notes; the most famous manuscript in the Ambrosiana in Milan was published by A. M. Ceriani (Monumenta sacra et profana, Milan 1874) in a fine lithographic edition; this manuscript does not include the entire Old Testament; however, by providing Origen’s textual critical signs, it is of the greatest help in reconstructing the Hexapla and gives Daniel in the Septuagint version, which was replaced in Greek Bibles by that of Theodotion. But already in 704–705, James of Edessa made another recension of the Old Testament according to the Septuagint; he also divided the text, providing brief summaries for individual chapters and adding marginal notes, etc., along with the “Syriac Masorah,” which takes its name from the Karkaftā monastery on the Ḥābūr River (though there is no such thing as a “Karkafan version”).

Not strictly Syriac is the Syro-Palestinian version of the complete Greek Bible in the most recent Galilean-Aramaic dialect, written in Syriac script; it is used in the liturgy of the Melkites. Direct relations with Syriac versions should not be underestimated, nor the influence of the Targums on the two versions; it would date back to the 4th–6th centuries.

pp. 203–10; id., *The New Test. Peshitta and its predecessors. The Stud. New Test. Societas Bulletin*, 1 (1950), pp. 51–62; B. J. Roberts, *The Old Test. text and versions*, Cardiff 1951, pp. 214–28. Philosophy and Harklean: besides H. Höpfl–B. Gut, *op. cit.*, cf. G. Zuntz, *The ancestry of the Harklean New Test.* (The British Academy Papers, 7), Oxford 1945; cf. *Rev. bibl.*, 54 (1947), pp. 127–31; P. E. Kahle, *The Chester Beatty Ms of the Harklean Gospel*, in *Misc. G. Mercati*, VI, Vatican City 1948, pp. 208–33; G. Zuntz, *Etudes harkléniennes*, in *Rev. bibl.*, 57 (1950), pp. 550–582. Syro-Escorial: H. Höpfl–B. Gut, *op. cit.*, p. 325 ff. Syro-Palestinian: *ibid.*, p. 331 ff.; A. Baumstark, *Das Problem des christlich-palästinensischen Evangelium-Textes*, in *Oriens Christianus*, 32 (1935), pp. 201–24; C. Peters, *op. cit.*, pp. 121–25. Pietro Nober

IX. Christian Art

From the standpoint of art history, Syria during the Christian era can be divided into three major regions with distinct characteristics. The first is the vast coastal zone along the Mediterranean from Gaza to Antioch, varying in depth at different points, and in its northern section encompassing the entire valley of the Orontes with the cities of Apamea, Epiphania, and Emesa, extending as far as Heliopolis; then the oasis of Damascus, and at the southern extremity the entire Palestine and the part of the province of Arabia south of Gerasa. Taken as a whole, this is a deeply Hellenized land, comprising the greatest cities that were seats of ancient and highly developed culture, exceedingly rich in industries and trade, open to the sea toward the entire Mediterranean world and especially toward the imperial seat, Byzantium. The second region, with its own distinct characteristics, is the Hauran, a great volcanic plateau rich in basaltic rock, inhabited since Hellenistic times by a population of Arab character, containing many ancient centers but perhaps only one city of great cultural importance, Bostra (Bosra). The third region is that of the limestone hills of inland Syria to the east of the Orontes valley, extending from the Ġebel al-'Alà at the height of Ḥamāh in the south to include, in the north, the entire Ġebel Sim'an, and reaching, in the east, as far as the Ġebel al-Ḥaṣṣ: this is a territory more distinctly Aramaic.

It is in the first region that the greatest artistic production took place, where not only were the greatest works of Syriac Christian art created, but where all forms of decoration and luxury were produced—wall paintings and mosaics, rich floor mosaics, illuminated codices, goldsmith work, carved ivories, and so forth. Unfortunately, however, its great architectural constructions have almost entirely disappeared, and only through ancient descriptions can they be known. The other two regions, on the other hand, have preserved a quantity—almost an abundance—of architectural monuments, many of which are still well preserved above ground, so that they can be fully appreciated from an artistic standpoint, while excavations may only clarify liturgical details or those pertaining to civil history. Moreover, the greater part of these monuments has been published in convenient repertories (M. de Vogüé, H. C. Butler), making their study easy; and even more data will become available when the careful and detailed researches of the Russian architect Ġalenko are published. This ease of study of the monuments of inland Syria has meant that in books on Syriac Christian art, and especially on architecture, almost only these are discussed, whereas they represent only the production of the part of the country with the least culture and creativity. This has given rise to a not inconsiderable imbalance in artistic judgment, which, here, for lack of space, can only be corrected in a necessarily summary manner.

The first part of the Syrian territory outlined above is an eminently Hellenistic zone, Greek in culture and language, which not only inherited all previous tradition but maintained continuous contact with the great centers of the eastern Mediterranean, Alexandria, Ephesus, Byzantium; and which, at the same time, attracted, for commercial reasons, those Eastern elements, especially Iranian, that brought models or ideas from the East. It is no coincidence that, as early as the 3rd century, floor mosaics in Antioch display Iranian decorative motifs. Furthermore, it is an extremely wealthy region, and the financial power of its clientele generated ever greater commissions and the possibility for artists to conceive and realize the most ambitious projects. Finally, it is the region that saw the rise, within its borders, of great imperial foundations, not only on the Holy Sites. All this entailed an exchange of ideas, the possibility of obtaining any material, and an abundance of means that attracted the best elements even from distant lands. Thus, architecture, which is the fundamental art around which the others are organized, realized the most diverse programs. This was already the case in the Constantinian constructions, which introduced into Syria the Hellenistic basilica with columns and an apse adapted to Christian liturgy, and its differentiation from the central-plan building, used as a *martyrion* or for other distinct purposes. At the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the two types appear united in a single architectural complex by means of an atrium: here the Anastasis is a rotunda with an ambulatory. At the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the basilican structure is instead directly connected to the central-plan building, which in this case is an octagon. The octagon with an ambulatory appears again in Jerusalem, in the Church of the Ascension and in the Tomb of the Virgin, to reappear later, with greater complexity of peripheral spaces, in the Sanctuary of Mount Gerizim; the rotunda also returns later at Beisan (Scythopolis). A more complex type is that of the octagon with each side opened by niches, alternately semicircular and rectangular, which are also delineated on the exterior: this is certainly Hellenistic, as evidenced by its reproduction in the Golden Court of Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, where the Emperor had buildings copied that had most impressed him in the East. Its adoption by Christianity is attested by the letters of Gregory of Nyssa to Amphilochius of Iconium, where a *martyrium* built in this form is described: the type must have been quite widespread, given its importation into the Po Valley, where it is adopted in several baptisteries. It must also have been known in Syria, where, however, its simple form is not documented; in Syria, as at Nyssa, the rectangular niches are so elongated as to form a cross: but a monumental and truly grand extension of this type is known in the sanctuary built around the pillar of St. Simeon at Qal'at Sim'an, where the four arms of the cross are enlarged into basilican structures with three naves. This derivation, hitherto unobserved, is the only one that explains the genesis of that magnificent sanctuary. A simpler form was later realized in the sanctuary of another St. Simeon on the Mountain of Miracles not far from Antioch. The idea of connecting the four arms of the cross to a central *martyrium*, giving each arm a basilican structure, may derive from the pre-Justinian sanctuary of St. John at Ephesus: but here the central building is square. In the *martyrium* of St. Babylas, erected near Antioch between 381 and 387, there is a simple cross form with arms extending from a central square with thicker walls, perhaps because it was raised in the form of a tower; similar is the sanctuary at Jacob’s Well in Shechem (Nablus), described and drawn by the pilgrim Arculf. The type of sanctuary with an inscribed cross, i.e., traced within a square, is also of Hellenistic origin, its ultimate source being those types of buildings of which an example is preserved in the *Tychion* of al-Mismiyah (Phaenea) on the northern edge of the Legha (Tracho

): an incomplete realization of it is seen in the martyrium of St. Elias at Ezra (Zor'ah) on the western edge of the Hauran and in the church at al-Anderin, but its most monumental development was realized in the church of the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs at Gerasa, built in 464–65. It seems to have been in the form of a cross, though of what type is uncertain; more than a basilica with a transept, it was the church raised at Gaza by Bishop Porphyrius on the ruins of the destroyed Marneion, built by an architect from Antioch according to a plan sent from Byzantium by the Empress. The fact that she also sent many columns of Carystian marble might suggest something similar to the church at Gerasa. A type of Hellenistic building widely used by the Romans in thermal architecture is that of an octagon with four semicircular niches on four opposite sides, all inscribed within an outer square: it was adopted by Christians for the baptistery at Qal'at Sim'an and, with an internal ambulatory formed by an octagon of eight columns, at St. George at Ezra, built in 515 on a site where, as the foundation inscription states, sacrifices were once offered to idols... Probably it stands on the substructures of a destroyed pagan temple. But it was at Antioch that the most celebrated centrally planned church of Christian antiquity arose, the Golden Church built by Constantine: begun in 327, it was completed and consecrated only in 341. For all its renown, the little that is known of its structure (contained in two passages of Eusebius) does not allow even an approximate reconstruction: it is known to have been octagonal in shape, provided with a dome and sedilia. This last detail makes one suspect that its plan had some relation to that of a building recently discovered at the port of Antioch, Seleucia Pieria. In the center of this structure stands a square formed by four L-shaped corner piers, connected by four colonnaded sedilia; all is surrounded by an ambulatory whose outer perimeter follows parallel to the inner square of the sedilia. To the east opens an apse preceded by a rectangular bema. A second, almost identical building was discovered at Apamea, but it remains unpublished. This type enjoyed a very wide diffusion. At Bosra the square of sedilia stands at the center of a circular building inscribed within a square, with four large niches occupying the corners of the square, a type well known in Hellenistic architecture of the Roman period and seen also in the church of St. John the Baptist at Gerasa; it then passes into Mesopotamia at the sanctuary of the Virgin at Amida and at the martyrium of Resafa-Sergiopolis (where, in place of the central square, there is a rectangle), and from there into Armenia, at Zvart'nots (A.D. 641–661) and at St. Gregory at Ani (A.D. 1001). Toward the West it is found in the building at the center of the Stoa of Hadrian at Athens, in the Balkans in the Red Church at Perustica, and as far as northern Italy, where it is repeated in the church of St. Lawrence at Milan. This vast distribution of derivations presupposes as a starting model a famous building: this might support the hypothesis suggested about the structure of Constantine’s church at Antioch, which Eusebius calls “unique of its kind,” μονογενές τι χρήμα ἐκκλησίας. A final type of centrally planned religious building realized in this part of the East is that with a triapsidal cella, as in the martyrium of St. John the Baptist at Jerusalem, the church on Mount Nebo, and the convent of St. Theodore near Jerusalem.

The realization in elevation of all these planimetric schemes presupposes as a fundamental condition the solution to the problem of the dome. In this regard one encounters a characteristic phenomenon: throughout the East, as in the roofing of naves, builders remained faithful to the use of wooden roofs (and in the Hauran to slabs of basalt) and never confronted the problem of vaulting; thus, for buildings that required a dome, whether of brick or stone, they never attempted to realize II. They did not even tackle the problem of the transitions between a dome and a square-planned structure, although