110 NEWBOLD— THE SYRIAC DIALOGUE " SOCRATES." 



9 to make war by His word, 

 to take victory by His might. 



10 The Lord cast down my enemy by His word 



and he became hke the chaff which the wind carries off. 



Another scrap of evidence, from a quite different source, points 

 in the same direction. The sixth Ode contains a simile which has 

 caused no httle perplexity : 



7 For a stream went forth 



and became a river great and broad, 



8 For it overwhelmed everything 



and shattered and brought (them) to the Temple. 



9 And the restraints of men could not restrain it 



nor the arts of them that restrain waters. 



This river, it appears, is the Gospel. But why does the Gospel 

 bring its conquests to the "Temple"? What is the "Temple"? 

 And why this curiously specific allusion to the hydraulic engineers ? 

 In the Edessene Chronicle one finds a contemporary account of a 

 flood which devastated Edessa A.D. 201 {BO, L, 390-91). A 

 spring within the palace grounds overflowed and inundated the 

 palace. "While the wise men were thinking what they should do 

 to the flood of water which was increasing" a heavy rain came on 

 during the night, the river Daisan overflowed its banks and formed 

 a deep lake which finally overtopped the west wall of the city and 

 poured over the battlements. King Abgar ordered the sluice-gates 

 to be opened, but it was too late — the wall collapsed, the flood 

 destroyed the palace " and the waters swept away everything before 

 them, the fair and beautiful buildings of the city, everything near 

 the river southward and northward, and they also made an on- 

 slaught on the temple of the congregation of the Christians." Un- 

 fortunately the word used'^ does not indicate the amount of damage 

 to the " temple " of the Christians, but from the very fact of its 

 ambiguity, following as it does unambiguous words, and from the 

 order of the narrative one may infer that the damage fell short of 

 complete destruction. Manifestly, this is precisely the situation 

 depicted in the Ode — the building used by the Christians of Edessa 



"^ srinv may signify any amount of injury from a mere attack upon to 

 total destruction. 



