188 



THE EEV. J. E. H. THOMSON, M.A., D.D., ON 



Bishops between Addai and the end of the second century. While 

 Dr. Burkitt considers it incontrovertible that Palut was contem- 

 porary with Serapion, he admits that some authorities say that 

 Barsamya, one of Paliit's successors, was put to death under 

 Trajan; but Trajan died a.d. 117, before Christianity was intro- 

 duced into Edessa, according to Dr. Buricitt. Further, in the 

 account which Dr. Burkitt gives of Bardaisan, from Michael the 

 Syrian, Hystasp was Bishop of Edessa in a.d. 179 — eleven years 

 before the Episcopate of Serapion ; he was the successor of Izani. 



An incident falls to be introduced here, which has a bearing, 

 not only on when the Syrian Churches were founded, but also 

 as affording a reason why so few notices of them have been pre- 

 served. Bishop Medlycott (India and the Apostle Thomas, p. 18) 

 relates on the authority of Bar Hebrseus and Assemani, that in the 

 year a.d. 139 Jacob, Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, sent two 

 presbyters, Achadabues and Kam-Jesu, to Antioch, in order that 

 one of them should be chosen and consecrated for the episcopacy 

 by the Bishop of Antioch ; this was in accordance with prevailing 

 ecclesiastical usage. On their arrival at Antioch, they were 

 denounced as Parthian spies and arrested. Achadabues escaped 

 and went to Jerusalem, but Kam-Jesu was executed. This unfor- 

 tunate occurrence terminated the relationship between the metro- 

 politan See of Parthia and the Patriarchate of Antioch. It is to 

 be noted that there was a fully organised Christian Church in 

 Seleucia-Ctesiphon before the date preferred by Dr. Burkitt for the 

 introduction of Christianity into Syria. We venture then to con- 

 tinue to hold to our opinion that Christianity early found its way 

 into Mesopotamia and Parthia. That now it is represented on the 

 banks of the Euphrates by a few^ weak communities of iYrmenians 

 and Nestorians, and has disappeared altogether from regions fur- 

 ther to the East, is due, first to the fierce persecution of the 

 Sassanide princes, and then to the submergence of the whole 

 country under the flood of Islam, with the sword in the one hand 

 and the Quran in the other. 



It is somewhat confirmatory of our contention as to the destina- 

 tion of the Hebrew Gospel that it so early and so completely dis- 

 appeared from the West. Jerome was the last man who professes 

 to have seen a copy late in the fourth century in Palestine. There 

 is, as is well known, a translation of the New Testament into 

 Eastern Aramaic, the Peshitta. The version of the first Gospel 

 in it was sometimes regarded as representing the earliest form of 

 the Aramaic Matthew. A more thorough knowledge of the his- 

 tory of the Eastern Church, and of the Aramaic versions used in 

 it, compelled the abandonment of that view. It is recognised now 

 that from the beginning of the third century to the Episcopate of 

 Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (412-435), the Syrian Churches used 

 in their Sunday services, not the separate Gospels, but Tatian's 



