than 150,000.[1] They claim to be descended from the original Hebrew Christians and designate themselves "B'né Israel." In their church government they are very hierarchical, although their orders are under suspicion since they are derived from Jacob Al Bardai, whose own ordination to the episcopate has been questioned, for some have maintained that he was only ordained as a presbyter.
In conclusion it is to be observed that the Syrian Church has made no inconsiderable contributions to literature, although Renan's generalised verdict of mediocrity must be applied to the mass of it. First we have the Peshitta, the standard Syriac Bible, the Vulgate of the East. Then there are several versions and successive revisions made by Jacobite scholars in the interest of the Monophysite doctrine. The first of these was produced by Aksenaya, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabbogh, with the assistance of his chorepiscopus Polycarp, which appeared in the year 508, and became popular among the Jacobites; it was superseded by later revisions, especially that of Thomas of Heraclea, bishop of the same city of Mabbogh early in the seventh century. A hundred years later a final attempt at revision of the Old Testament was made by Jacob of Edessa, but his work does not seem to have met with acceptance, and he did not proceed to revise the New Testament. The Melchite or Greek Church of Palestine had its own revision in the local Aramaic dialect, a dialect corresponding to the Jewish Targums, and probably more nearly approaching that spoken by our Lord than that of any other version. Meanwhile the Nestorians held to the old Peshitta, and opposed stolid indifference to the only attempt ever made to give them a more accurate version, when Mar Abha i., a catholicos in the middle of the sixth century, having studied Greek under a teacher at Edessa named Thomas, with his assistance made a new translation into Syriac of all the Old Testament and perhaps also the New.
The story of Syriac literature properly begins with
- ↑ Syrian Churches, p. 149, note.
