Christian Church in Mesopotamia; and they had the Diatessaron. That was their Bible. But now Palut brought them a New Testament consisting of the four Gospels, Acts, and the fourteen epistles ascribed to St. Paul, together with a revised edition of the Old Testament. Palut's Syrian Gospels—possibly his own translation, as Mr. Burkitt supposes—appear to be those known to us in the Curetonian and Siniatic manuscripts. They received the title of Evangelion da Mepharreshe.[1]
You cannot make a horse drink by taking him to the water, nor can you make a church adopt a new version of Scripture by introducing it to that version, as we have seen in the case of our Revised Version. The Diatessaron was the old Church lesson book of the Syrians; it contained the gospel story on which they had been brought up from their childhood. Palut was quite unable to induce them to give it up in favour of the four Gospels that he had brought them. It continued to be used in Edessa and the other churches of Eastern Syria for more than two centuries after this. Indeed, its popularity grew, and it penetrated farther north as Christianity slowly spread in that direction.
Palut was succeeded by ‘Abshelama, and he by Barsamya, who suffered martyrdom under Decius or Valerian (a.d. 250–260). Edessa also suffered from the persecutions under Diocletian and Licinius, when there were at least three martyrs, Shamona, Guria, and Habbib, whose story has been preserved. Then came peace, and for a time there is little to record in the obscure history of the Syrian Church. Three Syriac compositions in particular assigned to the fourth century call for some notice. These are the Doctrine of Addai, the Homilies of Aphraates, and the Writings of St. Ephraim; but the last-named
- ↑ i.e. "The gospel of the separate ones." See Burkitt, Evangelion da Mepharreshe. This is much nearer to the Diatessaron than to the later Peshitta, and yet it differs in some respects from the former work, which bears traces of Tatian's Roman residence, in its more or less Western text, agreeing with Codex Bezæ and the old Latin version.
