It was a magnificent centre for the missionary Church that was now beginning to enter on its great task of carrying the gospel to the Far East.
At first the reinvigorated Syrian Christians repudiated the name Nestorian. This was not because they were unwilling to accept the doctrines taught by Nestorius, but simply because they had no connection with the deposed patriarch of Alexandria. They had learnt the scheme of Christology with which his name was associated more from the writings of Theodore, its real founder and Nestorius's teacher, and from others of the same school. But they were not willing to have their position represented even in this way. They did not regard themselves as persons won over to a new doctrine. They maintained that the ideas now anathematised by the Greek Church were genuine, original Christian truths. Accordingly the catholicos Ebed-Jesu declared that it might rather be said that Nestorius followed them than that they were led by him.[1]
We must not suppose that the Nestorian tide of immigration entirely swept away the ascetic ideal, which had been so very marked as to be almost Marcionite in some quarters, at all events during the earlier days of the Church of Edessa. We have a remarkable testimony to the contrary in the chronicle of a Nestorian monk now available for the English reader. This is the Book of Governors, written by Thomas, bishop of Marga, and dated in the year 840, which Dr. Wallis Budge has edited in the Syriac, translated into English, and published. Thomas has here done for the Syrian monks what Palladius did for the Egyptian monks. His work is worthy of a place by the side of the Paradise[2] for its first-hand account of ancient
- ↑ Etheridge, The Syrian Churches, p. 72. Etheridge states that even to-day they object to the title "Nestorian." But Badger cites instances of the use of it in more modern times. For example, in the year 1609 Mar Abd Yeshua drew up "the orthodox creed of the Nestorians," stating that he did so "in the blessed city of Khlât in the church of the blessed Nestorians" (The Nestorians and their Ritual, vol. i. p. 178). Layard states that the name was first given by the Roman Catholic missionaries (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 259); but Badger shows that it had been used earlier.
- ↑ See p. 153.
