Adult Study Forum

Scripture:
Scripture and Tradition

i.

The Holy Bible, which comprises of the Old and the New Covenants/Testaments, is the
foundation of our faith.

ii. Scripture is mans record of his experience and understanding of Gods revelations
expressed in human language. To that extent, the Church does not concern itself with the
literal truth of the scripture, but acknowledges the need for interpretation in each age, which
is an essential function of the Church.
iii. Moses (c. 1500-1250) is the first to record Scripture in writing. The events recorded by him
in Genesis far predates his time and were transmitted across generations through oral
traditions. Similarly, the books of the New Testament were written in the second half of the
first century AD, decades after the authors witnessed the events they recorded later. It was
through the spoken word that the Good News was proclaimed and transmitted.
Through all ages, God spoke to men. It was by the Word of God that creation came to be
(JOHN 1:1-3). 1 In the creation narrative in GENESIS 1, we see repeatedly that God said
Light, the sky, land, seas, vegetation, living creatures and mankind were created by Gods
spoken Word. It is much later in human history that the written word becomes the medium
for transmitting the Word of God.
iv. Nowhere do we know of scripture that was directly written by God. The closest God comes
to writing is when He gives Moses two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone
inscribed by the finger of God. (EXODUS 31:18)2. However, Moses breaks these in anger
when he descends Mount Sinai and witnessed the infidelity of the Israelites. 3 When God
summons Moses again to the summit of Mt. Sinai, He tells him to chisel out two stone
tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets,
which you broke. (EXODUS 34:1). But after making the covenant with Moses, God
commands Moses, Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have
made a covenant with you and with Israel. (EXODUS 34:27). So it was Moses who wrote the
Ten Commandments that ultimately survived.

1:1-3 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God
in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
2
EXODUS 24:12. The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets
of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.
EXODUS 31:18. When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the
covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
EXODUS 32:15-16 15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his
hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. 16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the
writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
3
EXODUS 32:19 When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the
tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.
1

JOHN

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v. The written Scripture is not a complete record. Apostle John ends his Gospel thus, And
there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I
suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (JOHN
21:25). In the second epistle of John, the Apostle writes, Having many things to write to
you, I did not wish to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to
face, that our joy may be full. (2 JOHN 1:12). St. Luke, in the prologue to the Acts of the
Apostles writes, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many
infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining
to the kingdom of God. (ACTS 1:3). Indeed, the Apostles witnessed many events, which they
taught their disciples, not all of which was written. This however became the divine tradition
the teaching of our Lord witnessed by the Apostles and transmitted orally down in the
Church, even though not all of it was written down in the canonical books that became the
New Covenant. 4
vi. Even though the books of the New Testament were written in the second half of the first
century AD, the canons of the scripture, as we know it today, took shape within the Church
only 3-4 centuries after. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History records that it is the
persecution of Emperor Diocletian that prompted the formalization of the New Testament
as we know today. When the imperial edict ordering all sacred writings to be surrendered to
authorities to be burned, it became necessary to determine what books were true writings of
the Apostles. Canons emerged that categorized the books into i) universally acknowledged ii)
disputed books, and iii) spurious writings, usually by heretics. In AD 397, the Council of
Carthage formalized the canon of the scripture, although in the West and East, minor
differences arose. The Peshitta Syriac Bible excludes 2 PETER, 23 JOHN, JUDE, and REVELATION
from its canon, although Bibles of the Syriac Orthodox Church today include later
translations of those books. Even so, the Syriac Orthodox lectionary presents lessons from
only the twenty-two books of Peshitta. 5
vii. Thus the Church well preceded the Christian scripture and shaped it into the form we know
today. It is the Church that gives authority to the scripture. Thus the Syriac Orthodox
Church does not reconcile with sola scriptura (Latin, by scripture alone) 6 the leitmotif of
Protestant reformation.
Interpreting the Scripture

i.

Syriac fathers speak of two modes of interpreting the Bible. St. Ephrem makes a distinction
between the factual (or, we may prefer today, historical) and the spiritual
interpretation of the Bible. The former is primarily concerned with illuminating the
circumstances surrounding episodes in the Bible: who, when, where, and so on. The
spiritual truth is concerned with the eternal truths underlying the text; it seeks to penetrate
beyond the surface meaning to the various inner meanings. 7 The two approaches should

Kaniamparambil, V. Rev. Curian,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible
6
A formal principle of Protestantism which holds that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and
holiness. Consequently, it demands that only those doctrines be admitted or confessed that are found directly within
Scripture or are drawn indirectly from it by valid logical deduction or valid deductive reasoning.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura]
7
Brock, S.P., The Bible in the Syriac Tradition, (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), p. 63.
4
5

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complement each other, but all too often their proper roles have been misunderstood. The
fundamentalist approach confuses spiritual truth with historical truth, thus creating a totally
unnecessary conflict between religion and science. 8
ii. A number of passages in the writings of St. Ephrem (d. 373) provide us excellent guidance
on how Scripture should be read. On the one hand, he sees Scriptures themselves as
possessing an unfathomable depth of hidden power. On the other hand, in order for the
Christian to be able to draw on these hidden depths of spiritual meaning, he or she must
read the Bible with eye of faith, that is, with an openness to the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, for this same Spirit will then lead the reader to discover the power which lies hidden
within the words of the biblical text. Thus St. Ephrem says in one of his hymns, The
Scriptures are laid out like a mirror, and he whose eye is lucid sees within them the mirror of
Truth (Hymns on Faith 67:8). 9
iii. A passage of scripture is capable of one correct historical interpretation at a time; such a
restriction, however, does not apply to the spiritual interpretation; in that case, the more
lucid and luminous the inner eye of faith is, the more spiritual interpretations it will be
capable of discovering. As Ephrem points out, it would be very boring if a passage of
Scripture had only one spiritual meaning:
If there only existed a single sense for the words of Scripture, then the first
commentator who came along would discover it, and other hearers would experience
neither the labor of searching, nor the joy of discovery. Rather, each word of our
Lord has its own form, and each form has its own members, and each member has
its own character. And each individual person understands according to his capacity,
and he interprets the passage as is granted to him. (Commentary on the Diatessaron
7:22)
Earlier in the Commentary on the Diatessaron, St. Ephrem has the following excellent
advice (in the first paragraph he addresses Christ):
Who is capable of comprehending the extent of what is to be discovered in a single
utterance of Yours? For we leave behind in it far more than we take away from it,
like thirsty people drinking from a fountain.
The facets of Gods word are far more numerous than the faces of those who learn
from it. God depicted his word with many beauties, so that each of those who learn
from it can examine that aspect of it which he likes. And God has hidden within his
word all sorts of treasures, so that each of us can be enriched by it, from whatever
aspect he meditates on. For Gods word is the Tree of Life which extends to you
blessed fruits from every direction; it is like Rock which was struck in the
Wilderness, which became a spiritual drink for everyone on all sides: They ate the
food of the Spirit and they drank the draft of the Spirit.

8
9

Ibid., p. 64.
Ibid., p. 64.

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Anyone, who encounters Scripture should not suppose that the

single one of its riches that he has found is the only one to exist;
rather, he should realize that he himself is only capable of
discovering that one of the many riches which exist in it.
(Commentary on the Diatessaron 1:18-19). 10
The Syriac Bible

i.

Even though our Lord and the Apostles spoke the

Palestinian/Galilean dialect of Aramaic, the books of the New
Testament are believed to have been first written in Greek.
However, the earliest translation of the Greek text was into
Syriac. The Syriac version preserves the very ancient renditions
Syriac Bible, GEN. 29:25-30:2. AD
463. Amid. Now at the British
of the original texts, since the translation of the Bible started as
Library, BLAddMs14425f31.
early as the first century into Syriac, which is akin to the
Palestinian/Galilean dialect of Aramaic that Christ spoke. The
Syriac Old Testament is a translation from the original Hebrew and Aramaic (a different
Aramaic dialect from Syriac which is known by the name Biblical Aramaic).

ii. Two major Syriac translations of the Old Testament were produced. 11
The first is the Peshitta (meaning, straightforward, simple,) 12 from the original Hebrew
and Aramaic. Its origins are obscure and Syriac authors had no clear memory of how and
when the work was carried out. It was not the work of a single translator, but different
translators, perhaps working over a considerable period of time in the late first century to
early second century AD. Some of them were likely Jewish, or of Jewish origin, and there are
some remarkable links with the Jewish Aramaic Targums. 13
The second is the Syro-Hexapla, commissioned by Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Athanasius I
Gamolo, and translated from the Origens revision of the Greek Septuagint by Paul, bishop
of Tella (in northern Mesopotamia.) He was engaged in this arduous task in 615-617, as a
refugee in the monastery of Antonines at the Ennaton, just outside Alexandria in Egypt,
fleeing from the Persians who had seized northern Syria and Mesopotamia. Origens revision
was undertaken in the early third century to bring the Septuagint closer in line with the
Hebrew original. It was incorporated into a massive six-columned Bible which was known as
the Hexapla (six-fold) which probably contained: the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters
and in Greek transcription, two Greek translations (Aquila and Symmachus), Origens own
revision of the Septuagint, and another Jewish Greek translation by Theodotion. Paul
translated Origens fifth column, but in the margins he sometimes included information
from the other columns. Hence it is known today as the Syro-Hexapla, although Syriac
writers referred to it as shabin (the Seventy), i.e., based on the Septuagint. It enjoyed
Ibid., p. 64, 66.
Ibid., p. 23.
12
A term first encountered in the writings of Mor Severus Mush Bar Kepho (c. 813-903)
13
Targum translation; same root as the Sanskrit, targima.
10
11

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considerable popularity in the Syriac Orthodox Church, and sometimes its text, rather than
the Peshittas, was used in the Old Testament Lectionaries.
Other translations of individual books of the Old Testament were made possibly
commissioned by Philoxenus of Mabbug (6th cent.) and by Jacob of Edessa (8th cent.), some
of which survive.
iii. The Syriac Church produced no less than six
translations of the New Testament. 14
The earliest was Tatians evangelion damhalte which means
Gospels of the Mixed. It is known in Western sources as the
Diatessaron, a Greek word meaning through [the] four
[Gospels]. 15 Its use was forbidden among the Syriac Orthodox
by bishop Rabbula (350-435) of Edessa.

Moses before Pharaoh, Syriac

Bible. Now at Paris, Folio 8rr.

Another version was created in the 2nd-5th cent., called

evangelion dampharshe which means Gospels of the
Separated in order to distinguish it from Gospel of the Mixed.
The Old Syriac is a free translation from the Greek text; it is
free in the sense that the translators paraphrased the text in
order to make it as clear as possible to the native Syriac reader.

Since the Old Syriac was a free translation, it went through a series of revisions to make it
closer to the original Greek text. These revisions were done by a number of translators
during a long period of time. The end result was what we now know as the Peshitto version,
completed sometime around the 4th or 5th century. It became the authoritative translation
of all Syriac-speaking Churches till this day.
In A.D. 507/8, at the peak of the christological controversies, Mor Philoxenos, Bishop of
Mabug, felt that a new translation which is much closer to the original Greek was needed in
order to help Syriac theologians argue their christological position. He commissioned
Chorepiscopos Polycarpos to do this task. The new version was named
the Philoxenian (after Mor Philoxenos), but its usage was limited amongst the scholars and
theologians of the time and no manuscript survives.
The final version of the New Testament in Syriac came in the year 616 when Thomas of
Harqel felt that a new literal translation was needed. Unlike the case of the Philoxenian, the
motivation here was a linguistic one. Thomas aimed at a word-for-word translation of the
Greek into Syriac, even if that meant unintelligible Syriac, a style of mirror translation which
was popular in the seventh century. This Harklean version was a revision of the lost
http://sor.cua.edu/Bible/Translations.html
Islamic tradition attributes the Gospels to Jesus as a transmitter with not recognize the Gospel authors. They allege
that there was only one Gospel injil (in Arabic) which was revealed to Jesus and that was originally revealed in Syriac.
It is due to the corruption of Christians that the single injil became four. The transmitted memory of the Diatessaron
must have influenced the Islamic claim of a single injil. (see Kajivora, Edward, Interreligious Dialogue and Its Impact
on Bible Translation in Sudan, The Bible Translator 63:169 (July 2012). [ http://tbt.sagepub.com/content/63/3/169 ].)
14
15

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Philoxenian. It was popular in the Syriac Orthodox Church, often used in Lectionary
manuscripts instead of the Peshitta; many manuscripts of it survive. However, its obscure
Syriac made it unpopular in later times, although the Gospel readings of the Holy Week
today are from this version.
iv. The multiplicity of these translations and revisions is a noteworthy testimony to the
scholarship of the Syriac Church Fathers. In the words of the Estonian New Testament
scholar Arthur Vbus: No Church can submit to claim to have studied the sacred texts
more carefully and to have used and applied all the scientific resources, known to early
Christianity, to biblical criticism more intensely than the Syrian Church. 16
Unique features of the Syriac Bible and its influence on Syriac Spirituality

i.

The close similarities between the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic spoken by Christ and Syriac
offer us a unique understanding of some of the Biblical readings. For example, in the
English King James version of the Bible we read in MATTHEW 5:18 Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. What could
jot mean? The Syriac Bible uses the word yod for jot in this verse. This word is the name of
the tenth letter of the Aramaic alphabet, shown below in the Syriac Estrangelo script (read
from right-to-left; yod is shown in color):

Note that yod is the smallest letter in size. The above verse means that not even the smallest
of the letters shall pass from the law. This is rendered in the English New Revised Version
as not one letter.
ii. Another interesting reading appears in the Lord's prayer. The King James reads and forgive
us our debts, as we forgive our debtors (MATTHEW 6:12). The Syriac version reads and
forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. This implies that we must first
forgive our debtors before asking forgiveness from God. The English New Revised Version
agrees with the Syriac in this verse!
iii. In many instances the Syriac language offers interesting interpretations of Biblical verses. An
understanding of Syriac homonyms, for example, help us clarify the reading in Matthew
19:25 (also MARK 10:25 and LUKE 128:25), when Jesus tells us how much easier it is for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
The Syriac word corresponding to camel is gamlo which means camel. However, gamlo has
16

Vbus, Arthur, Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac, 1951.

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other meanings as well, one of which is given by the Syriac lexicographer Bar Bahlul (10th
century) in his Syriac dictionary: gamlo is a thick rope which is used to bind ships.
Considering that Jesus was speaking to fishermen, was this meaning of gamlo implied?
iv. The Semitic idiom that influenced the faith of the early Church is at times more authentically
represented in the Syriac than in the Greek New Testament.
e.g., In Syriac usage, salvation is identified by life. (Soter, Gr.; Savior) is Mayono
(Syr. Life-Giver) and to be saved is to live. Life is the genuine Aramaic usage and we
should suspect that the Greek Gospels introduced a distinction which was not made by
Christ and his Aramaic-speaking disciples. 17
v. Where the original text is obscure, ambiguous, or otherwise gives room for different
interpretations, the translators choice reflects an interpretation which then has a bearing on
how the text is understood by its readers. An example is GENESIS 4:8. 18 The original Hebrew
text of this verse has evidently lost some words, for it reads And Cain said to his brother
(). And when they were in the field Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
All the ancient versions, including the Peshitta, supply some appropriate words, usually, Let
us go out into the field. But the Peshitta translator does something else as well: instead of
translating the Hebrew word field literally, he renders it by valley (pqata). What is the
reason for this seemingly wilful alteration? A clue to the answer is to be found in Ezekiel,
where Paradise is described as a mountain. There is no hint of this in the Hebrew text of
Genesis, but Jewish and Christian readers regularly understood the topography of GENESIS 14 in the light of Ezekiel (the idea was also popularized in the non-canonical book known as
Enoch): Paradise was understood as a mountain, and when Adam and Eve were driven out
of Paradise they took up residence on the foothills at the mountains base. Abel and Cain
made their sacrifice on one of these foothills, but when Cain took Abel off with the
intention of killing him, he took him down on the lower ground, in other words, the valley
which the Peshitta translator has actually introduced into the biblical text here. Early
commentaries on the passage often understand the topography in this way, but the Peshitta
is the only biblical translation which incorporates this understanding into the Bible itself.
vi. The Peshitta is the source for many terms which were to become important in the history of
the Syriac spirituality. 19 These include:
rushmo (mark, from EZEKIEL 9:4, where the Hebrew word is taw, the letter T, whose
shape in the old Hebrew script was that of a cross)
shafyutho (lucidity, luminosity, purity, clarity, serenity, from ISAIAH 26:7, 20 where Greek has
uprightness, and Luke 8:15, 21 where Greek has excellent.)
msarrquto (self-emptying, from PHILIPPIANS 2:7, 22 where Greek as made himself of no
reputation)
F.C. Burkitt, Early Christianity Outside the Roman Empire, 1899.
Brock, S.P., The Bible in Syriac Tradition, pp. 24-25.
19
ibid, pp. 99.
20
ISAIAH 26:7 Straight and clear (shafyo) is the way of the righteous.
21
LUKE 8:15 The seed in the good ground refers to those who hear the Word with a luminous (shafyo) and good heart.
The Greek has an excellent and good heart.
22
PHILIPPIANS 2:7 Christ emptied (sarreq) himself, taking the form of a servant.
17
18

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aggen (hover from GENESIS 1:2 where Greek also has hover, but also LUKE 1:35 23 where
Greek has overshadow, JOHN 1:14, 24 where Greek has dwelt, and ACTS 10:44 and 11:15,
where Greek has the Spirit fell upon .)
Chapter & Verse 25

vii. The numbering system for identifying text in the Holy Bible evolved over time. In Greek
manuscripts of the Bible, many different chapter divisions and numberings were to be
found. In contrast, a remarkably uniform system of numbering is found in Syriac biblical
manuscripts from the seventh century onwards. These chapter divisions (in Syriac, shoh) are
usually very different from those in the modern printed Bibles.
In the New Testament, each Gospel has its own numbers (Matthew 22, Mark 13, Luke
23, John 20). The Acts and the Catholic Epistles have a continuous numbering of 30
chapters as also the Pauline epistles which are in 55 chapters.
In the Gospels, where there are four different accounts of much the same events, an
ingenious system of cross-referencing between the Gospels had been devised in the fourth
century by Ammonius of Alexandria. The text of each Gospel is divided up into units which
were numbered serially, and under each serial number (or canon, as it was designated)
there is a second number provided ranging from 1 to 10; this second number indicated
which of the ten tables (known as canon tables) one should look up to find a concordance
giving the correspondence between the canon numbers in two or more Gospels.
In the fifth century this system was introduced into Syriac Gospel manuscripts, but in an
improved form. The Syriac adaptor made two innovations. In the first place, he made it into
a more precise tool by diminishing the size of the text units, thus increasing the number of
text units, or canons in each Gospel (thus Matthew has 355 canons in Greek, but 426 in
Syriac). The second innovation consisted in the provision of a miniature concordance at the
bottom of each page of the Gospel text. This would indicate the correspondence between
the current Gospel canon numbers and their counterparts for any parallel passages in other
Gospels. These convenient foot harmonies as they are often called, are already present in
the very early Peshitta Gospel manuscripts of the sixth century, but they do not appear in
the any Greek manuscripts until considerably later.
Scribes of Gospel manuscripts with these Ammonian numbers would often provide the
ten canon tables at the beginning of the manuscript in a decorative form, and many fine
examples of this practice can be found in Syriac Gospel manuscripts, one of the earliest
being in the illustrated Rabbula Gospels, dated 586.

23
24
25

LUKE 1:35 The Holy Spirit shall come and the Power
JOHN 1:14 The Word hovered (aggen) among us.

ibid, pp. 118-122.

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of the Most High shall overshadow (naggen) you.

8

Examples of canon tables in the Rabbula Gospels, Folio 03b & 09b

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