Syriac Language Research Articles

(1) Geometrical Optics: (2) Geometrische Optik.

(1) FEW men were more versatile than Sir William RowanHamilton (1805-1865). In early youth he showed amazing linguistic ability, and attained a high standard in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, Persian, Arabic, Chaldee, Syriac, Sanskrit, Hindustani, Bengali, and other languages. He then turned to mathematics, astronomy and physics, and at the age of seventeen years he began to produce original work in geometrical optics. Hamilton's achievements were so great and so varied that it has taken the scientific world a long time to appreciate their full extent. Nineteenth century mathematicians esteemed him principally for his theory of quaternions. Since the rise of quantum mechanics, we now realize the fundamental importance of Hamiltonian dynamics. His optics, although his earliest work, has been the last to be appreciated. (1) Geometrical Optics: an Introduction to Hamilton's Method. By Prof. J. L. Synge. (Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, No. 37.) Pp. ix + 110. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1937.) 6s. 6d. net. (2) Geometrische Optik. Von C. Caratheodory. (Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzbegiete, Band 4, Heft 5.) Pp. iv + 104. (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1937.) 9.90 gold marks.

A Specimen of Old Aramaic Verse

WHAT WAS LOST to the world when the old Aramaic literature perished, we of course cannot guess. We have not at present, and probably never shall have, any satisfactory basis for an idea of either its volume or its variety. The Elephantine papyri brought a surprise in this regard, though perhaps not to those who were familiar with the Aramaic inscriptions. In the important field of poetry, very little has thus far come to light. We know, indeed, that in the earlier Aramaic literature of the Jews it was customary to employ the standard line of three stressed syllables, as in Hebrew; the Book of Daniel furnishes sufficient illustration of this, though in only a few scattered passages. I showed, some years ago, that in the Aramaic original of the Story of the Three Guardsmen, interpolated in the Book of Ezra, and now preserved in the fragment of the old Greek translation known to us as First Esdras, the three formal discourses of the contestants at the court of Darius are composed throughout in the familiar three-beat verse.' This very interesting tale may have had a Jewish author, but it is more probably Gentile in its origin. The accentual verse is easily composed, almost too easily, in fact. Did the Aramaic-speaking Gentiles of the Persian period, or earlier, have also a syllabic meter, such as we have not found, for instance, among the Hebrews? Syllabic meter is the usual thing in the classical Syriac literature, but has not hitherto been surely recognized in the great western branch of Aramaic. I once demonstrated, in the Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie (Vol. 28, 1913, pp. 312-317) the possibility of Aramaic syllabic meter in the original form of the Lord's Prayer; showing that the Greek version given in the Third Gospel, if rendered verbally into Jewish Aramaic, can easily be made to represent strict seven-syllable verse. Several scholars, after reading the article, wrote me their approval. My own attitude toward my demonstration was, and is, one of benevolent skepticism. I was interested to show the possibility, but prefer to leave it to

Some Notes on Early Christian Baptism

ONE OF THE PHENOMENA which arouse considerable interest from the standpoint of Christian archeology, and present problems of some difficulty from the standpoint of Christian doctrine, is concerned with the nomenclature employed in relation to Christian Baptism. In Hebrew the verb for baptism is tabal, in Syriac 'amad, and in Greek baptizein. The question of the change from the Hebrew root tabal to an entirely different one in the cognate Syriac language is a matter of great interest. With a terminology for baptism probably already in existence, and usages ready to hand, why did not Syriac utilize the current Hebrew idiom? A brief resume of the state of the question may not be beside the point. James Murdock in an article called The Syriac Word for Baptism in Bibliotheca Sacra, 7 (1850), pp. 733-743, interpreted the Syriac 'amad, meaning the reception of baptism, as coming to a stand or taking a public and decisive stand on the side of Christianity (p. 740). In the same publication, of the next year (8, pp. 554-563) Davies in his article An Investigation in Syriac Philology presented a number of different opinions as to the meaning of the word. There is, first of all, that advanced by Murdock (noted above), which was first proposed by Michaelis and approved by Gesenius: to take a decisive stand. A second view, proposed by Henderson and Schindler in the Lexicon Pentaglotton, interpreted 'amad: to stand at or in water in order to be sprinkled or poured upon. Stabant enim, qui baptizabantur. In other words, 'amad meant to stand in the act of being baptized. Davies' criticism of this is pertinent: (a) Christians certainly stood up for other acts than baptism, and (b) what possible reference could this derivation bear in relation to the baptism of infants? (Cf. op. cit., p. 555.) A third possibility was advanced by Dr. Augusti, Dr. Lee of Cambridge, and Moses Stewart. According to this, the root meaning of baptism came from the Sacrament of Confirmation; so to stand-to establish to con-

A Short Physiognomic Treatise in the Syriac Language

UP to now only one physiognomic treatise in the Syriac language has been made public. It forms the XXth chapter of the Laughable Stories collected by 1a\r Gregory John Bar Hebraeus, and has been published on pp. 149-156 of the edition of this last named work, by E. A. Budge (London, 1897); an English version is to be found on pp. 177-185 of the same book. Morales had published previously some extracts also of this chapter of the Laughable Stories, from the Syriac MS. 173 of the Vatican Library in ZDMG 40, pp. 410-456. In this MS. the chapter bears the title )LoZJo_ o ,ooa,_' L J20, which the editor translates simply with Physiognomistische Zeichen. In the edition of Budge the title runs L o Another MS. has ,L& j;zq J.OO0 :A{. The -treatise does not correspond to any of the physiognomic tracts in the Greek, Latin, and Arabic languages collected and published by R. Foerster in Scriptores physiognomici Graeci et Latini, Lipsiae 1892, I-II volumes. However it shows a certain resemblance to the treatise attributed by Foerster to PseudoPolemon (ed. Foerster, l.c., v. I, p. 298-426). The divergence between the two treatises lies in the different length. Besides that we must remark that the Syriac tract is most probably a translation from an Arabic treatise, which in its turn has been translated from some Greek or Byzantine original, now lost; as only the treatises collected by Foerster have survived. There is no doubt, therefore, that through this physiognomic treatise, embodied in Bar Hebraeus' renowned work on witticism, we are able to reconstruct a new type of Greek physiognomic tract, which bears a certain resemblance to Pseudo-Polemon, and represents, in my opinion, a state anterior to that of the author just mentioned. I have found another physiognomic treatise in the Syriac language on ff. 9' and 9b of the Syriac MS. or 5442 of the British Museum (G. Margoliouth, Descriptive List of Syriac and Karshuni MSS. in thy British Museum acquired since 1873, London, 1899, p. 49).

VII. A Cosmological Tract by Pseudo-Dionysius in the Syriac Language

The small cosmological tract I here publish, and which is attributed to Dionysius, Bishop of Athens, I have taken from the MS. marked 7192 Rich., now Add. 7192, of the British Museum. This is a MS. in quarto on vellum, containing not more than seventy-six folios, and belongs probably, so far as we can judge from the good esṭrangĕlô character in which it is written, to the eighth century. The treatise begins on f. 57c—there are two columns of thirty-one lines on every page—and ends on f. 63b at the bottom. It is followed by another tract from the hand of the same author—the contents and the style, and especially the concluding lines which are nearly identical to the last ones of the tract we publish, at least point to the same author—that bears the following inscription:It is an anti-astrological and anti-magical tract, as it undertakes to demonstrate that divination by means of the “stars, the zodiacal signs, the horoscopes, the fortunes, the chances, the hours, the convulsions, the auguries, the divinations, and all the deception of the Chaldæans, sons of deception” is not to be relied upon, and is contradictory to the facts that daily observation affords us.

Grammar of the Modern Syriac Language, as spoken in Oroomiah, Persia, and in Koordistan

Grammar of the Modern Syriac Language, as spoken in Oroomiah, Persia, and in Koordistan