Syriac: Modern Bible History (3)

**List: Syriac: Modern Ministry Bible ( Ktaba ) Syriac: Modern... SYRO-CHALDAIC AND MODERN SYRIAC. "I.--PEOPLE FOR WHOM THIS EDITION IS DESIGNED. THE Syriac language is written in Nestorian characters, by a professedly Christian people, of whom some are entrenched among the mountains of Assyria, and others settled in the adjacent plain of Ooroomiah, in West Persia, between 36° and 39° north latitude, and 43° and 46° east longitude: they are supposed to amount, in point of number, to about 200,000 souls.   They are sometimes called Chaldæans, or East Syrians, from the country they inhabit; but they are more commonly known by the name of Nestorians, which latter appellation, they contend, is not derived from the celebrated Nestorius, who was condemned at the third Council of Ephesus, but from Nazareth, the city of Mary. It is said that they originally fled from the Roman empire, during persecution in the reign of Justinian, and that they placed themselves under the protection of the king of Persia, who assigned them an abode in his dominions.   They then consisted of 50,000 families, headed by fifty bishops, and the family of the bishop who then held precedence over the rest, still retains the principal civil and ecclesiastical power.   During the severe persecutions which they subsequently suffered from the Moh_mm_dans, they were driven to their present impregnable abodes.   Their religious tenets are less corrupted than those of most oriental churches.*   They seem never to have practised image worship nor auricular confession; and so great is their antipathy to popery, that they have a singular and most * A modern visitor of these interesting people observes, "the happy moral influence of Christianity could not be more plainly manifested than in the change of manners immediately observable in the country we had now entered, and which presented itself with the more force from its contrast with the sullen ferocity of the Moh_mm_dans.   The kind, cordial manners of the people, and the great respect paid to their clergy, were among the first-fruits of that influence which showed themselves."   Again: "the Chaldæan church neither inculcates seclusion nor celibacy among its clergy; its only purification is fasting, so strongly enjoined to all Christians," etc.--Ainsworth, 'Visit to the Chal- dæans, in the summer of 1841,' Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. xi.   Several American mies. are stationed in the town of Ooroomiah, or Urumiyah, near the western shore of the lake of that name. anti-christian custom of cursing the Pope regularly every day, his grandfather, grandmother, and grandchildren. II.--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE.    The language generally denominated the Syro-Chaldaic, or Nestorian, differs in no respect from the Syriac, unless it be, indeed, in the occasional variation of one or two grammatical forms, and a difference in the pronunciation of the vowels.   Thus a Syro-Chaldaic book, if transcribed in Syriac characters, would be pure Syriac.   The Chaldean priest at Khosrova had a copy of the Pentateuch which he had caused to be transcribed, word for word, from the Syriac of Walton's Polyglot, only substituting the Nestorian for the Syriac characters; and it was ascertained beyond doubt by the mies., that the language of this Pentateuch was perfectly identical with that of the Church books in common use among the Nestorians.   The Nestorian characters may be said to be almost the same as the ancient Estrangelo, only slightly modified in form; they are very clear and agreeable to the eye, and mies. stationed in the country, who have been afflicted with ophthalmia, and thereby deprived of the power of reading English type without pain, have found themselves able to read with ease and pleasure books written or printed in the Nestorian character.   The dialect at present commonly spoken among the Nestorians is a very corrupted form of their ancient Syriac: it abounds in con- tractions, abbreviations, and inversions, and is adulterated by Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish words. In sound it is even harsher than the Armenian.   It still, however, retains its character as a Shemitic dialect; many Arabic and Hebrew words are discoverable in it; and it is rather remarkable, that the Nestorians and the Jews settled in adjacent villages are able to converse together, although the dialect spoken by the Jews is a barbarised form of Hebrew, altogether distinct from the vernacular of the Nestorians."--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only] "III.--EDITIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES IN THIS LANGUAGE.    Several ancient MSS. of Scripture have been found in the possession of the Nestorians, which from time to time have been brought to Europe.   Dr. Wolff, during his travels in 1826, purchased of the Nestorians several MSS. of various portions of their Bible; these he brought safely to England, although on two several occasions he very narrowly escaped shipwreck.   The MSS. became the property of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews, and the Committee lent them to the British and Foreign Bible Society for publication.   An edition of 2000 copies of the Syro-Chaldaic Gospels was accordingly printed by the latter Society, under the editorship of T. P. Platt, Esq., and those passages in which the MSS. were deficient were supplied from the Syriac version; for Mr. Platt had ascertained, on critical examination, that the Syro-Chaldaic text was identical, or nearly so, with the Society's Syriac version, the character only being different.   The types were cast for the purpose by Mr. Watts, and the edition left the press in 1829.   This, however, was not the first time that Syriac had been printed in Nestorian characters, for a Syriac liturgical work, called Missale Chaldaicum, con- taining the selections from the Gospels and Epistles read on Sundays and Festivals, was published in these characters in 1767 at Rome, accompanied by an interpretation in Carshun.   The mies. now among the Nestorians are said to be engaged in the elaborate preparation of a Syro-Chaldaic Old Testament, in which they take the ancient and valuable Syriac version, the Peshito, as their text.   An edition of the Scriptures has been projected by the Christian Knowledge Society, from valuable MSS. collected at the cost of the Society in Mesopotamia: but little, if any, progress seems as yet to have been made in the publication of this important work.   Mr. Perkins, of the American Board of Missions, commenced, in 1836, a translation from the ancient or ecclesiastical language, into the modernised corrupt dialect now vernacular among these people.   The Gospels, and several tracts and books, together with a monthly paper, have issued from the press at Ooroomiah; and more recently an edition of 1500 copies of the entire Bible, translated from the Hebrew, in modern Nestorian, with the Syriac in parallel columns, has been completed."--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only] THE SYRO-CHALDAIC VERSION.   from the Gospels printed for the B & F Bible Society London--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: ESTRANGELO CHARACTER   "18[29?]" John 1:1-14 unknown.] "IV.--RESULTS OF THE DISSEMINATION OF THIS VERSION.    Dr. Wolff, of the London Society for the Conversion of the Jews, travelled, in 1826, among the Nestorian churches, and had frequent interviews with the priests and people.   He found them, as they themselves admitted, in a wild and uncivilised state; but when questioned on the cause of their want of civilisation, they acknowledged it to be the result of their lamentable destitution of copies of the Scriptures.   They had no printed copies whatever, and the MSS. were extremely scarce, and never found in the hands of the common people.   "But," said they, "we have heard that the English are able to write a thousand copies in one day: would they not write for us several thousand copies, and send them to us? we become wild like Kurds, for we have so few copies of the Bible.   The English have written those of the Jacobites (in Syriac characters) which we cannot read generally, why should they not write these of ours?"   The expectations and desires of these simple people were realized; and soon after they had been put in possession of the Gospels by the British and Foreign Bible Society, the divine seed sprang up and bore fruit to the glory of God.   The mies. of the American Board of Missions who have for some years been labouring among them, give the following account of them: "The light of heavenly truth is rapidly pervading the mass of the people, many of whom appear like a person awakened from a deep sleep, unconscious of the darkness in which he has been enveloped, and are inquiring how it is that they have been kept so long in ignorance and self-delusion.   To this their priests reply, ‘We ourselves, till now, have been dead in trespasses and sins; and our criminality is even greater than yours for having hidden the light so long."   The following and later testimony is to the same purport.   "The other day (writes Mr. Barker, in 1853), an American my., who had been residing sixteen years at Ooroomiah, communicated to me most interesting accounts of the state of things in that part of the world.   In the whole of that district the American mies. have full liberty to preach in all the Nestorian churches; the Patriarch, who lives in the mountains, no longer opposing the reformation which is taking place among his people, and his brother is a member of the American Mission.   All the churches have been divested of all their pictures, crosses, etc., leaving their walls completely bare, as in Protestant places of worship.   The pious Nestorians have marked out all the objectionable portions of their Liturgy, such as prayers of intercession to the Virgin, Saints, etc., and omit them in their devotions.   In the Ooroomiah district, there are 80 schools entirely under the control of the mies., amongst which are some for male and female adults.""--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)   Samuel Bagster   [Info only]

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