THE ARAMEANS ARE CALLED SYRIACS

In part 1 of my study on Bishop Manna's Preface which was publiched in the Journal ARAM (Number 2 of the journal), the attention was drawn to the fact that both East and West Syriacs seem to accept without further examination what Bishop Manna wrote on the term Syriac.
It is a pity that the majority of the Syriac people has accepted his opinions without any examination.
Talking to people interested in Syriac history I have in vain tried to account for the many mistakes concerning the term Syriac.
I recommend the readers to read Manna's Preface once more and to study the many proofs I shall put forward in this article so that you can draw your own conclusions concerning Manna's inferences, especially the conclusion that during the first centuries of the Christian era the term Syriac came to be synonymous with Christian.

As the article is long, it is necessary to divide it into four parts. I shall first treat the historic mistakes made by Bishop Manna and then I put forward a new observation which helps us to understand what caused Bishop Manna to make the mistakes he made, and which enables us to see "why" and "when" Syriac became synonymous with Christian.

Part I) What Bishop Manna wrote about the term.
Part II) The mistakes and contradictions.
Part III) About the origin of Syria from Surus.
Part IV) What the Orientalist Quatremere wrote about the term Syria and its origin from Assyria.

 

PART I - What Bishop Manna wrote about the term

Bishop Manna wrote as follows in his Preface:
"The scholars have differed widely in their opinions regarding the pronunciation of Syria which gave the Syriac people its name. Some of them, especially the Europeans considered that the pronunciation is derived from Athour or Ashour. According to them, it appeared after the Assyrian kings had conquered Syria (the land of Ararn).
In his book on the history of the semitic languages, famous French Orientalist Renan wrote: "Finally, during the time of the Seleucids, the name Aram was replaced by Syria which is nothing else than an abbreviation of Assyria (I mean Athour or Athorya according to its Greek pronunciation). This name was used commonly by the Greeks and designated the whole of Inner Asia.
Despite of this, the name Aram has not ceased totally to be used but has remained in use, especially with the Aramaeans who did not become Christians as the Nabataeans and the Haranaeans. This explains why Aramaean is commonly identified with the Sabaean and the heathens."

The bishop renders still more opinions concerning the name "Syria", putting his trust in both East and West Syriac writers. But the opinions of these writers are of little scientific value as their judgments lack foundation in documents. To these writers belong:
 

1. Bar Ali who is the author of a famous Syriac dictionary. His opinion was that Syria comprised the whole territory from Antioch to Edessa. It was called Syria after Surus who killed his own brother to rule over Mesopotamia all by himself.
 

2. In his dictionary Hasan Bar Bahloul died ca 962, wrote that "the word Syria is derived from Surus, irrespective of he was alive or dead. Surus killed his brother and ruled over Mesopotamia. After his name the whole of his country was called Suriya (=Syria). The Syriacs were by the way earlier called Aramaeans".
 

3. Bar Salibi †1171, in his book "oru,utho". In Chapter 14 of this book, he attacked the Greeks. He wrote: "But they (the Greeks) call us Jacobites instead of Syriacs in order to make fun of us. Our answer is that the Syriac name that you deprive us of is no name of honour to us, as it is derived from the name Surus, which was the name of a king who ruled over Antioch and gave it the name Syria. While we are the sons of Aram, and were once called Aramaeans".

 

The bishop concludes his presentation: "Irrespective of the degree of truth of the above-mentioned opinions, there are undoubted consequences

1. Formerly, the Syriacs in general, East as well as West Syriacs, were not called Syriacs but Aramaeans - after their ancestor Aram who was the son of Sem who was the son of Noah.

2. The origin of the term Syriacs (Syrians) dates from the fifth or sixth centuries BC.at the most.
 

3. The Aramaeans did not adopt the term Syriacs (Syrians) until after Christ. They adopted it from the apostles who spread the Gospel among the Aramaeans, and as all the apostles came from Syrian Palestine our ancestors who were christians wanted to confess their adherence to the name their preachers bore in order to distinguish themselves in this way from the Aramaeans who were still heathens. Therefore, the pronunciation aramaya or oromoyo became synonymous with the Sabaean and the heathens and the pronunciation Syriac (Syrian) synonymous with Christian up to our time."

If the reader scrutinizes Bishop Manna's book, he will find that the bishop has made no distinct decision on the name Syriac. He does not give a clear cut answer to the question if the word Syria is derived from Assyria according to the historian Renan or from the name of the Aramaean King Surus according to the Syriac writers.
This is undoubtedly a difficult question.
Still today, the Syriacs do not agree among themselves concerning the origin of the term.
Today, it would be possible to solve this problem, namely, if we relied on what has been written since the year 1900, especially in regard to the old historical sources. The bishop's attempt to find out the origin of the term "Syriac (Syrian)" has given us a "new problem", namely, his binding together to each other the name "Syriac (Syrians)" and the conversion of the East Aramaeans to Christianity. This was what made him and the majority of the Syriacs believe in following equation: "Syriac (Syrian) is synonymous with Christian".

 

Sources:
1.Dictionary of Chaldean-Arabic, Preface,p.15.
2.Mingana (A), ed., Bar Salibi in "Woodbroke Studies".V.1(1927),p.72. v 3. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum, C.S.C.O., T. 6, p.360.
4. Quatre Mere, Memoire Sur les Nabateems, 1831, p.24.
5. Ibid., p.24.
6. Strabo, Geographie I (2). 74

Aram 3-4 1992