Aramaic Peshitta
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Nestorians were also charged with making the SONSHIP OF CHRIST DOUBLE. (See Magdeburg Centuriators, cent. v., col. 334, F.) Almost all the ancient creeds do this, by teaching that even the Deity of Christ was begotten, as well as his humanity. Nestore's opponents held this creed. But they seemed to have imagined that by calling the Godhead and the manhood "one person," they made the divine Sonship, in respect of which the Creed of Chalcedon says he was "begotten before the ages," to be one and the same with the sonship of his humanity. The charge against the Nestorians was that by denying Christ to be "one person," they left the double sonship unresolved into oneness. Nestore and his opponents both held that the Divine Word was a begotten Deity; but his opponents added absurdity to error when they imagined that the words "one person" converted two sonships into one. The word of God says nothing of a begotten God. "I am," which denotes underived existence, was used by Christ of his Godhead, as well as by God of himself when he spoke to Moses. (Ex. iii. 14; John viii. 58.) Oneness with the Father is the oneness of self-existence. God tells us that Christ is his Son because begotten by him of Mary, Luke i. 35.
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ANOTHER CHARGE brought against Nestore was that he made FOUR PERSONS in the Godhead. (Magdeburg Centuriators, cent. v., col. 335 F., 338 F.) As if it were impossible to believe that the Deity of Christ differs from his manhood, without converting his manhood into a second Deity. Such absurdities seem to be intended to show that if men assume a lordship which God forbids, he makes their wisdom folly.
These facts are proof that the Nestorians, who suffered the loss of all things, and preferred to be under the ban of perpetual excommunication, rather than admit the untruth that Mary was the mother of God, gave far better proof of being trustworthy witnesses as to the origin of their Scriptures, than those of the Greek and Roman bodies who asserted that untruth.
THESE CHARGES HAVE BEEN MENTIONED because they help to account for the unwillingness, so strong in some quarters, to receive THE TESTIMONY OF THE NESTORIANS respecting their Peshito Scriptures. For, strange as it may seem, even Dr. Liddon, a Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, in his Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of Christ, 9th ed., 1882, defends the false title "mother of God," (pg. 261.) He pleads that it has been used by those whom he calls "the whole church, since the Council of Ephesus," and justifies them in "attributing to God birth of a human mother," (pg. 261, note.) He calls the rejection of that false title by Nestore, a "vital heresy," (pg. 123.)
PENAL LAWS drove most of the Nestorians out of the Roman empire (Gibbon, chap. xlvii.) But ELSEWHERE THEY INCREASED EXCEEDINGLY. A large majority of the people of Persia became Nestorians. Cosmas, who is called the Indian navigator, and was a Nestorian, said of them, in the sixth century, that Christianity was successfully preached by them to the Bactrians, Huns, Persians, Indians, Medes, and Elamites; and that the number of churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian sea, was almost infinite. Gibbon says that, in a subsequent age their missionaries pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar; that some of them entered China, and that under the Mohammedan Caliphs, "their numbers, with those of the jacobites, were computed TO SURPASS THE GREEK AND ROMAN COMMUNIONS." (Gibbon, ch. xlvii. Nestorians.) All these churches used the Peshito.
THE BEST CHARACTERISTICS of the Nestorians are their LOVE AND USE OF THE PESHITO, and THEIR GREAT CARE TO KEEP IT PURE. From the first they shared the corruptions of Christianity which prevailed in the fifth century; and Wichelhaus says, in reference to about the year 600, "They were often contentious, ambitious, covetous; doctrines were adulterated," a hierarchy had been founded and was promoted; they corrupted and depraved the doctrines and precepts which they had received pure from the Apostles, not less than the Roman Catholics did. "This thing only is to be praised in them, that they always used the Bible, and greatly valued learning," (pg. 130.) He says that from the eighth century, slaughter and desolation overwhelmed both the Nestorians and the Jacobites; that some of the Nestorians fled for refuge to the mountains of Coordistan, and some of the Jacobites, partly to the mountain regions of Mesopotamia, and partly to the solitudes of Lebanon; (pp. 205-206). J. Aloys Asseman (a nephew of J. S. Asseman, who wrote the Bibliotheca) wrote a history of the Nestorian Patriarchs, published A. D. 1775, and showed a constant succession of them down to that date. He gives an account also of some of their chief writers. One of these, Jesudadus, mentions the belief of the Syrians as to the origin of the Peshito.
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JESUDADUS, who is sometimes called SOADEDUS, lived during the Patriarchate of Theodosius, A. D. 852-858. He said of the Syriac version, "The translation of the sacred books into the Syriac language was in this order; the Pentateuch, and Joshua the son of Nun, and Judges, and Ruth, and Samuel, and David, and Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, and Job, were translated in the time of Solomon, at the request of Hiram, king of Tyre, his friend. But the rest of the books of the Old and those of the New Covenant, in the time of Abgar, king of Edessa, by the care and solicitude of Thaddaeus and other apostles." (J. A. Asseman's Patriarchs, pg. 102, note 1.)
Thaddaeus, who worked miracles, could give the same authority to what he approved, as the twelve apostles did. The belief of the Syrians, therefore, about 800 years from the time of the Apostles was that the New Covenant Peshito was made under such apostolic care that it had the same authority as the gospels of Luke and Mark had from being made under the care of Paul and Peter.
EBEDJESUS, who became Metropolitan of Soba, that is, of Nisibis, A. D. 1290, was a Nestorian of great eminence. His works were very numerous. The list which he gave of the sacred books of the New Testament was that of the Peshito, not of the Greek. He states that the Gospel of Matthew was "written in Palestine in Hebrew," that is, in Syriac, then called Hebrew; and that the reason why the epistles of James, 1st Peter, and 1st John, were called catholic, was because "they had in them words written by the apostles in every copy and IN EVERY LANGUAGE." The Syriac books of which he was speaking were those contained in the New Covenant Peshito. His statements imply the general belief of Syrians that those four books, at the least, were written in Syriac, and that the Peshito contained true copies of them. (See Westcott on Canon, pg. 540, and Dr. Badger's Nestorians, 1852, vol. ii., pp. 361-363.)
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EBEDJESUS gives the following account of the origin of the Nestorians, the Jacobites, and the Melchites, in his work called "The Jewel," which is translated by Dr. Badger, vol. ii., pg. 380. Ebedjesus says that Cyril maintained that we ought to call the Virgin, "Mother of God," and wrote twelve sentences, excommunicating all who should draw any distinction between the Godhead and humanity of Christ after their union. Nestorius showed that these sentences were erroneous; that the appellation "Mother of God," is unscriptural. He called her "Mother of the Anointed," the Anointed being the word used by prophets and apostles. From this difference of creed came slaughter, exile, imprisonment, and great persecution. The Council of Chalcedon decided that there are TWO NATURES in Christ, and TWO WILLS, and anathematised all who should deny the two natures; but decided that there is but ONE PERSON. The party of Cyril objected to "two natures;" that of Nestorius to "one person." An imperial edict degraded from their dignity all who did not agree with the decision, that there are two natures and one person. Some submitted. Others did not. Hence arose three sects. Those who held ONE NATURE AND ONE PERSON IN CHRIST. This sect included the Copts, Egyptians, and Abyssinians. This is called the Jacobite sect, from a Syrian teacher called Jacob. The second sect held that there are TWO NATURES AND ONE PERSON in Christ. These are called Melchites -- the king's party, because this creed was imposed forcibly by the king. It is received by the Romans called Franks, by those of Constantinople who are Greeks, and by all the people of the West, such as Russians, Circassians, Georgians and their neighbours. The Jacobites and Melchites accept the appellation "mother of God." The Jacobites have added the declaration that "God was crucified for us." The third creed is that of the Nestorians, that there are TWO NATURES AND TWO PERSONS in Christ. The Easterns have never changed their faith, but have kept it as they received it from the apostles, and therefore are unjustly called Nestorians, because he was not their patriarch, nor was his their language. Nestorius followed THEM, not they HIM, and more especially, as to the appellation "Mother of the Anointed." Such is the account given by Ebedjesus of the three sects. It shows how well informed he was, and how important his testimony is as to the books of Scripture.
THE CHRISTIANS OF ST. THOMAS, in India, whose profession of Christianity dates from the time of the apostles, maintain that Syriac was the original language of Scripture. Dr. Westcott says, "The Syriac Christians of Malabar even now claim for the Peshito the right to be considered as an Eastern original of the New Testament." (On the Canon, pg. 233.) "How shall we know," said one of them, speaking to Dr. Claudius Buchanan about the Greek Testament, "that your standard copy of the Bible is a TRUE TRANSLATION? We cannot depart from our own Bible. It is THE TRUE BOOK OF GOD, without corruption; it is that book which was first used by the Christians of Antioch. What TRANSLATIONS you have got in the West, we know not; but the true Bible of Antioch we have had in the mountains of Malabar for fourteen hundred years, or longer." Another of these professed Christians said, "If the parables and discourses of our Lord were in Syriac, and the people in Jerusalem commonly used it, is it not marvellous that his disciples did not record his parables in the Syrian language, and that they should have recourse to the Greek? Surely there must have been A SYRIAC ORIGINAL. The poor people in Jerusalem could not read Greek. Had THEY no record in their hands of Christ's parables which they had heard, and of his sublime discourses recorded by John after his ascension? You admit that Matthew was written originally in Syriac; you may as well admit John. Or was one Gospel enough for the inhabitants of Jerusalem?" (Dr. Etheridge's Syriac Christians, pp. 166-167.)
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THE NESTORIANS NEVER TREATED THE GREEK TEXT AS OF HIGHER AUTHORITY than that of the New Covenant Peshito. Wichelhaus says (pg. 187,) that "the Nestorians had no social union with Western Christians; and that they held the text of the Greek New Testament in almost no esteem, and deemed the ancient Peshito to be in all things authentic." At pg. 153 he says, "In the history of the Nestorians, it was never found, so far as I know, that learned men took the trouble to compare the Syriac text of the New Testament with the Greek, and to conform it to that." (Also pg. 266.)
THE TERMS APPLIED TO THE PESHITO prove the general belief of its divine origin. Wichelhaus says, (pg. 153), "It was extolled with the greatest praises; it was esteemed to be exactly what was written in the first times BY APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY; it was called, not only ancient, but SACRED AND BLESSED."
THE EXTREME CARE taken to preserve its text in purity implies that every part of it was believed to be from God. The care taken was like that which the Jews took of their inspired Hebrew text. Wichelhaus says, "It is a proof of the extreme accuracy of the Syrians in treating the sacred text, that, like the Jews, they have their Masora," a collection of critical comments on correct readings; "not only do they divide the text into chapters and lections, but they also number the comma-divisions of each book." (pg. 156.) Monasteries abounded in the East from the fourth century. When the city of Edessa was taken by the Saracens, 300 monasteries were found in it, (pg. 126.) The monks of that period devoted their time chiefly to copying the scriptures, and making known the gospel. Wichelhaus attributes the great accuracy of the copies of the Peshito, and especially of the Nestorian copies, to the following causes. 1st. - Many copies were written in monasteries, by skilled men, from approved examples, and with the utmost care and attention. 2ndly. - Those copies were read and examined many times by ministers and monks. 3rdly. - In the time of Ephraem, cent. iv., deep interest was taken in the letter of Scripture, and many Syrians are mentioned who had committed almost the whole New Testament to memory. 4thly. - In schools, in church-assemblies, and in monasteries, there was such constant communication between the teachers and the taught, that if any differences crept into the text, they could scarcely escape notice, nor become fixed by custom. 5thly. - A large part of the Christians of that region had been Jews, they were compelled to discuss points with Jews, they had Jewish schools near them, and were thus accustomed to consider the words of sacred scripture, to be themselves sacred and inviolable, amd almost to number the very letters." (pg. 151.)