Aramaic Peshitta
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page IX
DR. J. S. ASSEMAN, the learned author of the great work--Bibliotheca Orientalis, published in four volumes folio; a Maronite Syrian; said in the Prologue to Vol. I, pg. 1, that the Syriac language formerly flourished in the immense empire of the Assyrians and that of the Chaldees, and was brought to the greatest degree of amplitude and elegance; that it was afterwards consecrated by the mouth of Deity incarnate and talking with men; that it was known familiarly by the apostles; that it was used in sacred worship every where in the East; and was made famous by being used by eminent writers of the greatest excellence. It was in this language that the gospel was diffused from Edessa and other places throughout the East, as from Antioch in Syria it was diffused by Paul in Asia Minor and in Europe. Dr. J. S. Asseman, also said in his Prologue, pg. 1, "To begin from those things which were first written in Syriac, it is a tradition certain and uniform, which the marvellous agreement of all the eastern nations confirms, and which both Eusebius of Caesarea, and Jerome, deemed to be established, that Thaddaeus, or as the Syrians prefer to call him, Adaeus, either an apostle or a disciple of Christ, immediately after His ascension into heaven, went to Abgar, the Toparch of Edessa, and instructed the people of Mesopotamia in the Christian faith; and that king Abgar himself received sacred baptism. The gospel was next openly proclaimed in those places, churches were built,.....and the sacred books translated out of Hebrew into Syriac.....Very many learned men began by their word, and by their writings, to deliver the divine teaching to the people, and to confute ancient, and more recent errors by their published volumes....Frequent incursions of the Persians, Arabs, and Tartars into Mesopotamia, and the adjoining provinces of the Syrians, followed; by which, cities were overthrown to their foundations, monasteries levelled with the ground, churches consumed by fire, and volumes of the most surpassing worth taken away. If any escaped the hands of the barbarians (as it is certain that very many did) they either feed the book-worms of the desert, or are torn, cut up, and devoted to profane uses by their ignorant possessors." He afterwards refers to later times, to 1555, when the New Covenant Peshito was first printed, and to the efforts which have been made to discover, and to make use of, such ancient Syriac copies, both of the Scriptures and of other works, as may still exist.