VII

PREFACE.

Sahdona declares (see hereafter pp. 474–475) that his explanations of the Holy Scriptures are in accordance with the teaching he had received from his masters. Hnana had as partisans Joseph of Adiabene or Joseph Hazzaya, Isaac of Nineveh, Isaiah of Tahal (see Ichoyab in Budge, II, p. 138), John Saba or John of Dalyata, and others still. Ichoyab of Gdala, or Ichoyab II, whom Sahdona accompanied on his embassy to the West, was himself accused of having professed Catholicism and of having anathematized Nestorius; otherwise, it was said, he would not have been admitted by the Greeks to celebrate the holy mysteries. It is therefore not believable, as M. Goussen has already remarked, that Sahdona was bewitched and converted to Catholicism during his return from this embassy by the abbot of a convent near Apamea. But this story, of which Thomas of Marga was the echo (Book II, ch. 6), must not be considered a legend; it should be understood in the sense that Sahdona had experienced the desire to visit the holy old man whose faith he shared. Ichoyab of Adiabene seems to allude to this event when he says that Sahdona had been converted recently in a chambre secrète secret chamber (Budge, II, 132, ult.; 133, 5).

His studies finished, Sahdona left Nisibis and went to Mar Jacques, who had left the convent of Abraham on Mount Izla to go and found the convent of Beit-Abe in the diocese of Marga. Jacques welcomed the newcomer, conferred the monastic habit upon him, and named him assistant to Qam-Icho, who was in charge of the construction of the monastery. It was from there that Ichoyab of Gdala, a deputy to Heraclius, had him summoned to take him along on his embassy.