The Demonstrations of Aphrahat

—from which the false assertions of Gennadius and the Armenians had despoiled him, when they attributed no small part of his works to Jacob of Nisibis, convincing learned men such as Assemani and Antonelli, as will be discussed hereafter.

However, against this, there are testimonies from Syriac writers (not indeed of his own age, but of later times) that reclaim him for Aphrahat. These show that this man was not entirely hidden among his own people, and that he certainly bore a reputation for holiness and learning.

Thus, there exists a letter of George, Bishop of the Arabs († 724), the fourth of twelve, of which the first three chapters are written about the Persian Sage. In the first, George inquires into our author's condition and the time in which he became known. In the two that follow, he examines various points of his doctrine (sometimes with his own assessments, as will be seen), yet declares him "very learned, sharp of wit, and most highly skilled in the knowledge of the priestly scriptures:" original: "ܕܐܝܬ ܕܝܢ ܚܙܝܬ..." (For I have seen that he was a Syrian, and in this writing, as much as is possible, he bears witness to his excellence.)¹. This primary document regarding Aphrahat is of such great importance that we shall return to it often.

The Persian Sage is called by his proper name by the Syriac lexicographer Bar-Bahlul (963), whose words in his Syriac-Arabic Lexicon are as follows: original: "ܐܦܪܗܛ ܚܟܝܡܐ ܕܦܪܣܝܐ."² "Aphrahat, in the book of Paradise (mentioned), is the Persian Sage, as they hand down." In the following century, Elias of Nisibis, or the Barsinaean († 1049), a monk at Mosul at one time and later the Metropolitan of Nisibis, composed a chronological work in which he commemorates Aphrahat and inserts his calculations of the times "from Adam to Jacob, and from Jacob's descent into Egypt up to the beginning of the Seleucid era," or "the years of the house of Adam according to the opinion of Aphrahat the Persian Sage," original: "ܫܢܝܐ ܕܒܝܬ ܐܕܡ...". This table, written in black and red letters, is arranged in Syriac and Arabic in a parchment codex of large size in the British Museum (Ms. Rich. 7,197). W. Wright edited this same table in Syriac³.

In the ninth century after Aphrahat, the most learned writer Gregory Barhebraeus († 1286) brought forth a double testimony regarding Aphrahat in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle—

¹ In P. Lagarde, Analecta syriaca, Leipzig, 1858, p. 110, ll. 2, 3; cf. p. 117, ll. 23, 24. W. Wright, The Homilies of Aphraates, p. 20. See G. Ryssel, Poems and Letters of George the Arab Bishop, Leipzig, 1891, p. 45; I. Forget, On the Life and Writings of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology at the University of Louvain, Louvain, 1882, pp. 12-13.
² Rubens Duval, Syriac Lexicon by Hassan Bar Bahlule, Paris, 1888, c. 268.
³ W. Wright, The Homilies of Aphraates, pp. 38, 39.