Martyrdom of Barsamya

The Martyrdom of Barsamya is a Syriac Christian text. The text is set at Edessa during the reign of Roman Emperor Trajan but is dated by biblical scholars to the fifth century AD.[1]

Publications

Published in his Ancient Syriac Documents (London, 1864), William Cureton translated the Martyrdom of Barsmaya to English from a Syriac manuscript (Brit. Mus. Add. 14, 645) dated to 936 AD.[2] In 1871, B. P. Pratten introduced his English translation to be published in the eighth volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.[3] In his Acta SS. Martyrum Edessenorum (Oenoponti, 1874), Moesinger published his Latin translation.[2]

Narrative overview

In the fifteenth year of Trajan's reign, the Edessan Bishop Barsamya had converted the pagan high priest Sharbel to Christianity. After Judge Lysinas heard of Sharbel's conversion by Barsamya, he ordered the torture of Barsamya. As he was being tortured, letters were sent across the Roman Empire to the high-judicial authorities from the Roman emperor and his proconsul member Lusius with a new decree pertaining to the punishments of Christians according to the laws presented in the decree.[n 1][n 2][n 3] Once Lysinas received the letter, he halted Barsamya's torture and had him brought to his court hall. Lysinas read the letter to Barsamya and was set free for not violating the laws according to the decree. Lysinas was relieved of his duties after, and Barsamya continued to live on in Edessa as bishop.[4]

The narrative is concluded with a Zenophilus and a Patrophilis claiming to be the authors of the text. By interviewing eyewitnesses Diodorus and Euterpes as their source, Zenophilus and Patrophilis were able to write the text.[4]

Composition, historicity, and affiliations with other Syriac texts

Scholars have deduced that the work was written in the fifth century AD, after the reign of Trajan it fictionally portrays. Due to similar composition and history, scholars associate the Martyrdom of Barsamya with the Acts of Sharbel.[5][n 4] Both of these texts were found to be less authentic by scholars in terms of historicity than other Syriac Christian works such as the Acts of Shmona and Gurya and the Martyrdom of Habbib.[6] In his Carmina Nisibena, Ephrem the Syrian mentions Gurya, Shmona, and Habbib but not of Barsamya or Sharbel. The same reoccurs in a Syriac martyrology calendar manuscript dated to 411 AD which lists martyrs from Edessa.[7][n 5]

Unique to the Teaching of Addai, the exact list of Petrine apostolic succession reoccurs at the end of the Martyrdom of Barsamya.[8][n 6] Also unique to the Teaching of Addai, the names of Addai's first Christian converts are mentioned in both the Acts of Sharbel and the Martyrdom of Barsamya.[n 7] Inscriptions of these names can be found in once pagan regions of Edessa dating back to the fourth and third century AD and are rarely mentioned in Syriac sources from the fifth century AD and after.[8] According to scholar Harold Attridge, Addai's first Christian converts mentioned in the Martyrdom of Barsamya and the Acts of Sharbel were incorporated in a literary writing style similar to that of the Acts of Shmona and Gurya and the Martyrdom of Habbib. With such similarities, he deduced that the Acts of Sharbel and the Martyrdom of Barsamya were written by the same group of pagan authors inspired to integrate their ancestral pagan ideology into the Christian community through the use of the Sharbel and Barsamya texts.[8]

Notes

  1. ↑ Lightfoot 1889, p. 69; Trajan's decree never existed because the Church Fathers neither referenced it nor alluded anything like it to Trajan.
  2. ↑ Lightfoot 1889, p. 69; Cureton considers the decree to be the earliest authentic documentation of Trajan respectfully suspending Christian persecution. Cureton also considers the decree to be exactly preserved as if it were written by the notaries of that time.
  3. ↑ Lightfoot 1889, p. 69; Joseph Lightfoot suggests that Trajan's attitude towards Christians in his decree was far more respectable than Constantine the Great.
  4. ↑ Lightfoot 1889, p. 69; "Moesinger argues at length in favour of their genuineness."
  5. ↑ Coghill 2016, p. 310; "The Acts of Sharbil, Babai, and Barsamya were probably composed after the time Ephraim of Edessa (died 373), and after a Syriac Calendar of 411, in which Sharbil and Barsamya are not mentioned, but possibly before Rabbula's time (died 435 or 436), and certainly before Jacob of Serug (died 521)."
  6. ↑ Attridge & Hata 1992, p. 228; "Addai's second successor, Palut, was consecrated bishop by Serapion of Antioch (190/191-211/212), who was consecrated (a patent anachronism) by Zephyrinus of Rome (198-217), whose priesthood went back to Simon Peter."
  7. ↑ Attridge & Hata 1992, p. 223; According to Harold Attridge, all three texts originated from the same social sect.

Citations

Sources

  • Attridge, Harold W.; Hata, Gōhei (1992). Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 9780814323618.
  • Coghill, Eleanor (2016). The Rise and Fall of Ergativity in Aramaic: Cycles of Alignment Change. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198723806.
  • Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1889). The Apostolic Fathers: A Revised Text with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations. London: Macmillan Publishers.
  • Millar, Fergus (1993). The Roman Near East, 31 B.C.-A.D. 337. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674778863.
  • Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, Sir James; Coxe, Arthur Cleveland; Menzies, Allan (1887). The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Buffalo, New York: The Christian Literature Company.
  • Valantasis, Richard (2000). Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691057514.
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