Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T14:21:05.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Institution of the Benai Qeiama and Benat Qeiama in the Ancient Syrian Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Arthur Vööbus
Arthur Vööbus
Affiliation:
Chicago Lutheran Seminary
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Syriac term qeiama, “covenant,”1 with its derivations benai qeiama, “the sons of the covenant,” and benat qeiama, “the daughters of the covenant,”2 not only marks the idiosyncracy of primitive Syrian Christianity but it also mirrors a development which parallels the whole process of transformation in ancient Syrian Christianity. Originally the term qeiama designated the whole church comprised of ascetically oriented Christians.3.Standing face to face with this singular concept of church and the peculiar profile of primitive Syrian Christianity, we must be reminded that the first Christian impulses in the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris did not come from Hellenistic Christianity via Antioch but from Palestinian Jewish Christianity.4 Therefore the earliest traditions implanted here reveal the Palestinian Aramaean influence not only in the contacts which these Christian Jews had with the Palestinian Jewish Christians5 but also in the use of the ancient Palestinian Targum as the first biblical texts translated into Syriac6 and in the fundamentally ascetic orientation of the Christian Kerygma7 which echoes the Palestinian ascetic trends.8 These archaic conditions, which understood the qeiama as the whole

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 19 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. This does not mean simply a “state” or “stand” as suggested by Wensinck, A. J., “Qejama und Benai Qejama,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft LXIII (Halle, 1909), 561Google Scholar. The central thought is the covenant idea, including the idea of oath and vow. A secondary meaning of the term is the group of persons who keep the vow or covenant.

2. We may translate these formations simply as the “Covenauters.”

3. Burkitt, P. C., Early Christianity Outside the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1902), 50ff.Google Scholar; Early Eastern Christianity (London, 1904), 127.Google Scholar

4. Vööbus, A., History of the Gospel Text in Syriac, in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia III (Louvain, 1951), 17ff.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 18f.

6. Vööbus, A., Peschitta und Targumim des Pentateuchs. Neues Licht zur Frage der Herkunft der Peschitta aus dem altpalästinischen Targum, in Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile IX (Stockholm, 1958), 105ff.Google Scholar

7. Vööbus, A., History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East, vol. 1, in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia XIV (Louvain, 1958), 10ff.Google Scholar

8. Vööbus, A., “The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the History of Early Christianity,” in Yearbook of the Estonian Learned Society in America II (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

9. Burkitt, , Early Eastern Christianity, 127ffGoogle Scholar; “Syriac-speaking Christianity,” in The Cambridge Ancient History XII (Cambridge, 1939), 499.Google Scholar

10. Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten II (Leipzig, 1906), 123Google Scholar. Cf. 19242 II, 691f.

11. Theologische Literaturzeitung XXXI (Leipzig, 1907), 432f.Google Scholar

12. “Eine enkratitische Glosse im Diatessaron,” in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft XXII (Giessen, 1923), 8.Google Scholar

13. Vööbus, A., Celibacy, a Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church, in Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile I (Stockholm, 1951), 35ff.; 45ff.Google Scholar

14. An interesting insight into the transformation from this aspect is given by the de-masqata, Kitaba, “Liber graduum,” ed. Kmosko, M., in Patrologia syriaca I, 3 (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar; see Vööbus, A., “Liber graduum: Some Aspects of Its Significance for the History of Early Syrian Asceticism,” in Charisteria Johanni Köpp octogenario oblata (Holmiae, 1954), 108ff.Google Scholar

15. S. Ephraemi Syri Rabalae episcopi Edesseni Balaei aliorumque opera selecta, ed. Overbeek, J. J. (Oxonii, 1865), 215ff.Google Scholar

16. Ms. Mus. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 38a—50a.

17. Can. X, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 216.

18. Can. II: with his mother, sister or daughter; can. X: with relatives, Ibid., 215f.

19. Can. XVIII, Ibid., 217.

20. Can. XLII, Ibid., 220.

21. Can. XLVIII, Ibid., 220.

22. Can. XVIII, Ibid., 217.

23. Pseudo-Amphilochius, , Turgama, in Acta martyrum et sanctorum, ed. Bedjan, P. (Paris, 1896), VI, 311.Google Scholar

24. Vööbus, A., “Das literarische Verhältnis zwisehen der Biographie des Rabbula und dem Pseudo-Amphilochianischen Panegyrikus über Basilius,” in Oriens Christianus XLIV (Wiesbaden, 1960), 40ff.Google Scholar

25. History of Martyrs in Palestine by Eusebius, ed. W. Cureton (London, 1861), 19.Google Scholar

26. Ms. Mus. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 41a.

27. Can. II, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeek 215.Google Scholar

28. Can. XXVIII, Ibid., 218.

29. Can. XXIX, Ibid.

30. Can. XXVIII, Ibid.

31. Can. XXIII, Ibid., 217f.

32. “That they shall not eat meat nor wash themselves while they are sound, he commanded to them,” Vita Rabbulac, in Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 176.Google Scholar

33. Can. VI, Ibid., 215f.

34. Can. IX, Ibid., 216.

35. Canones Johannis Bar Cursus Tellae Mauzelatae episcopi, ed. C. Kuberzyk (Lipsiae, 1901), can. X.Google Scholar

36. Vita Rabbulae, ed. Overbeek 177.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 177.

38. Can. XII, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 216.Google Scholar

39. Can. XI in Ms. Par. syr. 62, fol. 227b; Ms. Ming. syr. 8, fol. 149b.

40. Can. XIX, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeek 217.Google Scholar

41. Vita Rabbulae, ed. Overbeck 206Google Scholar; cf. Vööbus, A., La vie d'Alexandre en grec—un temoign d'une biograrphic de Rabboula éerite en syriaque (Pinneberg, 1948), 15f.Google Scholar

42. Can. XXV, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 218.Google Scholar

43. Can. X in Ms. Par. syr. 62, fol. 227a; Ms. Ming. syr. 8, fol. 149b.

44. Can. XXVI, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 218.Google Scholar

45. Can. IX, Ibid., 216.

46. Can. XXXVII, Ibid., 219.

47. Can. XVIII, Ibid., 217.

48. Can. VI, Ibid., 215f.

49. “The priests and deacons and the benai qeiama shall not compel the benat qeiama to weave garments for them by force,” can. III, Ibid., 215.

50. Can. III, Ibid., 215.

51. Ms. Mus. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 46a.

52. Ms. Mug. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 45a.

53. Ms. Mug. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 45a.

54. “That they shall be occupied with fasting and persevere in prayer,” Vita Rabbulae, ed. Overbeck 177.Google Scholar

55. Can. XX, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 217.Google Scholar

56. Can. XXVII, Ibid., 218.

57. Acta martyrum et sanctorum, ed. P. Bedjan (Paris, 1891), II, 238.Google Scholar

58. Acta Ephraemi XXXII, in Ephraem Syri opera omnia syriace, ed. S. E. Assemani (Romae, 1743) III, LIIGoogle Scholar; Historia Ephraemi, in Hymni et sermones, ed. T. J. Lamy (Meehliniae, 1890), II, 67.Google Scholar

59. Vööbus, A.Literary Critical and Historical Studies in Ephrem the Syrian, in Papers of the Estanian Theological Society in Exile X (Stockholm, 1958), 124ff.Google Scholar

60. Acta martyrum et sanctorum, ed. P. Bedjan (Paris, 1894) IV, 534f.Google Scholar

61. Can. XLV, Opera selecta, ed. Overbeck 220.Google Scholar

62. Vita Rabbulae, ed. Overbeck 203.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., 203.

64. Ibid., 203f.

65. Turgama, ed. Bedjan 311, 317Google Scholar. About the development see Vööbus, Das literarische Verhältnis etc.

66. “And are there villages where there are no benai qeiama of whom he [i.e., the chorepiscopus] shall make priests, (in this case) he shall bring out brothers from the monasteriesor churches which are under his authority, and shall make them,” Ms. Mus. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 44b.

67. Ms. Mug. Borg. syr. 82, fol. 41a.

68. Ms. Par. syr. 62, fol. 227 a.; Ms. Ming. syr. 8, fol. 149a.

69. Ms. Mug. Borg. 82, fol. 45a.