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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
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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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64. Ibid., 203f.

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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.