Rome and the East
and more significantly the writings (all now lost except theBook of the Laws
of Countries) of the heretic Bardesanes (–c. ).^28 In the face of this im-
portant development we perhaps forget that Edessa too was a Macedonian
colony.^29 Bardesanes was literate in both Greek and Syriac,^30 as was his son
Harmonius, who was educated in Athens, and composed hymns in Syriac;^31
and Bardesanes’ Syriac works were translated into Greek by his disciples.^32
In short, Bardesanes was the product of a mixed culture, where it may be
impossible for us to determine what the values attached to each language
were, or even, in certain cases, which the original language of a particu-
lar work was. Thus, for instance, only the most careful analysis can make it
probable that theOdes of Solomonwere written in Syriac, and translated into
Greek by the third century, from when we have a papyrus text in Greek of
OdeXI.^33
Edessa may not have been totally different from another Macedonian
foundation much better known to us, Dura-Europos. Here, together with
a preponderance of Semitic cults, Greek documents still far outnumber all
others (in Latin, Pahlavi and Middle Persian, Parthian, Safaitic, Palmyrene,
Aramaic, and Syriac), even from the latest, Roman, period of the city.^34
Furthermore, one of the Greek documents (P. Dura) serves to illustrate the
extraordinary tangle of confusions which tends to beset any attempt to por-
tray the cultural framework of early Eastern Christianity. This is the Greek
fragment of theDiatessaronof Tatian; in spite of the obvious implications
of the name, and the fact that no source actually says so, it has frequently
been argued that this was originally composed in Syriac. In fact there are no
valid linguistic arguments against the prima facie deduction from this very
. See H. J. W. Drijvers,Bardaisan of Edessa().
. See J. B. Segal,Edessa,‘‘TheBlessedCity’’(); see – for traces of Greek culture
there in this period.
. Epiphanius,Panarion, , ; cf. Theodoret,Haereticarum fabularum compendium,
(PGLXXXIII, ), mentioning Syriac only.
. Sozomenus,Hist. Eccles. , , –; Theodoret (n. ).
. Euseb.,HE,,;Jerome,de vir. ill..
. See J. A. Emerton, ‘‘Some Problems of Text and Language in the Odes of Solomon,’’
J. Theol. St. (): .
. For surveys, see C. B. Welles, ‘‘The Population of Roman Dura,’’ inStudies in Roman
Economic and Social History in Honor of A. C. Johnson(), ; G. D. Kilpatrick, ‘‘Dura-
Europos: The Parchments and the Papyri,’’Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies ():
. See also F. Millar, ‘‘Dura-Europos under Parthian Rule,’’ in J. Wiesehöfer, ed.,Das
Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse(Historia-Einzelschrift , ), – ( chapter of
the present volume).