Ethnic Identity predominantly a Greek-speaking organisation (or network of linked local
organisations).
That may seem a rash and unsustainable claim, and it is indeed only valid
in the strict terms in which it is expressed. For, if we look at the wider con-
text from other angles, it is beyond doubt, firstly, that the use of a Semitic
language, Syriac or Aramaic, in various dialects, was characteristic of all the
Roman provinces of the Near East. Secondly, it is of crucial importance that
the Roman imperialism of the later second and early third centuries had
led to the acquisition of northern Mesopotamia, which rapidly emerged as
the heartland of a Christian literature in Syriac, whose greatest exponent,
Ephraim, was born in Nisibis in the early fourth century, and died in Edessa
in . Thirdly, it was the great Christological disputes of the early fifth cen-
tury which were to lead in the end to the emergence of two Syriac-speaking
churches, separated from the Greek Orthodox Church, namely the Nesto-
rian Church (or Assyrian Church of the East) and the Monophysite Church
(or Syrian Orthodox Church).^18
Should we therefore not see Near Eastern Christianity in this period as a
zone of conflict or tension between two competing ethnicities, Greek on the
one hand and ‘‘Syrian’’ on the other? Our first problem is how to characterise
and name the non-Greek language concerned. To summarise a discussion
pursued in more detail elsewhere,^19 it should first be stressed that contempo-
rary observers experienced no such problem. To them, the Semitic language
in use in Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia was simply ‘‘the Syrian
language’’ (dialektosorglōtta,orinLatinSyrus sermo). Our problem arisesonly
from the modern convention of using ‘‘Syriac’’ in a more restricted sense, to
denote the script, dialect, and (by now) Christian language of culture which
had evolved not in Syria but in Mesopotamia. If we indeed confine ‘‘Syriac’’
to this more limited application, we have to find another term, ‘‘Aramaic,’’ for
the Semitic language which (as, for instance, Theodoret attests) was spoken
by many in Syria proper (and had earlier been used in public written form in
Palmyrene inscriptions, though no longer was), or for that which appears on
Jewish and Samaritan inscriptions from Palestine (as well as being the lan-
guage of the ‘‘Palestinian’’ Talmud), and which was also spoken by others in
the wider Palestinian area.
. For an illuminating essay on this slow process of separation, see M. Lichtheim, ‘‘Au-
tonomy versus Unity in the Christian East,’’ in L. White, ed.,TheTransformationoftheRoman
World: Gibbon’s Problem after Two Centuries(), . For a survey of the evidence for the
Syriac-speaking churches, see M. Albert,Christianismes Orientaux. Introduction à l’étude des
langues et des littératures(), ff.
. F. Millar (n. ).