Jews and Others
The same procedure, she goes on, applied to anyLatiniwho were present:
in order that they should not be ‘‘saddened,’’fratres et sorores graecolatini(‘‘the
brothers and sisters who spoke both Greek and Latin’’) had the task of trans-
lating for them.^33 It is important to stress that there is no implication in any of
the reports relating to Aelia Capitolina that the Christians there who spoke
‘‘the Syrian language’’ were converted Jews (any more than were those who
spoke the same language in Gaza). On the contrary, we are seeing here slight
but significant evidence for the Semitic language of at least a section of the
gentile population of Palestine.
None of this evidence, however, suggests that we should conceive of
‘‘Syrians’’ in the Near East as having represented anethnosin the strong sense
of a self-conscious ‘‘nationality’’ transcending provincial boundaries. Nor, to
sum up what is at this moment hardly more than a preliminary impression,
should we see the major theological divisions of the period, the doctrine of
the Trinity on the one hand and Arianism on the other in the fourth cen-
tury, or rival conceptions of the divine or human nature, or natures, of Christ
in the fifth, as either arising from or being marked by ethnic or linguistic
divisions within the church.^34 Rather, the conceptual model provided by the
liturgy at Aelia Capitolina, and in a different way by the gradual appearance
in northern Syria of Syriac church inscriptions along with Greek ones, is
surely correct. The rise of Syriac as a Christian language of culture, very sig-
nificant as it was, took place within the framework of a predominantly Greek
church, and was not (or was not yet) a challenge to it. It is at least very sug-
gestive that the earliest inscriptions from this region which mark Christian
churches or sacred sites, and which date to the middle of the fourth century,
are all in Greek. This is true, for instance, of the tomb of Ioulianos ‘‘beside the
boundary of the commonkoimēterion[dormitory] of the Christians,’’ erected
at Umm-al Jimal in ;^35 of the sanctuary of Saint Sergius established at
Eitha in the Hauran in /;^36 and of the building with a Christian inscrip-
tion at Dar Qita in the limestone massif, of the s to s.^37 These three very
early epigraphic reflections of the Constantinian revolution do not come
from urban locations, but all belong in the context of that rapid growth of
.Pereg. , –, ed. P. Maraval, ‘‘Egérie, Journal de Voyage,’’SC ().
. See F. Millar, ‘‘Paul of Samosata, Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church, Local Culture
and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria,’’JRS (): – ( chapter of the
present volume), where the accepted interpretation of Paul’s career, along ethnic lines, is
rejected.
.PAESIII.Greek and Latin Inscriptions in Syria. A.. Southern Syria(), no. .
. Le Bas-Waddington,Inscriptions grecques et latines(), no. .
.IGLSII, no. .