Syriac Reception of Socrates

chapter 19 Syriac Reception of Socrates Ute Pietruschka 1 Syriac Interest in Greek Philosophy Contacts between the Greek and the Aramaic-speaking world were close throughout the Hellenistic period. The Christianization of the Eastern Mediterranean strengthened the cultural ties between the adherents of the new faith in the two linguistic areas. Early Syriac Christianity was a learned, well-educated community that was, at the end of the seventh century CE, heavily Hellenized.1 The Syrian elites—among them clerics and well-educated monks—certainly received a Greek education. Admittedly, the references to Greek learning are few; but this fact may indicate that Greek education was so common that it was taken for granted in the sources.2 Ecclesiastical institutions and schools, for example the School of Nisibis and the School of Persians in Edessa (for the Church of the East), but also monasteries and monastic schools such as Qenneshre on the Euphrates (for the West Syrians), were intellectual centers that fostered and disseminated Greek learning in a predominantly Aramaic-speaking region, a process that lasted well until the end of the late antique period and the beginning of the Islamic era.3 Bilingualism in Greek and Aramaic remained a significant feature of Syrian culture; Syriac-speaking Christians therefore played an important role as intermediaries of Greek philosophy to the Muslims, especially during the so-called Greek-Arabic translation movement in ʿAbbāsid Baghdad from the middle of the eighth until the tenth century CE.4 This translation movement took on a rich life of its own, and the Arabic study of Greek philosophical works went far beyond the study 1 Brock 1982; Drijvers 1966, 52–3. 2 Syriac hagiographic sources reflect an ambivalent attitude towards Greek learning: frequently, the full extent of the classical education of their protagonists is underplayed in order to heighten their ascetic (or monastic) virtues; sometimes, however, the Greek educational background is evident. Cf. Peeters 1950. See now Gemeinhardt, Van Hoof et al. 2016 on a re-evaluation of the monastic education, esp. Rigoglio 2016; King 2016. 3 See Becker 2006, ch. 3–4, on the East Syriac School movement; Brock 2015, 109–10. On the literary production in Syriac monasteries: Debié 2010. 4 On the Greek-Arabic translation movement, see the profound study of Gutas 1998 (though underplaying the Syriac contribution to this movement), for the Syriac contribution Hugonnard-Roche 2000 and 2011, and Brock 2004a. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396753_021 Syriac Reception of Socrates 519 of Greek philosophy that is to be found among Syriac Christians in the sixth and seventh centuries.5 Hellenization was an important factor for the rise of Syriac literary culture. Beginning with the fourth century CE, and continuing into Islamic times, a large number of translations from Greek into Syriac were made. Biblical and Patristic texts, ecclesiastical histories, and homiletic and ascetic literature were first chosen for translation into Syriac and formed the main body of translations. With the beginning of the sixth century CE, philosophical studies, already in Greek late antiquity closely associated with medical studies, found their way into the Syriac tradition together with medicine. The interest of the Syrians in Greek philosophy and medicine is in pre-Islamic times most evident in their engagement with the works of Aristotle and Galen. The physician and priest Sergius of Reshʿayna (d. 536 CE)6 represents best the link between philosophy and medicine that can be observed not only among Syriac scholars of the sixth and seventh centuries, but also more than two centuries later in the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. Sergius, who studied in Alexandria and translated many treatises of Galen, one of Alexander of Aphrodisias (On the Principles of the All), and the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo,7 was the first known Syriac commentator on Aristotle. He intended to comment on the entire Aristotelian corpus, from the Categories to the Metaphysics, but only his commentary on the Categories is extant. As Sergius emphasizes in his introduction to the logical works of Aristotle, without them one can grasp neither the meaning of medical and philosophical writings nor “the true sense of the divine scriptures.”8 The appreciation of Aristotle’s Organon for the training in logic that gives access to all areas of knowledge is reflected in several translations and commentaries by important Syriac Aristotelian scholars of the seventh century. Severus Sebokht (d. 666 or 667 CE) wrote on De interpretatione and Prior Analytics;9 Athanasius of Balad (d. 687 CE) translated Porphyry’s Isagoge, the Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations, and wrote an introduction to logic;10 Jacob of Edessa (d. 708 CE) made a new translation of the Categories;11 and George, bishop of the Arabs (d. 724 CE), 5 For aspects of the Arabic Socrates, see Wakelnig (in this volume). 6 Hugonnard-Roche 1989. 7 On Sergius and his translations, see Hugonnard-Roche 2004, 123–31; Teixidor 2003, 20–2; Brock 2004a, 4. 8 Hugonnard-Roche 1997, 81–3 and Hugonnard-Roche 2004, 143–231, with a translation of the introduction and the first chapter. 9 Reinink 2011, 368. 10 Penn 2011, 46. 11 Salvesen 2011, 432–3..

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