THE CREED

OF SAINT
APHRAHAT
OF
ADIABENE

Hadrian Mr lijah Bar Isral

THE CREED OF SAINT APHRAHAT OF ADIABENE

By Hadrian M ar Elijah Bar Israel, http://www.marelijah.org
2016 All Rights Reserved by Righteous Endeavour
http://www.righteousendeavour.com

BIO GRAP HY
The word aphrahat, is not a name, but a title. It means
singular earth/soil/dust/ash, and refers to the unity of
mankind, under the Creator. There is no similar word or
concept in Aramaic or Syriac, however in Mandaic the word
is epheruchath. The use of this Pahlavi word as a title, seems
to reference monasticism, the dust of the earth to which we
all return, and from whence we all came.
In Farsi, the same word is now pronounced "farad" and has
come to literally mean sage. Farsi is the modern Persian
language, which is presently spoken by about 110 million
people worldwide.
We know next to nothing else about the monastic sage who
has come to be called Aphrahat; except the very little we can
ascertain through the twenty-two homilies which have
survived into our present era in Syriac translation. There are
also references to him in various liturgical commemorations
of the Syriac speaking churches, and also from two surviving
historical sources.
Bar Bahlul repeats the traditional narrative that Aphrahat,
was born in the late Third Century A.D. and resided at the
monastery of Mar Mattai, near Mosul in modern day Iraq.
List the second source

In the year 344 Aphrahat presided over a council of the

church at Adiabene, for which he recorded the councils
letter in his Fourteenth Homily. Maybe most significantly he
refers to himself as beth qayim or a "son of the covenant",
and in Syriac also as ichidaye.
By his time the Church of the East was already had its own
primate separate from Antioch, and under the Emperor
Shapur II of the Sassanid (i.e. Persian) empire, was cut off
from communication with the western schisms and politics
of the age.
But maybe more importantly, and otherwise nearly forgotten
is the fact that Fars was also an independent metropolitanate
with six bishops, its own language (Pahlavi) and a distinct
theological practice; which exercised episcopal authority
over all of India and huge swaths of the Middle East,
independently of the Patriarchate in Selucia-tiphon.
Modern studies of the Pahlavi crosses of Kerala and Tamil
Nadu tend to point out that they were found in India, and
refer to them as "Saint Thomas Crosses", but neglect the
obvious point that they are written in the Pahlavi dialect of
Fars and not in Syriac or Malayalam.
Aphrahats writings quote the diatessaron rather than the
separated New Testament, and his quotations from the Old
Testament are taken from the Peshitta version rather than the
Septuagint. He displays also a great knowledge of the

Talmud, which refers to the oral law and traditions which

were codified after the destruction of the Second Temple in
70 A.D.
Eugenia Constantinou points out that the use of alternative
scriptures in the writings of the fathers is in part because
"although the earliest Christians knew of apostolic writings,
the life and teachings of Christ were primarily passed along
orally for many generations. Christians even considered
oral tradition superior to writing because one always knew
and had confidence in the trustworthiness of ones teacher.
(pg. 5)

It is safe to say that Aphrahats views, his being a son of the

covenant, and his purely Semitic, yet thoroughly Christian
theology represents the nexus of the nazarani tradition
which existed prior to the eastern churchs assimilation of
Greek thought. According to Bucur, "Aphrahat provides
invaluable insight into earlier Christian doctrines and
practices.", which Parisot says indicates the existence of an
independent Oriental theology, which, however, was not
allowed to develop on its own lines, but was assimilated to
Greek standards a few generations later. This was a distinct
loss to the fullness of Christian thought, and a misfortune to
the Syriac church itself, in that it soon shewed itself unable
to think on Greek lines, so that schisms resulted that endure
to this day.

John England writes in his book The Hidden History of

Christianity in Asia, that Aphrahat and others from this
period are contemptuous not only of such debate, but of
Greek thought itself where this explores relationships in the
Trinity." (pg. 36) "The Creed of Aphrahat, which along with
others was used by many East Syrians, avoids any
speculation regarding the nature of divinity, focusing
primarily upon the "revelation of a divine spirit dwelling in
human beings and fighting against moral evil"." (pg. 37)
In fact, there persisted an argument among liturgical scholars,
only recently

THE C REED O F AP HRAHAT

The Creed of Aphrahat is found in his First Homily, and was
the primary creed used by the Church of the East until around
the 13th Century, alongside that of Nica, which wasnt
adopted until the Council of Yabalalah in 410 A.D., but
didnt gain wide acceptance in the east until the Hellenising
reforms of the mid-Seventh century changed the churchs
theological landscape from a Semitic to Greek worldview.
By the 19th Century, scholars had become so entrenched in
the European worldview, that Pass holds that "by the change
of a single word, possibly by the addition of a single letter in

the Syriac text, we could convert this document into a Jewish

creed."
The linguistic evidence of the Creed of Aphrahat however
points to its having been originally authored in Pahlavi,
rather than Aramaic or modern Syriac, the only version in
which it survives.

Now this is faith,

When a man shall believe in God,
the Lord of all,
Who made the heavens and the earth
and the seas and all that is in them,
Who made Adam in His image,
Who gave the Law to Moses,
Who sent His Spirit in the Prophets,
Who sent the Messiah into the world,
And that a man should believe
in the bringing to life of the dead,
And believe also in the mystery of Baptism:
This is the Faith of the Church of God.
And that a man should separate himself
from observing hours and Sabbaths
and months and seasons,
and enchantments and divinations
and astrology and magic,
and from fornication and from revelling
and from vain doctrines,
the weapons of the Evil One,
and from the blandishments
of honeyed words,
and from blasphemy
and from adultery
And that no man should bear false witness,
and that none should speak with double tongues
These are the works of the Faith
that is laid on the true Rock
which is the Messiah
upon whom all the building doth rise.

BIBLIO GRAP HY

Peter Bruns, Das Christusbild Aphrahats des Persischen Weisen

(Bonn: Borengsser, 1990), 69 81

Bogdan G. Bucur, Early Christian Angelomorphic Pneumatology:

Aphrahat the Persian Sage, Duquesne University,

R.H Connolly, On Aphraates Hom. 1, 19*, Journal of theological

Studies 9, 1908, pp 572-576

Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, The Canon of Scripture in the

Orthodox Church, in Vahan S. Hovhanessian's "The Canon of the
Bible and the Apocrypha in the Churches of the East", Bible in
Orthodox Tradition, Volume 2, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4331-1035-1

S.H. Griffith, "Asceticism in the Church of Syria. The Hermencutics

of Early Syrian Monasticism", V.L, Wimbush,

R. Vnlantasis, Asceticism, New York 1 995

Henry Hill, "The Assyrians: The Church of the East," in Light from
the East, ed. by Henry Hill (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1988)

Jacob Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: The Christian-Jewish

Argument in Fourth-Century Iran, Leiden, 1971

Parisot, Patrol. Syriac. Aphraatis Demonstrationes; Labourt.

Christianisme dans lempire perse

H.L. Pass, The Creed of Phraates, Journal of Theological Studies 9,

1908, pp. 267-284

Marie-Joseph Pierre, Aphraate le Sage

Persan: Les Exposs (SC 349; Paris: Cerf, 1988), 33199

S. Abott Znyd, Ihidayutha. A Study of the Life of Singleness in the

Syrian Orient, fFrom Ignatius of Antioch to Chalcedon 451 A.D.,
Oxford 1 993