Saturday, February 12, 2022

The worm of the mountain

Leaving aside the Worm of #25, we read from #26 to #48 of some hermit's successful creep through the monastery of Alfâf, which Isho'yahb doesn't name "Mar Mattai". I do not know this hermit's name but I do know what he taught. #26 also hints that Isho'yahb may have sent a letter to him directly before going over his skullcap.

The full Had-Qnoma was active in Iraq at the time. Maruta from Alfâf itself was preaching this doctrine down Tikrit. #44 (Bcheiry, 65, 83-7) deals with Tikrit, maybe #39 (pp. 80-3) also. But Maruta, by other accounts, including Nestorian accounts, preceded the rogue monk much less the Worm; he just hinders Isho'yahb from his fight against these threat(s). Sahdona, if he's Bar Sahde in #48, hasn't yet defected.

Of the letters I can skim, "Yazdeshâbhôr" looks promising. That sequence is #20-21, 30.23f. as the index to the Latin goes.

Dark-horse candidate: George of Resh-'Ayna. George was a bishop under Patriarch Sophronius, to whose memory he remained loyal, even though Sophronius eventually sided with Maximus. George joined the Palaestinian delegation at the synod of Arcadius II in Cyprus, in the middle AD 630s. I assume that George spoke and read Greek and Palaestinian-Aramaic at this point, and could muddle through Syriac.

George and Sophronius parted ways, posthumously or not. Note that as of the later AD 630s Jerusalem was becoming - famously - unsafe. George may have chosen this moment to learn spoken Mesopotamian Syriac and to retire northeast, to the Ra's al-'Ayn. As a Sophronius disciple the Church of the East should have welcomed him, albeit with some more reserve than that with which she had welcomed the disciples of Nestorius before him.

That would set Isho'yahb's Epistle #26 maybe to AD 636. Those letters associated with that, especially #43/44 and 48, to which I'd preface #25 then 34-36, would be pushed a year or two later than Bcheiry Table Two p. 64.

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