First Sunday after Easter

This being the first Sunday after Pascha for true dyotheletes, I bring Shimʿon bar-Sabbaʿe the martyr, if perhaps strictly-speaking an Arian martyr. Shapur II over the 340s was warring with the (Eunomian and Eastern-only) emperor Constantius II, failing repeatedly to take Nisibin. The shah took out his frustrations upon the Christians of the ʿIraq. He accused Shimʿon of Roman leanings, and on AD 345 - Wiki claims - sentenced him to the headsman. (Later Constantius would unite the Romans and the war would start up again, but that's beyond our scope.)

Shimʿon on his way to the mat quoted these verses: ne craignez pas ceux qui tuent le corps, puisqu'ils ne peuvent pas tuer l'âme (lâ takhâfû man qâtalî 'l-jasma idh laysû qâdarîn ʿalâ qatli 'l-nafsi) and celui qui aime son âme, qu'il la perde à cause de moi; celui qui la perdra, la sauvera (man ahibb nafsahi fa-liyatlafihâ min ajlî; wa-man atlafihâ faqad ahiyâhâ). He then sang a hymn, the Etsi exuitis vestes illas vestras exteriores published Rene Graffin Patrologia Syriaca II col. 1052.

... well, so Nineveh-de Siʿrt. This chronicle is in Arabic and has altered its sources. Philip Wood finds Siʿrt hard to trust for this age. And indeed some of these themes read as on-the-nose: the treachery of the Jews, his execution on Good Friday, his friends burying him in fear. There's no hill but God will supply a wind to create one. Small wonder the people commemorated this event as "the little palm-sunday".

Still, that the hymn (fourth of four) survives in Syriac points to an ancient tradition for the commemoration at large. Many themes could mine a "Syriac Passion Harmony", although such don't survive in their sixth-century form let alone fourth-.

I can report that the match between Siʿrt's Arabic and the modern Arabic Matthew 10 at v. 28 (fear not those who kill the body; as for the soul, they have no means to kill that) is... verbally close, excepting Siʿrt's jasam over jasad. For the different word-order we may account by paraphrase. The Siʿrt wanders more seriously agley from v. 39 (he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it). Siʿrt in - I assume - translating Syriac may have used an Arabic bible of the Nestorians (Hikmat Kashouh seems to know what he's talking about; I don't). The latter Siʿrt parallel starts more like John 12:25.

That is: Siʿrt has a harmony. These references may, instead, be Diatesseronic. This is difficult to say, absent an Arabic Diatesseron, let alone Syriac.