Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire (Routledge Classical Monographs) (Hardcover)

by Steven K. Ross (Author) "Blessed with generous springs that made it a welcome stopping point for travelers in the parched steppeland of middle Mesopotamia, Edessa must certainly have attracted..." (more)
Key Phrases: curule stool, obverse portraits, reverse type, King Abgar, Abgar Severus, Roman Empire (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Roman Edessa is a comprehensive and erudite analysis of the ancient city of Edessa, which constituted a remarkable amalgam of the East and the West. Among the areas explored are:
* the cultural life and antecedents of Edessa
* Edessene religion
* the extent of the Hellenization at Edessa before the advent of Christianity
* the myth of an exchange of letters between a King Abgar and Jesus.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (January 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415187877
• ISBN-13: 978-0415187879
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,743,302 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and up-to-date, June 13, 2009

By	Paul Stevenson "Linguist" (Silver Spring, Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book will be of most interest to those who study "Late Antiquity" and early Eastern forms of Christianity. It covers the history of Edessa (Urhay) from the earliest available records until the dawn of the Christian era. People who are interested in the origins of Syriac/Aramaic-speaking Christianity will find this essential background reading to learn the sort of environment in which the seeds of Christianity were planted. (Another important book for this kind of information, as well as for the history of Christianity in Edessa, is Edessa: The Blessed City.)

As the author states in his preface, this book started out as a dissertation. While it has been reworked for a general audience and is on the whole quite readable, it retains an unreformed dissertation-like feature: untranslated quotes in Greek and Latin. Some of the Latin quotes are straight from inscriptions and full of obscure abbreviations only decipherable by specialists. (For example, on p. 38, "leg. Augg. pr. pr. exercitus legionarii...) The minor effort to add translations would have made this book completely accessible to the general public. Even so, these quotes are not all that frequent and the book is understandable even for non-specialists.

Chapter 1, "The Earliest Edessa," presents what little can be learned about Edessa in BCE days. It is precious little. Scholars now have a tentative idea of how it might be identified in cuneiform records ('DM' = Adme/Admi/Admum). However, since it was not a major city at the time, little documentation about it exists. And since it is still an inhabitated city (Urfa in modern Turkey), which is directly on top of the remains of the ancient city, excavation is impossible.

Ancient Urhay was given the Greek name Edessa by the armies of Alexander the Great when they came through. This is the name by which the city continues to be known in the west.

In spite of being within the Hellenistic sphere of influence, Edessa never adopted the Greek language in a big way as did other cities of the Near East. Syriac continued to be the main language of great and small. Culturally, Edessa continued for many centuries (well into the Christian era) to have a mixture of Semitic and Greek features, usually fairly well balanced.

Chapter 2 deals with the arrival of the Romans under the emperor Trajan in the early second century CE. He was received, after some initial reluctance, by the King Abgar of the moment. Edessa became a more or less reliable ally of the Romans, although its kings and people always had a soft spot for the Parthians, in whose sphere of influence they had long been.

Chapter 3 traces the long, slow process by which Osrhoene, the kingdom of which Edessa was the capital, went from being a kingdom to being a province of the Roman Empire.

Chapter 4 deals with the last of the kings of Edessa, Abgar X, and his good relations with the short-lived Roman emperor Gordian III. This chapter is particularly valuable because it draws on documents that have only recently been discovered, and which were unknown when J. B. Segal wrote "Edessa: The Blessed City." These documents (labeled simply A and B) shed new light on the status of Edessa in the early third century.

Chapter 5 gives valuable details about religion and culture in and around Edessa in pre-Christian times. Ross' conclusion: "All in all, the evidence for Edessan pre-Christian religion indicates that both the city's common people and its rulers worshipped the ancestral Aramaean and Babylonian deities, with minimal influence from those of Greece and Rome" (p. 94). It is unclear whether there was a widespread belief in an afterlife. Pre-Christian beliefs persisted for many years after the coming of Christianity.

Edessa was a small but beautiful city. Ross quotes an account of a flood in 201 CE which includes a description of the city and also the first mention of a Christian church there (it was destroyed by the flood). Beautiful mosaics and statuary adorned the city and its environs. A few mosaics survived into modern times and were photographed, although they have since been destroyed.

Chapter 6 deals with the coming of Christianity to Edessa. Documentary evidence is almost non-existent. The earliest known individual who identified himself as a Christian was Bardaisan (although St. Ephrem, born about 80 years after Bardaisan's death, regarded him as a heretic). Bardaisan lived from 154-222 and composed poetry that remained popular for centuries. Bardaisan's Christianity seems to have hd some elements of dualism (dark vs. light), which Ephrem found objectionable. Other religious elements in the Edessan milieu were Arianism, Marcionism, Gnosticism and Manichaeism.

The earliest gospel produced in Syriac was Tatian's "Diatessaron," a compilation of the four gospels into a single narrative. This was the main version known and used by Ephrem.

Early Christians in Edessa and its vicinity did not have monasticism, but they did have a form of devoted life whose practitioners were called Sons or Daughters of the Covenant. They did not live in isolation from the rest of society, but they did have an ascetic lifestyle which included sexual abstinence, regardless of the marital status of the people.

Ross discusses the Abgar-Addai legend. Its legendary nature was recognized in antiquity (Pope Gelasius declared it a fraud in 494). It seems to have sprung from social and religious conflicts in the third and fourth centuries. It was apparently intended to give weight to the Catholic variety of Christianity introduced in 313 by Bishop Quna.

Chapter 7 contains some concluding observations. It is followed by a lengthy appendix, "Numismatic Notes," dealing with the study of coins of the era.

Ross does a good job of teasing plausible scenarios out of often scant documentary evidence and the evidence provided by coins. The coins often provide helpful clues. And on occasion they require scholars to reanalyze the few documentary clues in order to determine the context into which the coins might fit.

All in all, Steven Ross has done an admirable job of bringing together much information from a variety of sources and piecing together the history of Edessa from its earliest times until the dawn of the Christian era. Anyone interested in the origin of Syriac Christianity will benefit from reading this book.

A note to Routledge, the publisher: Get real about the price of this book. It is a slim volume with a sky-high price tag. You should consider publishing a paperback edition with a price in the $20-30 range.

5 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!, March 5, 2001

By	BEKAH (baton rouge, la United States) - See all my reviews

Wow, this book is absolutely incredible. I have never read such an interesting book. Anyone who can should buy it, it is absolutely mind-boggling!! Who cares about the price, this book is great! Even for people who don't know what Edessa is!!