Page 55 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

43 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS
and Adiabene.1 They were linked by the 'silk road'.2 Merchants had aban-
doned the southerly route, across the plain of Harran, where their caravans
were exposed to the pillage and the blackmail of the Beduins; they preferred
the comparative safety of the route that skirted the mountains by way of
Edessa. We are not surprised, then, to discover that the Jews of Edessa
included merchants in cloth, and that they were men of substance. A syna-
gogue stood in a prominent position in the centre of the city; another seems
to have been situated in front of the old Cathedral church of Edessa. The
Jews of Edessa lived on easy terms with their neighbours. They shared with
pagans the cemetery of Kirk Magara. There, three inscriptions in Hebrew
and one in Greek commemorate Jews, and their mixture of Hebrew, Mace-
donian, Roman, and Parthian names indicates a degree of assimilation to the
general population. But the Jews maintained their separate identity for we
find also a menorah engraved on the wall outside a cave.3 The sympathies
of the Jews seem to have been with the Parthians rather than with the
Romans. When Trajan's forces advanced to the East in 114-15, they were
opposed by the Jews of Edessa, Nisibis, and Adiabene, who paid, we are
told, a heavy price in lives for their contumacy.
All the names of courtiers at Edessa that are mentioned in the annals are
pagan. But Jews in the city may have been known to the king. At any rate,
we are told that Abgar requested Tobias son of Tobias from Palestine, at
whose house at Edessa Addai stayed, to bring the Apostle to him, and
although much of the traditional account of the introduction of Christianity
to Edessa is evidently unhistorical, this statement bears the stamp of truth.
Indeed, the swift progress of Christianity at Edessa is sufficient testimony to
the influence of the Jews. It is a truism that the advance of the new religion
was most rapid in those places where Jews lived firmly established and in
security. In north Mesopotamia, Christian evangelists found in the Jewish
communities tools ready to hand for the diffusion of their faith; for they were
close-knit congregations, respected by their neighbours, willing to accept the
Christians as allies against the dominant paganism, well acquainted with the
methods of analysis and argument best suited to the theological climate of the
country, and well acquainted too with the doctrines of the Old Testament.
The last factor is by no means the least in importance. We have alluded to

1 See pp. this inscription follows the usual formula it is
2 On the involvement of Jews of Nisibis in to be translated, 'This is the tomb of Rasha of
trade in silk see Neusner, A History of the Jews M . . . agir'. The second text reads: 'The Lord
in Babylonia, i, 'The Parthian Period'. give rest (or 'The Lord has given rest') to the
3 Pognon, op. cit., 78 ff. All three Hebrew soul of Joseph'. The third is bilingual, being in
texts have peculiarities of language, which may Greek and Hebrew; the Greek is more legible
be explained on dialectal grounds. One appears and reads: 'This is the tomb of Seleucus bar
to read: 'This is the tomb which ... its middle Ezad and lamia bar [. . . an]d Samuel bar
which is [to be] rented', but both the writing Gord[ . . .], the Jews'. Pis. i6a, 310.'.
and the interpretation are difficult. If, however,

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