The characteristics of the Syriac of the legal documents of the 3rd century CE

What is it about?

The chapter reviews the linguistic features of the documents. All the legal documents are linguistically very close to Classical Syriac, not having, for example, the characteristic y- prefixed imperfect which is usually treated as typical of the earliest Syriac inscriptions. The variations from Classical Syriac are, therefore, mainly limited to orthography and syntax. In orthography there is a clear pattern of historical spelling, typified by the use of the graph {š} to represent /s/ where the latter has its origin in the earlier lateral consonant /ś/, but also extending to other features such as the retention of {n} before a consonant (an historical spelling which is also found in Classical Syriac, though there normally marked with the linea occultans to indicate that it is not pronounced). In syntax, the documents contain many usages which cannot be paralleled in Classical Syriac, though the genre of legal documents in the corpus may give a false impression on this, since our awareness of later Syriac is dominated by literary works, with few legal documents surviving. The use of ḥad, “one”, as an indefinite article, “a, an”, in P. Euphr. 18 and 19 is striking, but it is not unknown in literary contexts in Classical Syriac and may always have been common in legal documents. The lexicon of the documents appears to be heavily influenced by Greek, with many loanwords. There are a few Greek loans even in the Syriac inscriptions of an earlier date and this impact of Greek is a continuing feature of Classical Syriac in later centuries (Butts 2016). By far the majority of the loanwords in the legal documents, however, are connected with Roman dating conventions, currency, archives and administrative titles. Most were borrowed in an unchanged form.

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Why is it important?

The chapter is concerned with the earliest evidence of the Syriac language in extensive writing, i.e. apart from the mostly very short inscriptions on stone, which date back to the 1st century CE. The documents represent an important step towards what became Classical Syriac.