other · 337–345
Twenty-three treatises, the first ten written in 337 and the rest in 344 and 345, arranged so that their opening letters run through the Syriac alphabet — which is how they got the name Demonstrations. What makes them remarkable is what is not in them. Aphrahat was writing while Nicaea was twelve years old and the Arian quarrel was consuming every Greek-speaking church, and there is no sign that he had heard of it. His categories are biblical and Semitic rather than philosophical; he argues from the Old Testament constantly, uses the language of the covenant, and calls ascetics the sons and daughters of the covenant rather than monks. He is also writing under Shapur II, whose persecution of Christians as a Roman fifth column had begun, and the treatise on persecution is addressed to people already in it. He is called the Persian Sage, and the point of the title is that he is a Christian theologian who owes nothing to Athens.
To set out the whole of the faith, in order, for Syriac-speaking Christians living under a Persian king who had begun to persecute them.
The earliest Christian literature in Syriac, and a theology that grew up outside the Greek argument entirely.