Francis Crawford Burkitt was born in London
at 2 York Terrace,
Regent's Park on September 3, 1864. Religion was well observed in his family
and from his father came the natural piety as well as the prodigious memory
that characterized his son. He was an accomplished pianist and a real musician,
though in view of some of his fellow musicians, his taste was too closely
limited to strictly classical music, especially Bach's, and he never went to
concerts except to hear music he already liked. His love of music would serve
him well in some of his liturgical studies, in his appreciation of ancient
hymns and in the hymns he wrote himself.
Regarded by his parents as a delicate boy needing special care, he
attended the day school of a Mr. Barford near to his home. He always spoke of
this school as having a remarkable set of masters and attributed his own
interest in a wide variety of subjects to their early influence on him. In 1878
he was sent to Harrow on the Modern Side where he won many prizes for
mathematics, physics, German, music, English Essay, history-cum-literature, and
a notable one in 1881which had been won only 10 times seventy-eight years. In
1882 he left Harrow and entered Trinity
College, Cambridge,
in 1883, with Mathematics as his subject.
In 1886 he took his degree as a wrangler in Part I of the Mathematical
Tripos. This discipline has been the basis or the framework of the studies of
philosophers and theologians from the beginning, and, no doubt had its
influence on Burkitt; though the precision of method and exactitude of thought
it demands were common of all Honors courses in Cambridge in the nineteenth
century. In view of the fact that he became a Professor of Divinity and that
some of his most distinguished work was is the domain of the beginnings of
Christianity…The Gospels and the history of the Church, it is worth
noting that the course of study prescribed for the Theological Tripos was based
on the conception that sound Christian theology must have for its foundation a
scientific knowledge of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the early
history of Christian thought and institutions. He won University prizes and
scholarships in Hebrew, the Septuagint, the New Testament, and Church History
and, as he added new knowledge of other languages and other subjects roused his
interest, he was able to see them in their true perspective in relation to the
whole field in a way not open to the specialist in one particular branch of
study, and, for all his sharp sight for the trees, he never failed to see the
forest as well and could often find new paths through an apparent jungle.
He often addressed and spoke at the Modern Churchmen's Conference, and at
several Church Congresses he brought the results of the modern method of study
of the Bible…. New Testament as well as Old Testament….and the
beginnings of the Christian religion before audiences unfamiliar with them and
very unwilling to accept any other than the traditional point of view. On one
of these occasions, at Manchester
in 1908, his address was interrupted by angry shouts of dissent and
expostulation from some of the clergy. He stood unmoved until the noise had
died down, and then said quietly and earnestly: "If the Christian cause
perishes at last, it will not be because historical critics have explained the
Gospels away, but because the followers of Christ are too faint-hearted to walk
in the steps of their Master and venture everything for the sake of the kingdom
of God." Not a sound was heard from any one as he sat down.
I could devote a number of pages to the accomplishments and scholarly
insights that Dr. Burkitt brought to the theological questions of his day. I
will, however, concentrate on his contributions to the study of the earliest
biblical works written in the language spoken by the contemporaries of Jesus
who founded the first non-Greek Christian Church. As early as 1892, Dr.
Burkitt's familiarity with the Curetonian MSS (of which only a single imperfect
copy existed) enabled him to promptly recognize the text of the Sinaitic
palimpsest of the Four Gospels in Syriac discovered by Drs. Lewis and Gibson.
Before the discovery of the Sinaitic palimpsest, scholars believed that the
earliest Syriac Father of the Church, St. Ephraim, who died in 373, had used
the Peshitta as his source Bible and that the version Ephraim used had been
written between A.D. 250 and 350. Dr. Burkitt showed conclusively that St.
Ephraim's text of the Gospels was not that of the Peshitta but that both the
Curetonian MSS and the Sinaitic palimpsest were derived from a version distinct
from the Peshitta. He did so by carefully examining the quotations of St.
Ephraim and comparing them to the Peshitta text.
In reference to the question of the importance of the study of Aramaic
(Syriac) Christianity, Dr. Burkitt says, "The Church we are about to
consider believed itself to have had an apostolic origin and the great Church
within the Roman Empire admitted the claim. The Saints of the Syriac-speaking
Church are Saints of
the Church universal, so far as their fame reached the West. Nevertheless there
is a real difference between the Church
of Edessa and the Church
of Antioch and Rome.
They were divided by one of the greatest barriers between man and
man….the barrier of language. It did not estrange the Syriac-speaking
Christians from their brethren over the border, but it separated them, so that
the Church of which they were members grew up to some extent under influences
different from those which helped to mold the Graeco-Roman Church of the
Empire."
The major difference that Dr. Burkitt is referring to is that the
language of the Syriac speaking Church is the language spoken by Jesus and the
Apostles. In this regard Dr. Burkitt says, "The establishment of a
Christian community at Edessa
is an event of real importance in the history of the Church. Edessa
was the only center of early Christian life where the language of the Christian
community was other than Greek. Christianity, the child of Judaism, was nursed
by the Greek civilization of the Roman Empire
for a short time only. The primitive Semitic Christianity of Palestine
came to an end in the great catastrophe of the Jewish War. Christianity
survived among the Greek-speaking population of the great towns of the Levant,
the Aegean, and in cosmopolitan Rome.
The Church of Antioch
in Syria,
one of the oldest of the these communities, was, so far as we know, wholly
Greek."
"When Christianity took root in Edessa,
a Syriac-speaking city with a native dynasty and culture, the whole atmosphere
was different. The Syriac language was used in place of Greek, and the Church
developed a national spirit. It was not long before Edessa
claimed the special protection of our Lord. It was believed that the city had
been evangelized by Addai, one of the seventy-two disciples, that he had been
sent there from Palestine in response to a letter from King Abgar to our Lord:
nay more, that our Lord Himself had answered Abgar with a promise that Edessa
should be blessed, and that no enemy would ever have dominion over it. The story
of Addai and King Abgar was received by Eusebius and incorporated into his
Ecclesiastical History. It is intimately connected with the various legends of
the finding of the True Cross and of the True Likeness of Christ, and its
reception forms a curious chapter in the history of human credulity. But this
legend, as contained in the book called the Doctrine of Addai, is also a source
of real value for the historian."
