The Syrian Christ

by Abraham Mitrie Rihbany

It was the desirableness to Orientals of this type of speech which prompted the writer of the Gospel of Matthew to say of Jesus, "And without a parable spake he not unto them."[[2]] This utterance itself is characteristically Oriental. As a matter of fact, Jesus did often speak to the multitude without parables. But his strong tendency to make use of the parable, and its agreeableness to his hearers, seemed to the Scriptural writer to be a sufficient justification for his sweeping assertion.

Of the New Testament parables some are quoted in this work in connection with other subjects than that with which this chapter deals. I will mention here a few more of these sayings as additional illustrations of the present subject, and with reference to the allusions to Oriental life which they contain.

In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, we have the parable of the wheat and the tares: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also."

The tare (zewan) is a grain which when ground with the wheat and eaten causes dizziness and nausea, a state much like seasickness. For this reason this plant is hated by the Syrians, although they use tares very extensively as chicken feed. Wheat merchants are likely to sell kameh mizwen (wheat mixed with tares) in hard times, because they can buy it for less money than pure wheat. I do not believe there is a family among the common people of Syria which has not suffered at one time or another from "tare-sickness." Having tasted the gall of this affliction a few times myself, I do not at all wonder at the Syrians' belief that tares must have come into the world by the Devil. And what I still remember with both amusement and sympathy are the heartfelt, withering imprecations which the afflicted ones always showered upon the seller of the "tarey wheat." When the food had taken real effect and the staggering, nauseated members of a family felt compelled to allow nature to take its course, the gasps and groans punctuated the ejaculations, "May God destroy his home!" "May the gold turn into dust in his hands!" "May he spend the price of what he sold us at the funerals of his children!"—and so forth.

Do you feel now the force of the allusion to the tares in the parable? "So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this."

Enemies are of course always disposed to injure one another, and in an agricultural country like Syria harm is often done to property for revenge. So the scattering of tares for this purpose in a newly sown wheat-field is not utterly unnatural or unthinkable. But the reference in the parable is to a belief which is prevalent in some districts in Syria, to the effect that in spite of all that the sower can do to prevent it, the tares do appear mysteriously in fields where only wheat had been sown. Some evil power introduces the noxious plant. Once I listened to a heated controversy on the subject between some Syrian landowners and an American missionary. The landowners clung to the belief that tares would appear in a field even if no tare seed was ever planted in that field, while the son of the West insisted that no such growth could take place without the seed having first been introduced into the field in some natural way. The fight was a draw.

"The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them."

The attempt is often made to pull up the hated tares from among the wheat, but in vain. The concluding admonition in the parable may well be taken to heart by every hasty reformer of the type of a certain regenerator of society, who, when asked to proceed slowly, said, "The fact is I am in a hurry, and God is not!"

In the same chapter (Matt. XIII) occurs the parable of the "leaven." "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." The setting of this short parable in Syrian life is given in another chapter.[[3]] But I mention it here in order to give my comment on a rather strange interpretation of the parable which came recently to my knowledge. In the course of a conversation I had with a prominent Baptist minister not long since, he stated to me that certain interpreters assert that the leaven in this parable meant the corruption which has come into the Christian Church, etc. My friend was anxious to know whether to my knowledge the Syrians associated leaven with corruption.

This interpretation echoes an ancient idea of leaven of which modern Syrians have no knowledge. They hold the leaven in high and reverential esteem.[[4]] To them it is the symbol of growth and fecundity. In many of the rural districts of Syria, upon approaching the door of her future home the bride is given the khamera (the lump of leaven) which she pastes on the upper doorsill and passes under it into the house. As she performs the solemn act her friends exclaim, "May you be as blessed and as fruitful as the khamera!"