The Syrian Christ

by Abraham Mitrie Rihbany

The word "husks" in the English version is not a correct rendering of the original term. The marginal note in the Revised Version reads, "the pods of the carob tree." The Arabic version says simply kherrûb (carob). The carob tree is very common in the lowlands of Syria. It is a large tree of dense foliage, and round, glossy, dark-green leaves. The pods it bears measure from five to ten inches in length, are flat, and largely horn-shaped. I do not know why the English translators of the Bible called those pods "husks." They are sold in almost every town in western Syria for food. Children are very fond of kherrûb. Some of the pods contain no small amount of sugar. In my boyhood days, a pocketful of kherrûb, which I procured for a penny, was to me rather a treat. The older people, however, do not esteem kherrûb so highly as do the children. The bulk of it is so out of proportion to the sugar it contains that its poverty is proverbial in the land. Of one whose conversation is luxuriant in words and barren of ideas it is said, "It is like eating kherrûb; you have to consume a cord of wood in order to get an ounce of sweet." By eating these pods, the poor people seem to themselves "to have been filled" while in reality they have received but little nutrition. Therefore kherrûb is generally eaten by animals.

It may be observed that the saying in the parable, "and he would fain have been filled with kherrûb that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him," simply describes the prodigal's poverty. For as a "swine-shepherd" the "kherrûb that the swine did eat" was certainly very accessible to him. The purpose of the passage is to draw the contrast between the rich parental home which the prodigal had willingly left and the extremely humble fare on which in his wretched state he was compelled to subsist.

The return of the prodigal son to his father's house, impoverished but penitent, the affectionate magnanimity of the father toward his son, and the spreading of the feast in honor of the occasion, are acts of humility and generosity which cannot be said to be exclusively Oriental. But the command of the father to his servants, "Bring hither the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat and be merry," brings out the idea of the zebihat (animal sacrifice) with which the West is not familiar.

The ancient custom, whose echoes have not yet died out in the East, was that the host honored his guest most highly by killing a sheep at the threshold of the house, upon the guest's arrival, and inviting him to step over the blood into the house. This act formed the "blood covenant" between the guest and his host. It made them one. To us one of the most cordial and dignified expressions in inviting a guest, especially from a distant town, was, "If God ever favors us with a visit from you, we will kill a zebihat!"

In his great rejoicing in the return of his son, the father of the prodigal is made to receive him as he would a most highly honored guest. "The fatted calf"—and not only a sheep—is killed as the zebihat of a new covenant between a loving father and his son, who "was dead and is alive again; was lost, and is found."[[10]]

The parable of the "treasure hid in a field"[[11]] alludes to a very interesting phase of Syrian thought. "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field, the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field."

I cannot refrain from quoting again in this connection the famous commentator, Adam Clarke. Speaking of this parable, he says: "We are not to imagine that the treasure here mentioned, and to which the gospel salvation is likened, means a pot or chest of money hidden in the field, but rather a gold or silver mine, which he who found out could not get at, or work, without turning up the field, and for this purpose he bought it. Mr. Wakefield's observation is very just: 'There is no sense in the purchase of a field for a pot of money, which he might have carried away very readily and as honestly, too, as by overreaching the owner by an unjust purchase.' ... From this view of the subject, the translation of this verse, given above, will appear proper—a hidden treasure, when applied to a rich mine, is more proper than a treasure hid, which applies better to a pot of money deposited there, which I suppose was our translator's opinion; and kept secret, or concealed, will apply better to the subject of his discovery till he made the purchase, than hideth, for which there could be no occasion, when the pot was already hidden, and the place known only to himself."

I have inserted here this double quotation, italics and all, in order to show how when the real facts are not known to a writer the temptation to play on words becomes irresistible. In this exposition the simple parable is treated as a legal document. Every word of it is subjected to careful scrutiny. "Hid" is converted into "hidden," and "concealed" is summoned to supplant "hideth," in order to make the "treasure" mean a vast deposit of gold ore, and get the poor Syrian peasant into the mining business.

The facts in the case, however, stand opposed to this explanation. I am absolutely safe in saying that every man, woman, and child in Syria understands that this parable refers simply and purely to a treasure of gold and silver which had been buried in a field by human hands. The entanglement of the commentator just quoted in the literary fault of the parable is inexcusable.

The New Testament writer might have said, not that the man in the parable found the treasure, but that he was led by certain signs to believe that a treasure lay hidden in the field. However, this is not the Oriental way of stating things, nor should the speaker in parables be denied the freedom of the poet and the artist to manipulate the particulars in such a way as to make them serve the central purpose of his production.