Nisibene Hymns
A collection of Syriac hymns by Ephrem, who lived at Nisibis and then at Edessa. Hymn 42 makes the devil complain that the apostle he killed in India now confronts him at Edessa, where a merchant has brought the bones.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗Chronology of Ephrem’s life, from the introduction to the same volume (CCEL) ↗
Ephrem wrote hymns in Syriac, first at Nisibis and then at Edessa. The introduction to the translation used here puts the surrender of Nisibis and his move to Edessa in 363 and his death in 373.
The translation groups hymns 35 to 42 under the heading “Concerning Satan and Death”. In the forty-second the Evil One laments that the apostles do him more harm dead than alive: the apostle whom he slew in India is before him in Edessa, and the bones that a merchant carried there torment him. The hymn names Thomas in its second stanza. The hymn shows that Ephrem held Thomas to have been killed in India and his bones to be at Edessa in his own day. It does not say where in India; see the Apostle Thomas and the Christians of India.
Cited in
- AD 52, traditional date