Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 21 (2024): 155-157
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala
University of Córdoba
Once more on the proper name Ḥabbān in
Acta Thomæ
Today, the most common opinion continues to maintain that the Vorlage of Acta Thomæ was
a Syriac text.
1
This idea dates back more than a century ago when Burkitt stated the
hypothesis of a Syriac original for the Acts of Thomas.
2
In a brief note, the author reasserted
one of the arguments with which he built his hypothesis: the theory that proper names
“sounds much more Semitic than Greek”, and that “they appear in a Syriac form which (to
say the least) does not suggest transmisión through the Greek”.
3
Burkitt, using the first of these two arguments, suggested that the author of the text of
the Acts of Thomas lived in the territories of Mesopotamia and the Euphrates valley when
referring to the proper name Ḥabbān, of which he stated the following:
I was not, however, able to say more of the merchant’s name Ḥabbān (, Ἀββάνης
or Ἀμβανής) than that it sounded more Semitic than Greek (J.T.S. i 288). The
derivation of this name still remains entirely obscure, but it occurs again in the very
regions where the Acts took their literary shape.
4
Burkitt echoed a Latin papyrus dated 166 AD in which Abban (Ἀββᾶ) was mentioned as
one of the two names (nomine Abban quem Eutychen sive quo alio nomine) of a young slave
(puerum) of seven years old coming from the other side of the Tigris river (natione
transfluminianum) acquired for 200 denarii by C(aius) Fabullius Macer, a lieutenant in the
1
Sebastian P. Brock, “The earliest Syriac literature”, in The Cambridge History of early Christian literature, ed.
Francis Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 167.
Against this, although without providing any evidence, cf. Lautaro Roig-Lanzilotta, “A Syriac Original for
the Acts of Thomas? The Theory of the Syriac Priority Revisited, Evaluated and Rejected”, in Early
Christian and Jewish Narrative: The Role of Religion in Shaping Narrative Forms, ed. Illaria Ramelli & J. Perkins.
«Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament» 348, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), pp.
105-133.
2
Francis Crawford Burkitt, “The Original Language of the Acts of Judas Thomas”, Journal of Theological
Studies [OS] I (1900), pp. 280-290; F.C. Burkitt, “Another Indication of the Syriac Origin of the Acts of
Thomas”, Journal of Theological Studies [OS] III (1901), pp. 94-95. Cf. Rubens Duval, La literature syriaque.
«Bibliothèque de l’enseignement de l’histoire ecclésiastique. Anciennes littératures chrétiennes» II (Paris:
Victor Lecoffre, 1907), pp. 90-92.
3
Cf. F.C. Burkitt, “The Original Language”, p. 289.
4
F.C. Burkitt, “The name Habban in the Acts of Thomas”, Journal of Theological Studies [OS] II (1901), p.
429.
Once more on the proper name Ḥabbān in Acta Thomæ
156
Imperial Fleet of triremes on the Tigris.
5
In Burkitt’s opinion “the name of the slave is
obviously identical with that of the merchant”
6
that appears in the Acts of Thomas.
7
The information provided by the Latin papyrus is certainly relevant. Likewise, other
potential references from the Semitic environment can be adduced. Thus, we have the
Aramaic Nabatean proper names ḥbn and ḥbnw, North-Arabian the first while the second
from the Sinai, for which Negev offered the Arabic correspondence (cf. the correct
form , “dropsical”) and the Greek transliterations Αβενε, Αβινας y Αβανος, with
parallels in Palmyrene Aramaic.
8
But, in our opinion, the spectrum of possibilities regarding the origin of this proper
name must be expanded in a more appropriate way. In fact, the author of the text of the
Acts of Thomas refers to Ḥabbān saying that he was an Indian merchant (Syr. tagarā ḥad
hendwayā; Gr. ἔμπορον ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰνδίας) who would have gone to a certain place at the
confluence between the Persian Gulf and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
9
Both the Greek and Syriac texts run as follows:
(…) ἔμπορον (…) ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰνδίας
ἐλθόντα ᾧ ὄνομα Ἀββάνης
10
……
(“(…) a merchant (…) coming from
India whose name was Abbanes”)
(“a certain merchant (…) an Indian (…)
whose name was Ḥabbān”).
11
According to this information, the proper name, rather than having a “Semitic”
provenance, should, consequently, be of Indian origin given the geographical association
mentioned in the text. The fact that the Arabic manuscripts of the Acts of Thomas give the
name as (Jābān)
12
must be due to a mistake by the copyist who changed the ḥāʼ () to
a jīm ().
5
See the text in https://papyri.info/ddbdp/chla;3;200. Cf. Ana Isabel Martín Ferreira, “El papiro 229 de la
British Library. Transcripción, traducción y estudio de un documento de compraventa”, Faventia 32-33
(2010-2011), pp. 93-111.
6
F.C. Burkitt, “The name Habban”, p. 429.
7
Cf. Albertus F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas. Introduction, Text, and Commentary. «Supplements to
Novum Testamentum» CVIII (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2003, 2nd rev. ed.), p. 21.
8
Cf. Avraham Negev, Personal Names in the Nabatean Realm. Qedem. Monographs of the Institute of
Archaeology 32 (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 27, 73, 75, 87, 90, 117. Cf.
Stanley A. Cook, A Glossary of the Aramaic Inscriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898), p.
50, and Delbert L. Hillers and Eleonora Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (Baltimore – London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 152 (C4571, line 2).
9
Nathanael J. Andrade, The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity: Networks and the Movement of Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 49-50, 215.
10
Cf. Maximilianus Bonnet, Acta apostolorum apocrypha (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1903), II, p. 101.
11
Cf. William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles I/II (Hildesheim – Zürich – New York: Georg Olms
Verlag, 1990), pp. qʻg (Syr.), 147 (Eng.).
12
Michel van Esbroeck, “Les actes apocryphes de Thomas en version arabe”, Parole de l’Orient 14 (1987), p.
16. Cf. R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus syriacus. Collegerunt S. M. Quatremere, G. H. Bernstein et al., 2 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879-83), I, col. 1181.
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala
157
Therefore, the origin of this proper name is not Semitic, but Indian: both the Syriac
form Ḥabbān and the Greek Ἀββάνης come from Appan,
13
but with the addition of the
ending –ης of the 1st declension for masculine nouns in Greek. However, it could be that
neither of the two forms comes directly from the Indian name, but perhaps through
Middle Persian (Pahlavi) or even through an Eastern Aramaic dialect as occurred, for
instance, with the transmisión of Indian medical texts.
14
On the other hand, in the case of the Syriac Ḥabbān one possibility is that the name
Appan could have been adapted into Aramaic with possible interference by contaminatio with
the Arabic ḥbn
15
thus adding the unvoiced pharyngal fricative /ḥ/ to the initial vowel /a/.
But we think that a more suitable possibility is that Appan’s initial /a/ was adapted directly
as /ḥa/, as in other cases (v.gr. /ʕ/), because the unvoiced pharyngal fricative /ḥ/ has been
weakened to the glotal stop /ʔ/, thus corresponding with the spiritus lenis in Greek. It
should also be noted that in Aramaic dialects there is a strong inclination to weaken ḥēṭ to
hē.
16
Resumen: La cuestión del texto original de las
Acta Thomæ sigue siendo asunto de controversia
para algunos autores. Entre los diversos
argumentos esgrimidos a comienzos del siglo
XX a favor de un original siriaco se encuentra el
de los nombres propios, entre los cuales se halla
Ḥabbān. El objetivo de esta nota es contribuir
con nueva información que ayude a resolver
este ítem.
Abstract: The question of the original text of
the Acta Thomæ still remains a matter of
controversy for some authors. Among the
various arguments put forward at the beginning
of the 20th century in favor of a Syriac original
is that of proper names, among which is
Ḥabbān. The aim of this note is to contribute
new information that helps resolve this item.
Palabras clave: Vorlage; Acta Thomæ; Ḥabbān;
Siriaco; Griego.
Key words: Vorlage; Acta Thomæ; Ḥabbān;
Syriac; Greek.
13
M. S. Ramaswami Aiyar, “Apostle Thomas. Was it a Mysore Mahraja that brought him to India?”, The
Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society XX/1 (1929), p. 27.
14
R. A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl-Fishing: Origins of the Age of Discoveries. Memoirs of the American
Philosophical Society, 224 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998), p. 112. Cf. John J. Lowe,
Modern Linguistics in Ancient India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), p. 209.
15
R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus syriacus, I, col. 1181; cf. Carl Brockelmann, Lexicon syriacum (Halle: Max
Niemeyer, 1928, 2nd rev. ed.), p. 211.
16
Cf. Carl Brockelmann, Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen. 2 vols. (Berlin: Reuther
& Reichard, 1908), I, p. 126; Johannes Friedrich – Wolfgang Röllig, Phönizisch-punische Grammatik. Analecta
Orientalia 46 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1970; rev. ed.), p. 15 § 35; Max L. Margolis, A
Manual of the Aramaic Language of the Babylonian Talmud_ Grammar, Chrestomathy and Glossaries. Ḏlavis
Linguarum Semiticarum (München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1910), p. 8 § 4e. See also
William Wright, Lectures on the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, edited with a preface and
additional notes by William Robertson Smith, with a new introduction by Patrick Bennet, Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press (repr. of 1890), p. 47.
