We’re now back to history.<\/p>\n
It is never safe for oriental potentates to be away from the centre of power.\u00a0 They tend to get overthrown.\u00a0 Being away from court, Mar Aba was now vulnerable to court intrigues.<\/p>\n
\n25.<\/strong>\u00a0 After the saint had spent seven years in this way, without ever crossing the threshold of the house in which he lived, being constant in fasting, prayer, and writing letters excellent in every way, which he sent out in order to govern his subordinate provinces, Satan became full of envy and could not endure these magnificent things.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0caused a second Judas, unworthy of the name of \u00a0Petrus Gurganara, who from a spiritual pastor had become a ravening wolf, to deny Christ and embrace the error of magianism, because the purity and integrity of the church expelled him from its womb because of his many abominations and immoralities, like a splinter from the eye, and, with the traitor, his associates.<\/p>\n
He went to the chief magian and at the command of the king obtained a order of apostasy[ref]The writer seems to mean that the order itself indicated that the person brandishing it was an apostate.[\/ref], that any of the bishops, priests and deacons ordained by the blessed one who did not resign should be thrown into prison, and that no-one should refer to him[ref]Mar Aba.[\/ref]\u00a0as Catholicos, because he only became a Christian in later life.<\/p>\n
26.<\/strong>\u00a0 When this command was\u00a0broadcast by the machinations of the apostate and his associates, some fearful people were influenced, and all prayed to God that he would have mercy on his church and not\u00a0deliver it\u00a0into the hands of the destroyer.\u00a0 But when the traitor got this order and took it to Azerbaijan and\u00a0convinced the Mobed of the area to\u00a0prosecute the disciples of the blessed one before him and,\u00a0because of\u00a0his murderous ambition, \u00a0to treat the blessed one in the same way as his disciples, the Lord did not fulfil his wicked desire.\u00a0 Instead he inspired the Mobedan (Mobed) and the magians to call him[ref]Mar Aba.[\/ref] before them and to question him\u00a0in the way\u00a0he[ref]Petrus Gurganara.[\/ref] wanted.\u00a0 And the Mobed said, “I do not have the authority to question him.”[ref]Is this “question” as in “being put to the question”, i.e.\u00a0torture?[\/ref]\u00a0 Some of the magians mentioned said, however, “He shall come before us as we are very determined to see him.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
And because he was persuaded to, he came before their assembly and they let him seat himself in great honour.”\u00a0 And because they heard sound thinking from his mouth, they reviled and beat the apostate, so that he hid himself from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he saw his hopes come to nothing, he sought another way to kill the saint.\u00a0 He hired some rascals and came with them to the place where the godly one lived, to murder him and give\u00a0as an\u00a0excuse that he[ref]Mar Aba.[\/ref]\u00a0was escaping from custody.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But God, who knew the thoughts of the traitor, did not allow it.\u00a0 For when the traitor arrived secretly at night with his men, entered and searched for his disciples, he heard the voice of the blessed one, and from fright and shame became weak and trembly and could not lay a hand on him.[ref]Not an experienced conspirator, it seems![\/ref]\u00a0 The men of the house found out, and the people of the village, and they came, beat the apostates, and drove him away, together with the magians that he had brought with him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The attempt to dispose of Mar Aba, first by legal and then\u00a0 by direct means, was clearly very amateurish and failed.\u00a0 But it was a wake-up call for Mar Aba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re now back to history. It is never safe for oriental potentates to be away from the centre of power.\u00a0 They tend to get overthrown.\u00a0 Being away from court, Mar Aba was now vulnerable to court intrigues. 25.\u00a0 After the saint had spent seven years in this way, without ever crossing the threshold of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[1078,1608],"class_list":["post-9517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-mar-aba","tag-syriac"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}