Syzygium
or SIZYGIUM (named from the way in which the branches and leaves are united by pairs); a genus of 1 SYRIAC few scattered tribes, and principally by the Nestorians of Kurdistan and Persia.
Syriac literature had its rise in the 1st century of our era. At first it was chiefly connected with theological and ecclesiastical subjects, Biblical translations and commentaries, hymns, martyrologies, liturgies, etc., but in course of time it embraced history, philosophy, grammar, medicine, and the natural sciences. The oldest work in the language still extant is the incomplete translation of the Bible called the Peshito. In addition to the Peshito Version, which was recognized as the authorized version by all the various sects of the Syrian Church, there is one made in the beginning of the 7th century by Paul of Tela, a Monophysite; this is based on the Hexaplar Greek Text, that is, the Septuagint with the corrections of Origen, and is of very great value for the criticism of the Septuagint, supplying as far as a version can the lost work of Origen. Another version, the Syro- Philoxenian, translated by Polycarp under the auspices of Philoxenus, Bishop of Hieranolis (488-518) and revised by SYRINGA a SYRIAN PROTESTANT COLLEGE, an institution for higher education, founded at Beirut, Syria, in 1863, and opened in 1866. It includes a college of medicine, a college of commerce, nurses' training school, and a teachers' training course. During the World War the institution was used as a hospital.
Before the war it had an enrollment of about 1,000 students. President, Rev.
Howard S. Bliss.