---
title: "The Syriac Christianization of a Medical Greek Recipe: From"
description: "The authors compare the Syriac prescription with four Late Antique Greek versions: Galen's Barbaros Hera, Oribasius's… 68 references."
authors: ["Daniel Asade", "Paola Druille"]
year: 2021
venue: "Studia Ceranea 11"
source: "https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/sceranea/article/view/13124"
doi: "10.18778/2084-140x.11.01"
licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Studia Ceranea)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/asade-2021-syriac-christianization-medical-greek-recipe/"
---
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# The Syriac Christianization of a Medical Greek Recipe: From Barbaros Hera to the “Apostles’ Ointment”

**Authors:** Daniel Asade and Paola Druille · **Year:** 2021 · **Venue:** [Studia Ceranea 11](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studia-ceranea-journal-of-the-waldemar-ceran-research-centre-for-the-history-and/) ([Studia Ceranea Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe 2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studia-ceranea-journal-of-the-waldemar-ceran-research-centre-for-the-history-and/2021/)) · **Publisher:** [University of Lodz Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-of-lodz-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Studia Ceranea)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.18778/2084-140x.11.01) · [PDF](https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/sceranea/article/download/13124/12723) · [DOI 10.18778/2084-140x.11.01](https://doi.org/10.18778/2084-140x.11.01) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4225349119)

**Citations:** 2 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper traces how a Greek wound plaster became the "Apostles' Ointment" in the Syriac *The Book of Medicines*, which E.A.W. Budge edited and translated in 1913. The authors compare the Syriac prescription with four Late Antique Greek versions: Galen's Barbaros Hera, Oribasius's Barbaros enaimos, Aetius of Amida's Cappadocian Hera barbaros and Paul of Aegina's Barbara enaimos. For each version they look at its therapeutic uses (staunching blood, treating fresh wounds and fractures), its list of ingredients and its preparation notes. The comparison shows small, cumulative changes. The Syriac compiler kept most of the inherited drugs, dropped white lead and the hydrocarbons (pitch and bitumen), added bdellium, and replaced the Greek name with a Christian one, "the Twelve," after the Apostles. Because the compiler mixed drugs from different sources, no single Greek author can be shown to be the source. The study matters because it documents how Syriac Christian physicians took over Greek pharmacology and reframed it. That reframed version later passed into Arabic and Latin tradition.

## Key points
- The Greek witnesses compared are:
  - Galen, *De compositione medicamentorum per genera* (ed. Kühn 13.557–560);
  - Oribasius, *Eclogae medicamentorum* 87;
  - Aetius, *Iatricorum liber XV*;
  - Paul of Aegina, *Epitomae medicae* 7.17.42.
- The Syriac recipe is in chapter 8 of *The Book of Medicines* (fols. 73b–74a). It lists fourteen drugs. Seven of them overlap with Paul's version, which has twelve.
- Paul is the only Greek author studied who uses twelve ingredients rather than ten. The authors cautiously suggest the "Twelve" name may go back to this, while admitting there is no direct evidence.
- The Syriac translation of Galen's *De compositione*, which would be the obvious intermediate source, has not survived. Sergius of Rēšʽaynā (6th c.) was the first to translate Galen into Syriac.
- On philological grounds, the authors place the Christianized Syriac version in the Abbasid period.

## Interesting ideas
- Each recipe version is treated as a set of ingredients, and versions are compared by overlap, additions and removals; this makes the line of transmission visible without relying on names.
- Renaming is kept separate from changes in content: the label changed completely while most of the composition stayed the same.
- The authors propose a numeric link (twelve drugs, twelve Apostles) but say plainly that the evidence for it is missing.
- When several sources partly agree, the authors conclude the text was compiled from more than one of them, rather than forcing it onto a single source.
- Every version is checked on several separate axes (name, uses, ingredients, preparation), so no single feature decides the comparison.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): Entity states across retellings of a fable could be compared as sets in the same way, recording what was added and what was dropped, to explain how two versions of a story differ.
- **I2** (frames): Coreference should be able to link a renamed entity to its earlier name by matching its properties and roles, not its surface string.
- **I3** (answer): Answer readers could mark explanations as either supported or merely suggested, so that a plausible guess is never presented as a fact.
- **I4** (learn): When witness parsers disagree in the silver data, a mixed-source label could be allowed, instead of always choosing one winner.
- **I5** (back): The text → graph → text compressor could be evaluated per axis (entities, roles, labels), which would show exactly what a round trip preserves and what it loses.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Universidad de Buenos Aires](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/universidad-de-buenos-aires/) — University, Buenos Aires, Argentina · 8 works · 447 citations
- [Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/government/consejo-nacional-de-investigaciones-cientificas-y-tecnicas/) — Government body, Buenos Aires, Argentina · 5 works · 447 citations

Also on the byline: [Universidad Nacional de La Pampa](https://ror.org/02c21vy68).

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## Cite

Cite as: Daniel Asade and Paola Druille. 2021. The Syriac Christianization of a Medical Greek Recipe: From Barbaros Hera to the “Apostles’ Ointment”. Studia Ceranea 11.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{asade2021syriac,
  title = {{The Syriac Christianization of a Medical Greek Recipe: From Barbaros Hera to the “Apostles’ Ointment”}},
  author = {Daniel Asade and Paola Druille},
  booktitle = {Studia Ceranea 11},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.18778/2084-140x.11.01},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18778/2084-140x.11.01}
}
```

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## References

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*Updated 1 November 2026*