The year six hundred and seventy-four
... In the land of Samaria, a great crowd of monks were martyred while going to prayer, for Samaritans and Jews fell upon them and killed all of them with sticks.
Now Julian the emperor compelled the Jews to sacrifice and they sacrificed. They begged the emperor that their temple which is in Jerusalem be rebuilt,
810 and he ordered them to build it, the expenses to be paid by the public treasury. Thus, they quickly prepared everything: stones, wood, burnt bricks, lime
instead of clay, and other things needed for the construction. When the holy Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, saw this, he prophesied saying:
It is time for our
Saviour's word to be fulfilled:
There will be not left here one stone upon another
.
811
The holy Cyril said these words in advance. Now
during the night there was such a mighty earthquake that the ancient foundation stones of the temple flew up,
and all of them scattered by the intensity of the earthquake.
Also the houses that were near the place were uprooted, and the news of the ruin spread out in the whole land. Then in another day, fire fell down from the sky,
destroying all the work of the architects, masons, and all kinds of instruments of work. One could see the hammers, tongs, axes, and hatchets, and in short all
the work that had been prepared by them for the building was burning in the fiery blaze; the fire burnt the instruments throughout the entire day. A great fear
befell the Jews, and unwillingly, they confessed that Christ was God. But they did not obey his will, nor did the triple miracle [179] that happened to them
bring them to the Faith. In another night, luminous impressions of a cross appeared imprinted on their garments, and when the day came and they saw this sign,
they sought to wash them and wipe them out with every means but they failed.
812
Now Julian, the maternal uncle of the tyrant emperor, when he went to Jerusalem and entered the holy church and seized the holy vessels of the Church there,
the Lord struck him: he bred worms and died.
813
Footnotes
810 Soc. III xx.
811 Matthew 24:2
812 Soc. III xxi.
813 See Soz. HS, V viii, Theod., HE, III viii—ix. See also the full account of Mich. Syr. 147a [I 285].
Witakowski suggests that this detail about Julian may have derived from Theodore Anagnostes,
who wrote a Church history also called Historia Tripartita, and who was one of Mich. Syr.'s sources
in the Armenian version of his Chronicle. Since there is no evidence that this Historia was translated
into Syriac, Jacob of Edes. and or John of Ephesus who used it in its original language may well be the sources
of Chr. Zuq. and Mich. Syr.; Witakowski, "Third Part;" pp. 194—5. With regard to Cyril and Jerusalem
see Sebastian Brock, "A Letter Attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem on the Rebuilding of the Temple," BSOAS 40:2 (1977), pp. 267-286.
