APHRAATES (a Greek form of the Persian name Aphrahat or Pharhadh), a Syriac writer belonging to the middle of the 4th century A.D., who composed a series of 23 expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. The first ten were written in A.D. 337, the following twelve in 344, and the last in 345. The author was early known as hakkima pharsaya ("the Persian sage"), was a subject of Sapor II., and was probably of heathen parentage and himself a convert from heathenism. He seems at some time in his life to have assumed the name of Jacob, and is so entitled in the colophon to a ms. of A.D. 512 which contains 12 of his homilies. Hence he was already, by Gennadius of Marseille (before 496), confused with Jacob, bishop of Nisibis; and the ancient Armenian version of 1p of the homilies has been published under this latter name. But (I) Jacob of Nisibis, who attended the Council of Nicaea, died in A.D. and (2) our author, being a Persian subject, cannot have lived at Nisibis, which became Persian only by Jovian's treaty of A.D. 363. That his name was Aphrahat or Pharhadh we learn from com paratively late writers—Bar Bahlul (loth century), Elias of Nisibis (1 th), Bar-Hebraeus, and `Abhd-isho.' According to a marginal note in a 14th-century ms. (B.M. Orient. 1017), he was "bishop of Mar Mattai," a famous monastery near Mosul; but it is unlikely that this institution existed so early. From the fre quency of his quotations, Aphraates is a specially important witness to the form in which the Gospels were read in the Syriac church in his day; Zahn and others have shown that he—mainly, at least—used the Diatessaron.