The earliest form of the name of the symbol which we can reach is the Hebrew beth, to which the Phoenician must have been closely akin, as is shown by the Greek Oiira, which is borrowed from it with a vowel affixed.
In the East, Joseph Karo (Qaro) wrote his Beth Yoseph (Venice, 1550), a commentary on the Tur, and his Shulhan `Arukh (Venice, 1564) an halakhic work like the Tur, which is still a standard authority.
By this permutation, Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, becomes Lamed, the twelfth letter; Beth becomes Mem, and so on.
His home appears to have been at Samosata.2 By the beginning of the 4th century much progress had been made with the organization of the Christian church not only within the Roman district of Mesopotamia, but also to the east and south-east within the Sasanian Empire, round such centres as Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris (near Baghdad), Karka de-Beth Selokh (modern Kerkuk) and Beth Lapat or Gundeshabhor (in the modern province of Luristan).
To the Nestorian movement in Persia he rendered useful service by his letter to Mari of Beth Hardasher, in which he maintained the tenets of Diodore and Theodore, while allowing that Nestorius had erred.
