The syntax errors are almost certainly because of the use of JSON functions. JSON functions were added as an optional feature in SQLite 3.9.0 (2015-10-14). Your SQLite 3.7.17 (2013-05-20) is too old to support JSON at all. Even SQLite 3.9.0 is way out of date. The current version as at this writing is SQLite 3.32.1 (2020-05-25). Note also that even with a new enough version, SQLite needs to be built with the JSON1 option enabled. There is a compile option to do this for the SQLite amalgamation. As I'm not familiar with the innards of Drupal I'm not sure where the use of JSON is coming from. Based on a quick bit of Google searching, it appears that Drupal 8.1.4 (in 2015 or 2016) required SQLite 3.7.11, and later versions of Drupal 8 didn't document a change to that requirement. (Drupal 9 appears to require a much later version of SQLite.) Perhaps they failed to document a change to the SQLite requirements for later versions of Drupal 8.x? Perhaps you have some Drupal plugin or feature enabled which requires JSON and that means you need a later SQLite version?