The Sacred Day of Ephrem the Syrian and the Rabbinic Sabbath

Parole de l’Orient 49 (2023) 217-232 THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH BY Serafim SEPPÄLÄ University of Eastern Finland Jewish influences in the exegesis of Ephrem the Syrian were inherited from much earlier times, most likely dating back to the traditions of Palestinian sectarian Judaism1. By the fourth century, direct literary transmission of ideas from Judaism to Christianity had largely diminished, as both religions had their own traditions of study, literatures, and literary languages. However, the option of personal contacts and discussions remains a genuine possibility, albeit not easily verifiable. Moreover, there may have been other kind of influences: indirect stimuli inspired by Jewish neighbourhood. This article is an exercise in reading Ephrem the Syrian‟s poetical and prayerful discourse concerning the day of birth and manifestation of the Lord in Hymns on Nativity2 4:1-83 in the light of early Rabbinic thought. Given that most Rabbinic texts are somewhat later than Ephrem3, the aim is not to find textual influences in any strict sense, but to understand the character of parallelisms in a wider perspective, even though I believe that there may have been some blurry influence and inspiration provided by the Jewish approach to Sabbath. Besides, Rabbinic notions in their written form typically reflect attitudes and subjects that had been in the air for centuries. 1) For a recent discussion, see Yifat MONNICKENDAM, Jewish Law and Early Christian Identity: Betrothal, Marriage, and Infidelity in the Writings of Ephrem the Syrian (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1-16. 2) The Syriac text in Edmund BECK, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de nativitate (Epiphania), CSCO 186-187 (Peeters, Louvain, 1959). Henceworth HNat. Translated by Kathleen McVey in Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns (Paulist Press, New York, 1989). All extracts from HNat are from McVey‟s translation unless otherwise indicated. 3) Mishnah predates Ephrem by a century, and the gemara of Jerusalem Talmud is written approximately at Ephrem‟s time. The earliest midrashim either slightly predate Ephrem (Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael) or are approximately contemporary to him (Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon). 218 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ THE QUESTION AND ITS BACKGROUND Already in the first century AD, Sabbath was understood as a cosmic entity that synchronises the divine and human realms and facilitates communication between them4. After the destruction of the Temple, Sabbath became one of the cornerstones of Rabbinic Judaism; the “sanctuary in space” was replaced with the “sanctuary in time”5, as Ginsburg has it. The Sabbath became in many ways the new centre of religion, and it continued to attain even more significance and colourful interpretations during the centuries. The Sabbath was sensed as a foretaste of the world-to-come, a proleptic glimpse of the eternal life6. It tells much about the Jewish ethos that the sages of Talmud encourage one to start the preparations for Sabbath the very first day after the previous Sabbath7. Probably it tells something of Jewish life in Ephrem‟s hometown Nisibis, too. The Syriac-speaking Christians were well aware of the significance of the Sabbath for the Jewish community. This is exactly why Aphrahat in 340s built his discourse XIII into a refutation of the salvific role of Sabbath. Aphrahat noted that Jews boast and take pride in Sabbath, exclaiming: “By this we live, seeing that we keep Sabbath and custom”8. Aphrahat built his presentation of Sabbath on the assertion that it is not a mediator “between death and life”, nor between “righteousness and sin”9, arguing that Sabbath has no saving or purifying value, but it simply provides some rest. This of course implies that the fourth-century Jews attributed to Sabbath characteristics related to eternal life and forgiveness of sins10. Aphrahat goes as far as to 4) The definition is the conclusion of Herold Weiss in his study on Sabbath in the biblical and first-century sources, including Philo and Josephus. See WEISS, A Day of Gladness: The Sabbath among Jews and Christians in Antiquity (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2003), 10. 5) Elliot K. GINSBURG, The Sabbath in Classical Kabbalah (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford & Portland, 2008), 64. For the historical development of the Rabbinic discussions on Sabbath, see Judith HAUPTMAN, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 109, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2005), 87-92, 224-230. 6) This is how Mishnah (Tam. 7:4) discussing the Psalm 92 (“Sabbath song”) is elucidated in Jon L. LEVENSON, Sinai and Zion (HarperCollins, New York, 1985), 183. 7) “From the first day of the week, Sunday, start preparing already for your Sabbath”. Betzah 16a. 8) Aphrahat, Demonstrationes, 13:1. 9) Ibid., 13:2. 10) This is reflected in Talmud: “Even if your sins are as numerous as those years that have proceeded continuously from the six days of Creation until now, they will become white like snow”. Shabbat 89b. THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 219 present Sabbath as a kind of anti-commandment: all the other commandments provide life, if observed in full, but the Sabbath provides some rest amidst all the other commandments. This is a curious mirror-image of the Jewish Sabbath in Rabbinic Judaism, for it partly parallels the Jewish view but shows a reverse picture. Moreover, we have Greek witnesses from the fourth century Western Syria indicating that the Jewish customs of observing the Sabbath were noticed by Christians, and that Christians could be in some way inspired by them. John Chrysostom‟s homilies from Antioch are a well-known example, and need no discussion here11. Instead, we may note that the letters of Pseudo-Ignatius (ca. fourth century) describe the Jewish Sabbath as “eating of day-old foods, drinking lukewarm drinks, walking measured distances, and rejoicing in dancing and senseless clapping”, and this inspired the author to promote Christian spiritual observance of Sabbath by “rejoicing in mediation on laws” and “marvelling at the creative work of God”. The idea behind the exhortations is that the Sabbath is not replaced by Sunday but rather supplemented by it, and the original principles of Sabbath are valuable and applicable for Christians12. Ephrem offered some sharp criticism of the Jewish Sabbath in his Hymns on the Unleavened bread and Sermons on Faith. Although he was concerned about the possibility that some Christians might follow Jewish feasts and laws, his references to Sabbath in these contexts were notably brief13. In other words, fourth-century Syrian Christians lived in an atmosphere in which the other was assigning enormous significance to their sacred day, 11) See e.g., John Chrysostom, Adv. Jud. 1.8.1., 3.3.9., 4.5.6., 6.3.3. Likewise in northern Africa, Tertullian (Ad nationes, 13:3-4) mentions the outsiders‟ attraction to the Sabbath and certain Jewish feasts. 12) Pseudo-Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9 [TLG]. For discussion, see Shaye J. D. COHEN, “Dancing, Clapping, Meditating: Jewish and Christian Observance of the Sabbath in Pseudo-Ignatius”, in Benjamin Isaac & Yuval Shahar (eds.), Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 147; Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2012), 31-33. 13) Ephrem, Azym. 19:25; SdF 3:179-180, 286. For discussion, see P. J. BOTHA, “Polarity: The Theology of Anti-Judaism in Ephrem the Syrian‟s Hymns on Easter”, Hervormde Theologiese Studies 46 (1990), 36-46; Christine SHEPARDSON, Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem’s Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria (The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, 2008), 43-45, 76-77; Karl H. KUHLMANN, “The Harp out of Tune: The Anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism of St. Ephrem”, The Harp 17 (2004), 179-182. 220 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ and this must have been somehow attractive in the eyes of many Christians. As Christianity took distance from the Sabbath, many Christians probably felt like lacking and missing something that their Jewish neighbours took pride in. Interestingly, some of the early Rabbinic stories and teachings on Sabbath were themselves written as a counter-polemic against Roman (first pagan, then Christian) critique of Sabbath. This applies to sources that originate from the Roman areas, especially Midrash Rabbah14. There were several misconceptions about the Sabbath in the Roman world15 that Ephrem or Aphrahat do not share, as they seem to have been better acquainted with the principles of Jewish Sabbath. Ephrem the Syrian in his Hymns on Nativity offers a splendid poetical praise of the sacred day of Christ‟s manifestation to the world (birth and epiphany), providing profound imagery in honour of that day. My hypothesis is that his exceptional exposition of the day may indirectly reflect a Christian response to the Jewish mystification of Sabbath. Therefore, I shall discuss the relevant section (HNat. 4:1-83), viewing its ideas in the light of Rabbinic material on Sabbath in order to outline some paradigmatic and thematic parallels and discrepancies between the two discourses. Certainly, there are no textual influences or direct references to Jewish ideas, as Ephrem‟s hymn is an original, creative, and solemn piece; the Jewish Sabbath may still be among the underlying motives, for the Jewish practices and beliefs obviously revealed a lack of something in Christianity, and this gap was something that Ephrem needed to fill, perhaps even without being fully aware of it. This being the case, the question may be focused so that it approaches the demarcation of boundaries in Ephrem‟s discourse: how far does he dare to proceed to the “Jewish direction” in providing cosmic significance for the Christian sacred day? As the boundaries defined by teachers such as Aphrahat do not seem to provide much space for mystification of a given day, every step that he takes into that direction makes him all the more original in the Christian tradition. 14) The most obvious example are the stories that describe Sabbath foods as tastier than similar foods on ordinary weekdays (Gen. Rabbah 11), which evidently is an early Rabbinic reaction to claims that Jewish Sabbath food is cold and tasteless. For discussion, see Sarit Kattan GRIBETZ, “Between Narrative and Polemic: the Sabbath in Genesis Rabbah and the Babylonian Talmud”, in Gribetz et al (eds.), Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 166; Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2016), 35-40; on polemics dealing with Sabbath foods, see 41-46. 15) For instance, many seem to have believed that Jews fast on Sabbaths. THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 221 A DAY MYSTIFIED Ephrem‟s discourse deals with the day of Christ‟s birth and epiphany, though many aspects in his discourse would fit extremely well for the Paschal days as well. The term that Ephrem uses is “Your day” (yawmāk), but as this second-person formulation is syntactically unwieldy for our purposes, and the term “Christmas day” would exclude the aspect of Epiphany (and vice versa), not to mention the modern connotations of Christmastide, I have chosen to use the term “sacred day” instead. However, it is to be noted that “Your day” is a most spiritual, prayerful expression, though it may also imply a slight apologetic nuance (Your day – their day). In describing the sacred day, Ephrem employs certain narrative techniques such as hyperboles and personification. It is not surprising that when a sacred day is being praised in embellishing rhetorical terms, one may easily find some general parallelisms between the two traditions. For Ephrem, the sacred day is “beyond comparison”16, and it is greater than all the other days17; in the Rabbinic sources, the Sabbath overshadows all other days18 and equals “all the other precepts of the Torah”19. Ephrem in his poetical language is fond of utilising mechanisms of personification for natural phenomena such as the sun20. In this hymn, he personifies the sacred day by presenting it as a subject with some personal characteristics, including cognitive and affective ones. The day “knows”21 and is a “lover of human beings”22. Ephrem‟s basic mode in discoursing about the sacred day is poetical and prayerful; this enables him to develop imagery to mystify and even deify the day. Mystification means that the day is set apart from the natural and situated to the divine world in some sense. Ephrem‟s sacred day is not our day but God‟s; “it cannot be compared with our days”23. The most relevant aspect here is not the impossibility of comparing, for Ephrem himself compares the days a lot, but rather the bipolar juxtaposition of the sacred day and 16) HNat 4:77. 17) HNat 4:23. 18) Pesiqta rabbati 23. 19) Exodus rabbah 25:12. 20) See HNat 21:11, 22:7. The lengthy HNat 18 is built on the idea of natural phenomena joining the worship. 21) HNat 4:6. 22) HNat 4:2. 23) HNat 4:77. 222 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ ordinary days. The sacred day is not counted among our days; it is not one of them. What is it, then? Here we face some surprises, as Ephrem begins to mystify the day. Indeed, Ephrem states that “the day of God is like God” (yawmeh dallāhā ayk-d-allāhā)24 presenting the day with divine characteristics, a day through which one may know God. The day “resembles you for although it is one, it branches out and becomes many in order to be like you” 25. It may be possible to consider such expressions merely as figurative analogies, but Ephrem does take a step further, towards actual deification of the day. It is attributed with eternity – “Your day, like You, will remain forever”26 – and even divine power: “power of Your day is like Your own”27. This peculiar divinisation of the day culminates in Ephrem‟s prayerful plea, “let Your day be like You for us”28; here the day functions as a space in which the likeness of God becomes present for humankind. This is in fact even stronger language than in the early Rabbinic mainstream. In the Talmud, the Sabbath is said to be a “microcosm of the world to come” (‫)מֵ עֵין הָ עֹולָם הַ בָ א‬, or “a sixtieth part” (‫ )אֶ חָ ד ִמ ִש ִשים‬of it29. In the rabbinic lore predating the Babylonian Talmud, it was presented as foretaste of the world to come30. In the Rabbinic sources, divine characteristics were first attached to the Sabbath not in the legal discussions but in the haggadic material (midrashim). This tendency shows already in the fifth-century Genesis Rabbah, in which Sabbath is presented as Israel‟s spouse, instead of the usual Israel-God relationship31. Centuries later, the divine aspects of the Sabbath gained immense importance during the heyday of Lurianic Kabbalah and Chasidism. 24) HNat 4:78. 25) HNat 4:11, cf. 4:2. 26) HNat 4:71. 27) HNat 4:10. 28) HNat 4:13. 29) Berakhot 57b (Gemara). 30) Gen. Rabbah 17, 44. The most likely place of origin for the compilation of Genesis Rabbah is fifth-century Galilee. It has been estimated that it was not known – or, in any case, not directly quoted – to the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud, but they knew many of its traditions from other sources and oral tradition. GRIBETZ, “Between Narrative and Polemic”, 58. 31) “The Sabbath pleaded to the Holy One, blessed be He: „Lord of the universe! Everyone else has a partner (‫)בֶ ן זּוג‬, while I have none!‟ „The Community of Israel is your partner (‫‟)בֶ ן זּוגְֵך‬, God answered”. Genesis Rabbah 11 (my own translation). THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 223 The combination of personal and divine characteristics in Ephrem means that the day is able to absorb certain functions of Christ. Accordingly, it is “able to reconcile”32 and has indeed “reconciled heaven and earth”33. Furthermore, the day feels concern for humanity34. Therefore, Ephrem even asks for forgiveness from the day: “may your day full of compassion excuse my offence”35. In this kind of poetical rhetoric, the day functions very much like the Divinity itself. Because of the peculiarity of these ideas, McVey‟s translation has missed at least one personification by transmitting yawmāk nettel lan with “On Your day grant to me”, the literal reading being “Your day will grant us” (the request of life)36. While these strains of thought are exceptional in early Christian literature, they are not at all peculiar in the Talmud where the Sabbath is a clear shortcut to forgiveness, even in the case of idolatry: With regard to anyone who observes Sabbath in accordance with its halakhot, even if he worships idolatry as in the generation of Enosh, God forgives him his sins37. The most famous personification of Sabbath in the Talmud is certainly the one by Rabbi Ḥanina and Yannai. The former used to say on the eve of the Sabbath, “Come let us go out to meet the Bride, the Queen”, and Rabbi Yannai used to adorn himself and say, “Come O Bride, come O Bride” 38. These verses were crucial in the process in which the personification of Sabbath as the “Queen” became a major trend in medieval Judaism. It is perhaps worth noting that a special day could be called a “queen” also in Byzantine homiletics, with no relation whatsoever to the Rabbinic thought 39, which demonstrates illustratively that the use of a given imagery may have very different functions, especially in the long run. 32) HNat 4:15. 33) HNat 4:14. 34) HNat 4:6. 35) HNat 4:76. 36) HNat 4:81. McVey, Hymns, 95. 37) Shabbat 118b. 38) Shabbat 119a. 39) Easter is presented as “queen of days” by Gregory of Nazianzus in Funebris oratio in patrem (PG 35: 1017). Likewise, the Greek corpus of Ephrem presents Easter as “queen of festivals” in Sermo in pretiosam et vivificam crucem (edited by K.G. Phrantzolas, 1992, 129), as noted in COHEN, “Dancing, Clapping”, 51. 224 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ In Judaism, the personification of the Sabbath is ultimately not an ontological claim for an independent being, but on the other hand, it is also not only a verbal metaphor with no actual reference. Rather, it could be defined as a metaphor that functions as an “exemplification of a divine attribute”, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel did in his classic The Sabbath (1951)40. COSMIC DAY, SACRED TIME Thus, both traditions have a day which surpasses time and represents eternity – that is, a cosmic day. A sacred entity of time is by its nature connected with timeless realities. Ephrem presents his sacred day as “first-born feastday” (‘ēdā [h]w bakkārā)41, which is a logical claim, given that the Christmas-Epiphany is the beginning of Christian feasts, and even of Christianity itself. However, the wording may also hint at the primordial character of the day, which in turn would make sense in relation to the pre-existence of Christ: as He is without beginning, so is His day. However that may be, Ephrem‟s sacred day certainly “extends over the generations that have come and will come”42. This is also the Jewish understanding and emphasis on the Sabbath, found already in the Torah and further developed in the Talmud43. For Ephrem, the sacred day encountered in the present opens up a direct connection with the original day: “On this, Your day, that is near to us, we have seen Your birth, that distant one”44. This parallels in a rather profound way the Rabbinic understanding of Sabbath as something that recalls and reactivates the sacred moment when the Torah was given to Israel 45, which was the beginning of Sabbaths in the earthly sense. Both imply a kind of spiral conception of time, in which each sacred feast day opens up a connection to the day of the original event and activates it in ordinary time, sensed as horizontal continuum46. This phenomenon may also be mystified and fur40) Abraham Joshua HESCHEL, The Sabbath (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2005), 60. 41) HNat 4:28. 42) HNat 4:10. 43) “The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant”. Ex 31:16 (KJV). In Talmud, the verse is further discussed in Betzah 16a and Shabbat 132a. 44) HNat 4:12. 45) Shabbat 86b. Some discussion in GINSBURG, Sabbath, 65. 46) For a discussion of the Jewish conception on time, see Jacob NEUSNER, “Paradig- THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 225 ther applied, as Ephrem does in presenting it as the cosmic agent escorting the cycle of human life, “the day goes to the end of life with old people and returns with infants”47. All these aspects point at the idea that the day surpasses time. In the early Rabbinic lore, this is a familiar theme which is applied in various ways. For example, the Patriarchs are said to have observed the Sabbath long before it was revealed on Sinai48. An early midrash equated the Sabbath with the “entirety of the work of Creation”, as Ginsburg has it, and a later one even identified Sabbath as “one of the seven things that existed prior to Creation”49. Ephrem portrays the day of the manifestation of the Lord as even greater than the very first day of creation that made the cosmos grow externally, as the sacred day of Christ has been planted inside (b-gaw) the whole creation50. In other words, the first day of creation supports the whole physical existence, but the sacred day of Christ supports all the blessings of humanity51. Here Ephrem seems to surpass the early Jewish view on the continuity between each Sabbath and the original first Sabbath, for he does not merely construct continuity but aims to surpass the creative act and open the inner dimension of the whole existence instead – just as the later Jewish sources do as well. For Ephrem, the sacred day was eternal, as we saw, but it was also an archetypal source from which the other days receive their sacredness and related aspects: all the other days derive their goodness and beauty from the “treasures of this feastday”52. The sacred day of Christ “beautifies and becomes beautified”, presenting an unparalleled gift 53. The activity of grace is more plentiful on the day: “if every day pours out your forgiveness, how matic versus Historical Thinking: The Case of Rabbinic Judaism”, History and Theory 36:3 (1997), 353-377; NEUSNER, The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism (Brill, Leiden, 2004), 58-60. 47) HNat 4:3. 48) “This is to say that Jacob kept Sabbath before it was given” (‫)הֲדָ א אָ ְמ ָרת שֶ שָ מַ ר ַיעֲקֹ ב אֶ ת הַ שַ בָ ת קֹ דֶ ם שֶ נִ תַ ן‬. Genesis Rabbah, 79:6; see also 72:4. 49) Mekilta (Yetro); Pirqei d-rabbi Eliezer 3; see GINSBURG, Sabbath, 65. 50) “The first day, the source and beginning, is a type (typos) of the root that germinated everything. / Much greater than it is our Redeemer‟s day planted in the universe”. HNat 26:4. 51) “As the first day „in the beginning‟ / the great pillar of the creation / bears the building of creation / so the first-born day [bears] the helps for humanity”. HNat 26:1. 52) HNat 4:19-20. 53) HNat 23:7-8. 226 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ much will it increase on this day”54. Ephrem‟s sacred day is a “treasury of medicines”55, and a “storehouse of benefits”56, which even “makes recompense for debtors”57. This all sounds very Jewish-like. Likewise in the Talmud, Sabbath is a precious gift (‫ )מתנה טובה‬from God‟s treasury58. “He who delights in the Sabbath is given an unbounded heritage”59 and “is granted his heart‟s desires”60. Moreover, the Sabbath observance is protective61 and salvific, for in Jewish terms it “imparts increased holiness to the people of Israel”, as Mekilta has it, and this is why “whoever keeps this holy day is himself sanctified”62. Belief in the cosmic power of Sabbath is a typical theme in later Judaism, but it appears already in certain Talmudic notions which in turn represent ideas that had been in the air for centuries63. For example, desecration of Sabbath is given in the Talmud as one of the reasons that caused the destruction of Jerusalem64 ‒ the most forceful event in the history of Judaism. There is also a Talmudic saying, “One who lends to Sabbath, Sabbath repays him”65. Here the personification of Sabbath is a verbal surface; the notion ultimately points at the Sabbath as a power that influences and acts under the surface of events. HOW TO PRACTICE SACRED TIME? In Rabbinic Judaism, observation of Sabbath laws is of course the pre54) HNat 4:18. See also 4:21. 55) HNat 4:24 56) HNat 4:25. 57) HNat 4:22. 58) God is said to have told Moses, “I have a precious gift in my treasury, and it is called Sabbath; I wish to give it to Israel. Go inform them about it”. Shabbat 10b. Sabbath as a gift is discussed also in Betzah 16a. 59) Shabbat 118a. 60) Shabbat 118b. 61) “He who observes [the practice of] three meals on the Sabbath is saved from three evils: the travails of the Messiah, the retribution of Gehinnom, and the wars of Gog and Magog”. Shabbat 118a. 62) Mekilta [ki tissa´, i.e., 21st weekly Torah portion (parashah)]. See GINSBURG, Sabbath, 65. 63) See the discussion on Josephus and Sabbath in WEISS, A Day of Gladness, 65-85. 64) “Jerusalem was destroyed only because people desecrated the Sabbath”. Shabbat 119b. “Had Israel kept the first Sabbath, no nation or tongue would have enjoyed dominion over them”, Shabbat 118b. 65) Shabbat 119a. THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 227 dominant question, discussed in endless length in the Talmud, particularly in the Shabbat tractate. What we have in Ephrem is a general concern of behaving worthily: “Your day is great; let it not be diminished by us”66. This would in fact sum up the early Rabbinic concerns well: even if considered from the cosmic perspective, the basic idea behind the details of Sabbath observance is to make the earthly day to correspond and reflect the heavenly day in an appropriate way. Ephrem‟s concern bears some loose resemblance to the Jewish ideals and practices, in particular the principle that during the Sabbath man should speak, walk, dress and act in a different way than on weekdays67. One should eat earlier or later than on ordinary days68, to make the Sabbath a special day. All this aims to underscore the uniqueness of Sabbath in relation to the other days, by giving practical applications to the idea. Likewise, Ephrem is concerned about the sanctity of his sacred day, demanding that it must not be mocked69. His concern seems to echo or parallel the Rabbinic concern of “not desecrating the Sabbath”, which may take place for example “by failing to delight in Sabbath”70. In Judaism, the observance is seen as the key to participation in the original divine Sabbath, the climax of the creation. According to Talmud, “Anyone who prays on Sabbath evening and recites the passage of vaykhullu (Gen 2:1-3), the verse ascribed him credit as if he became a partner with the Holy One, Blessed be He, in the act of Creation”71. In the subsequent Rabbinic discussions, the observation of Sabbath was regarded as a witness to God as Creator and to his providence, and the observance was taken to be in a direct relation to the original institution of Sabbath and the cosmic divine rest72. This was an inevitable consequence of the belief that the Sabbath orig66) HNat 4:17. 67) “A craftsman who carries out an object in the manner common to his craft on Sabbath is liable by Torah law” (Shabbat 11b). “Since every day he does not do so, and now in honour of Sabbath he is doing so, it does not appear as haughtiness”; “your dress on Sabbath should not be like your dress during the week”; “your walking on Sabbath should not be like your walking during the week”; “your speech on Sabbath should not be like your speech during the week” (Shabbat 113a-b). 68) Shabbat 119a. 69) HNat 4:60. 70) Shabbat 119b. 71) Shabbat 119b. 72) Mekilta 104a-b. Veglio sees in this thought an expression of the Jewish mission to promote monotheistic faith in the world and even to make the nations monotheistic. Armido VEGLIO, “Mission in Judaism and Christianity”, in Stanley E. PORTER, Brook W. PEARSON (eds.), Christian-Jewish Relations Through the Centuries (T&T Clark, London, 2004), 465. 228 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ inates in the divine world. In the Talmud, the Sabbath stands out among the commandments by its intimate and inner character, which is open for mystical interpretations. The Sabbath manifests the intimacy between God and Israel, which is based already on creation. The intimate and exceptional character of Sabbath is highlighted by noting that it is the only commandment given in private, as the others were given in public73. Ephrem is certainly not as specific, but there seems to be a somewhat similar urge in his basic intuition and intention. Perhaps surprisingly, Ephrem does not call his day “the day of the Church” but presents it as a universal day for the whole humanity, for all that is earthly and for the whole creation74. This is in line with the patristic soteriology that focuses on the relation of humanity and God rather than the individual and God; it also fits with the traditional Christian claim for being the universal truth, as Judaism was seen to be a cult of one nation. But it also parallels the Jewish understanding of Sabbath as a cosmic principle. Here Ephrem could take the step that in Christian eyes was lacking from Judaism: sacredness is not for one nation but for the whole world. CONCLUSION The parallels between Ephrem‟s sacred day and the Rabbinic Sabbath are many-sided and extensive, but at the same time unspecific and general by nature. Actual literary influences are out of question. Both discourses proceed from their own basis, towards their own aims, following the logic of the given tradition. What we have in Ephrem is a powerful and beautiful piece of poetry that carries some thematic parallels and common intuitions with the way how the Rabbis perceived the significance of Sabbath. The mechanisms of personification and mystification mostly represent rather common ways of discoursing, and both sides had full ability to develop them independently. Personally, I think that parallelisms are often all the more interesting 73) “All the mitzvot that the Holy One, Blessed be He, gave to the Jewish people, He gave to them in public [parhesya] except for Sabbath, which he gave to them in private. As it is stated: „It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever‟ (Ex 31:17), meaning that in a sense, it is a secret between God and the Jewish people”. Betzah 16a. 74) HNat 4:14, 5:6-67. THE SACRED DAY OF EPHREM THE SYRIAN AND THE RABBINIC SABBATH 229 exactly when they are not influences in any precise causal sense. They exemplify similarities in basic needs, essentials and aims – similar archetypes, one might say. Indeed, in this case most of these very needs seem to be very familiar from Judaism. The thematic parallelism is a significant and relevant fact as such, but there may well be more than random parallels. The two sets of thought come from the same world, and to a small extent even from the very same place: Ephrem‟s home town Nisibis (Netzivin) is mentioned in the Talmud among the early Rabbinic academies75. Anyone who lives in a town with a considerable Jewish population cannot fail to see the impact of Sabbath on Jewish life, and when someone gets into contact with Jews, Sabbath is likely among the first topics in any discussion, whether theological or commonplace. As Aphrahat‟s discourse shows, Syriac-speaking Christians were concerned with the richness of Jewish understanding of Sabbath. Aphrahat reacted in polemic tune, but Ephrem seems to have responded by deepening the Christian understanding of their own feast days and sanctification of time through them instead. Therefore, it is well thinkable that Ephrem got some inspiration from the presence of the Jewish Sabbath around him. This applied, first of all, to the basic idea of an exceptional day through which one may participate in the riches of God and gain some mystical sanctification from the cosmic and heavenly depth of the day. From this basic orientation, one easily ends up with related notions in topics such as the duty to live distinctively in accordance with the value of the day; likewise, rhetorical praises in honour of the day, including mechanisms of personification, mystification and even a certain deification of the day, may easily end up with related notions. However, if Ephrem was directly influenced by some specific early Rabbinic views, he managed to hide it rather masterfully. This all is relevant also in wider terms. As Christian-Jewish issues in late antiquity typically represent either inherited influences (mostly in biblical interpretation, but also in liturgical matters) or polemical attacks and counter-attacks, here we may have a rare case, almost a novel category, of a Christian author being positively inspired by post-biblical Judaism. If this be the case, one may wonder why Ephrem did not choose Sunday for his mystification pursuit, given that many early Christian texts discussed 75) Sanhedrin 32b. 230 SERAFIM SEPPÄLÄ the replacement of the Sabbath with the Lord‟s Day76. Of course, the birth of Christ was of salvific value for him, given that his theology was largely based on the idea of incarnation. However, Ephrem probably was also aware of the danger that an attempt to apply all the cosmic views to Sunday, even though the day of resurrection, might appear simply as imitation of Sabbath and seem like a simple relocation of the weekly holy day. Moreover, a competition between the two weekly days might be easily lost, and even a draw was not easy to achieve, due to the richness of Jewish cult of Sabbath in practical terms alone. Therefore, Ephrem preferred to surpass the weekly special days, the result being a profound mystical reflection on the day of incarnation and personal, embodied epiphany of God – the very aspects that Judaism lacked. In this sense, Ephrem perhaps aimed to attack what he saw as the weak side of Judaism. His theological principles also allowed for bold speech in attributing divine characteristics to the sacred day, resulting in a “deification” of the day of incarnation and epiphany in a way which is very original in the history of Christian thought. Perhaps we owe some debt of gratitude for this to his Jewish neighbours in Nisibis. 76) E.g., Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians 9. The extended, inauthentic parts of this letter were briefly discussed in the beginning of this paper. 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