Ephrem the Syrian

Jesus’ rejection by those in his hometown is a theme common to all three of the synoptic gospel accounts (cf. Mt 13.54-58; Mk 6.1-5; Lk 4.16-30). However, the placement of this episode strikingly differs amongst these three. Mark and Matthew both record a wholly positive initial preaching tour through Galilee which left the crowds astonished (Mk 1.14-15, 21-28; Mt 4.12-17, 23-25), and only later narrate his rejection at the synagogue of Nazareth after a period of successful ministry elsewhere (Mk 6.1-5; Mt 13.54-58). In contrast, Luke decided to collapse the Markan timeline by relocating the scene in the synagogue in Nazareth to the initial preaching tour through Galilee, and he further heightened the intensity of the event by telling of the unsuccessful attempt to cast Jesus from the cliff outside of town (Lk 4.16-30). The treatment of this theme in these three sources illustrates well the kind of rewriting that occurred in early gospel literature. However, this trajectory of rewriting can be extended further, to include the so-called Diatessaron of Tatian who attempted to incorporate material from all three synoptics in his revised gospel edition. Faced with these three conflicting texts Tatian had to decide how to reconcile his sources so as to produce a coherent narrative. The surviving witnesses to his edition indicate that he resolved this dilemma by splitting the Lukan scene into two parts. The first half of the Lukan pericope, which records a wholly positive reception in Nazareth (Lk 4.16-22), he left in the initial preaching tour through Galilee, and the second half, telling of the rejection and the attempted execution, he placed later in the narrative. In his redaction of prior sources, Tatian’s editorial work is broadly comparable to that of the evangelists Matthew and Luke, and he even adds a further detail of his own, namely that Jesus flew through the air to safety following his being thrown from the cliff. Tatian’s editing of these sources may be interpreted as a response to two ambiguities inherent in Luke’s telling of the episode: the jarring transition from acceptance to rejection in Luke 4.22-23 and the mysterious silence regarding Jesus’ means of escape from the angry crowd in Luke 4.30.

(Dutch) Onderzoekje naar Genesis 19:30-38, het verhaal van Lot die door zijn dochters verleid wordt, na hun vlucht uit Sodom. Is Lot een rechtvaardige of niet? Zowel de tekst als de receptie ervan laten de ambiguïteit van het antwoord op die vraag zien. Ook de receptie in de 16e en 17e-eeuwse schilderkunst is meegenomen.

Bijbels manuscript uit het jaar 770 met een fragment uit het boek Ezra, bewaard in het St. Gabriel klooster in Tur 'Abdin, zuidoost Turkije. Dit kaartje van het noorden van Mesopotamië geeft de grens tussen het Romeinse Rijk en het Perzische Rijk weer zoals die aan het eind van Efrems leven liep, nadat Nisibis in 363 aan de Perzen was overgedragen.

The article focuses on El'azar berabbi Qillir, the iconic pay￿an of all ages, and explores several aspects of his work, heritage and cultural significance. The var- ious parts of the article do not present a cohesive image of the life and work of the Qilliri. Rather, they present a mosaic of different outlooks on his image as well as scholarly reflections on some of his major contributions to Jewish literary culture.

Through a consideration of the reception history of the so-called “Diatessaron,” Tatian’s second-century gospel compilation, we can learn much about the nature of this peculiar text. Of paramount importance here is the Syriac Commentary on the Gospel attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis. In this article I argue that the ordering of pericopae in the opening section of Tatian’s gospel, which interweaves Matthean and Lukan passages within a broadly Johannine incluisio, prompted the Syriac exegete to an unexpected interpretation of these narratives. By reading these pericopae as a single, continuous narrative, he creatively combined the divine “Word” and “Light” of the Johannine prologue with the Synoptic traditions about John the Baptist as the “voice” and about the star that shone to guide the magi, presenting the star and the voice as extensions of the agency of the divine Son. This remarkably original interpretation of the nativity accounts illustrates the degree of artistry that went into the making of Tatian’s text and the novel interpretations of the Jesus tradition that it elicited from its readers.

Most surviving texts from late antique and medieval Christianity reveal a profound preoccupation with asceticism. Many authors viewed their literary work as an ascetic discipline in its own right, and some texts were composed specifically to be used in conjunction with the performance of an ascetic practice. This paper centers on two such texts, written in different languages, centuries, and ascetic contexts, but bearing the similarity that they were both written to be used while performing vigil or keeping watch. The first are hymns (madrāše) of the fourth-century Syriac author Ephrem of Nisibis (d. 373). Seven of these are preserved only in Armenian, and bear the superscript Գիշերոյ կցուրդ (Gišeroy kc‘urd, “Hymn of the night”). There are other hymns written for vigil in Ephrem’s extant Syriac corpus. The second is the Մատեան Ողբերգութեան (Matean Ołbergut‘ean, Book of Lamentation) of the tenth-century Armenian author Gregory of Narek (Grigor Narekac‘i, ca. 945 – 1003), intended for the private, solitary watching of a medieval monk. I will focus in on the nexus between text and performative context, first illuminating the particular ascetic environment each author presupposed, before showing how our understanding of these texts is enriched when read with their ascetic, performative context in the background.

Gli Inni sulla Natività di Efrem il , pubblicati da Edmund Beck osb. in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 186 (Lovanio 1959), si compongono di ventotto componimenti che celebrano la nascita del Signore. Anche se ci sono indizi assai chiari che alcuni di questi inni sono opera di seguaci di Efrem, la loro maggioranza sembra essere della mano del grande poeta-teologo siriaco. Nel numero di gennaio di questa rivista abbiamo già presentato la traduzione italiana del terzo inno di questa raccolta, il quale descrive con immagini sempre nuove i benefici dell'incarnazione salvifica del Signore e mostra quanto Efrem trova piacere ad accentuare i paradossi della fede nel Dio fatto uomo. Ora presentiamo l'inno 23, il quale, per il suo linguaggio, le sue immagini, il suo stile, è assai simile al terzo inno; per evitare delle repetizioni, ci prendiamo la libertà di rimandare alcune volte a delle spiegazioni che si trovano nelle note dell'articolo precedente.

Ephrem the Syrian was born in Nisibis (Nusaybin, Turkey) around 306 CE, and died in Edessa (Sanliurfa, Turkey) in 373. He was a prolific author, composing over four hundred hymns, several metrical homilies, and at least two scriptural commentaries. His extensive literary output warrants mention alongside other well-known fourth-century authors, such as Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea. Yet Ephrem wrote in neither Greek nor Latin, but in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. His voice opens to the reader a fourth-century Christian world perched on the margins between the Roman and Persian Empires. Ephrem is known for a theology that relies heavily on symbol and for a keen awareness of Jewish exegetical traditions. Yet he is also our earliest source for the reception of Nicaea among Syriac-speaking Christians. It is in his eighty-seven Hymns on Faith - the longest extant piece of early Syriac literature - that he develops his arguments against subordinationist christologies most fully. These hymns, most likely delivered orally and compiled after the author's death, were composed in Nisibis and Edessa between the 350s ans 373. They reveal an author conversant with Christological debates further to the west, but responding in a uniquely Syriac idiom. As such, they form an essential source for reconstructing the development of pro-Nicene thought in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet, the Hymns on Faith offer far more than a simple Syriacpro-Nicene catechetical literature. In these hymns Ephrem reflects upon the mystery of God and the limits of human knowledge. He demonstrates a sophisticated grasp of symbol and metaphor and their role in human understanding. The Hymns on Faith are translated here for the first time in English on the basis of Edmund Beck's critical edition.

Ephrem of Nisibis is unique among patristic authors for having authored a commentary on Tatian’s gospel commonly known as the “Diatessaron.” In this article I examine Ephrem’s corpus to determine what evidence exists for his knowledge and use of gospel versions beyond that of Tatian, most especially the fourfold, or separated gospel. I point out that Ephrem, in keeping with Greek and Latin authors, occasionally used poetic imagery for the fourfold gospel, and, moreover, that he knew at least the Synoptic genealogies and the Johannine prologue as distinct texts. It is undeniable, therefore, that he knew of and to some degree used the separated, fourfold gospel, even if this remained slight in comparison with his reliance upon Tatian’s version. Furthermore, on six occasions Ephrem refers to an unspecified “Greek” gospel version. Previous scholarship has almost universally interpreted these passages as references to a separated gospel in Syriac, but I argue that these are best taken as references to an actual Greek version, and may well be allusions to a Greek edition of Tatian’s work. Ephrem’s usage of multiple gospel versions suggests that at this point in the Syriac tradition, the concept of ‘gospel’ was fluid and more undefined than would be the case in the fifth century when attempts were made to restrict its sense to the fourfold gospel.

ABSTRACT:

According to Pauline theology we are ‘earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7) till Christ is formed in us (Gal. 4:19). Into the most holy place of our being, in which the very presence of God dwells, He ‘enters within the veil’ (Heb. 6:19) and ‘put in our hearts the light’ (2 Cor. 4:6). So, being ‘clothed in Christ’ (Gal. 3:27) we all are being ‘transformed into his image’ which is the ‘form of God’ ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ (Phil. 2:6). To Saint Ephrem, “The First-born wrapped himself in a body / as a veil to hide His glory” (CNis XLIII,21, LumE 74). He juxtaposes the image of Moses being veiled with Jesus’ veiling on Himself in the Incarnation. Face of Moses shone and he laid veil over his face, just as Lord, from the Womb, entered and put on the veil of the Body (Nativity 73). Also, the veil of the temple was intended by Moses to symbolize the veil of heaven, and both veils together prefigured the flesh of Christ, which enfolded and concealed his divinity. Firstly, we will focus on the analogy between Thabor’s garments and bodies in the water of Baptism (De Epiphania 9, 12), both glory / Light garments of the Son, the “Father Ray” (Heb. 1: 3; Sogyatha I 1-2). Secondly, we are interested in St. Ephrem’s interpretation of Matthew 27:50-51 (The Crucifixion IV, 1-12, Comm. Diatess. XXI, 4-6). Here, he combines two Pauline texts (Heb. 6:19 and 2 Cor. 3: 14-18) showing that, in fact, the veil split gave back to the Lord the glory that Jews have rejected. The latters dressed him with veil altar (Azym. V, 6 – the purple, which was the inner veil of the temple; Katapetesma: a curtain) actually they clothed Him with His symbol of the divine glory presence. The Veil of Light is that who hides the apophatic ‘aesthetics’ of God’s Face. This is the way of concealing the divinity from velum scissum to the eucharistic bread. In this view the Body becomes the ‘Veil of flesh’ (καταπέτασμα) in accordance with the clothing imagery. This study is about the Biblical, syrian and hesychast perichoretic interweaving of visible (created) and invisible (uncreated). First, the syntagm “Within the Veil” (καταπέτασμα) is related to the biblical and patristic understanding of salvation as a garment. Thus, the Syrian (nuhrā qaddīša Ephrem’s “eṣtal šubḥa”) is nothing less than the reception of Paul (veil of flesh, Heb 10:20) spirituality of divine light (δόξα). Dionysius speaks of his spiritual father, Hierotheos who is “suffering” the mystery of the Incarnation (παθὼν τὰ θεῖαν, DN II, 9). So, holy man is “theophanic”, becoming present to the Trinity (DN III, 1) and the hierarchy’s members becomes “spotless mirrors of the primordial light” (icons of the divine energies). Theurgic light and deiformity (θεοειδεῖ) by union with the rays of the unapproachable light. “Suddenly” (ἐξαίφνης) vision of Christ in light represents the divine motion as God extended “ecs[aes]tetically” into immanence. Therefore, the theophany of light (ἀπρόσιτον ϕῶς) is Imparticipable participable (τὰ ἀμεθέκτως μετεχόμενα) and God ad extra.
Accordingly, the veil (καταπέτασμα) theology is the hermeneutical key to reveal by concealing the divine presence, a real point of contact or somatic experience. In a word, God’s self-revelation as concealing presence. Perichoresis of the visible and the invisible (interweaving of the created and the uncreated in biblical, syrian and hesychast clotihing metaphors) becomes possible within the body, understood as a ‘veil’. The biblical theology of clothing, especially the Significance of Clothing Imagery in the Pauline and the Clothing Metaphors, as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition are both engaged to understand the late hesychast theology of uncreated light, this vision of God being “veiled unveiling” or hidden in his manifestation. The flesh becomes the veil of (καταπέτασμα) God’s self-revelation (a concealing presence) and the “shining face” of both the Desert Fathers, as well as the byzantine hesychasts, during prayer, is the witness of the realism of that communion, being the point of tangency of created (aesthetics) body and uncreated (apophatic) light.

Christopher Buck, Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Baha’i Faith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. ISBN-10: 0791440613. ISBN-13: 978-0791440612. (Release date: May 13, 1999.)

NOTE
This is the first formal (academic) comparison of the Baha’i Faith and Christianity, notwithstanding a wealth of apologetic literature on this topic.

OPENING PARAGRAPH
Religions enshrine symbols, the stained-glass windows of faith. Sacred symbols present an explorable treasury of religious thought—an information-rich, condensed language of spirituality. Symbols are the prisms of ideals and of other religious concerns. Symbols are susceptible of analysis and are proper objects of study. As symbols encode ideas, they require interpretation to be both understood and meaningfully compared. “We can see that an essential ingredient of the modern study of religion,” writes Ninian Smart, “is symbolic analysis, which tries to throw light on the various themes which can be discovered cross-culturally through the exploration of various worldviews” (1985, 33). Symbolic analysis involves not only the exploration of religious worldviews intrinsically, but comparatively as well. – Paradise & Paradigm, p. 1.

CONCLUSION
Symbols ensoul ideas. In the Abrahamic faiths generally, the most important symbol complex is eschatological imagery, the positive focus of which is Paradise. Visions of the empyreal realm have, historically, had an extraordinary power to inspire. Paradise is iconoplastic. The beatific panorama, the symbolic landscape, the ideals and imagery that inform Paradise in the religious imagination are grounded in root metaphors and are animated by key scenarios reflecting a theology of activity, in a dynamic interplay of belief and behavior, myth and ritual, within the religious grasp of totality.

Paradise allegorizes ideals. These ideals are projected onto heaven. There, in the wish-images of the communal dream, ideals are reified and beatified. In a Bergeresque process of paradisical world building, Heaven functions as the impressionistic blueprint of the ideal faith-community. Paradise imagery is then dislocated from the speculative and refocused on Earth. When once the heart is transformed and society reformed, Paradise is realized. In the intersection of eschatology and ethics, in the interplay of ideas and imagery, and as a function of an organizing principle, an overarching paradigm, Paradise becomes utopia. – Paradise & Paradigm, p. 329.

REVIEWS
•  Kathleen McVey. International Journal of Middle East Studies 35.3 (Aug. 2003): 494–496. 
Will C. van den Hoonaard. Studies in Religion. Sciences Religieuses 31.3–4 (2002): 501–502.
• Brannon Wheeler. Religious Studies Review 28.3 (July 2002): 293:
“Buck’s theoretically innovative analysis of ‘paradigmatic differences’ in East Syrian (or Nestorian) Christianity and the early Baha’i faith is a fascinating and intellectually challenging book. … In all, a forceful and clearly argued book which should be read by scholars interested in questions of religious symbolism and the comparative method.”
• Andrew Rippin. University of Toronto Quarterly 71.1 (Winter 2001/2002): 170–172. 
• William Collins. Baha’i Studies Review 10 (2001/2002): 157–160. 
• Edward G. Farrugia, S.J. Orientalia Christiana Periodica 66.2 (2000): 480–483.
• John Renard. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 34.2 (2000): 212–213.
• Daniel Grolin. H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (July 2000). 
Harold Coward. (Unpublished) (2000). 

POST-PUBLICATION SCHOLARSHIP
Paola Orsatti, “Syro-Persian Formulas In Poetic Form In Baptism Liturgy,” Persian Origins – Early Judaeo-Persian and the Emergence of New Persian. Collected Papers of the Symposium, Göttingen 1999. Edited by Ludwig Paul (Iranica Vol. 6, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003), pp. 147–176.

LIBRARIES WORLDWIDE
Total (print & ebook editions): 1,886. [WorldCat, July 11, 2019.] Also available as a Nook Book.

In terms of influence and literary quality, St. Ephrem 1 the Syrian (d. 373) may be considered as the greatest figure in the history of Syriac literature. His survived literary heritage consists of a vast corpus of poetical texts, commentaries and discourses in Syriac, 2 a remarkable corpus of commentaries and other texts in Armenian, 3 in addition to a spurious yet influential collection of ascetic texts in Greek. During the last decades, there has been a remarkable growth of scholarly studies on the Syriac Ephrem. 4 Ephrem's theological mission was in developing a holistic vision of all reality centred on the mystery of Christ. Ephrem's approach was enabled and enriched by the fact that the main vehicle of his theological expression was that of poetry. The main body of his vast literary output was written in poetical Syriac characterised by an effective fusion of compact expression and capacious content. Ephrem's methodical approach might be called "symbolic synecdoche", in which parts refer to the whole and the parts function as variations of certain main themes.

According to Pauline theology we are ‘earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7) till Christ is formed in us (Gal. 4:19) by Him who ‘entereth into that within the veil’ (Heb. 6:19) and ‘put in our hearts the light’ (2 Cor. 4:6). So, being ‘clothed in Christ’ (Gal. 3:27) we all are being ‘transformed into his image’ which is the ‘form of God’ (Phil. 2:6). To Saint Ephrem, “The First-born wrapped himself in a body / as a veil to hide His glory” (CNis XLIII,21, LumE 74). He juxtaposes the image of Moses being veiled with Jesus’ veiling on Himself in the Incarnation. Face of Moses shone and he laid veil over his face, just as Lord, from the Womb, entered and put on the veil of the Body (Nativity 73).
Firstly we will focus on the analogy between Thabor’s garments and bodies in the water of Baptism (De Epiphania 9, 12), both glory / Light garments of the Son, the "Father Ray" (Heb. 1: 3; Sogyatha I 1-2). Secondly, we are interested in St. Ephrem’s interpretation of Matthew 27:50-51 (The Crucifixion IV, 1-12, Comm. Diatess. XXI, 4-6). Here, he combines two Pauline texts (Heb. 6:19 and 2 Cor. 3: 14-18) showing that, in fact, the veil split gave back to the Lord the glory that Jews have rejected. The latters dressed him with veil altar (Azym. V, 6 – the purple, which was the inner veil of the temple; Katapetesma: a curtain) actually they clothed Him with His symbol of the divine glory presence.

In Egypt, the three patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can be frequently found in liturgical texts from an early date onwards. However, images of this theme are scarce in Coptic art. The two examples preserved are evaluated in this article from an interdisciplinary perspective, including the important matter of architectural context.

Negli ultimi decenni Efrem il , il più importante teologo del cristianesimo di lingua siriaca del quarto secolo e il massimo poeta dell'epoca dei Padri, attira sempre di più l'attenzione dei patrologi e teologi [1]. La pubblicazione e traduzione delle sue opere conservate nel siriaco originale, realizata principalmente da Edmund Beck, ha reso possibile l'attuale riscoperta dell'opera teologica e spirituale di questo testimone ineguagliabile della tradizione del cristianesimo semitico. Benché abbia scritto dei commenti scritturistici in prosa e delle omelie metriche (mēmrē), la sua opera è essenzialmente poetica: ha composto centinaia di madrāšē, componimenti ritmici di singolare qualità poetica che costituiscono la fonte principale per la nostra conoscenza del suo pensiero poetico-contemplativo.

The present chapter traces how the rabbis in the tractate of Hagigah developed the biblical commands concerning cultic pilgrimage into laws for a bygone Jerusalem temple pilgrimage to see and be seen by God. Our investigation points to how the desire for, and loss of, the sight of God’s face punctuates and centers the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Hagigah. The biblical commandment to "see the face of God three times a year" allowed the rabbis to conjure forms and narratives of pilgrimage in an age of Greek and Roman "visual piety" but without the Jerusalem temple. The chapter shows how in varying ways earlier and later rabbis construct a pilgrimage of reciprocal vision (in which pilgrim and god mutually behold and are beheld), particularly in the Babylonian Talmud which emphasizes "homovisuality."

A large portion of the Syriac works attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis survives in the form of collected poetic anthologies. This paper argues that previous attempts to assign authorship and date of composition to Ephrem's hymn cycles mistakenly treat these works as if they were treatises written by Ephrem. Scholars have tended to treat the hymn cycles as units and to judge the authenticity of each cycle as a whole. By contrast, this paper contends that the cycles postdate Ephrem and were assembled and supplemented by later editors. It further proposes that the heterogeneous origin of most of the hymn cycles makes it impossible to date them to a particular time in Ephrem's career. To hypothesize a date of composition is to assume that Ephrem composed the hymns in that cycle at a particular time and collected them as a unit. Likewise, this paper contends that scholars must be frank about the general lack of historical evidence, which severely challenges our ability to contextualize fourth-century Syriac poetry. The paper concludes by proposing a new approach to questions related to authorship and date of composition, one focused on smaller metrical sub-units (meter-melodies) that comprise the large hymn cycles.

Christopher Buck, “Sapiential Theosis: A New Reading of Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on Paradise.” Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society 9.2 (1995): 80–125. 

ABSTRACT

A fresh reading of the Hymns on Paradise (HdP) discloses how Ephrem the Syrian reworked soteriological presuppositions and thought-forms current in fourth-century Syria to effect a transformation of the doctrine of theōsis (deification), freeing it from its substantive categories, to lay emphasis on divinization at the sapiential level. See, for instance, HdP XII.15, where Ephrem states that “the human person can become / the likeness of God, / endowed with immortal life [i.e. theōsis] / and wisdom [i.e. sapience] that does not err” (HdP XII.15, HyP 166). While the form of the doctrine with its anthropological considerations was kept intact, the manner of Ephrem’s affirmation of theōsis was tantamount to its sophistication, in what amounted to a reformulation of the doctrine itself. In Ephrem’s eschatological scheme—which exalts form over substance—body, soul and spirit are rarefied beyond physicality, while corporeality is maintained. Even the argument for the body’s afterlife existence—the instrumentality of the senses being required for the soul’s ability to perceive—is effectively undermined by the obviation or precluding of the senses in the soul’s immediate cognition of the delights of Paradise. This innovation lent Ephrem’s doctrine of theōsis a greater potential for realization, in which eschatological Paradise came to enjoy a more edifying immediacy among the faithful.

The Resurrection, therefore, in Ephrem’s conception of it, is not simply an “arising” in the sense of revivification. It is an “arising” in the sense of a spiritual ascent, in which the whole tripartite being of man is “raised” to new life and to new heights. In what manner may we conceive of this? In this present life, in what really amounts to a realized eschatology for Ephrem, “the mind ... is spiritual” and it is the mind in mystic transport, and, at the eschaton, something like the mind into which the resurrection body is transformed, that can attain the environs of Paradise and, by the blessing of its Creator, enter into its Garden. There is in fact the suggestion that the metaphors Ephrem employs for his portrayal of Paradise may be decoded. From HdP VI.6 and elsewhere, we may thus infer: Symbols of Paradise (Symbol = Referent): Bud = Heart; Produce = Rational Speech; Fruit = Words (Deeds, VI.11); Plants = Truth; Sweet Scents = Love; Blossoms = Chastity (VI.12); Beauty = Mind (VI.13); Flowers = Virtuous Life (VI.13); Garden = Free Will (VI.13); Earth = Human Thought (VI.13); Trees = “Victors” (VI.14); Treasure Store = Hidden Mysteries (VI.25).

Paradise and paradigm:

Images and ideas are the twin hemispheres of the religious mind. The bicameral interaction of the imaginal and the abstract focus the believer on the archetypes of belief. To give a more complete description of any religious worldview, concepts should be complemented by conceits. In Ephrem, the Church is imagistically conceived of as Paradise. Since it is an extended metaphor, its imagery is extensible. Individually and collectively, paradise imagery can represent different facets of church life and experience. The phrase from the Lord’s Prayer—“on earth, as it is in Heaven”—perfectly expresses both imagistically and ideologically the Ephrem’s artifice at work in the HdP.

Ephrem’s Paradise is at once ecclesiastical and eschatological. Its imagery expresses a paradigm of purity. This is a purity that “cures.” It cleanses the soul of the “disease” of mortality. It restores primordial immortality. Life in Paradise, in both worlds, is for the pure. The pure in heart are Christians who are sexually pure and morally stainless. On this point, perhaps Ephrem and Bardaiṣan might agree. In a quote from Theodore bar Koni, Bardaiṣan, in one of his lost songs, taught: “And lo, the natures, all of them—with created things they hastened, to purify themselves and remove what was mingled with the nature of evil” (Segal 1970, 38). Although Ephrem rejects Bardaiṣan’s creation myth, the pursuit of ethical purity in both systems is, in nonascetic terms, comparable. In fine, Syriac Christianity’s response to Late Antiquity is the quest for purity, in which chrism, baptism, and the Eucharist become the ointment, fountain, and elixir of immortality, while the imagery of Paradise ennobles the sanctified soul.

Are the genealogies of Jesus (Mt 1.1-17 and Lk 3.23b-38) present or absent in Tatian’s Diatessaron? On the basis of the testimony of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, most scholars advocate that Tatian removed them. Is this testimony, however, compatible with the textual data? The purpose of this paper is to draw up an inventory of sources (Ephrem’s quotations and the fifteen most important harmonies), then to investigate in turn the evidence for the absence and for the presence of the genealogies. In our view, Tatian did not eliminate them but harmonized them into a single list and the central issue is not so much the presence or absence of the genealogies as their harmonization or non-harmonization. The most disturbing point is no doubt that he reversed the order of one of the genealogies in order to have a single order. In conclusion, if the presence of a harmonized genealogy in Tatian’s Diatessaron is accepted, then it means that several positions adopted in Diatessaronic studies need to be reconsidered, given that its absence has been taken for granted since the 19th century.

Dieser Beitrag diskutiert eine Reihe christlicher Quellen, die sich in syrischer und arabischer Sprache mit dem Problem der Willensfreiheit befassen. Ein Spezifikum ist dabei die Verwendung des Begriffs "Freiheit" als terminus technicus zur Bezeichnung der Willensfreiheit. In der arabischen Diskussion wurde er nur auf christlicher Seite in dieser Weise gebraucht und konnte so allein vor dem Hintergrund der syrischen Tradition verständlich sein. Hier sollen einige philosophische Charakteristika der syrischen Freiheitskonzeption herausgearbei-tet werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Verhältnisbestimmung von Natur und Freiheit. Die hier behandelten Autoren begegnen dem Problem auf zwei Weisen. Auf der einen Seite wird Freiheit als Anlage in der Natur verstanden, was zu einem ambivalenten Naturbegriff führt. Auf der anderen Seite werden Willensakte als internalisierter Zwang konzipiert, was jedoch eine paradoxe Freiheitsbestimmung zur Folge hat.

Ephrem’s memra on Jonah and the Ninivites, which contains some quotations and allusions to the New Testament, was transmitted in other languages beyond Syriac. Among these, the Greek translation of the metrical sermon deserves attention for a plenty of reasons, not least for the interest that this text has in the studies of Greek and Syriac cultural interchange.
The anonymous Greek translator seems to recognize almost all the Biblical quotations in the sermon he is translating. In deciding how to reproduce into Greek these references to the New Testament he uses an eclectic approach which is of interest for the study of the reception of the Bible in a multilingual context.
In some quotations the translator seems to follow strictly the Ephremian source text without taking into consideration the original form of the quotation ‘distorted’ by Ephrem (Luke 15, 7 and 10; Paul, Ep. Gal. 6, 7-8). In the most cases cases he decides to come back to the original text of the New Testament in Greek, and reproduces some words or phrases of it, adapting them to the context of the translation (Matthew 16, 3; 21, 13; Paul, Ep. Rom. 12, 5; Ep. Phil. 2, 4). Finally, he can decide to refer instead to the Syriac version of the New Testament (Luke 23, 35). In addition, there are some quotations or allusion in which the Greek translator seems to follow the Syriac Ephremian text, but some lexical choices refer clearly to the passage of the Greek New Testament (Matthew, 19, 15 and Mark, 10, 16; Luke 13, 7).
The analysis of the approach of the Greek translator of the Ephremian memra will show how a bilingual interpreter in Late Antiquity could exploit at the same degree the Bible text both in Greek and in Syriac, ‘picking up’ the expressions and the words which he judged to be more suitable for his translation into Greek. This could be also of interest in the study of New Testament criticism, because it could shed lights in the understanding and the refunctionalizing of Biblical quotations in Christian texts.

Mon sujet de recherche porte sur la traduction grecque du sermon sur Jonas et les Ninivites, attribué à Ephrem le Syrien (IVème siècle apr. J-C), un des auteurs les plus connus du Christianisme syriaque et dont la réputation connût une grande diffusion dans le monde oriental tardo-ancien et médieval. En grec, un corpus d’environ 200 œuvres attribuées à cet auteur a été conservé. Beaucoup de ces textes écrits en prose et en vers ne sont pas de véritables traductions, mais plutôt des productions ou des élaborations plus tardives. Le sermon grec que j’analyse est l’une des quelques œuvres traduites d’Ephrem, qu’il soit possible de comparer à un original syriaque existant. De plus, il s’agit de la seule traduction qui utilise un schéma métrique très proche de celui du texte source.
Ma contribution consiste à me concentrer sur des aspects de métrique et de style dans cette traduction grecque, qui représente l’un des premiers exemples de poésie isosyllabique en grec. Ce texte constitue un élément fondamental du parcours culturel qui amènera la poésie religieuse byzantine à utiliser un système métrique tout à fait différent de la métrique classique (l’exemple le plus frappant à cet égard étant celui de Romane le Mélode). En analysant l’influence de la métrique et du style poétique éphremien sur cette traduction grecque, il sera possible d’identifier certaines caractéristiques rhétoriques et linguistiques qui peuvent avoir une origine syriaque et qui contribueront à mieux évaluer l’apport de la poésie isosyllabique syriaque dans le développement du nouveau système poétique byzantin.

Ephrem's adaptation of the ancient "precedence dispute" genre in his poetic works is one of the most fascinating and often entertaining features of his writings. Though Sebastian Brock, Robert Murray, and others have introduced scholars to Ephrem's dispute and dialogue poems, we are still left with the question: why did Ephrem write these disputes? Or more properly, what do the disputes reveal about Ephrem’s stated intentions for his audience? The audience component is essential; these particular hymns vividly testify to their public, liturgical contexts.

This essay will draw primarily upon the “framing elements” of the precedence disputes found in Nisibene Hymns 52-59, Ephrem's disputes between Death and Satan. In these introductory and concluding addresses to his hearers, Ephrem gives us the clearest understanding of what he sought to communicate to his audience through these disputes.

I will argue that the Ephrem’s primary stated intention for his audience in these disputes is to exhort them to the wise exercise of human freedom. In a broader context, this essay will complicate the oft-mentioned characterization of the second half of the Nisibene Hymns as “eschatological” or “theological,” with these dispute poems as a prime example of the complexity of the themes which come to the fore in the various sub-sections of the collection.

""Inhaltsverzeichnis

Miscellanea Orientalia Christiana

Von den Herausgebern

SYRIACA

Yulia Furman
Der erste Schöpfungstag und die „ersten Naturen“ in der „Geschichte der zeitlichen Welt“ von Johannes bar Penkaye

Evgeny Barsky, Maksim Kalinin
„Werdet nicht wie die Kinder“: Adam im dritten Band von Isaak dem Syrer

Grigory Kessel
Isaak von Ninive. Zwei Traktate aus der neugefundenen Sammlung

Yury Arzhanov
Aristotelische Naturphilosophie in der syrischen Schule

Nikolai Seleznyov
Sieben Kanones und neun Zeichen: Der doktrinäre Teil des liturgischen Poems „Deutung der Geheimnisse“ von Johannes bar Zoʿbi

Mikhail Tolstoluzhenko
„Hier ist die Stiftshütte des Gottes des Jakobus“: Spitznamen als Argument in der interkonfessionellen Polemik

CAUCASIANA

Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev
Rückkehr zur Geburtshöhle: das Gedächtnis der erstgeschaffenen Menschheit in der armenischen „Schrift über die Kindheit des Herrn“ und in den verwandten Quellen

Tamara Pataridze
Gibt es Übersetzungen aus der syrischen in die georgische Sprache?

Dmitri Korobeinikov
Am Vorabend von Manzikert: Ein armenisches Kolophon aus dem Jahr 1067

COPTICA & AETHIOPICA

Anton Voytenko
Eine koptische Legende über Eudoxia als eine „alternative Geschichte“ der Regierung von Konstantin dem Großen

Dmitri Bumazhnov
Unbekannte christliche Parallelen zum Gespräch Jesu mit einem Schädel

Alexey Gudkov
Der äthiopische Buchschreiber (anhand der Miniaturmalerei von 14.–18. Jh. und der Feldforschungen vom Ende des 20.–Anfang des 21. Jh.)

TURCICA

Anton Pritula
Syroturcica: Ein zweisprachiges Strophengedicht aus der Mongolenzeit

ARABICA

Alexander Treiger
Die Christologie des „Briefes von den Christen Zyperns“

Nikolai Seleznyov
„Passio secundum Ibn al-Akfānī“: Die Lehre der christlichen Konfessionen über die Kreuzesleiden in der traditionellen arabisch-islamischen Religionswissenschaft

Konstantin Pantschenko
Gedenken an die Vergangenheit: Der antiochenische Patriarch Makarius III. az-Zaʿīm als Historiker

Dmitry Morozov
Eine neue Arbeit zur Frühgeschichte der Bibeltexte in der arabischen Sprache

Unsere Autoren
"

Table of Contents :: Editorial :: SYRIACA :: Yulia Furman, The first day of the Creation and "the first natures" in the History of the Temporal World of John bar Penkaye :: Evgeny Barsky, Maksim Kalinin, "Do not be like children": Adam in the Third volume of Isaac the Syrian :: Grigory Kessel, Two treatises from the newly discovered collection of Isaac of Nineveh :: Yury Arzhanov, Physica of Aristotle in the Syriac school :: Nikolai Seleznyov, Seven canons and nine signs: Doctrinal part of the liturgical poem of John bar Zo'bi Explanation of the Mysteries :: Mikhail Tolstoluzhenko, "Here is the tabernacle of God of Jacob": the nickname as argument in the inter-denominational polemics :: CAUCASIANA :: Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Return to the Cave of the Nativity: the memory of the first created humanity in the Armenian "Writing about the Childhood of the Lord" and the related sources :: Tamara Pataridze, Do the translations from Syriac into Georgian exist? :: Dimitri Korobeinikov, Before Mantzikert: An Armenian Colophon of 1067 :: COPTICA et AETHIOPICA :: Anton Voytenko, The Coptic legend on Eudoxia as an "alternative history" of the reign of Constantine the Great :: Dmitrij Bumazhnov, Unknown Christian parallels to the Muslim legend on the dialog between Jesus and the skull :: Alexey Gudkov, The Ethiopian Scribe (with reference to the miniature painting of the 14th-18th century and the field research from the late 20th-early 21st century) :: TURCICA :: Anton Pritula, Syroturcica: Bilingual poem from the Mongol time :: ARABICA :: Alexander Treiger, The Christology of the Letter from the People of Cyprus :: Nikolai Seleznyov, Passio secundum Ibn al-Akfani: the doctrine of Christ’s Passions on the Cross in the traditional Muslim religious studies :: Constantin Panchenko, To recall the past: Patriarch Macarius of Antioch as historian :: Dmitry Morozov, A new book on the early history of the text of the Arabic Bible. [Review of Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the "People of the Book" in the Language of Islam]."