Among the writers of the Syriac Christian tradition, none is as renowned as St. Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307–373), known to much of the later Christian world simply as “the Syrian.” The great majority ...of Ephrem’s works are poetry, with the madrāšē (“teaching songs”) especially prominent.
This volume presents English translations of four complete madrāšē cycles of Ephrem: On the Fast, On the Unleavened Bread, On the Crucifixion , and On the Resurrection . These collections include some of the most liturgically oriented songs in Ephrem’s corpus, and, as such, provide a window into the celebration of Lent and Easter in the Syriac-speaking churches of northern Mesopotamia in the fourth century. Even more significantly, they represent some of the oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition. Not only are the liturgical occasions of the springtime months a source of colorful imagery in these texts, but Ephrem also employs traditional motifs of warm weather, spring rainstorms, and revived vegetation, which likely reflect Hellenistic literary influences.
Like all of Ephrem’s poetry, these songs express early Christian theology in language that is symbolic, terse, and vibrant. They are rich with biblical allusions and references, especially to the Exodus and Passion narratives. They also reveal a contested religious environment in which Ephrem strove to promote the Christian Pascha and Christian interpretations of Scripture over and against those of Jewish communities in the region, thus maintaining firm boundaries around the identity and practices of the churches.
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.
Prior to the schism of the Syriac Christian churches in the mid-fifth century CE, the renowned poet and teacher Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307-73) was the most influential figure in the Syriac Christian ...tradition. Later Syriac Christians would come to revere Ephrem in large part for his accomplishments as a teacher of Christian Scripture. Despite renewed scholarly interest in Ephrem in recent decades, however, scholarship on his biblical exegesis remains rather fragmented. This dissertation examines Ephrem’s literary corpus with an eye to his practices as a reader and interpreter of Scripture. While the current scholarship has tended to emphasize Ephrem’s theological hermeneutic of Scripture, this dissertation argues that no single exegetical method unites Ephrem’s diverse corpus of hymns, homilies, commentaries, and polemical discourses, which were by nature occasional compositions. Rather, Ephrem used a variety of exegetical practices to bring Scripture’s words and imagery to bear in various literary genres and performative contexts. Given the broad scope of the topic, this study focuses on Ephrem’s use of one particular cluster of biblical passages—the Gospel accounts of the suffering and death of Jesus (identified hereafter as “the Passion narrative”). Ephrem regularly cites, references, and alludes to the Passion narrative throughout his corpus, making it a valuable case study for exploring how he engaged with, drew from, and transformed biblical sources. The argument of this dissertation proceeds in two stages. The first chapter serves as a prolegomenon to those that follow, outlining Ephrem’s exegetical methods and practices in the various literary genres in which he wrote. The following chapters (two through four) proceed to examine the three most common thematic motifs associated with the Passion narrative in Ephrem’s writings: anti-Jewish polemic (chapter two); payment of human debt (chapter three); and finally, the climactic victory of life over death (chapter four). Each of these chapters contributes further evidence to support the contention that Ephrem’s exegesis was fundamentally occasional, inextricably linked to the unique contexts and audiences of each of his many writings.
From the beginning, Christian writers have struggled to reconcile the New Testament’s varied accounts of the chronology of Jesus’ death and resurrection. In this paper, I will focus upon one ...chronological issue that drew the attention of Ephrem in his sixth Hymn on the Crucifixion¹—what I call the “three day problem.” The New Testament describes Jesus’ resurrection as occurring “on the third day,”² “in three days,”³ “after three days,”⁴ and most notoriously, “three days and three nights,” found in Matthew’s first account of the “sign of Jonah” (Mt 12:40). Here we read: “For as Jonah was three days and
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