HYMNS AND HOMILIES
of
Ephraim the Syrian,
and from the
DEMONSTRATIONS
of
Aphrahat the Persian Sage;
Edited, with an Introductory Dissertation, by,
John Gwynn, D.D., D.C.L.,
Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin
Preface.
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In the following selection from the voluminous writings of Ephraim, the great light of the Syrian Church of the fourth century, I have endeavored to give adequate specimens of his Hymns and of his Homilies; but have not included any part of his Commentaries on Holy Scripture. These last contain much that is worthy of study, but would not be found attractive to the general reader; nor could they be fairly represented by a series of extracts such as the limits of the present volume would admit of.
The Hymns (with small exceptions, presently to be specified), and the Homilies, which I have selected, appear now for the first time in an English version; and are translated from Syriac texts which have come to light within the last fifty years, in the great collection of manuscripts acquired by the British Museum by the purchase of the library of the monastery of the Theotokos in the Nitrian Desert, in Egypt.
To these I have added eight chosen from the twenty-three Demonstrations, or Epistles, of Ephraim's contemporary Aphrahat. These also appear for the first time in English, and are translated from a Syriac text, long lost, and lately recovered from the same famous collection.
Of the Hymns of Ephraim, I have placed the Nisibene series first, including forty-six of the total number (originally seventy-seven; but a few are lost). The first twenty-one, relating to the history of Nisibis and of its Bishops, I have given in full, because of their special interest and historic value. The translation of these is the work of the Rev. Joseph T. Sarsfield Stopford, B.A. (Dublin), Rector of Castle Combe in the Diocese of Gloucester. It follows the text edited by Dr. Bickell (Leipzig, 1866), from Nitrian mss.
Of the Hymns On the Nativity, which stand next in order, the first thirteen have already appeared in the Oxford "Library of the Fathers" (1847), translated by the Rev. J. B. Morris, M.A., from the text printed in the great Roman edition, S. Ephræmi Syri Opera Syriaca (Rome, 1743). These were all of the series known when that edition was published; but since then six complete hymns, and some fragments of the same have been recovered from Nitrian mss. I have reprinted Mr. Morris's version of the thirteen, with some modifications, and have subjoined the Nitrian six, rendered from the text published by Professor Lamy, of Louvain, in Tom. II of his edition of Ephraim (Mechlin, 1889). These last, and the series of fifteen Hymns For the Epiphany which follow them, have been translated by the Rev. Albert Edward Johnston, B.D. (Dublin), formerly Assistant-Lecturer in Divinity in the University of Dublin, and now Principal of the Church Missionary Society's College, Benares. The remaining series, of seven Hymns On the Faith, also called The Pearl, is borrowed, like the thirteen On the Nativity, from Mr. Morris's version.
I have carefully revised and in parts rewritten all these translations of the Hymns, chiefly with a view to bringing into some approach to uniformity the style and method of rendering of a collection which thus includes the work of three independent translators. While very sensible of the high merit of Mr. Morris's work, and conscious that by retouching and altering it I may incur the blame of presumptuousness, I have thought it expedient to tone down somewhat of the exceeding severity of his faithfulness to his original, and to remove some of the harsh expressions and harsher inversions which make his version, valuable as it is to the student, almost repulsive, and often barely intelligible, to the English reader. Of his learned Notes, I have retained a few, some of them in a curtailed form, of those which seemed most useful for the illustration of the text.
The three Homilies of Ephraim, which follow the Hymns, have been translated by Mr. Johnston from Professor Lamy's text (as above, Tom. I., 1889).
The selections from the Demonstrations of Aphrahat are the work of the same translator, and follow the text of Dom Parisot's edition, forming Tom. I of the Patrologia Syriaca (Paris, 1894).
The versions of the Homilies and of the Demonstrations, being all the work of one and the same hand, have called for but few and trivial alterations from the editor. I have, however, revised them throughout; and am responsible for the general accuracy of the rendering of the originals in these, and in the whole of the selections now presented to the public.
In the Introductory Dissertation prefixed to the work, I have drawn largely on the materials supplied by the Prolegomena of Dr. Bickell's Carmina Nisibena, and of Professor Lamy's S. Ephræmi Hymni et Sermones, Tom. I. and Tom. II.; and by Dr. Forget's Treatise De Vita Aphraatis, and the Preface of Dom Parisot to Tom. I. of the Patrologia Syriaca.
John Gwynn.
Trinity College, Dublin, 31st March, 1898.
Introductory Dissertation.
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Ephraim the Syrian
and
Aphrahat the Persian Sage.
------------------------
Preliminary.
The two Fathers of the Syrian Church, from whose writings the present Volume presents a selection, are from more than one point of view fitly associated as examples of the leaders of Syriac theological thought and literature. They are the earliest Syriac authors of whom any considerable remains survive; and they both represent the religious mind of the Syrian Church, but little affected by influences from without, other than the all-pervading influence of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.
Syriac Literature is, on the whole, of derivative growth. It consists largely of versions or adaptations from the Greek. The Syriac language, in the hands of those to whom the Syriac Church owes the admirable version of the Scriptures known as the "Peshitto," proved itself capable of reproducing adequately, not only the sublime conceptions of God and of man's relations to God which belong to the cognate Hebrew of the Old Testament, but also--the wider, subtler, and more complex religious ideas for which the writers of the New Testament found their fit vehicle in the Greek. But the Peshitto, great as its value must have been to the religious life of Syriac-speaking Christians, never became to them what Luther's Bible has been to Germany, and the "Authorized" Bible of King James's translators to England--an inspiring force in literature, not merely to elevate and enrich its language, but to quicken it in every branch. Syriac literature was indeed deeply penetrated by the Syriac Bible, but its level was never raised above mediocrity. For the most part it is imitative not original;--nay, it rarely succeeds in assimilating so as to make its own what it has borrowed. The Syriac translator, if he worked on the writings of a Greek divine, would often paraphrase or even interpolate; if of a Greek historian, would subjoin a continuation; but he would seldom venture farther. Those who essayed independent authorship were few. A home-grown Syriac literature began with Ephraim and Aphrahat; but [setting aside a very small number of the writers who followed] it may almost be said to have ended with them. These two, and these alone, in place of being imitators or translators, were translated and imitated by the writers of foreign nations. Aphrahat's literary lot was the singular one, that his work survived in an alien tongue for alien readers, when the original had wellnigh perished out of the memory of his own people. To Ephraim pertains the high and unique distinction of having originated--or at least given its living impulse to--a new departure in sacred literature; and that, not for his own country merely, but for Christendom. From him came, if not the first idea, at all events the first successful example, of making song an essential constituent of public worship, and an exponent of theological teaching; and from him it spread and prevailed through the Eastern Churches, and affected even those of the West. To the Hymns, on which chiefly his fame rests, the Syriac ritual in all its forms owes much of its strength and richness; and to them is largely due the place which Hymnody holds throughout the Church everywhere. And hence it has come to pass that, in the Church everywhere, he stands as the representative Syrian Father, as the fixed epithet appended to his name attests--"Ephraim the Syrian,"--the one Syrian known and reverenced in all Christendom.
Of the two, it has been usual of late to reckon Aphrahat as the elder. Further on, it will be shown in this Dissertation that the reasons for so reckoning him are inadequate. For the present it suffices to note that they were contemporaries--both living and writing about the middle of the fourth century, and that priority of treatment cannot with confidence be claimed for either. On grounds of convenience, therefore, we may properly proceed to deal first with Ephraim, as being indisputably far the first in order of importance, of copiousness, and of celebrity.
First Part
Ephraim the Syrian.
I.--Summary of the Authenticated Facts of His Life.
All that is known, on early and trustworthy evidence, of the person and life of Ephraim may be briefly summed up. He was born within the Roman pale, in the ancient and famous city of Nisibis in Mesopotamia, in, or before, the earliest days of the reign (a.d. 306-337) of Constantine the Great: he was a disciple of St. Jacob, Bishop of that city, who died a.d. 338: and he lived in it, under Jacob and the three Bishops who successively followed him, through three unsuccessful sieges laid to it by Sapor, King of Persia, down to its final surrender under the terms of the ignominious peace concluded with Sapor by the Emperor Jovian after the defeat and death of his predecessor Julian (a.d. 363). Nisibis was then abandoned by its Christian inhabitants; and Ephraim finally settled at Edessa, and took up his abode as a "Solitary" in a cell on the "Mount of Edessa"--a rocky hill close to the city, where many anchorites sought retreat. Here he rose into repute as a teacher, and a champion against heresy; and no less as an ascetic and saint. The fame of St. Basil, metropolitan of Cæsarea in Cappadocia (370-379), drew him from his solitude to visit that great prelate and doctor, and from him he received the diaconate; but (though some affirm that he was advanced to the priesthood) it is agreed that he never became a Bishop. He died at an advanced age, in his retreat, in the year 373 according to most authorities, but some suppose him to have lived to 378. He was a most copious writer, and left an immense quantity of writings of which a large part is extant,--Sermons, Commentaries, and Hymns. These constitute such a body of instruction in the substance of Scripture and the faith of the church, that they have justly earned for him the title of malpono, or teacher. And not only have his Hymns done much to shape the ritual of the Syrian Churches, in which large portions of them are embodied, but to his Sermons this singular honour is paid, that lessons selected from them were appointed, and are still read, in the regular course of public worship.
II.--Materials for His Biography.
Fuller details, of more or less authentic character, are forthcoming in many quarters. In Syriac, we have two Lives, a longer and a shorter; but whether the latter is an abridgment of the former, or is rather the nucleus from which the other has been expanded, is questionable. Of both alike, the date and the authorship are undetermined. The longer of the two is entitled, the History [tash itha] of the holy Mar Ephraim. It varies not a little in the two copies of it [the Vatican and the Parisian] which have been edited; [249] and contains many things that are not easily credible, and some things that are irreconcilable with one another, or with established facts. In the main facts, however, this History is borne out by the Greek authorities--the narrations of three fifth-century historians, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, the brief notices of Jerome, De Viris Illustribus (392), and of Palladius, in his Lausiac History (circ. 420) ci., and (what is of most weight) the almost contemporary biographical particulars contained in the Encomium pronounced on Ephraim by Gregory of Nyssa. Other Greek Lives are extant;--one which bears the name of a writer coeval with Gregory, Amphilochius of Iconium, but is certainly by a later hand; one anonymous, and one ascribed to Simeon the Metaphrast, a writer of the tenth century. [250]
We proceed to give an outline of the contents of the Syriac History, adding to it here and there such further noteworthy details or incidents as have reached us from the other sources indicated. Further on, it will be our business to examine this narrative and ascertain how far its statements are in themselves credible, or attested by other and earlier evidence.
[249] The former in the Roman edition, Opera Syr., Tom. III, p. xxiii; the latter in Lamy's Hymni et Sermones, Tom. II.