Selections From The Hymns And Homilies Of Ephraim The Syrian, And From The Demonstrations Of Aphrahat The Persian Sage

Introductory Dissertation

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. Syriac literature was indeed deeply penetrated by the Syriac Bible. 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 Caesarea 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.—The Life, as Amplified by Mediaeval Biographers.

1. His Early Years.—Ephraim, according to this biography, was a Syrian of Mesopotamia, by birth, and by parentage on both sides. His mother was of Amid (now Diarbekr) a central city of that region; his father belonged to the older and more famous City of Nisibis, not far from Amid but near the Persian frontier, where he was priest of an idol named Abnil (or Abizal) in the days of Constantine the Great (306–337). This idol was afterwards destroyed by Jovian (who became Emperor in 363 after the extinction of the Flavian dynasty by the death of Julian). In Nisibis, then included within the Roman Empire, Ephraim was born. The date of his birth is not stated, but it cannot have been later than the earliest years of Constantine’s reign. Though the son of such a father, he was from his childhood preserved, by Divine grace which “chose him like Jeremiah from his mother’s womb,” from all taint of idolatrous worship and its attendant impurities, to be, like St. Paul, a “chosen vessel” to spread the light of truth and to quench heresy. The biographer records farther on, but without fixing its time, an intimation of his future work which Ephraim himself relates in his “Testament” as belonging to the days “when his mother carried him on her bosom.” He saw in dream or vision a vine springing from his mouth, which grew so high as to fill all that was under the heavens, and produced clusters whereon the fowls of the air fed, and which multiplied the more, the more they were fed on. These clusters (the Testament explains) were his Sermons; the leaves of the vine, his Hymns.

But his entrance into the Christian fold was not to be without hindrance and suffering. His father, finding the youth one day in converse with some Christians, was filled with anger, chastised him with cruel and almost fatal severity, and repaired to the shrine of his god to seek pardon for his son by sacrifice and prayer. A voice issuing from the idol rejected his intercession, warned him that his son was destined to be the persecutor of his father’s gods, and commanded his expulsion from home. The father obeyed: the son received the sentence with joy, and went out from his father’s house, carrying nothing with him and not knowing whither he went. His way was divinely directed to the famous and saintly Bishop, Jacob of Nisibis, to whom he told his story and by whom he was affectionately welcomed and admitted into the number of “Hearers,”—that is, Catechumens in the first stage of preparatory instruction. From the first he showed himself a diligent disciple, in fasting and prayer, and in daily attendance on the teaching of the Scriptures. He frequented the Bishop’s abode, imitated his virtues, attracted his special notice, and acquired a high place in his love as well as in that of all the Church.

A slanderous charge, however, was laid against him in his youthful manhood, which, but for supernatural interposition granted to his prayer, would have ruined his good name. A damsel of noble birth had been seduced by an official (Paramonarius, i.e., sacristan, or perhaps rather, steward) of the church, named likewise Ephraim. When pregnancy ensued and her frailty was detected, she at the instance of her paramour charged Ephraim the pious Catechumen as being the author of her shame. Her father laid the matter before the Bishop, who in much grief and consternation summoned his disciple to answer the accusation. The youth received it at first in amazed silence; but finally made answer, “Yea, I have sinned; but I entreat thy Holiness to pardon me.” Even after this seeming acknowledgment of guilt, however, the Bishop was unconvinced, and prayed earnestly that the truth might be revealed to him: but in vain,—a more signal clearing was in store for the humble and blameless youth. When the child of shame was born, and the father of the frail damsel required him to undertake the charge of it, he repeated his seeming confession of guilt to the Bishop; he received the infant into his arms: he openly entered the church carrying it; and he besought the congregation with tears, saying, “Entreat for me, my brethren, that this sin be pardoned to me.” After thus bearing for some days the burden of unmerited reproach, he perceived the great scandal caused to the people, and began to reflect that his meek acceptance of calumny was doing harm. On the following Sunday, therefore, after the Eucharist had been administered, he approached the Bishop in church in presence of the people, carrying the infant under his mantle, and obtained his permission to enter the bema (not the pulpit, but the raised sanctuary where the altar stood). Before the eyes of the astonished congregation, he produced the babe, held it up in his right hand, facing the altar, and cried aloud, “Child, I call on thee and adjure thee by the living God, who made heaven and earth and all that therein is, that thou confess and tell me truly, who is thy father?” The infant opened its mouth and said, “Ephraim the paramonarius.” Having thus spoken, it died that same hour. The people and the Bishop received this miraculous vindication of the wrongfully accused with amazement and tears; the father of the sinful mother fell on his knees and cried for forgiveness; the true partner of her sin fled and was seen in Nisibis no more; Satan was confounded; and Ephraim was restored to more than all the favour and affection he enjoyed before.

Not long after, the young disciple received a singular proof of the high esteem in which he was held by his Bishop. When summoned with the other prelates to the great Council of Nicaea (a.d. 325), Jacob took Ephraim with him as his attendant or secretary, and brought him into that holy Synod. It is to be inferred that a youth so chosen must have shown early maturity and zeal for the Faith. His presence on this first great battlefield of the Church’s war against heresy must have given a keen stimulus to his polemic activity, and influenced his subsequent life as a student and teacher of theology.

2. Siege of Nisibis.—After some years his course of assiduous study, obedience, and devout piety, was rudely broken by the alarm of war. Soon after the death of Constantine (a.d. 337), Sapor, king of Persia was moved to seize the opportunity offered by the removal of the great Emperor and the inexperience of his sons, and to attempt the recovery of the provinces on the Tigris which had been ceded by Narses his predecessor to Diocletian (under the treaty of a.d. 297), so as to push his border westward in advance of the line which had for forty years defined the eastern limits of the Roman Empire. To this end it was essential that he should obtain possession of Nisibis, the strength and situation of that city marking it as a necessary safeguard for the frontier he sought to attain; and to it accordingly he laid siege in great force. After seventy days’ successful resistance, he had recourse to a novel mode of assault by which the city was wellnigh overpowered. The river (Mygdonius ) which flowed through it was by his orders embanked and its waters intercepted, and then let loose so as to bear with destructive rush against the city wall. It gave way; and Sapor prepared to enter and take possession. To his dismay he found his advance vigorously repelled; he saw the breach filled by a fresh wall, manned and equipped with engines of war. The holy Bishop Jacob and the devout Ephraim, by their unceasing prayers within the church and their exhortations, had stimulated the garrison and the people to accomplish this work with incredible rapidity, and had secured the divine blessing on its timely completion. But a more amazing sight than the newly-built wall awaited Sapor. On the ramparts there appeared a Figure in royal apparel of radiant brightness,—the Emperor Constantius in outward semblance; though he was known to be far off, in Antioch. Sapor in blind fury assailed this majestic phantom with missiles, but soon desisted when he perceived the futility of his attack. His final discomfiture was brought to pass by Ephraim. Having first sought and obtained the Bishop’s sanction, he ascended a tower whence he could view the besieging host, and there he offered prayer to God that He should send on them a plague of gnats and mosquitos, and show by what puny agents Divine Power could effectually work the ruin of its adversaries. The prayer was instantly answered by a cloud of these insects, tiny but irresistible assailants, descending on the Persian host. Maddened by this plague, the horses flung their riders; the elephants broke loose and trampled down the men; the camp was thrown into irretrievable confusion; a storm of wind, rain, and thunder (adds another chronicler) enhanced the panic; and Sapor was forced to raise the siege and retire with ignominy and heavy loss instead of success.

Soon after, the saintly Bishop Jacob died, in the fulness of his virtues and his fame; and Ephraim in deep affliction conducted his funeral.

3. Removal to Edessa.—Our biographer then, passing over the remaining years of Constantius, goes on to the accession of Julian (a.d. 361). The troubles of the intervening period he assigns to the reign of Constans, whom (though he died before his brother Constantius) he supposes to have reigned after him and before Julian. He records the persecutions suffered by the Christians under the latter, the judgment that overtook him in his defeat and death by the hands of the Persians, the succession of Jovian, and the treaty concluded by him with Sapor, under which Nisibis was surrendered to Persia and emptied of its Christian inhabitants. Of Ephraim he tells us only that he raised his voice against Julian and his persecutions, and remained in Nisibis until its surrender, and then retired to a place called Beth-Garbaia, where he had been baptized at the age of eighteen and had received his first instruction in the Scriptures and in psalmody. Persecution having arisen there against the Church, he fled to Amid, where he spent a year; and thence proceeded to Edessa (now Urfa), which city, as soon as he came in sight of it, he fixed on as his permanent and final abode. As he was about to enter it, an incident occurred which nearly all the narratives of his life relate with variations, and which the historian Sozomen states to have been recorded in one of the writings of Ephraim himself. Beside the river Daisan which surrounds the city, he saw some women washing clothes in its waters. As he stood and watched them, one of them fixed her eyes on him and gazed at him so long as to move his anger. “Woman,” he said, “art thou not ashamed?” She answered, “It is for thee to look on the ground, for from thence thou art; but for me it is to look at thee, for from thee was I taken.” He marvelled at the reply and acknowledged the woman’s wisdom; and left the spot saying to himself, “If the women of this city are so wise, how much more exceedingly wise must its men be!”

Other authorities (including Ephraim’s contemporary, Gregory of Nyssa, who professes to collect the facts of his Encomium exclusively from Ephraim’s own written remains) give a somewhat different turn to this story. According to them, Ephraim approached the city, praying and expecting to meet at his first entrance there some holy and wise man by whose converse he might profit. The first person whom he encountered at the gate was a harlot. Shocked and bitterly disappointed, he eyed her, and was passing on; but when he noticed that she eyed him, in turn, he asked the meaning of her bold gaze. In this version of the incident, her answer was, “It is meet and fit that I gaze on thee, for from thee, as man, I was taken; but look not thou on me, but rather on the ground whence thou wast taken.” Ephraim owned that he had learned something of value even from this outcast woman; and praised God, who from the mouth of such an unlooked-for teacher, had fulfilled his desire for edification.

Another woman of Edessa is related by some of these authorities to have accosted the holy man, expecting that, even if she failed to tempt him to unchastity, she might at least move him to the sin, against which he strove no less sedulously to guard himself, of anger. He affected to yield to her solicitation; but when she invited him to fix on a place of assignation, he proposed that it should be in the open and frequented street. When she objected to such shameless publicity, he replied, “If we are ashamed in sight of men, how much more ought we to be ashamed in the sight of God, who knows all secret things and will bring all to His judgment!” By this reply the woman was moved to repentance and amendment, and gave up her sinful life,—and finally (as some add) retired from the world into a convent.

In Edessa, Ephraim at first earned a humble livelihood in the service of a bath-keeper, while giving his free time to the task of making the Scriptures known to the heathen who then formed a large part of the population of the city. But before long he was led, by the advice of a monk whom he casually met, to join himself to one of the Solitaries (or anchorites) who dwelt in the caves of the adjacent “Mount of Edessa” (a rocky range of hills, now Nimrud Dagh). There he passed his time in prayer, fasting, and study of the Scriptures.

But a divine intimation was sent to call him back from his retreat into active life in the city. A vision came to the Solitary under whom Ephraim had placed himself. This man, as he stood at midnight outside his cell after prayer and psalmody, saw an angel descending from heaven and bearing in his hands a great roll written on both sides, and heard him say to them that stood by, “To whom shall I give this volume that is in my hands?” They answered, “To Eugenius the Solitary of the desert of Egypt.” Again he asked, “Who is worthy of it?” They answered, “Julian the Solitary.” The Angel rejoined, “None among men is this day worthy of it, save Ephraim the Syrian of the Mount of Edessa.”

He, to whom this vision came, at first regarded it as a delusion; but he soon found reason to accept it as from God. Visiting Ephraim’s solitary cell, he found him engaged in writing a commentary on the Book of Genesis, and was amazed at the exegetical power shown in the work of a writer so untrained. When this was speedily followed by a Commentary on Exodus, the truth of the vision became apparent, and the Solitary hastened to the “School” of Edessa and showed the book to “the doctors and priests, and chief men of the city.” They were filled with admiration, and when they learned that Ephraim of Nisibis was the author, and heard of the vision by which his merit was revealed, they went at once to seek him out in his retreat. In his modesty he fled from their approach; but a second divine vision constrained him to return. In the valley where he had sought to hide, an Angel met him and asked, “Ephraim, wherefore fleest thou?” He answered, “Lord, that I may sit in silence, and escape from the tumult of the world.” “Look to it,” rejoined the Angel, “that the word be not spoken of thee, Ephraim hath fled from me as an heifer whose shoulder hath drawn back from the yoke” (Hos. iv. 16, x. 11—quoted loosely). Ephraim pleaded with tears, “Lord, I am weak and unworthy;” but the Angel silenced his excuses with the Saviour’s words, No man lighteth a candle and putteth it under a bushel, but on a candlestick that all may see the light (St. Matth. v. 5, St. Luke xi. 33). Accepting the rebuke, Ephraim returned to Edessa, with much prayer for strength from on high, to combat false doctrine. There he was ill received, and taunted as one who had fled in hypocritical affectation of reluctance, and was now returning in vainglorious quest of applause. This reproach he met with the meek reply, “Pardon me, my brethren, for I am a humble man;” at which they cried out the more against him, “Come, see the madman, the fool!” He held his ground notwithstanding, and taught many.

But this work which his adversaries failed to put down, the over-zeal of an admirer brought to a sudden close. One of the recluses of the Mount, having occasion to visit the city, saw him and followed him crying, “This is the fan in the Lord’s hand, wherewith He wilt purge all His floor, and the tares of heresy: this is the fire whereof our Lord said, I am come to send fire on the earth” (St. Matth. iii. 12, St. Luke xii. 49). Hearing this, certain chief men of the city, heretics, heathens, and Jews, seized him and drew him outside the gates, stoned him and left him wellnigh dead. Next morning he fled back to his cell on the Mount.

4. Work as a Teacher.—There, he gave himself to the work of refuting with his pen the heresies and misbeliefs of his time, which he had thus been hindered by violence from combating in speech. Disciples gathered round him, and a school formed itself under the teacher in his retirement. The names are recorded by our narrator of Zenobius, Simeon, Isaac, Asuna, and Julian. Others add those of Abraham, Abba, and Mara. All these are named with favour in his Testament (a document of which we shall treat hereafter) except Isaac; but two others, Paulinus and Aurit (or Arnad) are denounced as false to the Faith.

The biographer introduces into his narrative of this stage of Ephraim’s life an account of his famous dream of the vine (above referred to), which foreshowed his future fertility as a writer, as related in his Testament. It will be given farther on, in his own words.

Remote and isolated as was his abode, the fame of the illustrious Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, reached him there, and moved in him a desire to see and hear so great a divine. He prayed for divine guidance in the matter; and in answer a vision was sent to him. Before the Holy Table there seemed to stand a pillar of fire, whereof the top reached unto heaven, and a voice from heaven was heard to cry, “Such as thou seest this pillar of fire, such is the great Basil.”

5. Journey to Egypt, and Sojourn There.—Thus encouraged, Ephraim set out on his journey, taking with him an interpreter, for he was unable to speak Greek. In the first instance, however (according to the History), he made his way, not to Cappadocia, but to a seaport (not named by the writer—but probably Alexandretta is meant) where he took ship for Egypt. In the voyage the ship encountered perils, first in a storm, and afterwards from a sea-monster, but was delivered from both by his faith, which enabled him with words of power and the sign of the cross to rebuke the winds and waves into calm, and to slay the monster. Arrived in Egypt, he made his way to the city Antino (apparently Antinoe or Antinoopolis), and thence towards the famous desert of Scete, in the Nitrian valley—then, and still, the place of many monasteries. Here he found an unoccupied cave, in which, as a cell, he and his companion took up their abode for eight years. His habits of life in this retreat—and (as it appears) at Edessa—were of the most austere. His food was barley bread, varied only by parched corn, pulse, or herbs; his drink, water; his clothing, squalid rags. His flesh was dried up like a potsherd, over his bones. He is described as being of short stature, bald, and beardless. He never laughed, but was of sad countenance. Other authorities, Gregory especially, dwell much and with admiration on his profuse and perpetual weeping.

In this Egyptian retreat he is related to have proved himself a victorious adversary against the Arians. On his arrival he had sought out and found a monk named Bishoi, to whom, because of his special sanctity, he had been divinely directed before he quitted Edessa; and with him he had sojourned for a week, communing with him by means of a miraculous gift which endowed each with the language of the other. By this gift he was enabled to carry on controversy with Egyptian heretics, many of whom he reclaimed to orthodoxy. Over one of these, an aged monk who had been perverted to heresy by the possession of a demon, he exercised a further miraculous power for his restoration, by casting out the evil spirit and restoring the old man at once to his right mind and to the right faith. This gift of language, and the intercourse of Ephraim with Bishoi, are told only in the Vatican form of the History, which adds that he not only spoke Egyptian, but wrote discourses in that tongue. The other version of it represents him as having learned to speak Egyptian in the ordinary way. It is to be noted that the name of Bishoi (in Greek, Pasoes) is known as that of the founder (in the fourth century) of the monastery of Amba Bishoi, still occupied by a community of monks, in the Nitrian Desert; and that in those sequestered regions the tradition of Ephraim’s visit to Bishoi was lingering even within the last century and probably still lingers.

6. Visit to St. Basil of Caesarea.—This long sojourn ended, he resumed his purpose of visiting Basil, and left Egypt for Caesarea (which our narrator evidently supposes to be a maritime city—probably confusing it with the Caesarea which was the metropolis of Palestine). He was anxious that his first sight of the great Archbishop should be on the Feast of the Epiphany, and he succeeded in so timing his journey as to arrive the day before that Feast. On enquiry, he learned that Basil would take his part in its celebration in the great church; and thither accordingly on the morrow he and his interpreter repaired. On the same day (adds our historian) was the commemoration of St. Mamas. At first, when he saw the great Prelate in gorgeous vestments attended by his train of richly-robed clergy, the heart of the humble ascetic failed him: this man so surrounded with state and splendor could not be (he thought) the pillar of fire revealed to him in his vision. But when Basil ascended the bema to preach, Ephraim, though he could understand little if anything of the orator’s eloquence, was speedily brought to another mind. As he listened he saw the Holy Ghost (in the form of a dove, says Gregory, as also the Vatican History,—or, according to another account, of a tongue of fire), speaking from his mouth, (Gregory says, hovering by his ear and inspiring his words); and he joined in the applause which each period of the oration drew from the audience,—so vehemently that while others were content to utter the cry of approval (aha) but once, he reiterated it (aha, aha). Basil noticing this sent his Archdeacon to invite the stranger into the Sanctuary; but the invitation was modestly declined. Another version of the story places this invitation before the sermon, attributing to Basil a spiritual insight which discerned the holy man’s presence and identified him. Again the Archdeacon was sent to summon him—this time, by name: “Come, my lord Ephraim, before the bema; the Archbishop bids thee.” Amazed to find himself thus discovered, Ephraim yielded, and praised God, saying, “Great art Thou in very truth; Basil is the pillar of fire; through his mouth speaks the Holy Ghost.” He begged, however, to be excused from coming into the Archbishop’s presence publicly, and asked to be allowed instead to salute him privately in the “Treasury,” “after the Sacred Oblation.” Accordingly, when “the Divine Mysteries” had been completed, the Archbishop’s Syncellus repeated the invitation, saying, “Draw near, Apostle of Christ, that we may enjoy thy presence.” He complied, and in his mean rags, silent, and with downcast looks, stood before the magnificent Prelate. Basil rose from his seat, received him with the kiss of brotherhood, then bowed his head, and even prostrated himself before the humble monk, greeting him as the “Father of the Desert,” the foe of unclean spirits; and asked the purpose of his journey,—”Art thou come to visit one who is a sinner? The Lord reward thy labor.” He then proceeded to give the Holy Eucharist to both the strangers. In the interchange of speech (through the interpreter) that ensued, Basil enquired how it was that one who spoke no Greek had followed his discourse with such applause. When he heard, in reply, of the visible manifestation of the Holy Ghost, he exclaimed, “I would I were Ephraim, to be counted worthy by the Lord of such a boon!” Ephraim then entreated of him a boon; “I know, O holy man, that whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, He will give it thee: ask Him, therefore, to enable me to speak Greek.” Basil in reply disclaimed such intercessory power, but proposed that they should join in prayer for the desired gift, reminding him of the promise, “He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him” (Ps. cxlv. 19). They prayed accordingly for a long space; and when they had ceased, Basil enquired, “Why, my Lord Ephraim, receivest thou not the Order of Priesthood, which befits thee?” “Because I am a sinner,” answered Ephraim (through the interpreter). “I would thy sins were mine!” exclaimed Basil. He then desired Ephraim to bow his head, laid his hand on him and recited over him the Prayer of Ordination to the Diaconate, inviting him to respond. Forthwith, to the amazement of all, Ephraim answered in Greek, with the due form, “Save, and lift me up, O God.” And thenceforth he was able to speak Greek with ease and correctness. He persisted, however, in declining the higher Order of the Priesthood; but his interpreter was admitted both Deacon and Priest by Basil before they departed. Their sojourn lasted about a fortnight. Other writers, however, call Ephraim a Priest; and there is a passage where he himself seems to speak of himself, as holding the Priesthood (koh’ niyo); but Palladius, Jerome, Sozomen, and others of the best-informed writers, confirm our History. He is in fact frequently styled Ephraim the Deacon, as if to emphasize the fact that one so high in repute never rose above that lowly rank.

Traces of Ephraim’s influence are to be found in two places of Basil’s writings. It can scarcely be doubted that he points to Ephraim when (De Spiritu Sancto, xxix. 74), in defending the familiar formula “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,”—and again (Homil. in Hexaem. ii. 6), in explaining the action of the Spirit on the waters (Genesis i. 2)—he appeals to the authority of an unnamed man of great knowledge and judgment, “as closely conversant with the knowledge of all that is true, as he is far removed from worldly wisdom,” a “Mesopotamian,” a “Syrian.” From him he says he learned—in the former instance, that “and” was to be inserted before the name of the Holy Ghost as well as before that of the Son;—and, in the latter, that the Spirit was not to be conceived as being “carried upon” the waters (as the Septuagint represents); but (as the Peshitto more truly represents the Hebrew), as “brooding upon” them, to cherish them into life—as a bird on her nest. The verb thus variously rendered is common to the Hebrew with the cognate Syriac; and the explanation of it given by Basil is in fact found in Ephraim’s extant Commentary on the passage of Genesis: but he understands the “spirit” to be the wind—not (as Basil) the Holy Ghost.

7. Return to Edessa.—Ephraim’s return to Edessa was hastened by the tidings that in his absence no less than nine new heresies had appeared there. His way thither lay through Samosata; and there he fell in with a chief man of the city, a heretic, who was passing by with a train of attendant youths. As the holy man sat by the wayside to eat bread, these followers mocked him, and one of them wantonly smote him on the cheek. The injury was borne in meek silence; but it was speedily avenged on the smiter, by a viper which came out from under a stone whereon he sat, and bit him so that he died on the spot. His master and companions hastened after Ephraim, and overlook him as he was begging his food in a village beyond the city which he had just passed through. At their entreaty he turned back with them, and by his prayers restored the dead youth to life. The nobleman and his followers, seeing this miracle, were converted to the orthodox faith.

8. Controversies.—Arrived at Edessa, he engaged at once in the conflict against the multiform heresies of the place, old and new—Manichean and Marcionite, as well as Arian. Of all the forms of error he encountered, the one that gave him most grief and trouble was that which had been originated about the year 200 by a Syrian, Bardesan. Of this heresiarch he writes, in one of his Nisibene Hymns.

The controversy against the disciples of this man gave to the literary work of Ephraim an impulse to which his fame is largely due. His polemic in the above instance took, as we see, the form of a hymn; and his biographer informs us that it was in this controversy he first was led to adopt hymnody as a vehicle for teaching truth and confuting error. Of his hymns we possess some which can be confidently assigned to an earlier period—the first twenty-one of the Nisibene collection (which are the Nisibene Hymns proper), belonging to the epoch of the third siege (a.d. 350); but those are songs of triumph and thanksgiving, or of personal eulogy and exhortation,—not of controversy. The idea of the controversial use of hymnody he borrowed (we are told) from his adversaries. It appears that Harmodius, the son of Bardesan, had popularized the false teaching of his father, as embodied in a series of a hundred and fifty hymns (in profane rivalry with the Psalms of David), by setting them to attractive tunes, which caught the ear of the multitude, and inclined them to receive his doctrines. So Ephraim himself tells us (attributing the work, however, to Bardesan solely) in his Homily (metrical) LIII., “Against Heretics” (not included in our selection). “He fashioned hymns, and joined them with tunes; and composed psalms, and brought in moods. By weights and measures, he portioned language. He blended for the simple poison with sweetness. The sick will not choose the food of wholesomeness. He would look to David, that he might be adorned with his beauty, and commended by his likeness. An hundred and fifty psalms, he likewise composed.”

To confute the heresies thus circulated, Ephraim borrowed the tunes employed by Harmodius; and his hymns, set to these tunes, soon carried the day in favor of orthodoxy, partly by the force of their truth, partly by their superior literary power, and partly by the help of a choir formed among the nuns whom he employed to sing them, morning and evening, in the churches. Thus the rival hymnody of heresy was superseded, and the hymns of Ephraim gained the place they have ever since held in the Church, wherever Syriac is the ecclesiastical language,—even though it is no longer the vernacular. Another demonstration of Ephraim’s zeal against heresy, which the compiler of the History judiciously omits, is attested, and with evident approval, by Gregory of Nyssa.

Apollinaris, who was his contemporary, and whose erroneous teaching he held in abhorrence, had committed his heresies to writing in two volumes which he gave into the keeping of a woman, a follower of his sect. Ephraim approached this woman and persuaded her to lend him the books, pretending that he agreed with the doctrine of their author and desired to use them in controversy against its opponents. At her instance he returned them in a short time; but before so doing, he treated them with fish-glue in such fashion that the leaves of each cohered into a solid mass, while to outward appearance they were unharmed. Soon after, he challenged Apollinaris to meet him in a public disputation concerning the articles of faith which the heretic had impugned. The latter sought to decline the controversy, pleading his old age and infirmities; but consented to it,—only on condition, however, that he should be allowed to read from these volumes the statement and defence of his tenets therein written by him. On these terms, the disputants met. Apollinaris was called on to maintain his thesis, and his writings were placed in his hands; but when he went to open the books, it was in vain. No part of either volume would yield to his fingers; he was obliged to desist and to retire, baffled and ashamed; in such dismay as to bring on an illness that nearly proved fatal.

Another incident of this period, related in the History, is a miracle wrought by Ephraim on a paralytic. Seeing him as he sat and begged at the door of a church in Edessa, the holy man asked him: “Wilt thou be made whole?” “Yea, my Lord; lay thy hand on me,” was the reply. With the words, “In the Name of Christ, arise and walk,” he was cured instantly; and departed, glorifying God.

At the end of four years, messengers came to him from Basil, summoning him to come and receive consecration to the Episcopate, for some see unnamed (to which, as Sozomen relates, he had been elected;—Hist. Eccles. II. 16). When he learned their errand, he feigned madness, going to and fro in the streets in unseemly fashion, in motley garb, eating bread as he went and letting his spittle run down. Thus he succeeded in evading the undesired elevation: the messengers, shocked at his behaviour, returned without him, and reported that they found him a madman. “O hidden pearl of price” (cried Basil) “whom the world knows not! Ye are the madmen, and he the sane.”

The city and the Mount of Edessa suffered in these days from an invasion of the Huns, who plundered, murdered, and ravished, without mercy,—not even sparing the cells and convents. This calamity Ephraim is said to have recorded, in writings which have not reached us.

9. Persecution by Valens.—From another peril the Edessenes were saved by their faith and constancy. In the days of their Bishop Barses (361–378), the Arian Emperor Valens (364–378), in the course of his persecution of the orthodox, approached the city and summoned the inhabitants to wait upon him in his camp and hear his pleasure there. They disregarded the command, and gathered into the great Church of St. Thomas, where they and their Bishop continued unceasingly in prayer. The historian Socrates, a trustworthy and early (fifth century) authority, confirms our History here; and explains that Valens had ordered their Church to be surrendered to the Arians, and was enraged against them for resisting his decree, and against his Prefect Modestus for failing to carry it out. Valens then, finding them contumacious, ordered one of his generals (this same Modestus, according to Sozomen, who also relates the story) to enter the city and put the people to the sword. As Modestus, who was a humane man, sought to persuade them to yield, he met a woman leading her two sons to the Church. He strove to stop her, warning her of the danger she incurred; but her reply was, “I hear that they who fear God are to be slain, and I am in haste to win the crown with the rest.” “But what of these boys?” he asked. “Are they thy sons?” “They are,” she answered, “and we pray, both I and they, that we may be made an oblation to the Lord.” Amazed at her resolve, he reported the matter to Valens, to convince him that the Edessenes were prepared to die rather than submit. The Emperor was moved to relent; the people and their Bishop and priests came forth; he heard their plea, was ashamed of his cruel purpose, pardoned their disobedience, and departed. This well-attested incident is to be assigned to 371, or to the preceding or ensuing year.

After all was thus restored to peace and orthodoxy, Ephraim withdrew to his retreat on the Mount, which he is not recorded to have again quitted, save on one occasion, to be presently related.

10. Penitent sent to Ephraim by Basil: Basil’s Death.—The death of Basil (at the end of 378) is said by our author to have caused great grief to Ephraim, and to have been lamented by him in hymns. But (as will be shown below) this is hardly possible, even if the latest date for Ephraim’s death be accepted.

Another miraculous incident connected with Ephraim’s biography, belongs to the year of Basil’s death. A woman of high rank, but of evil life, in Caesarea, being moved to penitence, wrote on a paper a full confession of her sins, and gave it to Basil, who at her entreaty laid it with prayer before the Lord. Her repentance and his intercession prevailed so far, that the record of all her guilt disappeared from the paper, save of one sin, more heinous than the rest. Disappointed thus of her hope of full pardon, she had recourse again to Basil, supplicating that this sin too might be wiped out. He encouraged her to persevere in prayer, and advised her to repair to the Mount of Edessa, to Ephraim, and through him obtain her desire. To Ephraim accordingly she made her way, and cried to him, saying, “Have pity on me, thou holy one of God.” When he heard Basil’s advice and her petition, he disavowed all such power to prevail with God as Basil had ascribed to him, and advised her rather to hasten back and obtain her Archbishop’s farther intercession. She returned accordingly to Caesarea; but, as it seemed, too late: Basil had died before her arrival, and she met his corpse as it was carried to burial. In despair, she prostrated herself in the dust, proclaimed her story to all that stood by, and upbraided the dead saint, “Woe is me, servant of God! why didst thou send me far away that I should return too late and meet thee borne to the grave! The Lord judge betwixt me and thee, who hast sent me to another, when thyself couldst have absolved me!” One of the attendant clergy, desiring to learn what was the sin for which pardon was so hard to win, took from her the paper she held, and opening found it blank. The last and deadliest of her list had vanished like the rest: and “thus, by the prayers of Basil and of Ephraim, and by the woman’s faith and perseverance, her sins were all of them blotted out.”

After this occurrence, the History places the following narrative of Ephraim’s last intervention in earthly concerns. It is related likewise by Palladius (Ephraim’s younger contemporary) and by Sozomen.

11. Exertions in Relief of Famine.—In a season of severe famine, he ascertained that grain was being hoarded in the stores of certain persons who gave nothing to the starving poor. When he rebuked their inhumanity, they excused themselves on the plea that none was to be found of such probity as to guarantee fairness and honesty in the distribution of relief. Ephraim at once offered his services, and was accepted as their agent throughout the famine season, to dispense large sums as the treasurer and steward of their bounty. Among other things, he provided three hundred letters, partly for removing the sick to stations where they were duly tended, partly for carrying the dead for interment. A body of helpers worked with him in administering relief, and their care extended not merely through the city, but to the country and villages adjacent. The year of dearth ended, a year of plenty ensued; Ephraim retired to his cell,—this time to leave it no more. He died a month after the close of the charitable labours. Of them his biographer, following for once the better instinct which recognizes higher worth in services of love than in ascetic practices, writes thus:—”God gave him this occasion that therein he might win the crown in the close of his life.”

12. His Testament.—In his Testament, which professes to have been composed in immediate anticipation of his end, he laid on his disciples a solemn charge that his body should be buried humbly, covered with no garment save his tunic (cotheno). Gregory of Nyssa adds that a rich friend who, though informed of his prohibition, had provided beforehand for this purpose a costly robe, was punished by the possession of an evil spirit, which tormented him until, on his confession, the dying saint relieved him, casting out the demon by prayer and laying on of hands.

His body was followed to the grave by all the people of the city and neighborhood, and by the Bishops, priests, and deacons of the province, with the monks, whether “anchorites, stylites, or coenobites”—solitary, or living in communities. It was laid (as he had desired) in the strangers’ burial-ground; but not long after, the citizens removed it thence, and made a grave for him, deacon as he was, among those of their Bishops,—probably in the monastery (now belonging to the Armenians) of St. Sergius on the Mount of Edessa, where his tomb is shown to this day, as we learn from the Reise in Syr. u Mesopot. of Dr. Sachau (p. 202).

13. Death and Burial.—His death occurred in Haziran (June), on the 15th according to our History (Vat.), but other authorities differ, assigning it to the 9th, 18th, or 19th. The shorter Syriac Life gives the year as 372,—thus contradicting the History which represents him as living in the year of Basil’s death (378).

Even in the time of Gregory of Nyssa, an annual commemoration of Ephraim had become customary in the Church, which gave occasion for the Encomium above referred to. In the East, it was held on the 28th of January; but in the Roman Martyrology his name is recorded on the 1st of February.

III.—His Writings: Their Characteristics.

His extant works (some of which are known to us only in a Greek version), and those of his lost works of which the titles are recorded, divide themselves into three classes;—Commentaries on Scripture, Homilies (mimre), and Hymns (madrashe).

1. Commentaries.—His Commentaries belonged (if we may trust the Life) to his later years, after his migration to Edessa, when he was past middle life.

2. Homilies.—The Homilies are very varied in character. Many are controversial,—directed against the Jews, against heathenism in the person of the Emperor Julian, against the heresies of Manes, of Marcion, of Bardesan, of the Anomoean followers of Arius. Others set forth articles of the Faith—the Creation, the Fall, Redemption by the Passion and Crucifixion of Our Lord, His Descent into Hades, His Resurrection, the Mission of the Holy Spirit, the Rest of Paradise, the Second Coming, the End of the World. Others are expository, treating of narratives from the Old and the New Testaments, such as the life of Joseph, the Repentance of Nineveh, or the story of “the woman who was a sinner” of St. Luke vii.—Others again are hortatory—calling to repentance, warning against sin, threatening future retribution, extolling virginity. Of the Homilies two—one doctrinal, of Our Lord; one expository, of the sinful woman, are given in this selection. It is to be noted that the Homilies are usually metrical in form, being written in regular stichoi (lines of uniform length). And some of them—for example, a series of nine for the “Rogation Days,” and another of eight for the “Passion Week” (week before Easter), and the vigil of “New Sunday” (first after Easter)—were and still are regularly read as lessons, as part of the offices of the Church; a singular mark of reverence—extended, it seems, to the sermons of no other divine.

3. Hymns.—But it is in his Hymns that Ephraim lives,—for the Syrian Churches, and indirectly for the Christian world, of the East if not of the West. Throughout Syrian Christendom, divided as it has been for ages—in the Malkite, Nestorian, Jacobite, and Maronite communities, from the Mediterranean to the Tigris, and beyond, even to the Malabar remnant of the Syro-Indian Church, all of which retain Syriac as the language of their ritual,—the whole body of public worship is shaped by his hymnody and animated with his spirit.

Second Part

Aphrahat the Persian Sage

1. Name of Author of Demonstrations long Unknown.—The author of the Demonstrations, eight of which appear (for the first time in an English version) in the present volume, has a singular literary history. By nationality a Persian, in an age when Zoroastrianism was the religion of Persia, he wrote in Syriac as a Christian theologian. His writings, now known to us as the works of Aphrahat, were remembered, cited, translated, and transcribed for at least two centuries after his death; but his proper name seems to have been for a time forgotten, so that in the mss. of the fifth and sixth centuries the Demonstrations are described as composed by “the Persian Sage,” or “Mar Jacob the Persian Sage;” and a writer of the eighth century, who had made a minute study of these writings and ascertained their date, admits that he has been unable to find out “who or what he was, his rank in the Church, his name or abode.” Not only so, but the name Jacob assigned (rightly or wrongly) to him has led to a confusion of identity. His works have been ascribed for many hundred years—from a date not long after their composition down to quite recent times, to an earlier Jacob, the famous and saintly Bishop of Nisibis in the days of Constantine the Great. It is not until the tenth century that the true name of “the Persian Sage” emerges to light as Aphrahat, by which he is unhesitatingly designated by several well informed and accurate authorities of that and the three succeeding centuries., and under which he is known to modern scholars.

2. Their Subjects, and Arrangement.—The Demonstrations are twenty-two in number, after the number of the letters of the Syriac alphabet, each of them beginning with the letter to which it corresponds in order. The first ten form a group by themselves, and are somewhat earlier in date than those which follow: they deal with Christian graces, hopes, and duties, as appears from their titles:—”Concerning Faith, Charity, Fasting, Prayer, Wars, Monks, Penitents, the Resurrection, Humility, Pastors.” Of those that compose the later group, three relate to the Jews (“Concerning Circumcision, the Passover, the Sabbath”); followed by one described as “Hortatory,” which seems to be a letter of rebuke addressed by Aphrahat, on behalf of a Synod of Bishops, to the clergy and people of Seleucia and Ctesiphon; after which the Jewish series is resumed in five discourses, “Concerning Divers Meals, The Call of the Gentiles, Jesus the Messiah, Virginity, the Dispersion of Israel.” The three last are of the same general character as the first ten,—”Concerning Almsgiving, Persecution, Death, and the Latter Times.” To this collection is subjoined a twenty-third Demonstration, supplementary to the rest, “Concerning the Grape,” under which title is signified the blessing transmitted from the beginning through Christ, in allusion to the words of Isaiah, “As the grape is found in the cluster and one saith, Destroy it not” (lxv. 8). This treatise embodies a chronological disquisition of some importance.

3. Dates of Composition.—Of the dates at which they were written, these discourses supply conclusive evidence. At the end of section 5 of Demonstr. V. (Concerning Wars), the author reckons the years from the era of Alexander (b.c. 311) to the time of his writing as 648. He wrote therefore in a.d. 337—the year of the death of Constantine the Great. Demonst. XIV. is formally dated in its last section, “in the month Shebat. in the year 655” (that is, a.d. 344). More fully, in closing the alphabetic series (XXII. 25) he informs us that the above dates apply to the two groups—the first ten being written in 337; the twelve that follow, in 344. Finally, the supplementary discourse “Concerning the Grape” was written (as stated, XXIII. 69) in July, 345. Thus the entire work was completed within nine years,—five years before the middle of the fourth century,—before the composition of the earliest work of Ephraim of which the date can be determined with certainty.

4. Extent and Limits of their Circulation.—These Demonstrations, though they fell far short of attaining the unbounded popularity which was the lot of the countless Hymns and Homilies of Ephraim, appear to have won for themselves a recognized place in Syriac literature. It is true that, in striking contrast with the overwhelming numbers of mss. containing portions, great or small, of Ephraim’s works, which are to be met with in nearly every collection of Syriac written remains, one complete and two incomplete copies are all that have reached us of this series of twenty-three treatises; and extracts or quotations from them very rarely occur. Yet it is clear that compositions which were thought worthy at an early date of translation into at least one foreign tongue, must have had some considerable reputation in the country of their origin; and it may be presumed that these two or three mss. (of the fifth and sixth centuries), are the survivors of a fairly large number of which the majority have perished.

The Armenian translation is probably the earliest evidence now extant of the circulation (though under a wrong ascription of authorship) of the Demonstrations, of which it comprises nineteen. Armenian scholars seem to agree in the belief that it was made in the fifth century, before its original was more than a hundred years in being. An Ethiopic translation of the discourse “On Wars” is extant, but there is no evidence that it formed part of a version extending to all or any of the remaining twenty-two, nor is its date even approximately determinable.

The manuscript evidence hardly reaches so far back as that of the Armenian version. The oldest extant ms. of these discourses (Add. 17182 of the British Museum) contains the first ten, and is dated 474. With it is bound up (under the same number) a second, dated 512, containing the remaining thirteen. A third (Add. 14619) of the sixth century likewise, exhibits the whole series. A fourth (Orient, 1017), more recent by eight centuries, will be mentioned farther on. Of the three early mss., the first designates the author as “the Persian Sage” merely, as does also the third: the second prefixes his name as “Mar Jacob the Persian Sage.”

Among Syriac authors, the first to show an acquaintance with these treatises, at a date prior to that of the earliest of these mss., is Isaac of Antioch, known as “the Great,” whose literary activity belongs to the first half of the fifth century. In his works passages have been pointed out which are evidently borrowed with slight change from the Demonstrations,—especially from that Concerning Fasting, and (though less distinctly) from that Concerning Faith. The imitation, however, is tacit, and Isaac nowhere names the work (or its author) whence he derived the illustrations and even the expressions he uses in treating of these topics.

Before the close of the same century, we find evidence that they were known—by repute, though apparently no farther—to a Latin writer of Western Europe, Gennadius of Marseilles, the continuator of St. Jerome’s work De Viris Illustribus, who wrote about the year 495. Though mistaken (as will presently be shown) about their parentage, and incorrectly informed as to their number (which he supposes to be twenty-six), Gennadius states their titles with such an approach to accuracy, as to leave no room for doubt that the discourses he describes are those of which we now treat. He shows himself aware that they are in Syriac, but gives no hint that he has ever seen them, or that he is able to read them.

In the seventh century, or (however) early in the eighth, tokens appear of a revival of interest in them. Georgius, “Bishop of the Arabs,” a Jacobite prelate, having been applied to by one Joshua an anchorite for information concerning the “Epistles” (as he styles them) of “the Persian Sage” and their authorship, wrote (in Syriac) in the year 714 a very full and elaborate reply, in which he cites at length passages from several of them, including those (above referred to) in which the dates of writing are stated with precision,—and he infers from these dates, that the author, of whose name he professes himself to be ignorant, wrote too early to be a disciple of Ephraim. To this inference we may safely assent, even though we hold that Ephraim wrote and taught earlier in the century than Georgius endeavours to place him. The point to be noted is, that this learned and acute writer, though he had by careful study made himself familiar with the Demonstrations, neither knows, nor can guess at, the name of their author, nor can he record any tradition concerning his identity. He can only tell what he has learned from their contents, that they were written from 337 to 345, by one who was a monk, and a cleric; and that they were characterized by certain peculiarities of doctrine.

5. Ascribed to Jacob of Nisibis.—Thus it appears that the series of discourses now known as the Demonstrations of Aphrahat, were imitated, and transcribed, and translated, into Armenian, and their titles cited by a Latin biographer, and their contents minutely investigated by an able critic, within the four centuries that followed the time of their composition; while through all that long period the name of Aphrahat had passed out of memory, and the “Persian Sage” simply, or else with the addition of an ambiguous and misleading name, “Jacob, the Persian Sage,” was the designation by which their author was usually known. As we have seen, the scribes of two mss., of the fifth and sixth centuries, and Georgius in the early eighth, confine themselves to the former; and the scribe of the sixth, thirty-eight years later than the earlier of the other two, uses the latter. Misled by it, the Armenian translator, and Gennadius in his biographical work, fell into the error of identifying the Jacob who wrote the Demonstrations with a namesake, the earlier and more conspicuous Jacob of Nisibis, of whom we have had occasion to speak in treating of the life of Ephraim. But of this celebrated personage no writings are recorded, nor was he a Persian, but a native of Nisibis (in his time a city of the Roman Empire), in 338, seven years before the completion of the treatises in question. As Jacob of Nisibis is thus too early to be the author of them, so, on the other hand, Jacob of Sarug, whom Assemani suggested in correcting the mistake of Gennadius, is too late; for he was not born till more than a century after the date of the last Demonstration.

6. Reappearance of the Name of Aphrahat.—It is not until some years after the mid-die of the tenth century, that the “Persian Sage” first appears under his proper name,—of which, though as it appears generally forgotten in the Syriac world of letters, a tradition had survived.—The Nestorian Bar-Bahlul (circ. 963) in his Syro-Arabic Lexicon, writes thus:—”Aphrahat [mentioned] in the Book of Paradise, is the Persian Sage, as they record.”—So too, in the eleventh century, Elias of Nisibis (Barsinaeus, d. 1049), embodies in his Chronography, a table, compiled from Demonstr. XXIII., of the chronography from the Creation to the “Era of Alexander” (b.c. 311), which he describes as “The years of the House of Adam, according to the opinion of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage.”—To the like effect, but with fuller information, the great light of the mediaeval Jacobite Church, Gregory Barhebraeus (d. 1286), in Part I. of his Ecclesiastical Chronicle, in enumerating the orthodox contemporaries of Athanasius, mentions, after Ephraim, “the Persian Sage who wrote the Book of Demonstrations;” and again in Part II., supplies his name under a slightly different form, as one who “was of note in the time of Papas the Catholicus,” “the Persian Sage by name Pharhad, of whom there are extant a book of admonition [al., admonitions] in Syriac, and twenty-two Epistles according to the letters of the alphabet.” Here we have not only the name and description of the personage in question, but a fairly accurate account of his works, under the titles by which the mss. describe them, Epistles and Demonstrations;—and moreover a sufficient indication of his date, in agreement with that which the Demonstrations claim: for one who began to write in 337 must have lived in the closing years of the life of Papas (who died in 334), and in the earlier years of the life of Ephraim. So yet again, a generation later, the learned Nestorian prelate, Ebedjesu, in his Catalogue of Syrian ecclesiastical authors, writes, “Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, composed two volumes with Homilies that are according to the alphabet.” Here once more the name and designation are given unhesitatingly, and the division of the discourses into two groups is correctly noted; but the concluding words appear to distinguish these groups from the alphabetic Homilies. Either, therefore, we must take the preposition rendered “with” to mean “containing,”—or we must conclude that Ebedjesu’s knowledge of the work was at second-hand and incorrect. Finally, in a very late ms., dated 1364, is found the first or chronological part of Demonstration XXIII., headed as follows:—”The Demonstration concerning the Grape, of the Sage Aphrahat, who is Jacob, Bishop of Mar Mathai.” Here (though the prefix “Persian” is absent) we have the author’s title of “Sage”; and the identification of the “Aphrahat” of the later authorities with the “Jacob” of the earlier is not merely implied but expressly affirmed. Here, moreover, we have what seems to account for the twofold name. As author, he is Aphrahat; as Bishop, he is Jacob—the latter name having been no doubt assumed on his elevation to the Episcopate. Such changes of name, at consecration, which in later ages of the Syrian Church became customary, were no doubt exceptional in the earlier period of which we are treating. But the fact that Aphrahat was a Persian name, bestowed on him no doubt in childhood—when he was still (as will be shown presently) outside the Christian fold—a name which is supposed to signify “Chief” or “Prefect,” and which may have seemed unsuited to the humility of the sacred office—supplies a reason for the substitution in its stead of a name associated with sacred history, both of the Old and of the New Testament. Here finally we have the direct statement of what Georgius had justly inferred from the opening of Dem. XIV., that the writer was himself of the clergy, and in this Epistle writes as a cleric to clerics.

We have now brought together all the known authorities who yield information concerning this collection of treatises, and its author. It remains that we should put into a connected form the facts to which they testify, and point out the inferences yielded by their notices, and by the treatises themselves.

7. His Nationality Persian, and Probably Heathen.—That the author was of Persian nationality, is a point on which all the witnesses agree, except the fourteenth-century scribe of the ms. Orient. 1017, who however is merely silent about it. The name Aphrahat is, as has been already said, Persian—which fact at once confirms the tradition that he belonged to Persia, and helps to account for what seems to be the reluctance of early writers to call him by a name that was foreign, unfamiliar, unsuited to his subsequent station in the Church, and superseded by one that had sacred associations. As a Persian, he dates his writings by the years of the reign of the Persian King: the twenty-two were completed (he says) in the thirty-fifth, the twenty-third in the thirty-sixth of the reign of Sapor.—Again: as a Persian of the early fourth century, it is presumable that he was not originally a Christian. And this is apparently confirmed by the internal evidence of his own writings; for he speaks of himself as one of those “who have cast away idols, and call that a lie which our father bequeathed to us;” and again, “who ought to worship Jesus, for that He has turned away our froward minds from all superstitions of vain error, and taught us to worship one God our Father and Maker.”—But it is clear that he must have lived in a frontier region where Syriac was spoken freely; or else must have removed into a Syriac-speaking country at an early age; for the language and style of his writings are completely pure, showing no trace of foreign idiom, or even of the want of ease that betrays a foreigner writing in what is not his mother-tongue. It is clear also that, at whatever age or under whatever circumstances he embraced Christianity, he must have taken the Christian Scriptures and Christian theology into his inmost heart and understanding as every page of his writings attests.

8. Evidence that he was a Cleric, and a Bishop.—We have already seen that Georgius in his study of the Demonstrations perceived the indications which prove the writer to be of the Clergy. He goes farther, and notes that the sixth (Concerning Monks) is evidently written by a monk. He might have added, what is yet more important, that the fourteenth (which he rightly fixes on as evidently written by a cleric) can hardly have been written by one of lower rank than that of Bishop. The translation of the opening sentence of this discourse (which is an Epistle to the Bishops, Clergy and people of the Church of Seleucia and Ctesiphon) is disputed; for “we being gathered together have taken counsel to write this Epistle to our brethren . . . the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and the whole Church” (XIV. 1) may be read so as to make the “Bishops, Priests, etc.,” either, the “we” who write,—or, the “brethren” who are written to. Whichever construction is adopted, the fact remains that Aphrahat here writes on behalf of a body of men assembled in council, who through him admonished their “dear and beloved brethren” whom they designate (farther on) as “the Bishops, Priests and Deacons . . . and all the people of God who are in Seleucia and Ctesiphon.” It is not conceivable that any body of men but a synod of Bishops (with their clergy and people present and assenting) would, in that age of the Church, have taken upon itself to meet and consult and address such an epistle of admonition and implied rebuke to that great see, the seat of the “Catholicus of the East,” the prelate who in the oriental hierarchy was inferior in dignity to the Antiochian Patriarch alone, and in authority almost coequal with him. And it may be safely assumed that the writer of the Epistle was one—probably the chief—of the Bishops in whose name it is written. If we accept the late, but internally probable, statement of the Scribe of ms. Orient. 1017 (above mentioned), that “the Persian Sage” was “Bishop of the monastery of Mar Mathai,” we arrive at a complete explanation of the circumstances under which this Epistle was composed. For the Bishop of Mar Mathai was Metropolitan of Nineveh, and ranked among the Bishops of “the East” only second to the Catholicus; and his province bordered on that which the Catholicus (as Metropolitan of Seleucia) held in his immediate jurisdiction. The Bishop of Mar Mathai therefore would properly preside in a Synod of the Eastern Bishops, met to consider the disorders and discussions existing in Seleucia and its suffragan sees. It thus becomes intelligible how an Epistle of such official character has found a place in a series of discourses of which the rest are written as from man to man merely. The writer addresses the Bishops, Clergy, and people of Seleucia and Ctesiphon in the name of a Synod over which he was President, a Synod probably of Bishops suffragan to Nineveh, and perhaps of those of some adjacent sees. Thus the admonition comes officially from “Mar Jacob Bishop of Mar Mathai;” but the thoughts, and language, and literary form are the production of Aphrahat personally, and he accordingly embodies it as fourteenth in his alphabetic series of twenty-two treatises, in which it is duly distinguished by its initial letter nun, the fourteenth of the Semitic alphabet. It certainly breaks the sequence of subjects, coming after and before treatises relating to Judaism: but for the alphabetic sequence it is essential.—This alphabetic arrangement was overlooked or ignored (as it seems) by the Armenian translator, who has omitted four of the twenty-two and transposed others, placing the fourteenth apart from the rest,—although in Demonstr. XXII. (which however is not included in the Armenian version) the author recites all their titles, arranging them in their order, and noting that it is the order of the alphabet. In the Syriac original the fact is beyond question that Demonstr. XIV. is an integral part of the series; and we may rely with confidence on the internal evidence it yields of the high ecclesiastical rank of the writer—evidence confirmed by, and in its turn confirming, the statement of the fourteenth-century scribe who makes him Bishop of the second see of the East.

Reverting to the subject of the Persian nationality of Aphrahat, we note that this monastery of Mar Mathai was on the eastern, that is, the Persian, side of the Tigris, not far from what once was Nineveh and is now Mosul, on the precipitous mountain Elpheph (now Maklob) where it still stands, though ruinous, and is known by the name of Sheikh Matta, and is occupied by the Metram (or Metropolitan) and a few monks.

9. His Writings little Concerned with Current Controversies.—To the remoteness of his see, and probably of the place of his obvious origin and abode, from the centres of religious thought and controversy, is probably due the notable absence from these discourses of all reference to the great theological questions that had employed, and in his time were engrossing, the leading minds of Christendom. He began to write within ten years after the Nicene Council and the Arian controversy, and the disputations that grew out of it were still ripe, and continued to abound long after. The writings of Ephraim show how vehemently in Aphrahat’s lifetime, or possibly a few years later, the theologians of Nisibis and of Edessa deemed themselves bound to strive for the Faith against Arians, Anomoeans, Apollinarians,—and not less against the surviving or revived heresy of home-grown production—that of Bardesan. But in Seleucia and Ctesiphon it is not heresy, but strife, self-seeking, and neglect of duty, that are censured by the Synod through the letter which we know as Demonstr. XIV., and the errors which the Bishop of Mar Mathai combats for the benefit of those whom he addresses are the errors of the Jews who refused and resisted the creed and the customs of the Church. There is in one place (Demonstr. III. 9) a passing reference to the heresiarchs of the second and third centuries, Valentinus, Manes, and Marcion; but it merely amounts to a brief statement in which the false teaching of each is summed up in a sentence, each followed by the question, Can one who holds such doctrine find acceptance before God by his fasting? No later heresy is even mentioned.

These facts not only confirm the tradition which places him at Nineveh, but they go far to account for the obscurity in which his name and his writings lay so long. In an age of excited controversy, these quiet hortatory discourses, marked by no striking eloquence of style or subtlety of reasoning, dealing with no burning question of the time, nor with any disputes more recent than those of the two previous centuries, or those between Jew and Christian, would hardly attain to more than a local circulation; and when they penetrated to Edessa or other such centres of Syriac theological life, would awaken but a languid interest. That they did so penetrate is certain; for of the existing mss. whence we derive their text, one (the oldest) was written in Edessa in 474, and Isaac of Antioch, who knew and imitated them, before that time, was a disciple of Zenobius of Edessa. But the paucity of such mss., and still more the oblivion which so long covered the name of Aphrahat, prove, either, that the work failed to attain popularity—or, that it provoked some prejudice which led to its practical suppression. It would be difficult, however, to point out anything in it to which exception could be so seriously taken as to be a bar to its acceptance. None of the errors which so keen a critic as Georgius detected in its theology—even if we admit the justice of his censure—is such as to shock the orthodoxy of the fourth or fifth century.