Robert Kitchen: Three Young Men Redux: The Fiery Furnace in Jacob of Sarug and Narsai

The vast corpuses of the metrical homilies of Jacob of Sarug and Narsai utilize a genre rarely employed by other early Christian writers, and therefore, not easily analyzed and comparable.  Jacob (d. 521) and Narsai (d. 502) are roughly contemporaries, but separated significantly by geography (Syria, Persia) and confessional allegiance (Miaphysite, Church of the East).  Their relationship is unclear, although different sources claim important connections in themes, motifs and approaches, even a kind of rivalry, which appear to arise out of early schooling in Edessa, and therefore, sharing the heritage and methods of Ephrem.
The aim here will be to compare the homilies of both authors on the same Biblical narrative, the Three Young Men in the Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3), focusing on the Biblical exegeses and figurative typologies utilized by each author in contrast to and in complement of each other.
Narsai's mēmrā is entitled "On Ḥananyā and ‘Azaryā and Mīshā'ēl," of medium length, 474 lines.  Jacob entitles his mēmrā "On Daniel and the House of Ḥananyā," and is significantly longer, 872 lines.  Both authors call the Three Young Men by their Greek LXX names, instead of the traditional Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego of the Hebrew canon and Peshiṭta.

Erin Walsh: Holy Boldness: Narsai and Jacob of Serug Preaching the Canaanite Woman

The exegetical history of the Canaanite Woman from the Gospel of Matthew  (15:21-28) in patristic sources has received little attention from historians of biblical interpretation. Within the corpus of Syriac literature, both Narsai and his younger contemporary, Jacob of Serug, composed verse homilies on this particular biblical pericope. This paper will compare the strategies both authors employ to explain the exegetical issues raised by the enigmatic exchange of Jesus with a non-Israelite woman. While Jacob’s homily exists in an edited form, Narsai’s homily on the Canaanite woman (Homily XXXII) has heretofore been unedited and unpublished. [1]I have prepared a critical edition and translation based on two of the four manuscripts containing the homily:  the oldest extant manuscript, ms. Diyarbakir 70 and ms. Vat. Syr. 594. The two other manuscripts (ms. M3 and M5) are currently at the Chaldean Patriarchate and inaccessible. Narsai and Jacob present the Canaanite Woman as a model for Christian emulation, showing a particular concern for her bold speech. Given the respective positions of these two exegetes within the Western and Eastern Syriac traditions, the present project promises to contribute to our understanding of how the schools of Edessa and Nisibis diverged and what continuities may still be detected in the works of the two Syriac poets.


[1]Sebastian Brock, “Guide to Narsai’s Homilies” in Hugoye 12.1 (2009). Brock provides a convenient guide to manuscripts and editions of Narsai’s homilies, using the numbering system of A. Mingana and Macomber.

Andrew Hayes: A First Look at the Manuscripts and Themes of Jacob of Serugh’s Metrical Homily “On the Adultery of the Congregration”

Among the unpublished works of Jacob of Serugh is a collection of metrical discourses on Moses. The longest of these, “On the Adultery of the Congregation,” addresses at length the incident of the golden calf (Ex. 32). This short communication offers a first look at the manuscript tradition of the text, as well as its thematic contents.  Two of the manuscripts differ significantly from one another in length, and the finding aids are not in agreement with the manuscript to which they refer. For this reason, some preliminary notes on the collation of three of its manuscripts (Vat. Syr. 114 and 117 and one from the Church of the 40 martyrs in Mardin) are offered.  As for the text, although references to the golden calf incident are common in the Syriac patristic tradition, this one is unusually detailed and well-developed.  Indeed, to the author’s knowledge, it is the only surviving sustained homiletic treatment of the golden calf epsiode in pre-Islamic Syriac tradition. Its length compared to its companion pieces also suggests that this narrative held special fascination for Jacob.  Its themes shed light on Jacob’s views of salvation history and the Church, and clarifying its situation in the manuscripts will pave the way for further study.

Susan Harvey: The Poet’s Prayer: Invocational Prayers in the Mimre of Jacob of Sarug

Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) was one of the great Syriac poet preachers, a master of the verse homily form known as the mimro.  Many of Jacob’s mimre begin with a substantial prayer of praise and thanksgiving, a doxology invoking divine assistance for the homiletic task at hand.  Often beautifully crafted, these prayers have received little scholarly attention except in their contribution towards establishing Jacob’s homiletic style and approach to biblical interpretation.  This paper, by contrast, will consider these invocations from the literary and rhetorical perspectives.  Jacob utilized a number of poetic conventions in these prayers that serve to establish the mimro as a particular form of ritual speech, with distinctive characteristics, rendering its presentation a sacred event.  Rhetorically, Jacob’s invocational prayers served to demarcate the constituent components of preaching as an activity.  With these prayers, Jacob constructed the sermon’s content, speaker, and listeners, each with critical contribution to the mimro’s form and function.  The invocations established the content of the mimro as divinely conveyed instruction.  Further, they constructed Jacob’s own homiletic role as that of vehicle or instrument for this instruction: the homilist as flute or harp of the Holy Spirit.  Finally, these prayers also constructed the listeners – the members of the congregation, whether lay or consecrated -  as themselves ritually essential and ritually distinct in the role they fulfilled for the mimro’s liturgical task.  In Jacob’s prayers, the congregation was summoned to active reception of the poet preacher’s divinely inspired words, thereby themselves rendering praise and glory.