Mary Hansbury: Shem ‘on the Graceful and the Solitary Life

Shem‘on
the Graceful, called the Graceful possibly because of his insistence on the
role of divine grace in salvation history. He was a medical doctor before
becoming a monk who lived in eastern Syria, and died ca 680. He saw humans as
the ‘bond of creation’ in a mediatory position between God and the universe,
influenced by Theodore of Mopsuestia. In my translation of Shem‘on’s Consecration
of the Cell, I quote from
others of ‘the golden age of Syriac
Christian literature’ who also lived periods of solitary life. Shem’on speaks of entering into the cell and
persevering inside oneself. The Solitary alerts others to a dimension of life
which can only be perceived in solitude but which is the ‘new creation’ in the
inner world of all Christians.

Vittorio Berti: Holy monks and Dead Bodies in East Syriac literature of Northern Iraq

In Late Antique Syriac Christianity two major teachings competed for explain the fundamental structure of the human nature. The more common doctrine, meanly spread among scholastic circles, consisted in a dichotomist model stating the entelechial relation of soul and body, according to a mixture between the Aristotelian leanings of the Antiochian tradition and the theoretical speculations on the syriac belief about the sleep of the soul after death. An alternative perspective, notably prevalent in the monastic milieu, sustained a tripartite model: the man as a composed of body, soul and intellect, as taught by the ascetic spirituality of Evagrius of Pontus, and its platonizing penchant. The two systems were often dialoguing in the tradition, shaping original synthesis on the representation of the death, speculation on the location of the souls, their relation with God, their memory of the past and their knowledge of the present. According to this perspective, it is revealing the way East Syrian writers treated some hagiographic episodes concerning the interaction between monastic holiness and the death’s sphere. This paper would present and analyse in particular a story concerning the necromantic power of Rabban Hormizd, preserved in his Life, and an episode of the disappearance of the corpse of a holy monk-bishop preserved in the Book of Governors by Thomas of Marga. Whereas in the first episode, theology and hagiography seem to find a shared discourse, the second shows the prevalence of a miraculous solution defending monastic autonomy face the official worship of mortal remains.

Robert Kitchen: Teaching Perfection Monastic Education in Dadisho‘ Qatraya’s Commentary on the Paradise of the Fathers

An unmined source for Syriac asceticism is found in the Commentary on the
Paradise of the Fathers by Dadisho‘ Qatraya (Church of the East; late 7th c.), organized into 399 questions and answers from the brothers or monks to an elder, in most cases Dadisho‘, centering around the stories and sayings of the Egyptian Desert Fathers (translated into Syriac), which were compiled by an older contemporary ‘Enanisho‘, and used for the monastic education of Syriac and later Ethiopian monks.Two aspects of this educational document will be examined. First, this Commentary is a rare witness to the continued existence of the ascetical level of Perfection (gmīrūtā) and its
practitioners, the Perfect (gmīrē), along with the lower consecrated
level of Uprightness/Upright (kēnūtā/kēnē), generally limited to The
Book of Steps and The Discourses of Philoxenos of Mabbug. Second, while the questions and answers roughly follow the order of Enanisho‘’s Paradise,
a pattern becomes discernible through the answers of a gradual progression for
the monks towards the status of Perfection, a spiritual and physical way of
life that is the result of the grace of education.

Simon Birol: The compilation of Syriac monastic miscellaneous manuscripts: Jacob of Sarug's memre 'On the Solitaries'"

Differences in the formation and structure of monastic miscellaneous manuscripts in Syriac language have not been studied quite deeply, however, the retracement of these documents could reveal why specific monastic texts were included resp. left out by the copyists of different centuries and how did they understand or interpret a specific text.For this aim, the transmission of the writings "On the Solitaries" by Jacob of Sarug - an author that is in first instance not famous for his monastic writings or teachings - will be given as an example.

David Michelson: Ascetic Reading in the Church of the East: Understanding Dadishoʿ of Qatar's Method of Spiritual Interpretation

There has been an enduring scholarly interest in the use of the phrase “spiritual interpretation” in the works of the seventh-century East Syrian author Dadishoʿ of Qatar. This paper examines Dadishoʿ in light of the ascetic reading practices of the Church of the East. It argues that by the late seventh-century, East Syrian reformed monasticism was able to flex its muscles against three other reading traditions within East Syrian Christianity: the scholastic movement, the reputation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and the liturgy (a textual tradition controlled by the Church hierarchy not the monasteries). This paper demonstrates that by the time of Dadishoʿ, East Syrian monasticism had its own traditions of reading which it felt worth defending even against other long-standing institutions. Dadishoʿ wrote in response to high demand for ascetic commentary that could teach correct practice of ascetic reading. This mode of reading was that appropriate to the solitary in a monastic cell, what Dadishoʿ also called “the solitary fathers’ own form of commentary.” His use of the phrase “spiritual interpretation” must be understood as part of this Syriac Evagrian tradition of ascetic reading which developed in parallel to lectio divina in the Latin West.

Peter Miller: Jewish Wisdom, Pagan Authors, Christian Monasteries: The Sentences of the Syriac Menander and the Preservation of Classical Authors in Syriac

Two Syriac volumes in the British Library purchased from the Egyptian Christian monastery Deir al-Surian preserve collections of gnomic wisdom attributed to Menander the Wise, better known as a New Comic poet. Due to his prominence in the educational curriculum, the moral maxims excerpted from his comedies loom in the background of many early Christian texts, from Paul of Tarsus to Justin Martyr to Socrates Scholasticus. However, the moral phrases contained in BL Or. Add. 14658 and 14614 that bear Menander’s name do not align with known fragments of the comedies, and seem to date to the Roman period as described by Monaco(2013), et al. While this text was clearly translated from the Greek (Baarda, Land), it is representative of an interest in the Western Syriac context to translate and preserve certain works of pre-Christian Hellenistic writers alongside honored theologians, including Melito and Gregory Nazianzus.In this paper, I argue that the preservation of the Sentences of the Syriac Menander aligns with broader translation interests of the Western Syriac context, which has selectively harvested certain works by or attributed to Greek authors predating Christianity. For the Syriac communities in Edessa, Nisibis, and Egypt, these authors who stand alongside pseudo-Menander include Galen and Aristotle translated by Sergius of Reshaina, an anonymous Socratic dialogue, Isocrates, and Porphyry of Tyre, some even in the same codex. Through this analysis, I will argue that the preservation of tracts like the Sentences reveals a willingness to syncretize perceived pre-Christian morality and monastic discipline.

Ester Petrosyan: The Revelation of Gregory the Illuminator (Gregory of Edessa) in the Armenian, Syriac and Arabic traditions

  The proposed research topic intends to scrutinize one of the little explored examples of apocalyptic literature in the Christian tradition, The Revelation of Saint Gregory the Illuminator/of Edessa in Armenian, Syriac and Arabic.  The story was quite popular in the Middle Ages. According to Georg Graf, it was originally written in Syriac, and later was translated into Arabic and Amharic. The original Syriac version, unfortunately, is lost. The recent survey of the Indian Syriac manuscript collections has revealed the existence of a modern Syriac version made in India in 1689, based on an otherwise unknown Arabic original. Simultaneously, a great number of Arabic and Arabic Garshuni texts of the revelation are preserved.  In the Armenian manuscripts (the oldest dates back to 1208 AD) the Revelation is explicitly attributed to Saint Gregory the Illuminator or Grigor Lusavorits’, the patron saint and first official head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.  My aim is to discuss and reveal similarities and differences of the Revelation in all three languages, attempting to discover the source of the Revelation, approximate time of its creation and endeavoring to understand who originally the Saint Gregory of the Revelation was and why in later stages the vision was attributed to various saints, such as Gregory the Illuminator and Gregory of Nazianzus (in the Arabic versions). The questions of when and where the translations were made and what changes have taken place in the text in different traditions will be raised.

Marion Pragt: Organising exegetical knowledge and interpreting the Song of Songs in Syriac Christianity

In late antiquity, Syriac biblical interpreters collected the interpretations of their predecessors in exegetical compilations, bringing together material from diverse authors and time periods. This paper focuses on the organisation of exegetical knowledge in manuscript BL Add. 12168, an eight- or ninth-century West Syrian collection which contains extracts from patristic works. The paper concentrates on the collection's interpretation of the Song of Songs, with particular emphasis on extracts attributed to Gregory of Nyssa and John bar Aphtonia. Gregory's Homilies on the Song of Songs were transmitted in Syriac in both full and abbreviated versions, but have not yet been edited or fully studied. On the other hand, the extracts from John bar Aphtonia received some attention in scholarship focusing on texts lost in Greek. However, this paper approaches the extracts in the light of recent attention to the study of texts in their manuscript contexts. The paper examines the strategies of compiling used in BL Add. 12168 as well as the interests its section on the Song reflects. Moreover, the extracts will be compared to the margins of the Syrohexapla (Codex Ambrosianus), in which some of the same material is attested. It is argued that the selection and organisation of extracts in BL Add. 12168 create a reading of the Song fitting for its own time. As such, the collection sheds light on the role of Syriac compilers in transmitting and shaping exegetical traditions.

Philip Forness: Liturgical Manuscripts as Archives: The Earliest Syriac Homiliaries

Sermons form one of the best-preserved genres of early Christian literature. Homilies circulated widely in late antiquity within biblical commentaries, catenae, and conciliar acts. But in the Middle Ages, homiliaries—sermon collections ordered according to the liturgical year—became the dominant medium for their transmission. The earliest examples come from North Africa and Gaul in the fifth or sixth century. Fully fledged homiliaries are not attested in the Greek- or Syriac-speaking East until the eighth century.This paper examines three sixth- or seventh-century Syriac manuscripts which form the earliest known efforts to organize Syriac sermons around the liturgical year. One manuscript (British Library, Add. 17181)contains short addresses for the abbot of a monastery to speak at various occasions and two anonymous sets of homilies designated for feast days. The other two manuscripts (British Library, Add. 14587; Vatican Library, Sir. 109) feature homilies by the Syriac preacher Jacob of Serugh assigned for six major feast days.These manuscripts reveal competing tendencies. The anonymity of the homilies in British Library, Add. 17181 emphasizes the practical reasons for the organization of homilies. The other two manuscripts, by way of contrast, take care to name the author and reveal the importance assigned to preserving the works of prominent figures. This paper argues that these two trends demonstrate how homiliaries emerged from the archival impulses of late antiquity. These manuscripts helped institute a liturgical setting in which prominent figures from the past would speak to the present.

Panagiota Mikropandremenou: The virtue of discernment according to the Syriac fathers of the desert as presented in the Book by Evergetinos

The purpose of this paper is to examine some extracts from the book of Evergetinos, in which various passages regarding the charisma of discernment (διάκρισις), as it is expressed and interpreted in the ascetic anthology of the Syriac fathers, can be found. Discernment (διάκρισις-diakrisis-ܡܒܰܝܢܳܢܽܘܬܳܐ ) is defined as the charisma that gives someone the ability to safely understand/to distinguish the will of God in every place and time. It is considered the highest virtue that presupposes inner purity and protects the believer against spiritual falls and mistaken actions.According to the spiritual Syriac desert fathers, who followed the monastic rules, had solitary habits and taught the above virtue, discernment includes all virtues. Examining the way of ascetic living in the desert, Father Paul Evergetinos, who lived in the 11th century, got paradigms from their daily practice and used apophthegmata gathered through centuries in his book. In this paper, some of these instances of asceticism, used by the monks to avoid the temptation of the demons and gain the charismas, will be presented.

Siam Bhayro: The Syro-Mesopotamian context of Bar Daisan and Sergius - Syriac scholarship in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

In this paper, I intend to argue that the late antique and early medieval Syriac traditions, in articulating an ideal of how philosophy, theology and medicine should all be studied together, should not be understood as simply reflecting a Greco-Roman ideal. Although dressed in Aristotelean garb, this phenomenon actually reflects a long-held Syro-Mesopotamian notion that associated the healing arts with the scribal or priestly guilds.

Ute Possekel: Exegetical Perspectives from the School of Nisibis: Michael Badoqa on the Pentateuch

In the sixth century, the School of Nisibis was a principal center of Christian learning within the Sasanid Empire and trained numerous theologians and church leaders. The scholar Michael, known as Michael Badoqa from his position as badoqa or instructor at the School, was an influential author whose writings addressed christology, exegesis, and philosophy, but unfortunately only fragments of his works have come down to us. Michael’s stature as an eminent exegete was such that his views were cited regularly by later East Syriac commentators including Ishoʿdad of Merv, Theodore bar Koni, the anonymous author of the so-called Diarbakir Commentary, and the commentary on the East Syriac lectionary known as Gannat Bussame. Michael’s surviving works have heretofore received little scholarly attention, and the exegetical fragments none at all. This paper will survey Michael’s exegetical fragments, most of which pertain to the Pentateuch, and attempt to situate his approach to Scripture within the East Syriac exegetical tradition more broadly.In particular, the paper will address how Michael’s exegesis compares to that of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the Interpreter par excellence for the Church of the East, and to other exegetical traditions prominent at the School, especially those represented by Henana, head of school in the time of Michael and a controversial figure on account of whom Michael and others are said to have left the School of Nisibis.

Bogdan Draghici: Theological Conservatorism in an Age of Irenicism: Dionysius Bar Salibi’s Anti-Chalcedonian Rhetoric.

The Crusader period (1098-1291), which partly coincides with that of the so-called Syriac Renaissance (c. 1025-1318), is characterized by intensive positive interactions between Christian factions as well as Christians and Muslims.One of the central and understudied figures of this period is Dionysius Bar Salibi (d. 1171), a polymath, prolific author and bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church. His heresiological project was extensive and comprised disputations against the Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Nestorians, Chalcedonians and epistolary treatises against Rabban cYeshu, Catholicos George II and Nerses Shnorhali.This paper will focus on the differences between the treatise Against Rabban cYeshu, incorrectly identified by Mingana as Against the Melchites,and the unedited text of Against the Chalcedonians. Starting from these disputations I will critically analyse the theological contents and rhetorical techniques in order to provide a clearer image of intra-Christian relations during the Syriac Renaissance. Likewise, I intend to challenge the hypothesis that Latin-Jacobite relations were amicable, and investigate whether or not, and to what extent, Bar Salibi was aware of the theologically irenic developments within the Syriac theological world. More broadly, through this study of Bar Salibi’s rhetorical method, I hope to provide more insights into the way in which his polemical corpus was designed, functioned and circulated.

Emiliano Fiori: Reshaping the Fathers, Learning Controversy. Syriac Patristic Florilegia as Laboratories of Religious Polemic in the Early Abbasid Age

The present paper aims to expound the first results of the research carried out within the framework of the ERC-StG project FLOS on Syriac patristic florilegia hosted at the University of Venice. It aims to present a short survey of the structure and aims of early Abbasid manuscripts containing vast anthologies of excerpts from Greek Church Fathers in Syriac translation. These anthologies or florilegia, produced by Miaphysite scholars, clustered the excerpts around topics that were the object of heated debate (especially but not exclusively Christology and the Trinity) among Christians and between Christians and Muslims from the 8th to the 10th centuries and beyond. In this rearrangement, the old authorities served as fresh handbooks for new religious polemic. The paper will discuss the excerption techniques, the thematic choices, and thereby the theoretical strategies of the compilers; it will also briefly introduce the differences between the manuscripts containing the florilegia.

Anthony GELSTON: The Post-Sanctus in the East Syrian Anaphoras

The preservation of most of the Post-Sanctus in the fragmentary sixth-century anaphora, in relation to which some preliminary questions were addressed in my paper at the last Patristics Conference (published in SP 64, 2013, 105-9), makes possible a comparative study of this section in all four extant East Syrian anaphoras. This paper offers a comparison of the contents of each Post-Sanctus, and examines significant areas of agreement, as well as features which are unique to and distinctive of each anaphora. A few suggestive parallels in West Syrian anaphoras are also noted.

Bo Holmberg: The Early Syriac Reception of the Sayings tradition

The printed texts of the Syriac versions of the Apophthegmata Patrum (AP) made by Paul Bedjan (1897) and by A. W. Budge (1904) reflect later compilations of monastic texts collected by the monk Enanisho in the 8th century. Several Syriac manuscripts containing collections of AP and dated to the 6th century have come down to us. By studying these older manuscripts knew insights may be gained with regard to the early Syriac reception of the Sayings tradition. They are among the earliest preserved testimonies of the AP found in any language. At least two different recensions may be discerned and neither of them is strictly alphabetic or thematic. Like the later compilations of monastic texts, these manuscripts also juxtapose apophthegmatic and non-apophthegmatic materials. The order of sayings and the identity of the non-apophthegmatic texts may throw new light on one of the earliest attested receptions of the Sayings tradition.

Carl Griffin: Vessel of Wrath: Judas Iscariot in Cyrillona

The character of Judas features in three Syriac poems by Cyrillona (fl. 399) on the Last Supper and Last Discourse of Jesus. This paper explores the role that Cyrillona creates for Judas as a shocking example of Christ-betrayal, as an antitype of Jesus and the faithful disciples, and as an agent of Jewish intrigue. Judas's dramatic and symbolic potential is cultivated to propel the narrative, but Cyrillona also reveals distinctive exegetical and theological interests in his consideration of the washing of the feet, the giving of the sop, and Judas's departure from the Cenacle. While tracing the lines of reception that connect Cyrillona with earlier Syriac tradition, I also consider ways in which Cyrillona prefigures later dramatizations of Judas.

Scott Johnson: Historiography in Verse Exegesis: The Syriac Tradition and Romanos the Melode on 1–2 Kings

Several Syriac poems dealing with episodes in 1–2 Kings survive from Late Antiquity. These poems cover various stories, but scenes from the life of Elijah are most prominent. In this paper I will consider poems by Ephrem, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos the Melode (in Greek) in an effort to investigate how Kings was treated as a historiographical model by late antique poets in the East. This investigation focuses on how authoritative biblical texts shaped the habits of talking about the past in the Syriac tradition. These poets shared a collective memory, not least through liturgical celebration, which served their poetry both by providing content but also by framing their discourse about past events. This paper is not intended as a survey of the exegetical tradition on Kings but, instead, explores how exegetical poetry set cultural habits for claiming the biblical past in the Syriac tradition. The regular recitation of liturgical hymns meant that patterns of thinking about the past permeated into other genres of Syriac literature, such as prose exegesis and commentary, prose homiletics, epistlography, and historiography. With regard to historiography, this paper will close with a meditation on how the emergent chronicle tradition in Syriac took inspiration from both Greek ecclesiastical historical writing, represented by very early translations of Eusebius, as well as from the indigenous Syriac poetical tradition. In this fusing of horizons between poetry and historiography, specific perspectives on history and the past will be put forward as characteristic of Syriac writing in Late Antiquity.

Kristian Heal: Construal and Construction of Genesis in early Syriac Sermons

The literary critic Stanley Fish argued that, ‘Interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing'. Thus meanings are to be found in (re)constructing texts and not simply in explaining them. We could argue whether Fish's observation is in fact correct, but I prefer to take it a prompt to reassess the interpretative value of the reconstructed narratives which we find in numerous late antique Syriac sermons on Genesis. We are entirely comfortable in attributing interpretative value to the commentary, which in essence is construing a text. My concern in this paper, however, is with the interpretative process and impact of the construction of a new scriptural story in Syriac sermons, or what we may call the hermeneutics of invention.

Ute Possekel: A Newly-Found Syriac Letter by Miaphysite Bishops Against the Julianists

This paper will present and interpret a previously unknown letter, written ca. 530 by several miaphysite bishops from northern Mesopotamia in opposition to the teachings of Julian of Halicarnassus. It is a pastoral letter, composed in response to a request by Severus of Antioch (ep. V.14), and addressed to the abbots and monks in the diocese of Amida. Previously only a fragment of the letter was known, but the full version is preserved in a manuscript owned by Harvard University (Harvard Syriac 91), somewhat surprisingly tucked in among the polemical treatises of Dionysius bar Ṣalibi, the twelfth-century bishop of Amida. The letter is also found in other manuscripts of Dionysius' polemical treatises.
The authors of the letter were John of Tella, Sergius of Cyrus, Marion of Sura, Nonnos of Circesium, and Thomas of Dara. The letter was signed by three additional hierarchs, who presumably were not present at the time of composition but wished to endorse the letter's message. All of the signatories were part of the epistolary network of Severus of Antioch. In the letter, the miaphysite bishops lay out scriptural and theological arguments against Julian's influential doctrine of the incorruptibility of Christ's body.
The paper will present the manuscript evidence, discuss the place of the letter in the correspondence of Severus with the eastern bishops, and interpret the letter's theological arguments.