Some aspects of Syrian asceticism, such as its geographical scope, are relatively uncontroversial; others, especially the extent to which there is a distinctively Syrian form of asceticism, are more contested. Debates raged throughout the latter part of the twentieth century about the significance of using Syriac rather than Greek; of the distinction between asceticism and encratism, and the degree to which these ways of behaving and perceiving the world were affirming or rejecting of the body. Whilst today’s readers are indebted to some aspects of the work of Vööbus in the 1940s and 1950s, who opened a door onto the world of Syrian religious literature, it is to the scholars of the last quarter of the century (Brock, Harvey and Murray among others) that we owe the biggest debt for their meticulous sifting of material and closely argued insights, based on a sensitive understanding of the nuances of Eastern Christian spirituality. Their findings have challenged two main misconceptions about Syrian asceticism; one, that the term ‘Syrian asceticism’ adequately explains a very complex and evolving situation, in which the relative cultural isolation of Syria may be understood to have led to a identifiable and peculiarly fixed set of concepts. The other relates to the nature of that asceticism and its near relation, encratism.
Syrian asceticism is a complex cultural construct, and this is immediately demonstrated by its existence throughout a geographical area beyond the mere boundaries of Syria; essentially it is found in the area of Northern Mesopotamia and Adiabene, including the capital city of Antioch (which gave its name to one of the two dominant schools of Christological thought),1 Damascus, Edessa, Apamea and other cities.2 Edessa was the capital of the principality of Osrhoëne, east of the Euphrates3 and some see it as ‘one of the main centres of Syriac Christianity’;4 Drijvers describes Edessa as ‘the cradle of Syriac Christianity’, arguing that Syrian cultural isolation in the earliest years was ‘protect[ing] it against Hellenistic influences from the West’ in that the ‘authentic words of Jesus himself and the gospel traditions of the Jerusalem congregation’ were retained in Syria but nowhere else.5 Edessa was, Drijvers argues, ‘an exponent of Near Eastern Hellenism, where cultural traditions of Semitic origin were transmitted in Greek disguise and vice versa’.6 Murray, however, discredits the idea of Edessa as the main ‘cradle’ of Christianity in the Syriac language area, preferring to see it as ‘a sort of precipitate in a cloudy solution’.7 So periodisation and choice of language determines the type of asceticism.
The diversity and distinctiveness of Syrian asceticism is best understood by looking at the timeframe. Whilst the very earliest period of Christian conversion showed an ascetic thread in the Syrian context which was less pronounced in the Greek/Roman world,8 beyond the first few generations of Christian believers it is not simply a matter of the distinctiveness of Syriac culture from Greek.9 Modern scholarship now distinguishes between a distinctively Syrian milieu up to the fourth century and a much more hybrid culture, with strong evidence of Hellenistic influence, by the sixth century.10 Even encratism itself, so associated with Syrian asceticism, is seen as having ‘hellenistic and Philonic ancestry’.11
In addition, what is sometimes referred to as Semitic12 and elsewhere specifically as Palestinian sectarian monotheism13 helped shape Syrian culture and, above all, its spirituality. Several key features of so-called Syrian asceticism owe clear debts to this Palestinian heritage; notably the covenantal concept of bnat qyama (discussed below under a consideration of terminology) and the influence of the Mandeans, a dualist sect with Essene tendencies which reveres John the Baptist. The Mandean tradition features clothing imagery and takes baptism as its signifying sacrament,14 both of which find resonances in Syrian thought.
The choice of Syriac rather than Greek relates to the fact that Syriac is the Edessene dialect of Aramaic, and arguably the language Jesus himself spoke.15 Murray sees the use of a large number of Greek loan words in the writings of Aphrahat as evidence that ‘the whole Near and Middle East was a culturally hybrid world’.16 The choice of language is a vexed one. Many texts survive in manuscripts in both languages, or a mixture of both; many literate people were bilingual and not knowing whether a text was first written down in Greek or Syriac is not necessarily significant.17 The influential Acts of Judas Thomas, for example, was likely written in Syriac but, apart from the Hymn of the Pearl section, the most reliable sources are derived from manuscripts in Greek.18 Where the choice of language is significant, however, is where it suggests a particular readership; Harvey writing about John of Ephesus in the middle of the sixth century states that his preference for Syriac suggests an intended readership of monophysite readers.19 The issue perhaps is not so much of bilingualism as bi-culturality.20
Brock agrees with Barr’s refutation of Boman’s argument that Syriac by its very nature lends itself to a symbolic mode of expression.21 Ephrem and others in his ‘school’ write as poet theologians, and employ verse forms to articulate doctrine, provide liturgical works and biblical exegesis, some of which is polemic and critiques heretical teachings.22 The very form of Syriac, with its multilayered meanings, reflects the unity and diversity of the human person (one word has many different nuances and functions, just as the human person has constituent parts which each have different responsibilities). If, as noted in Chapter 10,23 God is ‘clothed in language’ even before Christ is ‘clothed in the flesh’ then the language itself yokes together diverse meanings and functions in a holistic manner.24
So, the tributaries which feed Syrian Christianity include Hellenism, Judaism (especially Palestinian monotheism) and some heterodox understandings of the material world as intrinsically evil and corrupt. Murray’s sense that it is easier to define Syrian Christianity by what it is not rather than what it is seems alluring.25 The terminology employed within the Syrian context provides some concrete evidence, building an overview of the range of Syrian anthropologies in the late antique era, some more obviously Syrian and others more synthesised with Greek models.26
The ancient Syrian world provides us with dramatic instances of men (and some women) who forced their bodies into unnatural behaviours in order to demonstrate their love of God.27 Stylites, hermits who confined themselves permanently to a crouching posture, or lived in barrels, the seventh-century use of the word ‘mourner’ to denote monk – all these suggest a severe approach to the body. There was scope for ‘extravagant self-mortifications’.28 However, such extreme manifestations of asceticism were not expected of all; each individual decided what they were called to do.29 Ascetics acted as a spiritual powerhouse for the rest of the community; what amounted to a spiritual aristocracy provided the energy for those who were engaged in more mundane activities.30 Envy or misunderstanding of this resource led to misconceptions that opting out of conventions such as marriage was rebellious or solipsistic, but the writings of Ephrem, Aphrahat and the Liber Graduum show that this was not the case. On the contrary, ascetics were ‘simply the more dedicated spirits in the whole community’, people who placed themselves ‘in the very midst of the Christian society’.31 One interpretation of such practices is to see them as evidence of a ‘protomonasticism’ of diverse expression, unlike the more proscriptive environments of Basilian or Pachomian communities. The movement towards coenobitic monasticism coincides with global developments within Christianity itself through the establishment of doctrine and ecclesiology in the Ecumenical Councils. Harvey makes a very nice distinction in this regard, arguing that the fourth century ‘brought a shift in the Syrian Orient from Christianity as an ascetic religion to Christianity as a religion with asceticism as a possible vocation’.32
It is impossible to define Syrian asceticism without evaluating the concept of encratism, and at least glancing at the evolution of critical responses to the seminal work of Vööbus in the 1950s and ’60s. Quoting Assemani, Vööbus states emphatically: ‘Asceticism ultimately is directed against the human body, the guilty and sinful part of human existence’.33 To the modern reader, this seems quite a Western view, where sin is seen as deliberate wickedness, and punishment as retributive. The Eastern Christian rather than Protestant perspective, exemplified by Ware’s analysis, provides an alternative interpretation of punishment as restorative, a healing process which operates with an integrated person rather than a partial human being.34 Brock posits what he calls ‘a very biblical – and positive – attitude towards the human person as body-cum-soul’ as the more appropriate interpretation of ascetic ideals, insisting on anthropological integrity and showing real reverence for the ‘sanctity’ of the body. The integrity of the human person thus reflects the entirety of God’s creation, seen through the ‘interpenetration of the physical and the spiritual worlds’,35 emphatically refuting a dualistic worldview.36 Similarly Harvey insists on the integrity of the ‘whole body, heart and mind’ being the proper response of God’s creation.37 The theological reason for a positive view of the human body is transparent: it is shared with Christ. Not only were humans made in the image of God ‘but in the image of the future Christ’. If ‘to be human is to be Christ-like in one’s very core’38 then a negative view of the human person which rejects the body is not an appropriate response to God’s offer of salvation. A further argument is put forward by Louth, Brock and Harvey: the natural material world and the Bible are ‘co-witnesses’ to God the creator; both reveal God, and are to be valued.39
Not only does Vööbus see the human body as culpable, he even sees life itself as ‘death for the righteous one’, hence ‘the ultimate purpose of subjugation is the killing of bodily needs’.40 He quotes Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron as evidence of this:
Jesus died to the world in order that no one should live to the world, and He existed in a crucified body in order that no one should live sensually by it. He died to our world in His body in order that He may make (us) alive by His Body to His world. And He mortified the life of the body in order that we may not live carnally by flesh.41
However, in reading this as meaning life itself is death, Vööbus shares a common misunderstanding of the Pauline anthropological distinction, which is not a crude antithesis between sarx and sōma, but psychē and pneuma.42 What Paul rejects is not the world itself, but living by the world. Merely having a living body does not mean you are doomed to live by its sensual instincts.
Whilst modern scholars vigorously defend Syrian asceticism as affirming the human person, such acceptance of the whole person sits alongside strong encratic elements. It is indicative of the synthetic nature of early Syrian asceticism that one of its defining characteristics, encratism, is known by its Greek terminology. The term ἐγκράτεια literally means ‘self-control’ or ‘mastery over someone or something’.43 Putting flesh on the bones, Elm’s interpretation of the term is ‘control of the physical and emotional self to the point where one remains untouched by “worldly” passions and concerns’.44 So far this sounds indistinguishable from asceticism, with its connotations of athletic training and discipline.45 But encratism and encratites have a further connotation. They share with mainstream asceticism a concern for restraint about food, sleep, sexual behaviour even within marriage, and other physical activities. Taken to extremes, this may lead to repugnance for certain aspects of human life which are so body-denying as to verge on heresy.46 Christian attitudes to marriage are informed by Mark 11.25, which asserts that in heaven the saints neither marry nor are given in marriage. Patristic references supply evidence that ‘encratites’ was the term applied to a religious sect between the third and fourth centuries.47 Distinctive to encratites and heretical sects such Manicheans was their abhorrence of marriage and procreation.48 An influential aspect of the commonly circulated Acts of Judas Thomas was its extreme negativity towards the very concept of ‘filthy intercourse’ which the author attempts to dissuade even married couples from indulging in.49 The Milan Colloquium on Encratism (1982)50 gave a systematic analysis of the term, a key feature of which is a sense of the ontological motivation behind such self-restraint, and how rejection of human sexuality is perceived as honouring the original perfection of Adam before the Fall. The issue of motivation is difficult to prove from the sources, however some sense of a hierarchy of encratism makes sense.51 It mirrors the tripartite anthropologies of John of Apamea and Isaac of Nineveh who rank spiritual achievement, suggesting different levels of motivation among spiritual athletes.
A useful, if rather technical, definition sums up the Colloquium on Encratism (Milan, 1982):
By encratism we understand self-restraint (enkrateia) in its radical form, going so far as to repudiate marriage. Marriage is identified from the start with harlotry and corruption, which entails and presupposes a negative estimate of human existence, including birth and procreation. This position is often accompanied by abstention in matters of food, with specific references to meat and wine together with a renunciation of the things of the world. It is usually characterised by a protological motivation, which provides its basis and justification: the doctrine of the virgin Adam, or of the uncorrupted soul, which excludes sexuality from the original nature of man.52
Applying this to the Syrian ascetic context, we can see that it may be predisposed towards encratism because of its eschatological focus, the awareness that earthly life is only a temporary stage in human existence between the original perfection of God’s Eden creation and new life in the Kingdom of God. This awareness might be described as a ‘motivation’. But this is constantly mediated by the emphatically positive message of the Incarnation; the practical manifestation of God’s love for and acceptance of his material creation, whereby belief in the God-man Jesus can restore humanity to that original innocence, without repudiating the body. According to such an understanding, humanity in its holistic form is no less than the pinnacle of creation rather than its lowest point.
A hierarchy or ‘spiritual aristocracy’ as outlined by Burns’ analysis of encratism allows for three levels of encratism and encrateia; enkrateia as mirroring ascesis, open to all; radical encratism which privileges sexual continence above marriage but allows for both; exclusive encratism, in which only virginity can lead to salvation.53 For our purposes, the most extreme of these seems so contaminated by quasi-Gnostic and Manichean teachings as to be of dubious acceptability within the Christian tradition. Chapter 11 examines some of the main heterodox approaches to the human person which came to be condemned as heretical; a substantial number of them derive from Antiochene roots.
Set against this negativity about the body is a strong sense in Syrian spiritual writing that the body is a temple.54 1 Cor. 6.19 is explicit that it was the body rather the soul which is the temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This can be taken to affirm the unity of the human person as well as the validation of the body.55 The prayer by Joseph the Visionary ‘May my person become a holy temple for you’ also indicates a unified sense of the human person as represented by the body.56 If the body is not inhabited by the Holy Spirit it may become the home of demons; the body is portrayed as a house which needs to be on the alert for the intruder, sin.57 The same Syriac word, sra, with a meaning of ‘abiding in’ is used to denote both the Incarnation and the presence of God in one who has received the sacrament of Eucharist or Baptism.58
Akin to the idea of the body as a temple is that of the soul as the bridal chamber of Christ; the soul and the body are interdependent. Ephrem’s Hymn on the Faith 14 creates a very affirming image of the body and its senses, a mode of theological communication very fully explored by Harvey in her recent study of the olfactory imagination.59
The soul is Your bride, the body Your bridal chamber,
Your guests are the senses and the thoughts.
And if a single body is a wedding-feast for You,
how great is Your banquet for the whole Church!60
Just as God is ‘clothed in language’ even before the Incarnate Christ is ‘clothed in flesh’, so the human body ‘speaks’ its prayers to God through action and gesture. Aphrahat’s Demonstration 4 on Prayer is an extended metaphor for how prayer uses the body in very practical ways (giving kindness to the poor, for example).61 Isaac, in particular, insists that it is crucial that the whole body is used in prayer.62 His words are echoed by Symeon, an eighth-century East Syrian:
Prayer in which the body does not toil by means of the heart, and the heart by means of the mind, together with the intellect and the intelligence, all gathered together in deep-felt groaning, but where instead prayer is just allowed to float across the heart, such prayer, you should realise, is just a miscarriage.63
The theological importance of bodily prayer lies in the due human response to the corporeality of the Incarnation. Since this act made ‘the material world the medium of his saving work; to deny the importance of the material aspects of worship was also to deny what God had done through and in the incarnate Lord’.64
It is because the body is seen as having such value that its misuse through overindulgence in food, or promiscuity, is seen as so damaging, not to God but to the person who abuses their body in this way. The body as the temple of God must be kept pure because God chose the Incarnation as the means of redemption.65 Isaac’s understanding of ‘the world’ was quite specifically not those who lived outside the monastery but those who lived governed by ‘bodily behaviour and carnal thoughts’; this orientation of the body is what constitutes an unspiritual life.66
As we have seen, diverse cultural and religious backgrounds shape Syrian asceticism and this is demonstrated especially in two key concepts. The first is the bnat/bnay qyama, loosely translated as the sons and daughters of the covenant, and the second is that of ihidaya, the solitary or single-minded. In Syriac the basic triad of consonants which form a word has layers of related meanings. The primary meaning of qyama is ‘covenant’, a clearly Hebraic concept, to which is added the extended meanings of ‘to stand’ and ‘resurrection’.67 The covenantal relationship implied by this term is at the heart of Syriac spirituality and shows its connection with Jewish and Palestinian roots, in combination with a Christian and Mandean focus on adult baptism as a new circumcision. Similarities to the Qumran community spring to mind, with the sense of election, dedication to God and publically undertaken vows combining to form ‘the precursor to coenobitic monasticism’.68 In common with other ascetic practices within and outside the Christian tradition, the bnat/bnay quama also advocated celibacy, but this was specifically placed in the context of a displacement of human marriage with a spiritualised marriage to the ‘heavenly bridegroom’ (Christ) at the eschaton.69 This spiritualising of marriage can thus be read as affirming of the concept of conjugal union, rather than the phobic approach of the Manicheans; however, there is a strong sense of the ideal being a non-physical commitment in order to remain pure for the ultimate marriage at the end of time.
The covenant expressed by this term suggests not just the personal commitment of an individual but a grouping within Syriac society. As we have noted, scholars tend to prefer the term ‘protomonasticism’ to describe those who set themselves apart in some ways from the mainstream of their communities.70 Barnard’s phrase ‘the baptized laity of the Church’ gives a good sense of the degree to which members of the bnay or bnat qyama were separate or superior to their peers.71 Typically, Vööbus, whilst identifying it as ‘abstinence with vows’,72 sees only a negative reading in such a commitment calling it ‘a covenant against the physical-natural conditions of the world’.73
Aphrahat is a key source for qyama as a convenantal relationship; he uses the word 77 times and the Greek loan word diyatiqi 35 times.74 The title of his Sixth Demonstration indicates the extent of his involvement with the covenant,75 and there may be evidence that at least the first ten of his collection of Demonstrations were written for members of the Convenant.76 The term is often found in conjunction with another key Syriac term, Ihidaya,77 because sometimes ascetics in the late antique era saw their sense of covenant as being expressed by a sense of single-mindedness.78 Like bnay and bnay qyama, ihidaya expresses something of what in other contexts might be called monasticism; it refers not so much to physical singleness in terms of total solitude as a single-minded focus on God; it is thus sometimes translated by the Greek term monachos which similarly suggests oneness of purpose as well as living arrangements.79 Like the bnay and bnat qyama, the ihidaya were viewed as a ‘spiritual aristocracy’80 who through purity and dedication modelled the ideal Christian life. A further important concept is that of the monk as mourner.81
Ihidaya is a polyvalent concept, but always conveys a sense of singleness. It can denote the single-minded attention of a solitary to God,82 undistracted by worldly affairs; the ‘singleness’ of the only-begotten son of God; and the unity of the component parts of the human being. It sets against dualism an essential oneness of body and soul which reflects the unity of Jesus’ divinity and humanity.83 This sense of unity of apparently disparate components is fundamental to Syrian spirituality, and the antidote to the fragmentation and divisiveness of dualist constructions of the world.84 The person who embraces a solitary life will usually also feel covenanted to a life of chastity, because they see their marriage partner as the ‘Only-Begotten (ihidaya) Bridegroom’ (or hathna ihidaya), Christ.85 To be free and pure for such a marriage one must therefore be single in heart and purpose, not rejecting marriage as intrinsically sinful but just as inappropriate because the ‘true’ marriage will take place after the eschaton. Naturally, this way of life was often adopted by members of the bnay qyama86 although the two terms are not synonymous.
The Christian understanding of redemption is that humanity is redeemed by a God who shares our physicality; without a body, therefore, humans cannot be redeemed. The human body is ‘the location of Christianity’, and specifically the place ‘in which we receive God’s revelation’.87 Capable of redemption, humans are the highest regarded part of God’s creation. At Adam’s creation (Gen. 1.3) God gives the first man custody of the rest of His creation, a position of trust and responsibility. God looked at the physical and especially the animal world He had created and ‘saw that it was good’ (Gen. 1.21 and 25). At the same time (Gen. 2.7), God creates man from the earth, from material dust rather than out of thin air. This dust is animated by the breath of life breathed into his nostrils. (Gen. 2.7). So from the outset of the Judaeo-Christian concept of man we have a component being of flesh and spirit. To quote Philoxenus: ‘we have received soul and body by the grace of God in the construction of our created form, and it is required from us that we should take care of both’.88
Physical creation precedes its completion and animation by the spirit, and at the eschaton, human bodies will be freed from their limitations.89 During earthly existence, however, the corporeal nature of human creation – like that of Christ during His earthly life – must be acknowledged and affirmed if the covenant between humanity and God is to be authentic. A refusal to accept that we have commonality with God risks a quasi-Gnostic position.90 Dadisho Katraya, in language which echoes that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, uses the physicality of Christ as the basis for validating the human body:
The body which He assumed from us, and which is so high and sublime, He made it so by uniting it to Himself for our benefit, when He raised us and made us sit with Him in Heaven in Christ (Eph. 2.6) as the Apostle said, so that we might be glorified in Him and reign with Him (Rom. 8.17) after having been fashioned like unto his glorious body (Phil. 3.21).91
We therefore need to examine the ways in which materiality in itself is able to be redeemed, and how the human person who is made up of matter as well as spirit can be wholly redeemed without disparaging or ignoring any part of their personhood.
One way in which the Syrian traditions attempted to explain the tensions between body and soul was to see them not as equals but placed within a hierarchy, with the body as the lowest form. This quasi-dualistic approach is favoured by John of Apamea and Isaac. But even when asserting that a hierarchy exists, there may be an ambivalence about the relative value of both parts of the human person, as seen in John’s comment that ‘the body and soul are not the enemies of the spiritual life, they are the instruments and inferior degrees of perfection’.92 Ephrem, whose approach in general is much more holistic, implicitly accepts the tripartite nature of humanity93 by insisting that they will each be raised one step higher in paradise.94 The demands of the flesh are something to be protected from; this prayer of Joseph the Visionary apparently asks to be sealed from living by the flesh:
Isaac explains his liking for hierarchy as being informed by Pauline thought; both Isaac and Paul distinguish between the existence of flesh and living according to it. For Isaac and others, the material world is not in a concrete form a separate and lower entity than monastic life, it is the dominance of behaviours which cause the problem: bodily behaviour and carnal thoughts constitute the unspiritual life.95
Wipe out from me
all the signs of my bodily nature,
and mark in me
the signs of your spiritual nature.96
John of Apamea’s analysis of a tripartite model for human anthropology recalls Evagrius’ explanation of the logismoi. John makes clear that it is the intention which is contaminating, not the actual presence of the body:
Corporeality is [not] another nature separate from the body, nor is pneumatism another nature separate from the soul. It is just that when man turns towards the concupiscence of the body and enacts his passions and instincts, he is within the order of corporeality. When, on the contrary, he turns away from the body and realises the potential he has for spiritual activity, he is called psychic, because he turns himself away from the body through his actions, just as he is called corporeal, when his actions incline him towards his body.97
This type of distinction is more complex than a simple antithesis between body and flesh. Whether seeing body and soul as uneasy bedfellows or co-workers in the task of redemption, Syrian writers insist on the active conversion of the human will towards God. Isaac insists on the ‘conscious turning of the whole man to God, body as well as soul’,98 and Philoxenus places the imperative to be a doer of right not just a listener in the context of a convenental society such as the bnay qyama.99
A variant on an anthropological hierarchy is effectively anthropological apartheid, in which body and soul are regarded as having different spheres of influence or modes of operation. Such a distinction is found in Cyril of Jerusalem,100 who suggests that:
since human beings have a double nature and are composed of soul and body, the purification is twofold also: immaterial for the immaterial, and bodily for the body. The water cleanses the body, and the Spirit seals the soul.101
This resonates with the more wordy account by Dadisho Katraya, who explains:
As the nature of the body is one thing, and the nature of the soul another thing, but through their union with each other they are one nature, in such a way that their action is not completed without their mutual union and participation, so also, although prayer and purity of thought are different things, yet from the union and participation of both of them one exercise results, which is called by our Fathers ‘the exercise of the mind’.102
Philoxenus condones an inequality of activity; according to him, the soul may operate independently though the body should not.103 Philoxenus’ attitude to bodily involvement in prayer is slightly different to that of Isaac and Dadisho Katraya, who believes the remedy for the unruliness of bodily desires is to employ both body and soul in ‘incessant’ prayer.104
Anthropological hierarchies and separate modes of being are not, however, the only way in which Syrians explore how to be humans in the image of God. Equally common – perhaps more so – is a more nuanced reading of the integrity of the human person, with a strong sense of the co-dependence of body and soul. In response to challenges about their willingness to experience extreme physical pain, some fourth-century martyrs of Edessa explained that this was not because they hated their physicality (a trope in martyrologies).105 On the contrary, Habib replies, ‘We do not hate our bodies. It is written for us that whoever will lose his life will find it’.106 For Habib, it was not a matter of separating the body from the soul; the question was how to find authentic and enduring life as a Christian, following the evangelist’s lead in Matt. 10.39. Underlying this is an affirming approach to human bodies. Indeed, the fact they are so valued by God is why it is so crucial to maintain their purity. The image of the soul as the bride and the body the bridal chamber unequivocally affirms the flesh of man.107 Indeed, undervaluing the body by having a bipartite understanding of the human person risks readily polluting it; because if you ‘live in it as if in an alien container’ you will more readily turn to fornication.108 Kenosis is also presented as an explanation for the process by which the body is maintained sufficiently pure to be acceptable to God; in suggesting this, Christ’s sharing of human mortality is evoked, as in Ephrem’s Hymn 37 (9) on Virginity:
The body from Mary rebuked that one who said
That with another body the Heavenly One dwelled in her …
If the ascended body is unsullied,
Still it resembles our body since it died.109
The integration of all components of the human person is powerfully articulated in Syrian writings by synaesthesia; souls can hear and speak because they are intrinsically part of the body. In Syrian anthropology, the various functions of the body, soul and spirit are not presented as belonging only to the literal actions. Because the thought-world is shaped by metaphorical and symbolic modes of expression, no inconsistency is seen in suggesting that souls can hear. Indeed it can be argued that knowledge of God requires sensory perception – what Harvey calls a ‘noncognitive base’110 – on the grounds that God cannot be fully understood by human rationality. The Syrian concept of God condescending to be ‘clothed in language’ (which is explored in Chapter 10 of this book) shows how the distance between God and human understanding can only be bridged by a divine approach on human terms. Since humans have bodies as well as souls and minds, it follows that the mode of communication should be physical in addition to or even prior to any intellectual expression.111
So the body is the mode of communication and expression for the whole person. Without each other, body and soul are seen as unnaturally incomplete and unfulfilled. Ephrem, like others throughout the tradition, uses the graphic image of the undeveloped foetus as his way of affirming the synthetic nature of the human person and its sense of loss without one of the component parts. Just as Isaac says that prayer without the involvement of the body is like an ‘abortion’ and therefore, in his terms, both unnatural and ineffective, so Ephrem uses a similar image to expound the basics of human anthropology at its existential level.112
Ephrem’s description of the body as not only the ‘mate’ but the ‘instrument and lyre’ of the soul which seeks to experience Paradise113 is unequivocally affirming about the place of physicality in humanity. The musical image suggests the body creates the expression of the soul, and is certainly not its prison. He attests to the mutual need of body and soul – the soul enables the body to live, and the body enables the soul to ‘see and to hear’.114 Similarly, Philoxenus claims that ‘the whole of the spiritual nature can see, and that all of it can hear … everything which it is that it is wholly’.115 Stephen bar Sudaili also transfers functions across the divide of body and mind, asserting that:
the Mind will say ‘This is the Rebellious one that cannot be subdued, and the Serpent which cannot be charmed’; and will weep passionately and say ‘How has its light been quenched and itself become dark!’ but it will answer never a word.116
The indivisibility of body and soul is also expressed as their being held equally to account for sin; neither the body nor the soul can do wrong independently and neither will be rewarded separately, because ‘there is no division between [you]’.117 This resonates strongly with a similar comment from the Doctrina Addai.118 Both body and soul have free will, Ephrem asserts;119 they grieve at being separated, presumably in death, although Ephrem is not explicit about this, because God had ‘joined them together in love, but they had parted and separated in pain’. They go to court together ‘to see which caused the other to sin’; however, as both have free will ‘the wrong belongs to both’.120 Both will therefore receive punishment and reward impartially.
Whatever variations there are in the Syrian understanding of the integrity of the human person, underlying them is the Semitic concept of the heart as the centre of the human person: ‘the heart of the inner man is also the heart of the outer man; neither heart can function properly without the other’.121 This is rooted in a biblical rather than a Hellenistic concept, in which the heart ‘denotes the seat, not just of the emotions, but also of the intellectual faculties as well’.122 Because of this integration of feelings and thoughts, seeing the heart as the spiritual centre of the human person means that there is ‘no dichotomy between the heart and the mind’.123 Over-simplistic antithesis between heart and mind, affective and noetic spirituality, may be something which is erroneously read back into the early Syrian context through the lens of the later Hesychast movement, which also insisted on the prayer of the heart as a key mode of spiritual practise.124 As we have seen, the early Syrian context is affirming of the integrity of all parts of the human person, as a mirror of the perfect unity of two natures in Christ. Human salvation is shown by Syrian writers to depend on Christ’s salvific death on the one hand and on human integrity on the other. Adam can only re-enter Paradise when he is complete and whole.125 Redemption cannot exclude the bodily; it has to embrace it to bring the whole person before God.
1 Antiochene Christology focuses on the divinising of man, rather than the humanifying of God. An example of this is in Ephrem’s Hymn on Faith 29.1, quoted by Sebastian Brock, Sogiatha: Syriac Dialogue Hymns (Kottayam, 1987), p. 32. The Syrian context of various contentious Christologies is debated in Roberta. C. Bondi, Three Monophysite Christologies (Oxford, 1976) and see also Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, 1987), pp. xii, xiii, and Sebastian Brock’s discussion of Alexandrian and Antiochene understandings in his analysis of the early sixth-century Philoxenus of Mabugh’s Commentary on the Prologue of John (AD 505) in Studies in Syriac Christianity (Aldershot, 1992), p. 15.
2 Hans Drijvers, East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity (Aldershot, 1984), p. 1.
3 Leslie W. Barnard, ‘The origins and emergence of the church in Edessa during the first two centuries AD’, VC, vol. 22 (1986): pp. 161–75, at p. 161.
4 A. Baker, ‘Early Syrian Asceticism’, DR, vol. 88 (1970): pp. 393–409, at p. 395. In modern Turkey, Edessa is now Urfa. A. Baker, ‘Syriac and the Origins of Monasticism’, DR, vol. 86 (1968): pp. 342–53, at p. 344 and Susan Ashbrook–Harvey, ‘Embodiment in Time and Eternity: A Syriac Perspective’, SVTQ, vol. 43, no. 2 (1999): pp. 105–30, at p. 106.
5 Drijvers, East, p. 2, n. 5. This term is adopted enthusiastically, if uncritically, by Leslie W. Barnard in Asceticism in Early Syriac Christianity (Bangor, 1991), p. 13.
6 Drijvers, East, p. 3.
7 Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (London, 2006), p. 7.
8 Susan Ashbrook-Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley, 1990), p. 4.
9 Barnard argues that by 200 CE some of Church in Edessa wanted ‘closer connection with Greek-speaking Christianity’. ‘Origins’, p. 174, and that by the early fifth century, the church in Edessa had been assimilated into Antiochene church though not ‘at a theological level’. Ibid., p. 175.
10 Robert Murray writes persuasively about the complicated nature of cultural strands in the Persian, Seleucid, and Hasmonean periods in ‘The Characteristics of the Earliest Syriac Christianity’, in Nina Garsoïan et al. (eds), East of Byzantium (Washington, 1982), pp. 3–16, at p. 5. Burkitt’s assertion that Syriac was untouched by Greek culture or idiom was convincingly refuted by Drijvers, East, p. 1, and see also L. Abramowski, ‘Review of Drijvers H.J.W. East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity’, JTS, vol. 38 (1987), pp. 218–19. The integration of Neoplatonic understandings of the negative connotations of the material world is evidence of the synthesis of Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian thought even at the earliest stages of Syrian Christianity.
11 Definition of Encratism from the Milan Colloquium, U. Bianchi, La Tradizione dell Enkrateia (Rome, 1985), p. xxvii. However, balance this against Brock, who argues strongly that the ‘more integrated biblical view of the human personality that is Ephrem’s’ is set against the permeation of Hellenism into the European Christian tradition. Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World of Saint Ephrem (Kalamazoo, 1993), p. 128.
12 For example, Ashbrook-Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, pp. 109–11, n. 10.
13 Murray, ‘Characteristics’, p. 8. See also by Barnard, ‘Origins’, p. 174 and Barnard, Asceticism, p. 21.
14 Brock, Luminous, p. 86. This is discussed further on pp. 103 and 143 below.
15 Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, p. 106. See Sebastian Brock’s comments on the nature of Syriac in ‘The Dispute between the Soul and the Body: An Example of a Long-lived Mesopotamian Literary Genre’, in ARAM, vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 1989): pp. 53–65, at p. 53.
16 Murray, ‘Characteristics’, p. 9.
17 On this, see Drijvers, East, p. 3, and Sebastian Brock From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1999), p. 154.
18 J. Keith Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford, 1993), p. 440, follows the lead given by Wright from his work on this a century earlier.
19 She argues for this demonstrating ‘some respect’ for Syrian ‘from the elite world of Greek culture’. Harvey, Asceticism, p. 41.
20 Sebastian, Ephrem, p. 154.
21 See Thorlief Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (London, 1960).
22 Harvey emphasises this in ‘Embodiment’, p. 109, and Brock has written widely about the matter.
23 See pp. 137–9 below.
24 Harvey believes that this idea of God being clothed in language demonstrates early Syriac theologians’ ‘deliberate strategy’ of seeing bodily experience as a means to comprehending God. ‘Embodiment’, p. 109. Her later work develops one aspect of sensory perception; see Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, 2006).
25 Murray, ‘The Features of Earliest Christian Asceticism’, in Peter Brooks (ed.) Christian Spirituality (London, 1975), pp. 65–77.
26 I am indebted to Sebastian Brock for discussions about these issues, contained in private correspondence.
27 Some are also found in the writings of desert Fathers from Egypt and Palestine, too.
28 Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, p. 108.
29 For detailed readings of the place of the ascetic within the wider community, see Harvey, Asceticism.
30 Dom A. Baker explains that they ‘arose out of the very nature of the Christian society, were not a specially labelled class, and were subject to diverse and purely local customs and traditions’. ‘Syriac’, pp. 350 and 351.
31 Ibid., p. 346.
32 Harvey, Asceticism, p. 10.
33 A. Vööbus, Literary Critical and Historical Studies in Ephrem the Syrian (Stockholm, 1958), p. 102.
34 Kallistos Ware, ‘“My Helper and My Enemy”: The Body in Greek Christianity’, in Sarah Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 90–110, at p. 91.
35 Brock, Fathers, p. xxv.
36 Ware argues the spectre of dualism is mediated by the accompanying emphasis on moderation in ‘The Way of the Ascetics: Negative or Affirmative?’ in Asceticism, pp. 3–15, at p. 8.
37 Harvey, Asceticism, p. 104. She does, however, acknowledge that some Syrian groups did have dualist tendencies.
38 C.S. Beggiani, Introduction to Eastern Christian Spirituality: The Syriac Tradition (Toronto, 1991), p. 14.
39 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition from Plato to Denys (Oxford, 1981), p. 54. See also Brock, Dialogue, p. 6, and Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, p. 110. Note, too, her comment in Scenting Salvation, p. 60, where she declares that nature no less than Scripture ‘revealed and declared God’s truth’. See also her ‘Creation and Asceticism: Syriac Christian Thought’, in Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason and Hugh Pyper (eds), Christian Thought: A Brief History (Oxford, 2002), pp. 33–7. at p. 35.
40 Vööbus, Literary, p. 102.
41 Ibid., p. 104. Vööbus’ reading of Ephrem is frequently partisan; in asserting that ‘Ephrem’s works were mostly written for the purpose of showing how the heart can be made to groan and moan’ (ibid., p. 108), or that ‘we are in the province of mortification … [which is] fundamental to the concept of asceticism in Ephrem. Indeed, it lies at the heart of his whole ascetic outlook.’ (A History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient (Louvain, 1958), pp. 97, 98), he neglects the extremely positive views of the human person and joyfulness of the Hymns on Paradise.
42 Ware, ‘Helper’, p. 91.
43 Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek–English Lexicon (3 vols, Oxford, 1940), vol. 1, p. 222. This is discussed by Stuart Burns, ‘Charisma and Spirituality in the Early Church: A Study of Messalianism and Pseudo–Macarius’ (PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1998), p. 125.
44 Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1996), p. 99.
45 Burns, whose whole thesis focuses on encratism in Pseudo-Macarius, gives a detailed analysis of different understandings of encratism, here arguing that Elm uses the term as synonymous to asceticism. ‘Charisma’, p. 126.
46 Giulia Gasparro, for example, suggests that encratites became a ‘heresiological title’ for those most extreme advocates. ‘Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and “Double Creation” in Early Christianity’, in Asceticism, pp. 127–46, at p. 130.
47 Baker, ‘Early’, p. 396, cites Irenaeus and Basil as among those who use the term.
48 Murray, ‘Features’, p. 11. Murray observes that this anti-sex approach is in contrast to the general upholding of marriage by Syrians as valuable. The acceptance of procreative married sex as desirable for stable communities is shared by the late Romans, as discussed extensively by Peter Brown.
49 Act 1 (13, 14), in Elliott, Apocryphal, p. 452.
50 For a concise definition of encratism, see the published conference papers: Bianchi, Tradizione, pp. xxvii–xxix.
51 This is discussed at some length by Burns, ‘Charisma’, pp. 127–30.
52 Bianchi, Tradizione, p. xxvii.
53 Burns, ‘Charisma’, p. 131.
54 It is Ephrem’s use of this image of the body as temple which Brock identifies as showing him ‘far removed from platonizing or dualistic tendencies which denigrate the body’. Brock, Luminous, pp. 36–7. Further evidence of Syrian acceptance of the human body is that the eucharist, in taking the body of Christ to be shared with the faithful, attributes great value to its physical materiality.
55 ‘It is not a case of body versus soul, but of body and soul; the “heart” is doubly the centre of the psychosomatic entity.’ Sebastian Brock, Studies in Syriac Spirituality (Kerala, 1988), p. 43. Isaac of Nineveh’s Second Part V (33) also suggests a unity of the two – he talks of the Fathers ‘whose bodies and souls had become temples for the Holy Spirit’. Sebastian Brock (trans.), Isaac of Nineveh: The Second Part (Leuven, 1995), p. 19.
56 In Brock, Fathers, p. 359. Writing in the early fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem asserts that if the body ‘coexists with a holy soul then it becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit’. For this reason the body should be kept pure.
57 Columba Stewart, Working the Earth of the Heart: The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts, and Language to AD 431 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 204 and 206.
58 Ibid., p. 213.
59 Harvey, Scenting.
60 Ephrem Hymn on the Faith 14 (5), Sebastian Brock, The Harp of the Spirit: Eighteen Poems of St Ephrem (Studies Supplementary to Sobornost no. 4, 1983), p. 19. Bridegroom imagery features very frequently in Syrian writings; for example, Aphrahat Demonstration XIV: ‘He is the Bridegroom and the Apostles are the ‘Betrothers’, / and we are the Bride; let us prepare our dowry.’ Cited Murray, Symbols, p. 131. Murray gives here an extended analysis of the theme of the bride and bridegroom, in relation to typologies of Christ.
61 This is explored in detail by Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, p. 117. Both Aphrahat and Ephrem share a common metaphor of silent prayer being a physical acting out of Matt. 6.6 (shutting the chamber door when you pray); this image is found in Ephrem’s Hymn on the Faith 20 (6), in Brock, Sogiatha, p. 14 and pp. 34 and 170. For an analysis of integrated prayer in Isaac and the later Syriac tradition, see Hunt, Joy-Bearing, ch. 7.
62 ‘Every prayer in which the body does not participate, and by which the heart is not affected, is to be reckoned as an abortion, without a soul.’ Ascetic Homily 21 in Damon Miller (trans.), The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian (Boston, 1984), p. 107; see also Ascetic Homily 64, Miller, Ascetical, p. 312.
63 A. Mingana, ‘Treatise on Solitude and Prayer 21a’, Woodbrooke Studies VII (1934), p. 58. This is also quoted by Brock, Dialogue, p. 43; see also his Fathers, p. xxvii.
64 Harvey, Scenting, p. 87. Here she refers to John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, 1.24.
65 Hannah Hunt, ‘Praying the Body: Isaac of Nineveh and John of Apamea on Anthropological Integrity’, The Harp, vol. 11–12 (1998–99): pp. 153–8, at p. 158.
66 Brock, Studies (1988), p. 101.
67 Vööbus, History, vol. 1, pp. 97–103, citing Wensinck.
68 Murray, ‘Characteristics’, pp. 8 and 9. See also Beggiani, Introduction, pp. 19–20, where he connects the sense of covenant to that of ihidaya. There is also an extensive description of the Bnay and Bnat qyama in Shafiq Abouzayd, Ihidayutha: A Study of the Life of Singleness in the Syrian Orient (Oxford, 1993), especially with regard to Aphrahat, pp. 59–107. Abouzayd argues against the view that Aphrahat’s Sixth Demonstration constitutes a rulebook for the Bnay Qyama, but it is clear from the textual evidence he cites that this text gives a clear exposition of common understandings of covenant.
69 Murray, ‘Characteristics’, p. 8.
70 Ibid., p. 7. Murray provides convincing evidence for Aphrahat and Ephrem being members of the covenant and also that the intended audience of many of Ephrem’s hymns were the same community.
71 Barnard, ‘Origins, pp. 162–3. Barnard argues that this sense of a baptised elite pertains up to the time of Aphrahat, and thereafter the term indicated ‘a kind of monastic order within the Christian community, not the community itself’.
72 Vööbus, History, vol. 1, p. 15.
73 Ibid., p. 13. Note Vööbus’ depressing comment that ‘“flesh” had become, in these ascetic circles, the sphere of the evil that was hostile to God and was the proper domain of sin’. Ibid., pp. 21–2. Alarmingly, he appears to blame this on a Jewish heritage. This intense negativity (and what reads at times almost like anti-Semitism) is vigorously refuted by Murray, Symbols, pp. 14–15.
74 Beggianai, Introduction, pp. 19–20. Beggiani makes a firm connection between the commitment made to Qyama and the concept of ihidaya interpreting this as meaning a single-minded person.
75 Brock, Fathers, p. xxi.
76 Murray, ‘Characteristics’, p. 7.
77 Vööbus, History, p. 106, sees it as one of several fundamental terms at the heart of Syrian spirituality. As noted above, Abouzayd’s study focuses on the term, largely by giving very extensive quotations from relevant primary sources. His book includes a useful aide memoire to the dates and contexts of the authors he cites.
78 Brock, Fathers, p. xxii.
79 Baker, ‘Syriac’, argues that it is a satisfactory translation for monachos, and both Brock, Fathers, p. xxii, and Harvey, Asceticism, p. 8, note that this is the term found in the Gospel of Thomas to denote monachos.
80 Burns, ‘Charisma’, p. 102.
81 For a good overview of all three terms, see Sidney Griffith, ‘Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism’, in Asceticism, pp. 220– 45. The concept of monk as mourner (abîlâ) in Syrian asceticism is explored extensively in Sections III and IV of Hunt, Joy-Bearing.
82 It denotes more than celibacy, because the mind and heart must be engaged as well as the body. It is the attentiveness and focus of the mind which matters. See Baker, ‘Early’, p. 405.
83 Harvey clearly has this in mind when she insists that the body and soul must be one in order to meet God. ‘Embodiment’, p. 110.
84 Brock explains this in terms which evoke Platonic images of the soul’s division, expounded in the Phaedo. See Luminous, p. 130. Brock’s explanation of the ‘reality’ of marriage after the eschaton likewise recalls the famous Platonic image of the cave and the nature of reality and forms.
85 Brock, Luminous, p. 130.
86 Brock, Fathers, p. xxv.
87 Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, pp. 110 and 122.
88 Philoxenus of Maboug, First Discourse,, in The Discourses, trans. E.A. Wallis Budge (2 vols, London, 1893–94), vol. 2, p. 18. However, Philoxenus is inconsistent in his approach to the indivisibility of body and soul.
89 Harvey is much concerned with this aspect, arguing that ‘whatever the changes in our resurrected body, it is the continuity of our bodily existence in time and eternity that matters’. ‘Embodiment’, p. 122. Cyril of Jerusalem thinks that as the body will be ours for eternity it must be cherished during its earthly stage. Catechesis 4 (30), in E. Yarnold (trans.), Cyril of Jerusalem (London, 2000), p. 107
90 See n. 105 to Catechesis 4 (22) in Yarnold, Cyril, p. 105.
91 Treatise on Solitude and Prayer 21a and b, ed. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies VII (1934), p. 101.
92 Jean le Solitaire (Pseudo-Jean de Lycopolis) Dialogue sur l’âme et les passions des homes, trans. Irénée Hausherr (Rome, 1939), p. 8. In his introduction to the translation, Hausherr argues for the influence of John the Solitary (also known as John of Apamea) on Ephrem and Philoxenus, as well as early Muslim writers. However, he does not explore the issue of the extent to which Ephrem affirms a holistic understanding of the human person, focusing instead on the issue of spiritual hierarchies.
93 The taritha, naphsha and gusha being the intellectual spirit, soul and body respectively.
94 Hymn on Paradise 9 (20) (discussed by Brock Luminous, p. 153) gives an extended analysis of how the soul is more glorious than the body, and the spirit more glorious than the soul, which in turn is inferior to the Godhead.
95 Brock, Dialogue, p. 101.
96 Brock, Fathers, p. 358.
97 Hausherr, Dialogue, p. 82.
98 Brock, Studies (1988), p. 104.
99 First Discourse, ed. Budge, vol. 2, p. 2.
100 Although his name suggests he is not a Syrian by birth or dwelling, his texts are widely distributed in Syriac translation, and he was defended by Theodoret of Cyrrhus as a Nicene despite some apparent Arian sympathies. See Yarnold, Cyril, p. 7.
101 Catechesis 3 (4), Yarnold, Cyril, p. 90.
102 Treatise on Solitude and Prayer 11b, ed. A. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies VII (1934), p. 88. See also Philoxenus, who acknowledges the unity of body and soul, but recommends an encratic rejection of the body as risking contamination of the soul. The Twelfth Discourse, Budge, vol. 2, p. 505 talks about being ‘unable to separate the body from the soul’ so ‘we can, if we wish, cut off and eject lust from the body’.
103 ‘The labour of the body cannot be justified without the service of the soul, but the service of the soul can be justified even without the labours of the body.’ Sixth Discourse, Budge, vol. 2, p. 173. See also the Second Discourse (Budge, vol. 2, p. 45), where he cites Paul in his defence: ‘Paul knew that the spiritual nature could not fall under the bodily senses, and that it could not be known, for not even one of its bodily senses could subjugate it.’ Budge, vol. 2, p. 32.
104 Treatise on Solitude and Prayer 21a, ed. Mingana, pp. 88 and 101.
105 Especially Shmona, Guria and Habib, analysed in Susan Ashbrook-Harvey, ‘The Edessan Martyrs and Ascetic Tradition’, The Harp, vol. 6, no. 2 (Nov. 1993), pp. 99–110, at p. 99. Harvey relates the conviction of such martyrs to the covenantal commitment of the bnay qyama.
106 Harvey explains that this statement draws on the Syriac word qwm, meaning to stand, and related to the bnay qyama. ‘Edessan’, p. 103. See also Ephrem: ‘We love our bodies, which are akin to us, of the same origin; / for our roots are dust.’ Nisebene Hymn 50 (3), Brock, Harp, p. 121.
107 Note from Ephrem’s Hymn on Faith 14 (5): ‘Your bride is the soul, the body Your bridal chamber / Your guests are the senses with the thoughts.’ Cited by Harvey, Scenting, p. 61.
108 Catechesis 4 (22), Yarnold, Cyril, p. 105. Writing in praise of chastity in Catechesis 12 (34), Cyril insists on respect for bodies because ‘they will shine like the sun’. Ibid., p. 147.
109 Kathleen E. McVey (trans.), Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York, 1989), p. 426.
110 Harvey, ‘Embodiment’, p. 124.
111 Harvey states that Ephrem insists that sense perception is the foundational experience of the human-divine encounter, while he repeatedly admonishes that the senses are insufficient for the task. ‘Embodiment’, p. 128.
112 Hymn on Paradise 8 (5–6), Sebastian Brock (trans.) St Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, 1990), p. 133. It is worth noting that the term ‘miscarriage’ might be a more accurate translation, denoting the failure of a pregnancy to come to term rather than its deliberate termination.
113 Hymn on Paradise 8 (2), Brock, Paradise, p. 132.
114 Hymn on Paradise 8 (4), Brock, Paradise, p. 132.
115 Second Discourse, Budge, vol., p. 33.
116 Stephen bar Sudaili, ‘The Book of the Holy Hierotheos’, Fourth Discourse, ch. 13, F.S. Marsh (trans.), The Book of the Holy Hierotheos (London, 1927), pp. 110–11. For more details on this Syrian mystic, see Beggiani, Introduction, ch. 13.
117 Anonymous Mesopotamian text, cited in Brock, ‘Dispute’; see esp. stanzas 45 and 46 on p. 63.
118 ‘[The soul] cannot receive reward and punishment without [the body], because the labour was not its alone, but also that of the body in which it dwelt.’ Cited by Ashbrook-Harvey, ‘Edessen’, p. 105.
119 Nisibene Hymn, 69 (3) and (5), Brock, Harp, p. 77.
120 Ibid., v. 3., p. 77, and see also v. 14, p. 78. Almost identical wording is found in Brock’s edition of ‘Dispute’, p. 46.
121 Brock, Studies (1988), p. 43.
122 Brock, Luminous, p. 128.
123 Brock, Fathers, pp. xxv–xxvi.
124 Burns, ‘Charisma’, p. 94.
125 As suggested in Ephrem’s Hymn on Paradise IX: ‘together they entered, / body and soul, / pure and perfect to that perfect place.’ Brock, Paradise, p. 134.