Embodiment is at the heart of Syrian theology and anthropology. In the early Syrian tradition, human redemption is predominantly articulated through typology and symbolism. Christ as the second Adam and Mary as the new Eve were dominant ways of explaining the connection between God’s divinity and human life.1 Furthermore these linguistic and intellectual devices were not just the means by which writers communicated; they were also the means by which God communicated with humanity itself.2 Before Christ ‘put on the body’, God ‘puts on words’, clothed himself in language in order to communicate to men and women.3 Ephrem’s Hymn 31 on The Faith devotes its first five stanzas to this image, detailing how God chose to do this for the benefit of humanity,4 revealing by visible means what is invisible so humanity can share in his divinity. The concept of divinisation or theosis is commonly found in both eastern and Western Christendom, expressed here by Ephrem in a straightforward re-voicing of Irenaeus’ words: ‘He gave us divinity, / we gave Him humanity.’5
The divinising function of the Incarnation is also explicitly phrased as a process of stripping off and reclothing, a symmetrical stripping of the glory of the Godhead to match that lost by Adam, and a reclothing of Adam through Jesus being ‘clothed in a body’, as expressed in Hymn 23 on the Nativity (13):
All these changes did the Merciful One effect,
Stripping off His glory and putting on a body;
For he had devised a way to reclothe Adam
In that glory which Adam had stripped off.6
Late antique Syrian writers use images of clothing to show the interchange between divinity and humanity: God uses human modes of being to allow himself to be perceived:
He clothed Himself in language,
so that He might clothe us
in his mode of life.7
God seeks to facilitate understanding It is not just perception but that, in this, the ‘Creator of the Garden … clothed his Majesty / in terms that we can understand’.8 In addition to employing human language, God is depicted as using ‘corporeal objects’ in order to ‘draw us close in a symbolic way to knowledge of his invisible nature’.9 The material world is the essential means by which the invisible (non-material) is made visible (material) in a way which humans, who are both material and spiritual, can perceive with their senses and understand with their intellect. Just as Christ has both divinity and humanity, so in Syrian religious anthropology it is taken for granted that the human person’s constituent ‘parts’, both physical and spiritual, must coexist and indeed co-operate in order to be in relationship with God.
The use of antinomies, parallels, pairing, opposites and inversions of subject and object feature strongly in Syrian typology and modes of expression – visible/invisible, clothed/naked, silence/speech. This frequently finds expression as a symmetry or mutuality. The antithesis of speech and silence, for example, is seen clearly in the writings of John the Solitary. Writing about prayer he takes the reader from silence to speech, punning on the sense of ‘Word’ as Jesus. He writes of the Incarnation as: ‘the Word going forth from Silence’ and ‘putting on the body as a word puts on the voice’.10 The boundaries between physical and spiritual are presented as fluid, as ‘silence’ can be metaphorical, being ‘of the tongue … of the whole body … of the mind … of the spirit’.11 In other words, a physical construct (human speech or its absence) is seen as having a noetic or spiritual expression as well as a physical one, suggesting a holistic understanding of the human person. Silence becomes clothed – the Voice becomes a body.12
Symmetries and antitheses are expressed through images of clothing and the experience of being clothed. This takes many guises in Syrian thought. In addition to the key concept of Christ being clothed in the body, and Adam being clothed in light, there are many general, sometimes almost playful, uses of clothing imagery in the literature. Philoxenus invites his readers to clothe the soul with the ‘dress of belief’,13 and suggests that one who is ‘clothed in passions’ cannot develop spiritually.14 Another more generic use of the metaphor is connected to the apostles, whom Ephrem describes as naked and then clothed by the Spirit,15 and in Hymn 2 on Virginity (3) there is the image of the ‘attire of illness’;16 Hymn 16 on Virginity (8) talks of ‘a new man not clothed in the guile of the serpent, / a simple man in whom Adam was reproached’.17 Ephrem’s Letter to Publius describes virgins as ‘those whose bodies had been betrothed in chaste marriage, while their spirit was bound in the love of their Lord, were chosen, being clothed in love of Him as with a robe, with the desire from Him permeating all their limbs’.18
To some extent this fondness for imagery represents simply the nature of Semitic languages (referred to on p. 96) in which layers of meaning adhere to the triad of letters which form a word-stem in Hebrew or Syriac. It also illustrates the distinctive role of ‘poet-theologian’ typical of Ephrem and others in his milieu. A language in which the word for diving (as for treasure)19 also refers to baptism lends itself to a highly developed use of symbolism, typology and metaphor in its theological teaching.
Alongside images of Christ being clothed in human flesh, there are a range of kenotic images couched as stripping and reclothing. God’s ‘condescension in allowing himself to be described at all in human terms’ is aptly described by Brock as a kind of kenosis, and in analysing the literature we will find instances of both divine and human kenosis.20 In order to be approachable to humanity ‘Grace’ has stooped down; this ‘clothing in his likeness’ is not in order to diminish his majesty, but to bring humanity close to his divinity, as ‘Paradise has simply clothed itself / in terms that are akin to you’.21 There are parallels here to the iconoclast debate, where the issue of whether Jesus can be portrayed in a physically accessible mode of expression is used to argue for the appropriateness of images and their veneration, since they express his humanity as well as his divinity. The fact that Jesus uses human modes of existence and means of perception raises humanity to its original perfection, and affirms the presence of the physical senses. Just as Christ shares the human body, so God shares in human language. This has an anthropological dimension (what it is to be human and made in the image of God) and also a sacramental side: the key functions of baptism and eucharist are expressed and experienced bodily.22 God’s kenosis is seen as a willing change undertaken by ‘the Compassionate One’ in order to ‘put on Adam the glory that he had shed’.23 In a different type of kenosis, Jesus is described as physically diminishing Himself in order to fit into the womb:
He diminished His measurements corresponding to the garment.
She wove it and clothed in it Him Who had taken off His Glory;
she measured and wove for Him Who had made Himself small.24
Jesus relinquishes not just the infinite dimensions of divinity, but also his strength.25
Divine kenosis is a familiar enough concept within the Christian tradition. Syrian writers affirm the connection between God and humanity by suggesting that humanity too experiences kenosis, putting off its fleshly instincts in order to leave room in the heart for divine activity. This is not to say that putting off the flesh is analogous to Jesus ‘putting off the divinity’, but the parallel process of emptying and replenishing affirms the integrated status of the physical and spiritual in man, just as the divine and human is integrated in Christ. Christ’s kenosis of divine power is mirrored in a penitent’s voluntary kenosis of fleshly desires which does not result in destruction of the body, merely its correct orientation and function. The opening passages of the Liber Graduum urge the penitent to ‘self-empty’ the heart,26 and then ‘empty’ the self from other physical accoutrements such as possessions and worldly inheritance.27 John of Apamea also sees spiritual progress taking place through human kenosis which leads to purity and luminosity.28 The influence of the Liber Graduum can also be discerned in the early sixth-century author Babai’s Letter to Cyriacus,29 which urges the convert to remember what he has given up through self-emptying, so that his yearning for the goal of the new Jerusalem is not a shallow or hasty choice but deep learning.30 Less overtly kenotic, but suggestive of self-emptying, is Ephrem’s image of the exalted Godhead diminishing in order to make humanity great. Without losing the divine nature, he explains, ‘in [Mary] It has woven us a garment / that shall be for our salvation’.31
The Syrian tendency to see the human person as an animated body is rooted in the Biblical tradition, starting with Genesis.32 As discussed in Chapter 7, the Syrian ascetic attitude to the human body derives from a Hebraic rather than a predominantly Greek view of humanity. So it is unsurprising to find images of clothing and veiling applied by Syrian writers to Scriptural texts, in addition to the incarnational uses of this motif applied to New Testament texts. In fact, typology enables the two testaments to be linked in a way that emphasises Christological insights. A recurrent image in Syrian writings is that of God being veiled from Moses, which is taken as a parallel to Jesus ‘putting on the veil of the body’ to disguise His divinity.33 Ephrem juxtaposes the image of Moses being veiled with Jesus’ veiling of Himself in the Incarnation, providing a further level of typology with Moses as the ‘type’ of Jesus, a variation on first and second Adam typology which serves to emphasise the covenantal nature of Christian discipleship:
The face of Moses shone
When God spoke with him
And he laid a veil over his face
For the people were unable to behold him
just as our Lord, from the womb,
entered and put on the veil of the body.34
Images of clothing applied to the Hebrew Scriptures stress its prefiguring of the New Testament; in Ephrem’s Hymn 44 on The Church, the image of clothing is applied initially to the Law ‘“clothed” in the first tablets which Moses broke and then in the new tablets’ (those of the new covenant); then to the election of the Church and finally to both the Incarnation and Resurrection.35 Syriac interpreters habitually explain the Jewish Scriptures’ teachings of God’s engagement with humanity through practices of clothing, disguise and veiling analogous to the Christian model of the godhead ‘clothed in the body’. Further evidence of the Syrian saturation in Jewish thought may be seen in Ephrem’s Hymn 13 on Virginity (5), which talks of ‘the despicable one who stripped you of your garments’, and the ‘stripping off his graven images in which he clothed himself’.36
A passage in the Hebrew Scriptures commonly interpreted by Syrians through clothing images is found in Isaiah: ‘The Lord will give them ‘a garment of splendour for the heavy heart’ (Isa. 61.3) and ‘he has robed me in salvation as a garment, and clothed me in integrity as a cloak’ (Isa. 61.10). The Christian appropriation of Isaiah’s suffering servant motif as a precursor for Christ’s passion is an obvious reason why this passage would appeal especially to Syrian writers. But sometimes their reworking of the texts shows a detailed focus; note, for example, the Syrian variant of ‘clothe’ for ‘crown’ in Ps. 8.6, which in the Greek and Hebrew is translated as ‘You created man a little less than the angels: in honour and glory did you crown him’.37 This subtle change in emphasis casts humanity in an elevated position within the created order, one in which man was once of angelic status, to which he can return. Another example of the hybrid nature of Syrian and Hebraic concepts is to be found in the priestly connotations of the robe of glory. Whilst this has clear liturgical resonances for Christian interpreters, following the Letter to the Hebrews and Paul on Christ as the High Priest, this idea has its roots in not only Jewish but Mandean and Manichean thought.38
There are a vast number of images of clothing applied to Christ by Syrian writers, and here we will focus largely, though not exclusively, on Ephrem the Syrian. In these texts, clothing images are used to describe each stage of Jesus’ earthly life and also those of his human counterparts as they become Christian. The key liturgical actions of baptism, eucharist and anointing all start with the human body rather than a spiritualised being. Created with a robe of glory which is lost in the Fall Adam’s body is reclothed through Christ’s own self-clothing in that same body. The robe of glory, shared by Christ and humanity, is used to show the interconnectedness of each stage in this divine plan.39 The creation of Adam is the starting point. Particularly significant here is the alternative reading of being clothed in light or clothed in skin from the Targum. For Syrian writers the concept of the garment of light may be interchangeable with a garment of skin, because of one traditional translation of Gen. 3.21, which describes how God clothed Adam and Eve in tunics or garments of skin after the Fall. The Hebrew words for ‘skin’ and ‘light’ are very close (‘wr and ‘wr, respectively) and the late first-century Rabbi Meir apparently had access to a manuscript of Genesis which read ‘garments of light’.40 This is strikingly more positive than many Greek and Latin Patristic writers who tend to refer to the ‘garments of skin’ as ‘garments of shame’.41 Was Adam before the Fall not, in fact, luminous, limpid and close to God through this skin of light just as Jesus at his transfiguration was luminous?42 Eve, too, can be luminous.43 In a variant on the robe of glory, Ephrem also describes Jesus being the Light which ‘stripped off and took away from us the garment of blemishes’.44 Christ is ‘covered with light as though with a garment’.45 Being in the presence of God confers luminosity and as Adam rejects this intimacy, like Lucifer, he loses his light. But through baptism the robe of glory is refreshed; Ephrem talks of it being dipped in the River Jordan at Christ’s baptism in order that all humanity may in future have a robe of glory to wear.46 Repentance as well as baptism can effect this Pauline-inspired image of putting off of the old Adam and putting on of the new.47 In a further link to the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses’ encounter with God is described as God being veiled from Moses not only in order not to blind him, but as an interchange between the external brightness which clothed Moses and the internal light from the Jordan, which is rendered luminous by its encounter with Jesus.48 Elsewhere, veiling is recalled in this description of Adam’s awakening to sin; through it, he acquired knowledge of both God’s glory and his own nakedness. As Adam:
tore away and removed
both veils from his eyes:
he beheld the Glory of the Holy of Holies
and trembled.49
Jesus’ baptism is seen as involving the ‘robe of glory’ with which Adam was clothed initially;50 it is taken from him as he becomes physically naked and exposed to God after his temptation in the Garden of Eden. Some commentators go as far as to suggest that the serpent ‘stole the clothes of Adam’ (that is, his innocence).51 Metaphorical, luminous clothing has to be replaced with a physical clothing of fig leaves, which has all sorts of biblical resonances. Ephrem’s acceptance of women is shown in his idea that the ‘shame’ of women is, through Christ, clothed ‘not in leaves but rather in the glory they had shed’.52 Eve, like Adam, shared originally in the luminosity of God.
Physical nakedness entails being stripped bare of pride and artifice hence Adam’s being stripped of the robe of glory is a manifestation of shame rather than innocence. Mirroring this, Christ’s adoption of the robe of humanity enables him to share in some of that human shame. In Eph. 6.14, Paul gives an extended metaphor of God’s strength acting as protective armour. He advises the faithful to ‘Put on the belt of truth, for coat of mail, put on integrity; let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace … take up the great shield of faith … take salvation for helmet, for sword, take that which the Spirit gives you.’
Isaac alludes to this in one of his prayers, where he combines being clothed in divine ‘protective armour’ with the garment-of-light imagery and the motif of nakedness which is shared by Christ and man:
O Christ who are covered with light
as though with a garment,
who for my sake stood naked in front of Pilate,
clothe me with that might
which you caused to overshadow the saints.53
The vulnerability and humility of Christ is emphasised by links between the garments of skin and the swaddling bands with which Jesus clothed himself in order to raise Adam to glory again.54 An anonymous soghitha finds a direct corollary between the lost garment of glory and the swaddling clothes with which the infant Christ is willingly ‘bound’.55 There are several references to this in Ephrem, for example:
The Lord of David
and Son of David hid his glory
in swaddling clothes. His swaddling clothes gave
a robe of glory to human beings.56
The concept of baptism cleansing the robe of glory so that it can be used by man57 is linked to the wedding garment which features strongly in many eschatological references in the New Testament, especially Matt. 22.12. The robe of glory with which the baptismal candidate is clothed thus becomes simultaneously the wedding garment without which one may not enter into eternal light.58 Ephrem elaborates on the eschatological banquet to suggest that the individual becomes universal,59 a type for humanity as a whole with body and soul involved in this exchange. In Hymn 14 on Faith, he explicitly includes ‘senses and thoughts’ as ‘guests’ of the soul which is ‘your bridal chamber’.60 When the robe of glory is dipped into the water, it becomes humanised, as does the water; in a wonderful verse which conflates Jesus’ baptism with his calming of the waters depicted in Mark 6.51, Ephrem attributes human senses of sight and touch to the natural world in a way which affirms both man and nature as part of divine creation. Hymn 33 on Virginity (10) says:
Before the feet of our Lord the sea smoothed its waves,
The land carried [Him] and before Him it took and spread our garments.
The waves saw You and were calmed,
And the garments saw You and were spread out.61
An anonymous epiphany hymn62 elaborates on the process of baptism as renewing virginity, which enables the newly baptised to be brought to ‘His Bridal Chamber on high’ where Jesus has not only exchanged clothing with him (‘He has clothed Himself in me, and I am clothed in Him’) but embraced him as a bride (‘With the kisses of His mouth He has kissed me’).63 Clothing acts as purification and covenantal commitment between God and man. The boundaries between divine and human become permeable, just as the barrier between time now and time to come is opened up through the advent of Christ. In eschatological terms: as Brock points out, the epiclesis onto the water of baptism ‘effectually makes the water of the individual font identical in sacred time and space with the Jordan waters’.64 In eschatology, there is no division or separation between the two waters, just as the robe of glory and the wedding robe are one, but seen at different times and in different forms. Because Paradise is outside the boundaries of human time, the saints have ‘put on glory’ rather than being clad in the leaves of shame; they always wear the luminous robe of the wedding banquet, which is one with ‘the robe that belongs to Adam and Eve’.65 Jesus puts on ‘one body of limbs and another of glories’;66 glory is worn by Adam, the first man, by Jesus who redeemed him in taking ‘the dust of man’ to be his robe, and by the guests who share in the banquet, whose ‘bodies, their garments will shine’.67 Wearing the ‘garments of light’ will enable Adam to return to Eden.68
Mary, the Holy Mother of God, has an especial role to play in the clothing metaphors of the Incarnation. We find examples of the mythopoetic69 use of wombs, whether the literal womb of Mary, the receptive womb of the ear,70 to the penitent’s request that he become a womb for the word of God to flourish and grow. Her womb clothes Christ in His physical form, taking on full, not docetic, humanity which shows His human motherhood; Jesus ‘shone out in her … formed and clothed in her features’.71 As with the waters of Jordan, so here Christ’s light transforms her body in which He resided, as it ‘gleam[s] from within’.72 In a symmetrical typology Jesus reclaims the body for Adam and Mary does the same for Eve. She is at once both the bearer of the light-giving one and the one whose daughter caused the robe of light to be replaced by shameful garments; in her, the light-bearing Christ is ‘woven’, as a garment, in order to redeem the first woman who caused the robe of glory to be sullied.73 In weaving a body for Christ in her womb, Mary also weaves one for herself, typologically: Eve had stripped off the garment of glory and Mary (through bearing Christ) replaces it.74 A parallel typology to the first and second Adam is strongly suggested through images of clothing being the symbol and signifier of redemption. Mary is depicted as having ‘woven a robe of glory to give to her ancestor / who had been stripped naked … His wife [Eve] had laid him low, but his daughter lent him support / And he arose all valiant.’75 The use of ‘daughter’ and ‘mother’ here in place of the names ‘Eve’ and ‘Mary’ suggests the continuing nature of redemption achieved through replacing the ‘fig leaves of shame’ with a ‘garment of glory’ which is, specifically, ‘woven’ just as Jesus himself is ‘woven’ in Mary’s womb.76 Just as Eve ‘made for him / a garment covered with stains’, so Mary provides another robe.77
The plethora of images associated with Mary and the annunciation lay the groundwork for ‘clothed in the body’ being the key metaphor for the Incarnation used by Syrian writers at this time.78 In fact, it was the actual phrase used to translate that part of the Creed,79 specifically to put on the body not put on flesh, a choice of terminology found widely in the early Syrian tradition, including the apocryphal Acts of Judas Thomas and Acts of John, as well as Ephrem and Aphrahat.80 The Biblical roots of this concept may well come from Rom 13.14 or Gal. 3.27, and references to Isaiah have already been noted. Within apocryphal literature, it is noticeable that the image of the Incarnation as a clothing in the body is found extensively in the Acts of Judas Thomas, and also in the early Syrian context in the writings of Aphrahat.81 The purpose of Jesus being clothed in the body was that, by assuming the same flesh as man, he could redeem him: ‘he clothed himself in the likeness of man / in order to bring man to the likeness of himself.82
Doctrinal teachings pertaining to the death of Christ are also expressed through clothing images, especially light-bearing robes. The relinquishing of the human body in death is seen as a stripping off in order to descend to Sheol; just as in baptism Christ picked up the cleansed robe of glory from the River Jordan, so in the Resurrection he ‘found’ his garment in Sheol.83 The descent of Jesus into Sheol and his subsequent resurrection is seen, like the nativity and baptism, as a ‘descent of divinity into successive wombs’ which each furnish Jesus with light.84 Joseph the Visionary asks that he ‘become a womb for you in secret’ in which Jesus can dwell by night (in other words hidden) whilst being received openly by the man who prays.85
So, images of clothing dominate the literature as a means of expressing Christological and other doctrinal statements. For the human person to be ‘clothed in the body’ is to be a witness to God of the glory of creation. As a consequence, there is much emphasis (especially in the later literature) of the centrality of physical participation in acts of worship. Isaac and John of Apamea in particular insist that prayer which does not involve the body in appropriate prostrations and gestures was so incomplete as to be described as an abortion, in other words something not only utterly unfruitful but unnatural.86 Like a foetus (as understood in ancient times) prayer without the toil of the body does not have a soul.87 Physical acts of worship, including kissing the cross, are performed with ‘their body assisting them as the occasion might allow … reckoning each act of worship and kiss as a single prayer’.88 Although other forms of prayer may take place,89 prayer which uses bodily postures is clearly valued. This is for man’s benefit, not God’s: Isaac explains that God’s desire for ‘outward postures, specific kinds of honour, and visible forms of prayer’ is insisted on because humanity needs it. ‘Had such things not been requisite’, he continues, ‘he would not have adopted such postures for Himself during his incarnation’.90 Christ is seen as a salvific ‘tabernacle of love on earth … a temple made of flesh’ and because of this, human worship synthesises the soul and the body in a coherent act of worship:
As my soul bows to the ground
I offer to you with all my bones
And with all my heart
The worship that befits you.91
Note that the soul performs a bodily posture while the body offers worship. The two are inextricably linked, and share modes of expression. Although prayer of the heart is an ‘inner’ activity, the outward postures should not be despised as they operate as the vehicle of the soul, and the image of Christ.92 The soul is portrayed as ‘labouring’; this sense of activity is not confined to the physical aspect of the human person, and the labours of prostrations benefit the soul.93 Body and soul must co-operate in this activity: ‘In the ministry of the mind, the body is not without labour, either.’94
Since human souls inhabit bodies it is important to integrate the two. The sixth-century Sahdona (also known as Martyrius) explains that using the body correctly in prayer cleanses it from its habitual shameful habits. This is the reason, he says, that:
God gave us eyes, mouth and hearing, so that all our limbs might be filled with service of him, as we recount his words, carry out his wishes, continuously sing his praises and ceaselessly offer up to him thanksgiving. By these means we shall purify our minds.95
Since God deigned to clothe Himself in speech, it is only right that man offers praise back to God using the means by which God Himself communicated with humanity. Human prostrations mimic Christ’s condescension in assuming an incarnate form. Christ’s kenotic humility prompts Him to assume a body, in an act symmetrical to the prostrations performed by the Fathers in order to defeat the demon pride.96 God assumes the mantle of human language; so Christ, by sharing in humanity, shows full acceptance of the human body.97 In addition to the kenotic implications of physical prayer, the role of the body in worship also enables Isaac to refute accusations of Messalianism.98 The body is portrayed in a spiritual light with the soul being the part which is ‘bowing down to the ground’.99 The heart represents the whole of the human person.100 Isaac represents human worship as replicating that of the angels who are incorporeal, because ‘those whose nature comes from dust [are] worthy to speak of such mysteries’.101 The integrity of material and non-material aspects of the human person when at prayer is strongly affirmed by physical charisms, such as tears, being seen not as ‘rapture of the intellect’ but ‘purity of prayer’. Rather than the body detracting from prayer it is in fact contributing to it;102 however, at the point of purest prayer, the bodily expression of penitence is transcended.103 Abraham of Nathpur is one of several Fathers to suggest a spiritual hierarchy in modes of prayer: he who ‘sings, using his tongue and his body’ is one of ‘the just’, but one who sings internally is ‘a spiritual being’,104 he writes, suggesting an almost Gnostic sense of election.
We have seen how clothing imagery is used within the Syrian tradition to exegete the incarnation of Christ and the salvation of Adam, through the birth, baptism and resurrection of Christ. Several key incidents involving Christ’s ministry to women use clothing. The Scriptures record instances of healing through touching Jesus’ garments; what would normally be seen as contaminating to a Jewish man is superseded by Jesus’ power to avoid being sullied by contact with menstrual blood and furthermore heal and transform through his physical clothing. Touch, like sight and smell are pre-eminently physical modes of engagement and expression. Being able to find God through the senses suggests a rehabilitation of the whole of the human person, operating not just at an intellectual level but in an enfleshed body which ‘perceives’ rather than intuits God. Just as the light of the transfiguration or the light-bearing robe of the unfallen Adam has a theological import, so does the touching by women of Jesus’ garments and even His body in some New Testament stories. Luke’s story of the Sinful Woman (Luke 7, 35–50)105 is an immensely popular pericope for Syrian commentators.106 The popularity of this motif (the redemption through penitence of a professionally sexually active woman) has many possible explanations, some of which are inevitably connected to misogynistic social constructs at the time. It tacitly reminds the reader of the Eve/Mary typology.107 Clothing imagery and the practical use of clothing appear in various guises here. Through her penitence and love, the woman is reclothed physically and spiritually, like Adam in the robe in glory. In using her own hair as a cloth to wipe Jesus’ feet she becomes her own garment of salvation. Her penitence is physically expressed to Jesus’ physical body through this garment, and at the same time her love for him recognises that he is ‘clothed in a body’ which conceals his divinity. This bridging of material and spiritual worlds (with the ‘eye of faith’ recognising what is hidden) is a deeply holistic approach to the human person, who shares with Christ the image of the invisible God. It gives an authoritative voice to every woman who is, typologically, the Eve who has led Adam astray from Eden.108
The story of the woman with the haemorrhage, (Mark 5.25–34) also attests to the power of Jesus’ physical self to heal. Mark describes how the woman believes she will be healed by touch, not of Jesus’ body but even by something which has touched Him (His physical clothing). Correspondingly, Jesus is aware that power had gone out of Him through this touch (Mark 5.31). As with the Sinful Woman, the healing here is due not so much to the physical contact with Jesus but to her belief that the touch of Jesus will heal. By association, garments which have touched Jesus will also carry that power (a convention thoroughly absorbed in subsequent hagiography and veneration of relics in Eastern and Western Christendom). As with the healing of the paralytic (Mark 2.1–12), Jesus’ instruction to ‘go in peace’ suggests emotional (or spiritual) healing as well as physical: the physician of souls integrates healing of the whole person. Ephrem’s Hymn 4 on Virginity (7) brings out the unseen nature of Jesus’ divinity and His act of healing by giving metaphorical sight to the flow of blood.109 The healing of the woman with the haemorrhage can act as a model for all healing, as Christ’s hidden power is disclosed to humanity:
And like her who feared yet took heart when she was healed
heal my fear of terror, let me take heart in you;
let me pass from your garment to your body,
that to the best of my power I may speak of it.
Your garment, Lord, is a fountain of healing.
In your visible dress dwells your hidden power.110
Mark’s account of the woman with the haemorrhage is juxtaposed to another healing miracle, that of Jairus’ daughter, who Jesus takes by the hand (again touching a woman in a manner which risks physical contamination in order to heal her whole person). Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron juxtaposes this story to that of the Sinful Woman, in order to make the theological point that the visible woman (who was in need of healing) discloses the hidden divinity (who heals her). In this symmetrical interchange of disclosure and touch, the salvation Christ brings is seen as being silently articulated by the woman herself, rather than any words of Jesus. Her actions become the confession of Christ’s divinity and humanity:
By means of a woman whom they could see, they were enabled to see the divinity which cannot be seen. Through the Son’s own healing his divinity became known, and through the healing of the afflicted woman, her faith was made manifest.111
The Lucan text concerning the Sinful Woman is a parable of forgiveness and humility; the self-righteous Pharisee Simon is rebuked by Jesus for his disparaging attitude to a sinful woman (presumed to be a prostitute) who is so moved by Jesus’ presence that she anoints His feet (prefiguring His anointing at Bethany), washes them with her penitent tears and dries them with her hair. What is striking is the insistence that it is by her body that she is saved, not because of it:
By that thing by which she was lost, she was found, since she believed,
So that triumphant was the mouth that had condemned her,
And sanctified was the mouth that had defiled her,
And purified was the beauty that had debased her.112
She is transformed by her tears of grief and through the correct use of the very physical attributes by which she previously earned her livelihood, and thus becomes ‘a female mouthpiece of incarnational theology’, an ‘exemplum of redemption for the whole of humanity’,113 one who ‘prefigures the baptism of the whole world symbolically’.114 Her physical contact with Christ draws His sanctity into her body:
Her eyes, indeed, which used to gaze on all sides – are now purified by the tears she lets fall.
Her hair bound her to evil actions – now she renounces them by wiping Jesus’ feet with it.
Her lips, which she had soiled by kissing impure mouths – now she is sanctified by using them to kiss the holy feet.115
By ministering to Jesus’ humanity, she affirms her own physicality. The righteous Simon, whose purity is merely ritualised, only offered to wash His feet with water, whereas this woman has anointed them with her own bodily fluids, which metaphorically represent the cleansing waters of baptism, the sacramental ointment used to embalm the dead, and the amniotic fluid released at birth. The ‘eye of faith’ saves the woman, because her physical actions demonstrate her recognition of Jesus’ humanity and divinity. This illustrates Brock’s comment that where we see ‘the hidden power’ (hayla kasya)116 reiterated in the Syriac linking of the material and spiritual in such an affirming way, we are ‘far removed from those Christian writers who, usually under Neoplatonic influence, tend to denigrate the value of the material world’.117 Jacob of Serug’s memra on the same theme combines the womb image with a remarkably positive view of the integrity of the Sinful Woman’s person, in which her own physical actions mimic those of Christ. Her tears become her own baptism of forgiveness, and her kenotic inclining over the feet of Jesus suggests His own gracious descent from heaven:
She bent her head over to wipe his feet with her hair.
And just as in baptism she received holiness from the Holy One.
She entered into the second womb, the place of atonement,
So that in new birth she might become beautiful in a spiritual sense.
She grasped his feet to find a Sea of mercy at the banquet.
She was baptised in him and he cleaned and polished her, and she arose pure.118
Although on one level this can be read as a positive approach to a woman of known ill repute because of her grieving penitence, it also speaks powerfully of the acceptability of the physical, when it is rightly used. Her tears are the ‘medication’ offered to the physician of souls.119 Her soul and her body are both healed by this penitent action, as with the paralytic, where it is clear that the remission of sins is what enables the man to regain physical strength. The Ephremic texts focus on the physical as essential to the integrity of the human person, even to the extent of introducing the imaginary figure of the perfume-seller to add sensuality to the story. The conflation of this character with the Mary of Bethany who anoints Jesus increases the impact.120 The physicality of the Sinful Woman is strikingly juxtaposed to Jesus’ incarnate nature in order to show not only the forgiveness He extends to her person in a holistic manner but the importance of the fully human and bodily form of Jesus. As Harvey indicates, Ephrem, by emphasising the ‘importance of bodily experience as a primary means by which humanity gains knowledge’, both articulates how the human intellect can ‘know’ God, and also looks to beyond earthly life when physical bodies will be no more.121 Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron explicitly makes a connection between the woman’s physicality and that of Jesus; there is symmetry in the cleansing and between Jesus’ speech and her silence: ‘Through her tears she washed the dust which was on his feet, while he, through his words, cleansed the scars which were on her flesh.’122 At the same time, he affirms the dual nature of Christ. The woman’s touching of Jesus’ body is informed by the interior eye of faith which enables her to recognise that His divinity will heal her: ‘His humanity was washed by her tears and refreshed, while his divinity granted redemption there and then for the price [of her tears]. Only his humanity was capable of being washed, whereas his divinity alone could expiate sins which were not visible.’123
The Ephremic treatment of the Sinful Woman offers further insights into the concept of clothing as a representation of a state of being. Building on the idea of Adam and Eve being clothed first in light/glory and then skins/figleaves/shame, the woman in Luke’s story ritually removes the physical signifiers of her trade in order to be reclothed in cleanliness. Her reclothing signifies her changed relationship with her own body, and is therefore challenged by Satan, who sees she is no longer in thrall to sin.124 Just as the dual nature of Christ has both an inner (invisible) and outer (visible) aspect, so the woman consciously says ‘inwardly’ and acts ‘outwardly’.125 She is depicted here as systematically removing the adornments of ‘whoredom’ and ‘lewdness’ before visiting the perfume-seller to buy the ointment with which she will anoint the feet of Jesus.126
We have travelled a long way from Adam in the Garden of Eden, clothed in robes of light. The range of material associated with clothing metaphors in early Syrian writings – from exegesis of Genesis to the eschatological significance of the robe of glory shared by Christ and man – testifies to the centrality of this metaphor within the tradition. It acts as a means of explaining the dual nature of Christ, the means by which God communicates with humanity through His ‘Word’ and above all the redemption of man and woman, their purification and rehabilitation as part of the created world loved and ordered by God.
1 Sebastian Brock stresses the prominence of this theme in the literature in The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, 1987), p. xxii. The image is drawn from 1 Cor. 15.22 and 45–6.
2 Sebastian Brock attributes this ability to ‘move rapidly to and fro between the individual and the collective’ to the ‘essentially Semitic understanding of the Biblical narrative’. Brock, Saint Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, 1990), p. 70.
3 Ibid., p. 41. Ephrem explicitly includes women in this economy of salvation: ‘Both men and women / are clothed in raiment of light; the garments provided to cover up their nakedness / are swallowed up in glory.’ Hymn on Paradise VII (5), Brock, Paradise, p. 120. See also Susan A. Harvey: ‘all religious language is metaphorical because no language is adequate to convey God’. ‘Embodiment in Time and Eternity: A Syrian Perspective’, SVTQ, vol. 43, no. 2 (1999): pp. 105–30, at p. 109.
4 See Hymn 11 on Paradise (6): God’s condescension in clothing himself is ‘in order to bring him to the likeness of [Grace]’. Brock, Paradise, p. 156.
5 Hymn on Faith V (17), quoted Brock, Paradise, p. 74. Cf. Isaac, Second Part V (7), S. Brock, Isaac of Nineveh: The Second Part (Louvain, 1995), p. 8.
6 This translation from Brock’s The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, 1987), p. xxiv, brings out the clothing metaphor more explicitly than that in Kathleen E. McVey (trans.), Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York, 1989), p. 190.
7 Stanza 2, quoted Brock, Paradise, p. 46.
8 Hymn on Paradise XI (V), Brock, Paradise, p. 155.
9 Isaac, Second Part XI (31), Brock, Second Part, p. 62.
10 Sebastian Brock, ‘John the Solitary on Prayer’, JTS, vol. 30 (1979): pp. 84–101, at p. 86.
11 Ibid., p. 99. Although silent prayer is important, the body has a very specific role to play in prayer, purely intellectualised prayer being seen as unnatural or inadequate.
12 Hymn on the Nativity 4 (143), McVey, Hymns, p. 100.
13 First Discourse (20), in E.A.W. Budge. (trans.), Discourses of Philoxenus (2 vols, London, 1894), vol. 2, p. 18.
14 Ninth Discourse (265), in Budge, Philoxenus, vol. 2, p. 255.
15 Hymn on Faith 74. As quoted in Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (London, 2006), p. 80, from CSCO 154, Syr 73, pp. 225– 8. See also E. Beck, Die Theologie pp. 83–4.
16 McVey, Hymns, p. 267.
17 Ibid., p. 331.
18 Sebastian Brock, ‘Ephrem’s Letter to Publius’, Le Museon, vol. 89 (1976): pp. 261– 305, at p. 286.
19 See, for example, the verb mad, meaning to dive for treasure (as in collecting pearls) and by extension ‘to baptise’. Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World of Saint Ephrem (Kalamazoo, 1992), pp. 90–91; and see also Hannah Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers (Leiden, 2004), p. 99.
20 Sebastian Brock, The Harp of the Spirit: Eighteen Poems of St Ephrem (Studies Supplementary to Sobornost no. 4, 1983), pp. 10–11. The human analogy of kenotic interchange is found also in Philoxenus: for example, his Eighth Discourse, where he claims that man will never be ‘filled’ unless he first of all ‘empty himself’. Budge, Philoxenus, vol. 2, p. 229. Writing about the Liber Graduum, Brock sees the imperative for divine kenosis to be met with human kenosis; this is discussed more fully in Chapter 8. See Brock Fathers, p. xxvi.
21 Hymn on Paradise VI (6–7), Brock, Paradise, p. 156. Theosis is thus seen not just as the interchange of divinity and humanity but as a return to Eden.
22 Murray, Symbols, p. 70.
23 Hymn on Nativity 23 (13), McVey, Hymns, p. 190.
24 Hymn 4 on the Nativity (187–8), McVey, Hymns, p. 102. See also Hymn on the Nativity 17 (4), which talks of ‘the small mantle of the body’ being given to ‘the One who covers all’. McVey, Hymns, p. 154.
25 See Hymn on Virginity 29 (1), which talks of the Word putting on a ‘weak body with hands’. McVey, Hymns, p. 390.
26 Brock, Fathers, p. xxxii.
27 Book of Steps Discourse XII, quoted Brock, Fathers, p. 45.
28 Brock, Fathers, p. 79.
29 Babai was believed to be a convert to Christianity from Zoroastrianism. Brock, Fathers, p. 136.
30 Ibid., p. 157.
31 Homily on the Nativity (73), Brock, Harp, p. 65. See also the verses of Isaiah 61.3 and 10 already discussed, with their image of ‘a garment of splendour for the heavy heart’.
32 Brock, Fathers, p. xxv.
33 Homily on the Nativity (73), Brock, Harp, p. 64. See also. Hymn on the Church 36 (6), which compares the ‘brightness which Moses put on’ coming from outside him, to the river in which Jesus was baptised which ‘put on Light from within’. The typology carried across from OT to NT is extended further by a comparison between these two forms of light and the internal light of Mary’s womb when bearing Jesus. Sebastian Brock, The Bride of Light: Hymns on Mary from the Syrian Churches (Kottayam, 1994), p. 29.
34 Homily on the Nativity, Brock, Bride, p. 142.
35 Murray, Symbols, pp. 59–60.
36 McVey, Hymns, p. 318.
37 Brock, Paradise, p. 68. Hebrews 2.9 talks of Jesus being ‘a little lower than the angels’ but this should perhaps mean ‘for a short while’.
38 See Sebastian Brock’s discussion of this point in Studies in Syriac Spirituality (Kerala, 1988), ch. 11, p. 15.
39 Brock, Paradise, p. 67, notes ‘four main episodes’ in the ‘cosmic drama’; the Fall, the Incarnation, Christ’s baptism (and thereby the baptism of all believers into the church) and the Resurrection.
40 Brock, Paradise, pp. 67–8. See also Brock, Studies (1988), ch. 11, p. 29. David Aaron, in his ‘Shedding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous Adam’, HTR, vol. 90, no. 3 (1997): pp. 299–314, at p. 305 cites a reading of Lev R 20.2: on p. 303: ‘The apple of Adam’s heel outshone the globe of the sun; how much more so the brightness of his face.’
41 Susan A. Harvey, ‘Why the Perfume Mattered: The Sinful Woman in Syriac Exegetical Tradition’, in Paul Blowers et al. (eds), In Dominico Eloquio – In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken (Grand Rapids, 2002), pp. 69–89, at p. 86.
42 Luminous and limpid are key terms in Syrian religious thought. See Brock, Luminous, passim.
43 In the Sogdian hymn M 129r 10–11, Jesus ‘take[s] possession of Eve’s body which is strong and shining’. Werner Sundermann, ‘Eva Illuminatrix’, in H. Preißler and H. Seiwert (eds), Gnosisforschung und Religionsgeschichte: Festschrift für Kurt Rudolph zum 65. Geburtstag (Marburg, 1994): pp. 318–19.
44 Hymn 3 on The Nativity (9), McVey, Hymns, p. 85.
45 Isaac, Second Part V (22), Brock, Second Part, p. 15.
46 See note to verse 11, in Sebastian Brock, ‘An Epiphany Hymn on the Church as the Bride of Christ’, The Harp, vol. 2, no. 3 (Dec. 1989): pp. 131–40, at p. 138. See also Jacob of Serug, ed. Bedjan III, 593, cited Brock, Bride, p. 5: ‘Christ came to baptism, he went down and placed in the baptismal water / the robe of glory, to be there for Adam, who has lost it.’ In the Commentary on the Diatessaron XVI (10), Ephrem contrasts the garment of glory and the fig leaves, and he also comments on this in Hymn on the Epiphany XII (4); cited Brock, Studies (1992), p. 18. See also Cosentino Augusto, ‘Il fuoco sul Giordano, il cero pasquale e la columna del Battistero Lateranense’, in L’edificio battesimlae in Italia. Aspetti e problemi, Atti VIII Congresso Nazionale di Archeaologia Christiana, Liguria 21– 26/9/1998 (2 vols, Bordighera 2001), pp. 521–40.
47 Isaac of Nineveh, Additional Homily V, in Damon Miller (trans.), The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian (Boston, 1984), p. 395.
48 Hymn on the Church 36 (6), Brock, Bride, p. 29, and see also Sebastian Brock, ‘St Ephrem on Christ as Light in Mary and in the Jordan: Hymni de Ecclesia 36’, ECR, vol. 7 (1975): 79–88, at p. 138.
49 Hymn on Paradise III (7), Brock, Paradise, p. 93. Verses 10, 12, 14 and 15 develop the theme of being robed in glory. The serpent’s losing its feet is even attributed to its having ‘stolen [Adam’s] garments’! See also Hymn on Paradise XV (14), where he writes: ‘The serpent served as a garment / for the evil one to put on.’ Brock, Paradise, p. 187.
50 Brock, Fathers, p. xxiv. See also the statement that Adam had originally been clothed in glory from the Commentary on Genesis II.17, cited Brock, Paradise, p. 59.
51 ‘Because the serpent had stolen the clothes / of Adam, that fair image, / the royal Son brought them back / to reclothe Adam in his adornment.’ Verse 11 of anonymous hymn, possibly by Jacob of Serug, in Brock, ‘Epiphany’, p. 135.
52 Hymn 1 on the Nativity, 43, McVey, Hymns, p. 69.
53 Prayer of Isaac of Nineveh, Brock, Fathers, pp. 352–3.
54 Note Hymn on Nativity 23 (13): ‘He wrapped swaddling clothes with his leaves, and put on garments instead of his skins … He rose and raised him up in glory. Blessed is He who came down, put on [a body] and ascended!’ McVey, Hymns, p. 190.
55 See Anonymous Soghitha 1, in Brock, Bride, p. 73.
56 Hymn on the Nativity 5 (4), McVey, Hymns, p. 106.
57 See note to verse 11 of Brock, ‘Epiphany’, p. 138.
58 Brock, Studies (1992), p. 19. See Hymn on the Church 36 (11): ‘so too at the resurrection / the righteous are light; /for their clothing is splendour, / their garment brightness: / they become their own light, / providing it themselves.’ Brock, ‘Light’, p. 139. Note also Hymn on Virginity 7 (10): ‘the Anointed, a nature that does not die, put on a mortal body; / He dove down and brought up from the water the living treasure of the house of Adam.’ McVey, Hymns, p. 295.
59 ‘if a single body is a wedding-feast for You / how great is Your banquet for the whole church!’ Hymn on the Faith 14 (5), in Brock, Harp, p. 19.
60 Brock notes how this image is ‘a remarkable illustration of the very positive attitude of St Ephrem toward the body’. Paradise, p. 28.
61 McVey, Hymns, pp. 409–10.
62 This is sometimes attributed to Ephrem but bears many resemblances to Jacob of Serug’s writing.
63 Verses 15 and 24, Brock, Harp, pp. 135 and 136. See also Hymn on the Nativity 17 (6): ‘You are our bridal chamber and the robe of our glory’. McVey, Hymns, p. 155.
64 Brock, Studies (1992), p. 13.
65 Hymn on Paradise VI (9), Brock, Paradise, p. 112.
66 Hymn on Virginity 6 (8), McVey, Hymns, p. 290.
67 Nisibene Hymn 43 (20–21). CSCO 240, Syr 102, 45, quoted in Murray Symbols, p. 76.
68 ‘Blessed are you … who came to find Adam when he was lost, and in the garment of light to return him to Eden.’ Hymn on Virginity 16 (8), McVey, Hymns, p. 331.
69 For an exploration of this concept, especially ‘the small womb of Mary’s ear’, see Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition from Plato to Denys (Oxford, 1981), p. 55.
70 Ephrem, Homily on the Nativity, in Brock, Harp, p. 63; see also Hymn on the Church 49 (7), where the author compares the ‘small womb of Eve’s ear’ with the ‘new ear’ of Mary, who hearing Gabriel’s message then carries Jesus in her womb. Brock, Bride, p. 6. Note also Simeon the Potter, Hymn no.3 (3), in Brock, Bride, p. 104.
71 Homily on the Nativity, ll. 141ff., Brock, Harp, p. 66.
72 Hymn on the Church 36 (6), Brock, Bride, p. 29. See Hymn on the Nativity 11 (8), McVey, Hymns, p. 132; Hymn on the Nativity 9 (2), ibid., p. 125. Hymn on the Nativity 16 (11) shows a variant on this theme by ‘layering’ the clothes: Mary addresses Jesus (who has put on the glory) as the one who puts on the garment of herself. Ibid., p. 150.
73 See, for example, Homily on the Nativity, ll. 125 ff, in Brock, Harp, p. 65, and note also Hymn on Virginity 37 (6): ‘For her whose will wove her a stained garment, / the Merciful One wove a garment of light and He clothed her.’ McVey, Hymns, p. 426.
74 Hymn on the Nativity 21 (5), McVey, Hymns, p. 174. Note here also the use of ‘herself’ referring to the Godhead; as weaving is typically a female activity so the verb attracts a feminine sense.
75 Hymn on Mary 1 (12), Brock, Bride, p. 34.
76 Hymn on Mary 2 (9), Brock, Bride, p. 36.
77 Hymn on Paradise IV (5), Brock, Paradise, p. 99.
78 Murray, Symbols, pp. 69 and 311, where Murray cites a phrase from the Didascalia as ‘[betraying] how the phrase [clothed in the body] is virtually technical, equivalent to “the doctrine of the Incarnation”’.
79 Brock, Bride, p. 4. See also note to v. 15 of An Epiphany Hymn on the Church as the Bride of Christ, in Brock, ‘Epiphany’, p. 135, where he makes the same point that ‘the earliest Syriac rendering of “he was incarnate” in the Creed was “he clothed himself in the body”.’ See also Brock, Paradise, p. 66, n. 49.
80 Brock, Studies (1992), ch. 11, p. 15.
81 Murray, Symbols, esp. pp. 69–70 and 310–12.
82 Hymn on Paradise 11 (6–7), p. 156. This is Ephrem’s reworking of the classic Irenean exchange motif. See also the Hymn on Nativity 26 (9): ‘He put on a body and was offered to them both’ [Adam and Eve]. McVey, Hymns, p. 208.
83 Hymn 30 on the Virginity (120), McVey, Hymns, p. 397.
84 Brock, Studies (1992), p. 12.
85 Prayer of John the Visionary, Brock, Fathers, p. 359. Here, the eucharist is received into the ‘womb of my mind’ rather than ‘the stomach which belongs to the body’s limbs’, in order that Christ ‘may be conceived there’. Ibid., p. 360.
86 Isaac’s Discourse XVIII: ‘Every prayer in which the body does not toil, and the heart does not feel suffering, you should reckon as an abortion without a soul.’ Cited Brock, Fathers, p. 250.
87 Isaac, Ascetic Homily 21, Miller, Ascetical, p. 107.
88 Isaac, Second Part XIV (24), Brock, Second Part, p. 51.
89 An anonymous sixth/seventh-century text refers to ‘three modes by which prayer may be prayed, apart from prayer which is with the body’ but each of these in fact necessitates physical activity such as penitent weeping. See Brock, Fathers, p. 182.
90 Texts on Prayer, cited Brock, Fathers, p. 276; see also Second Part XIV (13), Brock, Second Part, pp. 69–70.
91 Prayer of Isaac of Nineveh, in Brock, Fathers, p. 349.
92 Isaac, Second Part XIV (14), Brock, Second Part, p. 70.
93 Sahdona (Martyrius), Book of Perfection, 54, Brock, Fathers, p. 224.
94 Isaac, Second Part XXIV (1), Brock, Second Part, p. 121.
95 Book of Perfection, 54, Brock, Fathers, pp. 224–5.
96 See Second Part XIV (42), Brock, Second Part, p. 80.
97 Second Part XIV (18–19), Brock, Second Part, p. 72.
98 Second Part XIV (22), Brock, Second Part, p. 73, esp. n.3. See also Brock, Fathers, p. 280.
99 Second Part (V) (i), Brock, Second Part, p. 5.
100 He seeks to offer ‘with all my heart the worship that befits you’. Second Part V (i), Brock, Second Part, p. 5.
101 Brock, Fathers, p. 252.
102 Isaac, Second Part XIV (27), Brock, Second Part, p. 75.
103 For a fuller discussion of the use of the body in prayer, see Hunt, Joy-Bearing, ch. 7, pp. 135–52.
104 On Prayer, in Brock, Fathers, p. 192.
105 Like Harvey, I favour the term ‘Ephremic’ to describe this body of texts, the authorship of which is contested but clearly derives from Ephrem and his school. See Harvey, ‘Perfume’, p. 71.
106 See Hannah Hunt, ‘Sexuality and Penitence in Syriac Commentaries on Luke’s Sinful Woman’, SP, vol. 64, nos 44–9 (2010): pp. 189–94, and Joy-Bearing, ch. 5.
107 See Hunt, ‘Sexuality’, p. 191.
108 The concept of the ‘eye of faith’ is explored in depth by Brock in various writings; it is a common Syrian theme, allowing for a metaphorical play on the concept of sight as insight. See Philoxenus of Maboug’s Third Discourse (On Faith): ‘the eye of the body is too small for sight of our mysteries so we were given the eye of faith.’ Budge, Philoxenus, vol. 2, p. 62.
109 ‘… the Anointed was portrayed in secret, and He persecuted all ills, / as on the hem of the garment the flow of blood saw Him and dried up.’ McVey, Hymns, p. 277.
110 Ephrem, Hymn on the Faith 10, vv. 6 and 7, Robert Murray (trans.) as ‘A Hymn of St Ephrem to Christ on the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments’, ECR, vol. 3 (1970–71): pp. 142–50, at p. 143.
111 Carmel McCarthy, Ephrem: Commentary on the Diatessaron, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2 (1993), p. 129. It is followed by the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, another example of Jesus healing a woman through physical proximity.
112 Hymn 35 on Virginity, McVey, Hymns, p. 418.
113 Hunt, ‘Sexuality’, pp. 190 and 193. Harvey is more explicit about this woman’s liturgical and theological role, describing her as ‘priest and suppliant, prophet and penitent’. ‘Perfume’, p. 80.
114 Scott F. Johnson, ‘The Sinful Woman: A memra by Jacob of Serug’, Sobornost, vol. 24, no. 1 (2002): pp. 56–88, at p. 57. Harvey, ‘Perfume’, considers in detail the liturgical significance of the perfume; and see also on the priestly aspect McVey’s introduction to Ephrem’s hymns, p. 376.
115 J.M. Sauget (trans.), ‘Une homilie syriaque sur la pécheresse attribuée à un évêque Jean’, Parole de l’Orient VI and VII (1975–76), p. 164 (my translation from the French).
116 On the hidden being revealed, see Brock, Second Part XI (31), p. 62.
117 Brock, Paradise, p. 39. Note also the antithesis between visible and hidden in Hymn on the Nativity 22 (T39) which gives a set of parallels; visible body/hidden power; our body becoming Jesus’ garment and his spirit humanity’s robe. McVey, Hymns, p. 185.
118 Johnson, ‘Sinful’, p. 67.
119 See Hannah Hunt, ‘Tears of the Sinful Woman; A Theology of Redemption’, Hugoye, vol. 1, no. 2 (July 1998).
120 Hunt, Joy-Bearing, p. 111.
121 Harvey, ‘Perfume’, p. 71.
122 The woman’s silence is of her lips; as the homily in Sauget, ‘Une homilie’, p. 164, notes, her tears speak and her eyes ‘beg without a word being uttered’.
123 Commentary on the Diatessaron, section X.8, McCarthy, Ephrem, p. 170.
124 Homily on the Sinful Woman, in A.E. Johnston (trans.), Ephrem’s Homilies on Our Lord, Admonition and Repentance and The Sinful Woman, NPNF ser. 2, 13 (Peabody, MA, 1995), p. 337.
125 Ibid., p. 337.
126 Harvey explores at length the ‘rhetoric of adornment’. See especially ‘Perfume’, pp. 85–7.