No one can write about the theme Christus Victor without mentioning the classic work by Gustav Aulén.1 In his work, Aulén lays out the early view of the church fathers on the atonement, which consists of a dramatic victory of Christ over the powers of Satan and death. This midrash-like expansion of the New Testament narratives is nicely illustrated in the icons of the resurrection wherein Christ is shown beating down the doors of Hades and crushing Satan underfoot so that he can secure the release of Adam, Eve, and other righteous figures from the Old Testament.2 For Aulén, it was important to contrast this portrait of Christ’s martial victory over the powers of sin with the more penitential, juridical view that obtained in the work of Anselm of Canterbury. The latter perspective, Aulén argued, with its overriding interest in securing satisfaction for the personal debt that accrued to one’s sins, puts undue emphasis on the role that humans play in saving themselves.3 In this essay I take a new look at this problem. It is my firm conviction that the imagery of Christ’s victory over the power of sin is intricately linked to the world of Second Temple Judaism, a matter almost completely overlooked in the discussion of this topic. To keep such a Semitic flavor in view, I will consider how three Syriac authors use the New Testament to flesh out this theme. The grounding of this metaphor in Scripture cannot be grasped without careful attention to its Jewish roots.
Metaphors for Sin
Let me begin by juxtaposing two very different texts about the forgiveness of sins. The first is a well-known passage from the book of Leviticus that describes the culmination of the events that mark the atonement liturgy in ancient Israel.
When [Aaron] has finished purging the Shrine, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, the live goat shall be brought forward. Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (Lev. 16:20–22 NJPS)4
The key feature to attend to is the function of the goat. Aaron puts both of his hands on the head of the goat and then confesses the sins of the Israelites. By doing this, he transfers the accumulated weight of these sins onto the goat so that it can “carry . . . all their iniquities.” Next, the goat is sent off into the wilderness with all these sins loaded upon its back. The wilderness was a particularly fitting destination because it was imagined as being beyond the realm of the living, sometimes even as a portal into the underworld. If the sins were sent there, this ritual presumes, they would be safely out of sight. And in the narrative world of the Old Testament, out of sight means out of mind. In a very real sense, we could say that this rite ritualizes what is affirmed more poetically in the Psalms: “As east is far from west, so far has He removed our sins from us” (103:12 NJPS).
The second text I notice is from the Gospel of Matthew. It is a parable that builds on a petition from the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).
For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. (Matt. 18:23–34)
Central to this parable is the notion that the sinner is someone who has incurred a debt. In this particular worldview, the debt can be overcome in two basic ways: either the holder of the bond graciously remits what was owed, or the debtor pays the full penalty.
At first glance it is striking how different these two narratives about the forgiveness of sins are. The gulf between the two Testaments seems large indeed. But a little investigation of the terrain below the surface of these stories will reveal why they take the shape they do. In the Old Testament are several different metaphors for describing the state of a sinner, but pride of place goes to the image of sin as a weight that the culpable soul must bear on one’s back.5 Conventional English translations often fail to bring this out, but a literal rendering of Leviticus 5:1 is quite instructive:
When he has heard a public imprecation and—although able to testify as one who has either seen or learned of the matter—he does not give information, then he shall bear the weight of his wrongdoing [nāśāʾ ʿăwônô]. (NJPS alt.)
Forgiveness, on the other hand, requires the offended party to remove the weight of the sin. This perspective is well in view when Joseph’s brothers beg him to forgive them for trying to murder him earlier in the narrative:
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong that we did him!” So they sent this message to Joseph, “Before his death your father left this instruction: So shall you say to Joseph, ‘Take away the weight of the offense [śāʾ nāʾ pešaʿ] and guilt of your brothers.’” (Gen. 50:15–17a NJPS alt.)
A heinous sinner is one loaded down with a considerable degree of wrongdoing; hence Isaiah describes Israel in one text as so weighted down with sin that they would require a team of oxen to assist them in transporting this burden.6 Truly Israel was a people “heavily laden with the weight of iniquity [kebed ʿāwôn]” (Isa. 1:4, my trans.).
During the onset of the Second Temple period, due to the introduction of Aramaic into the world of ancient Judaism, the dominant metaphor becomes that of debt. This transformation is already in evidence in late biblical material and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but there is perhaps no better way to illustrate this momentous change than in the targums, ancient translations of the original Hebrew into the idiom of Aramaic. In Targum Onqelos, every place where we find the Hebrew expression “to bear the burden of one’s sin,” the targumist translates, lĕ-qabbalat ḥôbâ, “to assume a debt.” So in Leviticus 5:1 the Hebrew expression wǝ-nāśāʾ ʿăwōnô, “so that he shall bear the weight of his sin,” becomes wîyqabbel ḥôbêh, “so that he shall assume his debt.” And similarly where we find the expression “to take away the burden of one’s sin,” the targumist regularly translates, lĕ-mišbaq ḥôbâ, “to remit a debt.” And so in Genesis 50:17, the targum renders the Hebrew expression śāʾ nāʾ pešaʿ ʾaḥêkā, “remove the weight of the sin of your brothers,” as šǝbôq lĕḥôbê ăḥāk, “remit the debt of your brothers.”7
Paul Ricoeur has argued that there is no such thing as a “sin” per se, that every culture mediates the notion of wrongdoing in the highly picturesque imagery of metaphor.8 And from these basic metaphors, each culture will, in turn, construct the stories it wishes to tell about how sin is alleviated. In the examples that I have chosen, we can see how insightful his remarks are. In the Old Testament, where the primary metaphor for sin is that of a weight, the classic text about forgiveness involves a pack animal that bears that weight away. In the period of the New Testament, when the metaphor of weight in contemporary Judaism has been replaced by that of debt, it should occasion no surprise that a Jewish teacher living in Palestine in the first century would tell stories about the forgiveness of sins that involved debtors and creditors.
The Bond of Indebtedness in Rabbinic Judaism
The notion that sin is a debt that must be repaid is standard in contemporary Jewish texts. This is amply in evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls.9 But rather than turning there, I will push ahead a few centuries to a couple of rabbinic texts. The first comes from a traditional prayer spoken during the days leading up to Yom Kippur: “Erase, in your great mercy, all the bonds of our indebtedness.”10 This prayer, which is often cited as background to the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament, presumes that each of our sinful deeds results in the creation of a bond (šǝṭār) that must be paid off. To get an even more colorful picture of the same, let us consider a midrash found in the fourth-century text Genesis Rabbah 82.13:
“Esau took his wives, his sons and daughters, and all the members of his household, his cattle and all his livestock, and all the property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan, and went to another land because of his brother Jacob” (Gen. 36:6). R. Eleazar explained [the departure of Esau from his brother Jacob this way]: it was on account of the bond of indebtedness [šǝṭār ḥôb]. R. Joshua said it was due to shame.
The midrash is struck by the fact that Esau, of his own free will, departs from the promised land while Jacob remains in it. Since the land had been given to Abraham and his offspring, Esau would seem to have a legitimate right to settle there even if he were to remain in a subordinate position to his brother. The text from the book of Genesis indicates that his departure was due to his brother Jacob (36:6) but says no more. The midrash steps into this void and provides us with a specification of the reason: Esau was wary of a bond of indebtedness. Though Genesis Rabbah says no more about what exactly this is, we can find the matter clarified in another tradition found in Numbers Rabbah 19.15.
And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom. “Thus says your brother Israel. ‘You know all the hardships that have befallen us; that our ancestors went down to Egypt, that we dwelt in Egypt a long time, and that the Egyptians dealt harshly with us and our ancestors’” [Num. 20:14–15]. . . . Scripture states: “You know all the hardships that have befallen us.” The messengers said to the king of Edom: “You know that the Holy One [Blessed be He!] said: ‘You shall truly know that your seed will be sojourners in a land that does not belong to them, and they will be enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years’ [Gen. 15:13]. Yet it was we who suffered slavery while you were free.” “Our ancestors went down” for the purpose of suffering that affliction. We can compare this situation to two brothers against whom a bond of indebtedness was issued on account of their grandfather. One of the two paid that bond. After some time he asked his brother to loan him a certain item. He said to him, “You know that I paid that bond which was the responsibility of the two of us. So don’t turn down my request to borrow said item from you.”11
This text presumes an earlier midrashic tradition that Abraham had sinned when he expressed some doubts about God’s ability to fulfill his promises.12 In order to pay off the cost of this bond, Israel would be required to descend into Egypt and suffer for some four hundred years (Gen. 15:13) before being released and allowed to enter the land that had been promised to Abraham’s seed in the first place. Esau was aware of this bond, and as a result he did not wish to remain in the land of Canaan with his brother Jacob and be forced to share his allotted punishment. He moved on to the land of Edom to avoid having to descend into Egypt. Yet Esau’s departure did not exempt him from his obligation to repay the bond, for both he and Jacob were direct descendants of Abraham. Thereby arises the logic of the parable that our midrash tells: There were two brothers who had to pay off a bond that was held against their grandfather. One of the brothers stepped forward and paid it on his own. As a result of his generosity, he later asked his brother to reciprocate by lending him an item he needed. And exactly so was the logic of Moses’s plea to the Edomites when Israel sought to take a shortcut through their territory on the way to the promised land. We, the sons of Jacob, Moses declares, paid off the bond our ancestor Abraham owed by suffering for some four hundred years in Egypt. The least you could do now is grant us safe passage through your land.
The Bond of Indebtedness in Colossians 2:14
Colorful portrayals such as this are even more frequent in early Christian material, especially in writings that come from the Syriac milieu, where the idioms for sin and forgiveness are exactly the same as those found in Jewish material. The classic text derives from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians and describes the saving work of Christ as akin to the voiding of a bill of indebtedness:
When you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the bond of indebtedness that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. (Col. 2:13–15, emphasis added)
The key clause here is the statement that through the work of Christ on the cross, God was able “to erase the bond of indebtedness that stood against us.” The term in Greek is cheirographon, and in Syriac it was translated as šṭār ḥāwbayn. Both terms refer to a handwritten bond of indebtedness.
Early Syriac writers, very much like the rabbis, were fond of filling out this text so as to describe just how Christ voided this bond. Indeed, this Christian “midrashic” development culminates in the motif that Gustav Aulén aptly titled “Christus Victor.” Yet the Syriac data severely qualifies a theme that lies at the very heart of Aulén’s project. Aulén claimed that the classic patristic approach, which emphasized Christ’s victory over the powers of sin and death, was to be sharply distinguished from the more juridical (and hence “legalistic”) approach that was represented in such Latin thinkers as Tertullian and Cyprian. What was particularly offensive to Aulén was the emphasis on debt and the rendering of “satisfaction” for that debt. Yet within the Semitic background to the New Testament, the concepts are linguistically and conceptually inseparable. In both Jewish and Christian Aramaic, the noun that means “debt” (ḥôbâ) comes from a verbal root (ḥab) whose basic meaning is “to suffer defeat” either in battle or in the lawcourt. Because someone who loses in battle is obligated to pay tribute and someone who loses in court is often obligated to pay a fine, the verbal root came to have a very prominent secondary meaning as “obligated to pay.” So when Adam is defeated (ḥab) by Satan in the garden of Eden, it was altogether natural for a Syriac thinker to imagine that he now was obligated to pay (ḥayyab) for the debt of his sin. And similarly the term for punishment, pûr anût, comes from a verbal root (pera) that means “to pay.” In short, the concepts of defeat in battle and satisfaction for a penalty that is owed are part of a single linguistic package. They cannot be separated.
In contrast to ḥab is the Aramaic root zakâ, meaning, “to be victorious” in battle or the lawcourt.13 A favorite title of Christ among the Syriac fathers is that of zakyâ, “the victor.” But whom does this victory benefit? Those who have been defeated (ḥab) by the powers of sin and stand in a state of obligation (ḥayyab) to make satisfaction for their obligations.
New Testament scholars have noticed the patristic development of Colossians 2:14 but have been quick to point out that it is not relevant to the original intent of the author of the epistle. It must be conceded that there is more than a grain of truth here. There is no evidence that the author of Colossians thought that the bond that Christ voids on the cross had been signed by Adam. But let us shift our focus from the epistle itself to its place within the emerging Pauline corpus. For early readers of the letter were certainly not going to isolate this text from the larger fabric of Pauline theology in which it was embedded. In this light it is useful to bear in mind an observation that Adolf Deissmann made long ago. He remarked that Paul was quite fond of depicting the human predicament as one in which humans were enslaved to sin.14 Consider these examples from the Letter to the Romans,
We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. (6:6)
But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. (6:17)
For Paul, the heart of our redemption consists in being freed from such servitude. This act of redemption is true to the etymology of the term: Christ literally “buys us back” (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23). Deissmann was especially impressed by the language of Galatians 5:1—“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (RSV)—because it reflects almost exactly the ancient documents of manumission found among the Greek papyri.
If we take the Pauline evidence at face value, it would not be unreasonable to argue that human sins have created in their wake a bond of indebtedness that must be repaid. Should one not be able to raise sufficient currency to cover the cost of the bond, then one would become enslaved. Christ’s salvific act is defined by his overturning of this bond. Indeed C. F. D. Moule, who accepts the traditional attribution of Colossians to Paul, puts the picture together almost precisely in this fashion: “A cheirographon is an ‘IOU,’ a statement of indebtedness, personally signed by the debtor.”15 But how is the bond actually signed? Here Moule appeals to data found elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, specifically the opening chapters of the Epistle to the Romans: “The bond in question here is signed by men’s consciences: for a Jew, it is his acceptance of the revealed Law of God as an obligation to abide by; for the gentile, it is a corresponding recognition of obligation to what he knows of the will of God. . . . This cheirographon is ‘against us’ because we have manifestly failed to discharge its obligations—no one felt this more keenly than Paul the Pharisee (cf. Rom. 7:16, 22, 23).” To arrive at what the church fathers saw, the only element we need to add to this picture is the evidence of Romans 5:12–21 that slavery to sin begins with Adam. Once that piece of the puzzle is in place, the picture that Jacob of Serug draws does not seem nearly as strange as it otherwise might. In commenting on the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our debts,” he writes,
To the father you cry when you pray that he come and set free
His sons who are enslaved to the Enemy of old.
You say to him that I have been captured and sold.
I am a slave and have been enslaved among foreigners.
Sin purchased me and I fell from the state of Freedom.
They led me away from you and I became a slave for naught.
The Evil lord who purchased me yoked me with a harsh yoke
And disfigured me in a cruel form of slavery.
I have been sold, O my Lord, how can I return to Freedom?
By my own will I came among those of this Evil lord.
The devious serpent took my pen and wrote;
He and Eve wrote a bond [šṭarâ] of servitude and enslaved me.
I consented and I who was once free became a slave
The Enemy who purchased me, bound me for naught.16
In this brief résumé of the plight of humanity, Jacob of Serug sounds the important Pauline theme of our servitude to sin that is represented by the bond that Adam and Eve sign in Eden. The one element we cannot find so clearly in Paul is the fact that Satan holds this bond. But the introduction of the figure of Satan should not occasion any surprise. For it is the nature of such bonds that the one who is obligated to pay must hand over the bill to his creditor.17 The bond represents the rights that the creditor holds over the debtor. So naturally one must ask who holds the bond that Adam and Eve have signed. For the fathers, the answer was clear: the only fitting representative would be Satan.
If the picture of humanity’s plight emerges with a certain degree of uniformity from this composite picture drawn from Paul’s writings, the manner in which Christ will save humanity from its indebtedness is not uniform at all. It has been observed that although the church spent a considerable degree of time and effort in clarifying the nature of Christ’s personhood, it showed no similar interest in defining how the atonement actually worked. As a result a variety of different proposals circulated in late antiquity. In the space that remains I will outline three different ways of accounting for how the bond that Satan possessed was overturned.
Narsai (d. 503): Satan Overreaches the Terms Set for the Bond
Narsai begins his account of the passion with a brief flashback to the moment of Christ’s temptation in the desert.18 This may surprise some modern readers, but it certainly would not have troubled Narsai’s audience. For in the patristic tradition, the conflict with Satan was imagined to have two principal staging grounds: the first was the temptation in the desert, and the second was the passion.19 Early Christian readers had two strong exegetical reasons for linking these two events. First, already in the Gospel of Luke, it is said that after the temptations had run their course, Satan left Jesus until the “appropriate moment.”20 Even modern New Testament scholars are in general agreement that this means until the moment of the passion. Second, the fathers of the church generally thought the temptation scene to be a resumption of the temptation of Adam in the garden.21 This typological reading was aided by the fact that in Eden, Adam and Eve succumb to the offer of fruit, whereas in the desert Satan offers Christ bread. The desire for food is the common factor that Satan is able to use to his advantage.
Narsai opens his homily with some general remarks about the incarnation. Christ assumes a body so that he can go forth to restore those whom the Strong One has taken captive. Though Christ is visibly indistinguishable from the other captives, he differs from them in that he has been armed with the hidden power of the Spirit, through which he will overcome the temptations that beset the body.
His race was captive to the Evil One and Death, the tyrants who rebelled.
He gave himself to the struggle on behalf of his people.
He went forth to the desert to battle the Evil One, conquered him,
and prepared himself for a struggle against Death, the insatiable one.22
He grappled with the Strong One over the desire for bread,
bound him, and cast him down through his enduring those blandishments.
The Spiritual One was defeated (ḥab) by the Corporeal One through spiritual power.
The body which trampled down the passions overcame the prince of the air.
The body that was contemptible derided and mocked the Strong One
and removed the weaponry lest he use it to wage war on mortals.
“Be gone, Evil One, to your counterpart,” he said to him.
“Be gone, prepare other weaponry for Death.
Be gone, prepare deadly nets with the help of mortals,
for your power is too weak on its own for the struggle.
Be gone, gather the children you have begotten by your stratagems.
Arm them with slander as you are accustomed.
Summon lying comrades to assist you,
for you are a liar and through lies you are accustomed to conquer.”23
At the center of Satan’s strategy lies the human “desire for bread.” Unlike Adam, however, Christ resists “those blandishments” and as a result binds the strong man and casts him down. The first round in this struggle has drawn to a close, but the fight has not yet come to completion. Christ goes on to taunt Satan and to urge him to prepare better weaponry for his next engagement with his comrade in arms, Death. Merely repeating the temptation of Adam and Eve will be insufficient to overcome him. Christ suggests that Death make use of the deadly nets that only mortals can provide. Here we have in view the false witnesses who will be called to testimony against Jesus when he appears before the high priest (cf. Mark 14:53–65 and parallels).
At this point Narsai skips directly to the events of Holy Saturday, the moment when Christ descends to the abode of the dead. Narsai must continue his story without scriptural aids, for the Gospels are completely silent as to what happens to Christ once he breathes his last breath. Yet the fathers of the church found hints that a larger cosmic struggle was going on against the backdrop of the more mundane, historical events that Scripture narrates. For example, in the Gospel of John, when Jesus begins to speak in detail of his death, he remarks, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:31–32). For Narsai and other patristic readers, this verse indicated that the events of the passion would take place on both a historical and a suprahistorical plane. What happened on earth somehow mirrored what was transpiring elsewhere. The fact that the Jewish high priest used false witnesses in an effort to find a way to condemn Christ to death suggested that Satan would pursue a similar course.
He remembered the breaking of the law in paradise
and took refuge in this sin as his evidence.
With the desire for fruit as a guarantee, he made his accusation.
For this guarantee secured his enslavement of humanity, whom he acquired through eating.
The signature of Eve and Adam he showed him.
“Look! Your forefathers signed and handed this over. Read it carefully.
The bond [šṭarâ] that Adam wrote for me in Eden when he succumbed to sin [ḥab].
Because he did not repay it, he pledged his sons as interest.
From the beginning, I acquired authority over mortals.
It was not in secret that they wrote this bond and became enslaved as debtors.
I did not capture your race through force but through love.
They willingly became slaves.
It was not solely Adam and his generation that became corrupt,
rather his entire nature by necessity is bound by mortality.
If you are corporeal and share the passions of the body,
then examine your nature; know that you are bound by the bond of my lordship.
There is no corporeal being, a possessor of limbs, that is not mortal,
and if he is mortal, he is a slave to me and Death.
Show me that you are not mortal, and I shall depart from you,
but if you are mortal, your nature refutes the contention of your words.
Show me the edict that Death issued to you that you are not mortal
even though I don’t accept such things from corporeal beings.
You are corporeal. What need is there of words in this lawsuit?
The nature of your body is entirely mortal and perishable.”24
At this point, Satan appears to have Christ exactly where he wants him. For according to the tableaux on view here, when Adam and Eve succumbed to sin (ḥab), they signed a bond of indebtedness (šṭār ḥawbâ). In and of themselves, they were not able to repay this bond, and as a result the offspring of Adam and Eve were taken as a pledge toward the interest. As a surety or guarantee, Satan could point to the human will, which had a propensity for disobedience, or as Narsai puts it, for “desiring fruit.” In this fashion, the sin of Adam is both a punctiliar moment in time whose aftereffects of sin continue to unfold through the centuries, and an example that each generation will reproduce within itself.
To make matters worse, the bond cannot be overturned by the somewhat conventional strategy of contesting the terms under which it was signed, for Satan makes it perfectly clear that Adam and Eve were not forced to sign this bond. Nay, rather, they did so out of their own volition.25 There is one point, however, where Satan overstates his case. He claims that Adam’s entire nature is “by necessity bound to mortality.” If this were the case, then the simple act of assuming human flesh, Satan reasons, would make anyone “bound by the bond of my lordship.” Yet Satan has earlier confessed that the guarantee of his rights over humanity was marked by their uncontrollable “desire for fruit.” In the person of Jesus, however, this desire has been quenched by the Holy Spirit, who indwelled him.26 As a result, Adam’s nature, entirely and without remainder, was not bound to mortality. If God put on this body and made it his own, everything would be different. This legal codicil to Satan’s claim to power would prove his undoing.
Once Satan has thought through his legal argument, he begins to press his case. He demands that Christ “fulfill his mortal obligations,” for he is, after all, simply a human being. “Pay back,” Satan insists, “just as the others do who are legally obligated [ḥayyab].” Christ, however, does not contest the matter. He acts before Satan just as he acted before Caiaphas: he keeps his peace. “In silence, I conceal my majesty from him / until he completes his treachery of putting me to death.” For the sake of the economy of salvation, it is necessary that Satan overreach his stated rights. Only then can his grip over humankind be undone. So Christ lets Satan pursue his misguided thinking to its logical conclusion. At this key turning point in the trial, Christ lays out his case:
If mortals are obligated to repay because they have sinned,
then I, who am clean of all such stain, who could enter a suit with me?
If it be that Adam having fallen into debt was taken in pledge because he took his advice,
then I, whom he did not overpower for even a second, how could he enter a suit with me?
Therefore it is clear that his rash assault on me is wrong.
He wields his royal scepter over mortals unjustly.
Though it is quite clear that I am free from his servitude,
I shall willingly accept death due to his treachery.
He threatens and frightens me with death like other mortals,
but by death I shall overthrow him from his rule.
With the weaponry of mortal passions he fights against me.
But by my own sufferings I shall teach him that his weaponry is weak.
Because he thinks that Adam and all his offspring have been given in pledge,
I shall wipe away the bond of his lordship from mortals.
By death he sealed the bond of indebtedness of the human race,
and through death on top of a cross I shall rip it in two.
In the eyes of both angels and humanity I will void it,
that legal verdict which he boasts about as if he were a victor.
I will demonstrate for those in heaven and earth
the redemption of the living and their renewal, which is fulfilled in me.
I summon heaven and earth as reliable witnesses,
and in the name of the hidden one, I shall seal my promise.
Those that can speak and the mute are mediators between me and the Evil One
that he provokes a suit and dares to put me to death who am without any debts.
If he be at fault and thirsts for my death,
then judge justly and rebuke his fault and expose his treachery.
See how I assume his wrongful judgment
and show that death freely chose to overpower me.
I am descending to the depths of Sheol as though into the ocean.
Swiftly I shall proclaim my victorious name.
If Adam’s bond is guaranteed by an ongoing desire for forbidden fruit, then clearly Christ cannot fall within its bounds if he is “clean of all such stain.” Through Christ’s death on the cross, the originating terms of this bond are voided. Christ can declare that on the cross he has ripped this bond in two, by which he means it is null and void due to its misuse. Moreover, it is certainly significant that Death has freely chosen to take Christ; like Adam and Eve, he consented willingly; there was no divine compulsion that could have forced his hands. As a result, his rights are lost in an incontestable fashion. And the whole salvific event has been witnessed by both heaven and earth, so the promise of Christ rests on far surer ground than the bond that Satan held, which could not claim such reliable witnesses.27 The authority of sin and death has been broken. Since they have lost the battle (ḥab), Christ the victor (zakyâ) is free to share the spoils of his victory with his companions in faith.28
Jacob of Serug (d. 521): Christ Repays the Bond
Like Narsai, Jacob also sees the salvific action of Christ as a two-stage event. The process begins with the temptation in the desert and concludes with the passion. What is striking here, and what we do not see in Narsai, is that Satan actually falls during the temptations in the desert. One might have thought that the demise of Satan would take place either before his temptation of Adam, in which case we would imagine Satan as having been in possession of some sort of primordial glory that he loses as a result of his rebellion; or during the passion narrative itself, in which case Satan would lose the power he had gained over humanity through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The surprising move to localize this fall in the temptation scene is necessitated, Jacob believes, by what Jesus says to the disciples after they have returned from their first apostolic mission to teach and heal in Jesus’s name:
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:17–20)
As Jacob understands the matter, Jesus is able to authorize the disciples to perform various works of wonder because he has already defeated the power of Satan earlier in his earthly life. Though the Gospels give no explicit reference to this, Jacob concludes that the only possible place in Jesus’s life where Satan could have fallen would have been during his failed attempts to tempt Jesus to obey him. For it was during those temptations that Satan tried to lure Christ into the same trap into which he had lulled Adam.
Because the fall of humanity was due to eating a piece of forbidden fruit, the penalty for that sin could be paid only by abstaining from such a choice in the future. Fasting was the fit remedy for the human predicament.
Fasting is the first remedy that was set up to heal the first lesion of the flesh.29 Through eating came the fall, and from fasting came the rising again. The first commandment was, “Do not eat.” That one who did not obey and ate was swallowed up by Death. And because he was defeated, became a debtor, and stumbled so as to fall, it became necessary that his debt be repaid by fasting and his stumbling be corrected so that he could rise from his fall.30
But the repayment of the debt was not by any means brought to a close during the period of fasting in the desert. It was simply the first act in a two-act play. The full terms of Adam’s debt could not be brought to completion until the passion. Christ is uniquely able to repay the debt because Jacob believes that he is the true heir of Adam. The classification of Christ as “heir” derives from the opening paragraph of the Epistle to the Hebrews as well as the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard.31 What is required, Jacob seems to be arguing, is that no mere mortal can fulfill the terms of the debt that Adam has bequeathed to humanity. As the uniquely fashioned “Son of the Father,” he bequeathed a legacy that only another uniquely fashioned being can assume. In other words, satisfaction cannot be generated by currency that is generated below; salvation must have its origin in heaven.
On this view the bond of indebtedness required that currency be raised in order to be paid off. Given that the word for physical punishment in Syriac (pûr anût) derives from a verbal root that means “repayment of a debt,” it was altogether logical that the suffering of Christ would come to be understood as providing the currency needed to pay off the debt of Adam.
Then the Messiah entered and took the debt and put the sins upon himself so as to tear up the bond by his own person. He said: “I am the heir. I shall repay the debt that drowned the mighty, entangled the swift, bound the strong, and destroyed all generations and raised the entrance ways [?] of the noble ones. Neither Enosh, Noah, Melchizedek, nor Abraham was able to stand before the debt. What was demanded of Eve? Let her bond be read aloud. The virgin fell into debt; the son of a virgin repays it. The snake bit the young maiden; another young maiden gives the medicine for her cure.
“The inheritance of these ruins has come upon me. I shall rebuild the house of Adam; as the Heir, I shall repay. On account of this, my Father had sent me: I shall be the heir to Adam. For He saw that there was no other heir who could repay his debts. I shall rebuild his ruins. I will not let our image be ruined in Sheol. I will not forsake our likeness nor allow them to be trodden underfoot in the mire by the champions of perdition. I am the heir. All which Adam owes [ḥayyab], I myself will repay.”
The bond of Adam was read aloud, and it was found that he owed [ḥayyab]the penalty of death on the grounds that he had eaten from the tree of knowledge. A heavenly voice was heard on this account which said: “You are of the dust and to the earth you shall return” [Gen. 3:19]. What sin could Adam have committed that his transgression could be so great? He shunned his lord, obeyed his wife, reached for the fruit, put his foot in the snare, breached the fence of the law, broke the yoke of the commandment, dug a deep grave, and opened the gate to death so that it might enter and corrupt creation.32
Jacob’s emphasis on the necessity for Christ to repay the debt puts his soteriological schema in a different category from that of Narsai. For the latter, the bond was voided by Satan’s act of overreaching. Narsai takes very little interest in the actual suffering that Christ would have to undergo during the passion. When those moments do appear in his writings, the point Narsai makes is how unjustly Satan has acted in his legal suit. He has used his bond to condemn an innocent man. Jacob, on the other hand, is not interested in elaborating the theme of a legal suit. In his view the bond of indebtedness “was onerous and justice was fierce. That which was demanded [of the human race] was great.” The love of God is exemplified in Christ’s willingness to step forward and pay this price in full. Only in this fashion could the bond be discharged.
For Jacob, this point is made clear during the trial before Pilate when Barabbas and Christ are placed before the people.
“Then the judge said: ‘Whom do you desire that I should release to you, Bar Abba or Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them cried out and said, ‘Bar Abba’” [Matt. 27:17, 21]. A prophecy was spoken by these foolish ones. The truth was sung by liars. They proclaimed what was to happen without knowing what they were saying. For Jesus was crucified in place of Bar Abba. It was for him that Jesus had come to free him from the bonds. For our Lord was bound solely that Adam be freed. For what could this mystery mean that on that feast day the bound one was set free? Certainly this one was a type of Adam who was freed from his bonds on the feast day of the cross.
The merciful Father made Adam a son by grace so that he could be heir to his possessions. For this reason Adam is the son of the Father [i.e., “Bar Abba”]. When Adam had sinned, he was bound in Sheol. Yet when the great feast day on which he was set free from his bonds [came], a brigand was bound by the Hebrews. Even he was called Bar Abba. When Pilate asked them, “Whom do you wish that I set free for you?” they cried out and said, “Bar Abba.” These people showed mercy on this brigand, for prophecy cried out that Adam should be freed.
The one who sets free the prisoners entered the prison, and a clamor arose from the people, for that one who was bound for his debts was to be set free. For how could it happen that the name of the one bound at that time was called Bar Abba unless it be that providence—so rich in understanding—willed that through the mouths of all the people there be a clamor for Adam? And so he was set free. “‘Whom do you wish that I set free for you?’ They cried out and said, ‘Bar Abba.’”
It was a wicked desire but a beautiful clamor. Jesus was bound, and Bar Abba was freed. The innocent one was declared guilty while the one who was guilty was declared innocent. [Or: the innocent one owed a punishment while the one who owed a punishment was declared innocent.] The strong man was bound, the sinner went free. Our Lord was scourged while Adam was spared the scourgings. The Sun took hold of the pillar, and the flame was scourged with lashes. The champion bore the weight of the world and removed the ills of sinners by his sufferings. The rich one paid the debts of the sinners and tore up the bond which all generations had not the resources to repay. The crucified one renewed creation by his sufferings and reestablished the world without corruption by his afflictions. For this reason the church cries out in a loud voice, “Let it not be that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah,” to whom be glory in all times and forever and ever. Amen.33
In this remarkable text Jacob of Serug makes an ingenious and unprecedented move in the history of exegesis. He understands the name of Bar Abba to be the key to understanding the trial before Pilate. The Aramaic name Bar Abba literally means “son of the father.” This unusual name, Jacob reasons, must be a subtle cipher for Adam, for only he was fashioned directly by the hands of the Father. This means that when Bar Abba and Christ are presented before the crowd, what is really on offer is a choice between the first and second Adam. The providential plan of God the Father requires that the second Adam suffer for the sins of the first, and it just so happens that as the economy of salvation unfolds, this is precisely what happens. The crowd, in an ironic fashion, does the bidding of the Father by releasing the first Adam and putting the second to death. “It was a wicked desire,” Jacob observes, “but a beautiful clamor.”
The events of the passion can be read at two levels. On the plane of simple historical fact we see a brigand and an innocent man. The brigand has committed crimes requiring a considerable amount of bodily suffering to pay them off. But he is released by the crowd in favor of an innocent man who will suffer unjustly. At the cosmic level, this brigand is none other than Adam himself. The punishment he owes has become our own tragic patrimony. Yet due to the workings of divine grace, Adam will not suffer as is his due. The second Adam will stand in his place and undergo the scourging that was his and our due. Christ, “the rich one,” steps forward and repays “the debts of the sinners and [tears] up the bond which all [previous] generations had not the resources to repay.”
Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373): The Old Bond Is Voided and a New Bond Is Written
Ephrem is certainly the most complex and profound thinker in the Syriac tradition. His construal of the atonement, though it shows numerous family resemblances to what is found in Narsai and Jacob, differs sharply from them. There are two important elements in view: the bond of indebtedness that stands against humanity and the enormous interest generated by almsgiving and other works of charity. The latter element we will put off for another time.
Let us begin with a consideration of how the bond of indebtedness works in Carmina Nisibena 35–42, the story of Christ’s descent into Hades to despoil the kingdom of Death. The narrative opens with Christ preparing to offer his life back to his divine Father on the cross. Satan and Death confer as to what stratagem they should follow. They are puzzled over what to do because they cannot tell whether Christ is a man or God. If he is a man, then he is clearly susceptible to death since he falls under the terms of the contract that Adam signed in Eden: “Through writing Adam became gravely liable to death and sin; / by transgressing the command, he sealed a pledge.”34 Satan, whose task it is to tempt humans, finds that his wiles have no power over Christ. Even at night, while he is asleep, Christ’s dreams remain completely pure of any hint of concupiscence.35 In his despair Satan seems on the verge of giving up. Just then his underlings gather and exhort him to maintain the fight. Satan then reasons that if his own powers are too weak for direct combat, perhaps he should shift the confrontation to Christ’s disciples.
“By the words of this Jesus
I can learn to fight against him.
For he said that ‘[if] Satan is divided
against himself, he will not endure’ [Matt. 12:26]. Though he wishes to fight with us
he gives us a weapon against him. Go divide his disciples,
for if they are divided, it is possible for you to be victorious.
By means of the Snake and Eve, these weak ones,
by means of his very own, I overcame the First Adam.”
Death answered and said to the Evil One:
“Why do you neglect your former ways?
You used to catch the contemptible and trifling
just like the capable. But Jesus, who is greater than all,
with what will you catch him? The taste of his arrows,
which he cast in you, while being tested by you, causes you fear.
You and I along with your servants,
our congregation is (too) small for war with the son of Mary.
If this contention [among the disciples] allows
us to do anything, then I advise this:
go forth and dwell in that disciple,
that the head will speak with the heads. Dismiss your camp,
go forth and incite the Pharisees. But don’t speak as in a disputation,
as you are wont to: ‘If you are God, throw yourself from here.’
With affection kiss him and turn him over;
the envy and sword of the Levites shall drag him away.”36
The irony of Satan’s logic should not be missed. Christ remarked during his ministry that if Satan’s house is divided, it cannot stand (see Matt. 12:25–26). Now Satan uses Christ’s words against him in order to concoct a strategy that he believes will allow him to emerge victorious in the struggle. Judas will be the means of bringing discord into Jesus’s inner circle.37
Death, at this point, has taken no active role in the plot, for he bears no responsibility for murder. His task is that of taking the sick, the infirm, and the aged. What nature offers him, he collects.38 At first Death reasons that there is cause for fear since no being can repay the debt of Adam. “Neither Cherubim nor Seraphim are able,” Death relates, “to repay his debt;
there is no mortal among them that can give
their soul on behalf of him. Who can open the mouth of Sheol
and go down and bring him up from there?
He whom Sheol has smitten, she conceals forever.39
Yet the death of Christ is unlike all other deaths because Christ does not fall under the bond of indebtedness that Adam signed in Eden. Because he is human, Jesus is granted entry into the kingdom of Sheol. Only someone who is truly man would have a key to fit the door of entry.40 But because he is also God, there is no way that Death can retain him once he has secured his entrance. To his credit, Death recognizes the lordship of Christ and submits to him when he enters the kingdom of Sheol. As a token of his submission, Death provides Christ with Adam and pledges to return all of the rest of humanity when Christ comes again in glory. Thus Death says:
Jesus, King, receive my petition.
And with the petition take your pledge.
Lead forth Adam, the great pledge,
in whom all the dead are concealed. [It is] just like when I received him,
when all the living were hidden in him. I give you this ancient pledge,
the body of Adam. Go up from here and rule over all.
When I hear your trumpet
I will bring out the dead with my own hands at your coming [again].41
In consideration of these new circumstances, “Death rewrote [the contract]; Sheol stood surety with him: All whom they had snatched and plundered would be returned at the resurrection.”42
On this view it is not Satan who holds the bond, a fact that many over the centuries have worried about, but Death. And Death, by holding this bond, is simply carrying out the will of God established in the garden of Eden. Once Death learns of who Christ is, he grasps for the first time what his true role is in the economy of salvation: “If this is only a figure of what is to come, then I, who thought I was a king, did not know that it was a temporary deposit that I was keeping.”43 Here the bond of indebtedness assumes a very different sort of meaning. One recalls the role such a bond plays in the book of Tobit. In this story Tobit left a rather substantial sum of money with Gabael (Tob. 1:14). To secure that deposit and to guarantee that he or his agent could retrieve the funds at a future date, a cheirographon, or “bond of indebtedness,” was signed and served as a guarantee. Later in the narrative, Raphael is able to present this bond before Gabael and receive the entire sum back (5:3; 9:5). And a similar custom seems to be at work in Ephrem’s account of Christ’s descent into Sheol. Death erred in thinking that this bond was an interest-bearing note that gave him permanent rights to collect payment. It turns out that this bond only guaranteed his rights over a temporary deposit. Death does not overreach the terms of his bond, as we saw in Jacob of Serug; rather, he learns that the terms of his “fiscal” sovereignty are time-bound. In recognition of his error, Death provides Christ with Adam as a token of what he will return to Christ when he comes again. This change in circumstances requires that a new contract be written. Through Christ the promise is made that all will be raised again at his second coming. In his Hymns on the Nativity, Ephrem frames this construal of the atonement as a surprising if not shocking reversal: “Thanks be to the Rich One, who paid the debt in place of us all, something He did not borrow, but He signed and became indebted to us again.”44 Thus Death, who has erred, owes the debt of human life to Christ and will pay it at the Lord’s second coming, and in turn Christ, the gracious one, has taken it upon himself to repay this life to humankind through the final resurrection.
There is much, much more to say about Ephrem’s construal of Christ’s victory than space will allow. Let it suffice to say that the manner by which Christ becomes indebted to us is equal to or exceeds in significance the way in which our own debt was released. Ephrem differs from Narsai and Jacob in making his story a two-pronged affair. To this theme I hope to return in a future essay. But for the time being, one chapter in this story has come to closure. As can be vividly seen in the work of these three Syriac writers, the impact of Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism is patent. The conception of sin as a debt that must be repaid, an idea that takes root in Second Temple Judaism, is the foundation upon which the doctrine of atonement is built. This important detail was missed by Aulén and by the numerous commentators on his legacy. A common criticism of Aulén has been that the theme of Christus Victor, for all of its powerfully dramatic character, is too unbiblical to be taken seriously.45 Yet this criticism fails to take seriously the influence of a text like Colossians 2:14 and the powerful influence of the late biblical metaphor of sin as a debt that must be repaid.
1. Gustav Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement (New York: MacMillan, 1969). The work appeared first in a Swedish edition in 1930. The English version (London: SPCK, 1931) has undergone numerous reprintings, a strong witness to its influence and popularity, as is the fact that many major theological libraries hold multiple copies of the work.
2. For an excellent treatment of the development of these icons, see Anna D. Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). For the relationship of the icon to the patristic thought, see Gary A. Anderson, “The Resurrection of Adam and Eve,” in In Dominico Eloquio—In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, ed. Paul M. Blowers et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 3–34, esp. 6–9.
3. Aulén has been severely criticized on this point. For a critique of the work from a Protestant historical theologian, see John McIntyre, St. Anselm and His Critics (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1954); and for the perspective of an Orthodox systematic theologian, see David Bentley Hart, “A Gift Exceeding Every Debt: An Eastern Orthodox Appreciation of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo,” Pro Ecclesia 7 (1998): 333–48.
4. For citations from the Old Testament in this essay, I am altering the translation when necessary to draw attention to the biblical metaphors for sin (as indicated by “alt.”).
5. See my article, Gary A. Anderson, “From Israel’s Burden to Israel’s Debt: Towards a Theology of Sin in Biblical and Early Second Temple Sources,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran, ed. Esther G. Chazon et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 3–9, and the literature cited therein.
6. So Isa. 5:18 NJPS, “Ah, those who haul sin with cords of falsehood / and iniquity as with cart ropes!”
7. I have cited Targum Onqelos, but the same sort of translation can be found in the other targums.
8. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon, 1967).
9. See Anderson, “From Israel’s Burden,” 13–18.
10. This prayer can be found in any Siddur (Jewish prayer book); it follows the Amidah on Yom Kippur and is called Avinu Malkenu, “Our Father and Our King”; New Testament commentaries on Col. 2:14 frequently refer to it, including Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1922–61).
11. Mosheh Aryeh Mirkin, ed., Midrash Rabbah: Be-Midbar Rabbah (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1987), 2:231–32.
12. See Song of Songs Rabbah 1.23. When Abraham asks how he can be sure that he will inherit the land that God has promised (Gen. 15:8), this is understood to be the sin that creates the bond.
13. In Jewish Aramaic a nominal form of this root assumes the additional meaning of a “merit” or “credit” that accrues to one’s account. So the important rabbinic concept of zǝkût ʾabôt, “the merits of the Patriarchs,” a term denoting a form of “currency” that accrues from virtuous actions such as Isaac’s willingness to lay down his life for God (Gen. 22). These meritorious actions generate a form of currency (zǝkût) that can counterbalance the “debts” of sinful Israelites. Frequently in midrashic texts, Israelites will pray that God will ignore their “debts” and reckon by the “merits” of their ancestors.
14. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (New York: George H. Doran, 1927).
15. C. F. D. Moule, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians and to Philemon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 97.
16. Paul Bedjan, ed., Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis, 5 vols. (Paris: Harrassowitz, 1905–10), 1:225; rev. ed. as Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, ed. Paul Bedjan, with additional material by Sebastian P. Brock, 6 vols. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2006). All Syriac translations in this chapter are my own.
17. See Tobit 5:3. In this text the document is not a bond of debt per se but a financial obligation of deposit. Tobit left a considerable amount of money in trust with a person by the name of Gabael. Tobit gets a handwritten receipt, a cheirographon, that will identify him as the one with a rightful claim to the money in the future.
18. For the text of his Homily for the Great Sunday of the Resurrection, see Narsai, “Narsai’s Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension,” ed. Frederick G. McLeod, PO 40 (1979): 136–61.
19. See the important article of Veselin Kesich, “The Antiochenes and the Temptation Story,” StPatr 7 (1966): 496–502; and two monographs: Klaus-Peter Köppen, Die Auslegung der Versuchungsgeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Alten Kirche: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Schriftauslegung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1961); and Martin Steiner, La tentation de Jésus dans l’interprétation patristique de Saint Justin à Origène (Paris: Gabalda, 1962).
20. Cf. the last verse of the temptation story (Luke 4:13): “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” Most commentators believe that this moment takes place during the passion; in support of this they cite Luke 22:3, “Then Satan entered into Judas, called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve.” Hans Conzelmann goes the farthest here when he asserts that the interval of time between the temptations and the passion was a “Satan-free period.” See his Theology of St. Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1961), 16, 27–29, 80–81.
21. This position is also followed by some modern commentators. See, e.g., Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8, Anchor Bible 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 169–71.
22. There appears to be a typographical error in the Syriac text; I have emended it.
23. Narsai, Homily for the Great Sunday of the Resurrection, lines 23–40.
24. Ibid., lines 45–68.
25. In legal contracts from the ancient world, it was important to establish that the contracting parties entered the agreement by their own free choice. For if this was not the case, the contract could be contested in court at a later date. On this point see Yochanan Muffs, Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine (reprint, Leiden: Brill, 2003), 128–41. In our text, Satan makes it clear to Christ that Adam and Eve had freely chosen to sign this bond, making it all the harder to dissolve it.
26. So Narsai in his homily on the passion, “Our mortal nature was too imperfect to serve as its own redeemer. / The Self-subsistent One put on our nature and thereby freed our race.” See Narsai, “Narsai’s Metrical Homilies,” 128, lines 659–60.
27. This point is made later, in lines 291–92: “That wrongful bond he brought forth and demonstrated legally / that it was not sealed with a signature before proper witnesses.”
28. See lines 295–96, “And since I have conquered [zk] and the hater of our race has been defeated [ḥab] / I will allow my companions to share in the greatness of my victory.”
29. In Syriac thought the mark of the fall was the change from an angelic constitution to a mortal human body. Here the lesions on the flesh indicate that onset of the mortal state. See the classic essay of Sebastian Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter, ed. M. Schmidt and C. Geyer (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1982), 11–37; as well as Gary A. Anderson, “Garments of Skin in Apocryphal Narrative and Biblical Commentary,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash, ed. James L. Kugel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 101–43.
30. This selection is from the Homily on Fasting. The Syriac text was edited by Frédéric Rilliet, “Jacques de Saroug: Six homélies festales en prose,” PO 43 (1986): 568, 570.
31. See Heb. 1:1–4, esp. v. 2: “In these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.” For the parable of the vineyard, see Matt. 21:33–46 and parallels.
32. From the Homily on Good Friday. For the Syriac, see Rilliet, “Jacques de Saroug,” 612.
33. Rilliet, “Jacques de Saroug,” 626, 628.
34. Carmina Nisibena 48.9. For the original Syriac, see E. Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers, Carmina Nisibena CSCO 240 (Louvain: Peeters, 1963).
35. In Narsai’s account it was also the case that Satan discovered that Christ was free of the normal “desire for fruit” that defined Adam and his progeny (as discussed above in this essay). See Satan’s thoughts as expressed in Carmina Nisibena 35.10:
Bodily desire is in every body,
for even when they sleep it is awake in them.
He whose thoughts are clear while awake,
I can make them turbid in a dream. The dregs of his body stir in him,
by the impulses hidden within him. Whether awake or asleep,
I can disturb [him]. This One alone was so clear,
not even in a deep dream could I disturb him;
even in his sleep he was clear and holy.
36. Carmina Nisibena 35.20–22.
37. This idea of Ephrem is clearly reflected in Narsai’s account: “Be gone, Evil One, to your counterpart,” [Christ] said to him. “Be gone, prepare other weaponry for Death. / Be gone, prepare deadly nets with the help of mortals, / for your power is too weak on its own for the struggle. / Be gone, gather the children you have begotten by your stratagems. / Arm them with slander as you are accustomed.”
38. See Carmina Nisibena 38.3–4:
It is before God that I serve,
for there is no partiality before him.
Who else has endured as I have?
For I am reviled though I do good. I am requited oppositely
from the good deeds that I do. Though my acts are good
my name is not good. My conscience is at rest in truth;
in God I take consolation;
though he is good, he is cheated every day but endures it.
The old I remove from all sufferings,
likewise the young from all their sins.
Inner turmoil I quell in Sheol;
for in our land there is no iniquity. Only Sheol and Heaven
are removed from sin. But iniquity is rampant
on the earth which lies in between. Therefore he who is discerning,
let him ascend to heaven.
And if that be [too] hard, let him descend to Sheol, which is easy.
39. Ibid., 36.2.
40. See ibid., 37.9:
If a man reads the prophets, he hears about just wars.
If a man reflects on the stories of Jesus,
he learns of pity and mercy.
And if a man believes that Jesus is an alien (to this created world),
it is a blasphemy to me. For an alien key
could never fit the door of Sheol.
There is only the one key, that of the Creator,
which opened this door and will open it again at his coming [again].
41. Ibid., 36.17.
42. Ibid., 48.9.
43. Ibid., 37.3, emphasis added.
44. Hymns on the Nativity 3.10. For the original Syriac, see E. Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers, Hymnen de Nativitate, CSCO 186 (Louvain: Peeters, 1959).
45. For an example of this sort of criticism, see the fine book of Colin Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989).