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The Exhortation to Candidates for Ascetical Vows at Baptism in the Ancient Syriac Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Robert Murray
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Extract

Throughout the present century historians of Christian asceticism, especially in the Syriac-speaking area, have returned repeatedly to the problem posed by a passage in Aphrahat's seventh Demonstration, the natural implication of which seems to be that in his day baptism was reserved for those who consecrated themselves to Christ in virginity or by renouncing marital intercourse, to become members of the ‘Covenant’ (qyāmâ) which was evidently regarded as the core or heart of the Church. The question was raised provocatively by F. C. Burkitt (1899, 1904) and taken up by R. H. Connolly, with an intervening reply by Burkitt, in 1905–7. Connolly rightly argued that by Aphrahat's time (fl. 336–45) married people must have been regarded as members of the Church, and that the ‘penitents’ discussed by Aphrahat were Christians who had ‘fallen’ after baptism, but he overplayed his hand in identifying the Bnay Qyāmâ simply as ‘monks’. An undertone of denominational controversy remained throughout the subsequent discussion, continued by (among others) H. Koch (1911), K. Müller (1927) and E.J. Duncan (1945). It was A. Vööbus who showed the way out of the impasse by his perceptive suggestion that the exhortation in Dem. VII is a liturgical text which had survived into Aphrahat's day but whose restrictive implications were no longer in force. At the same time, under the powerful impetus of the discoveries of the Qumran, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean documents, with consequently increasing understanding of early Jewish Christianity in its many varieties, and realization that Syrian asceticism was not derivative from Egypt but probably earlier, the basic concepts and terminology of asceticism were being studied anew by A. Adam, E. Beck, G. Kretschmar, P. Nagel, M. Black, J. Gribomont, A. Guillaumont and others. Study of early Syriac asceticism continues, as is shown by G. Nedungatt's recent articles but there still remains more to be done to follow up Vööbus's hint about the genre of the exhortation quoted by Aphrahat in Dem. VII.

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New Testament Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , October 1974 , pp. 59 - 80
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 59 note 1 The summary mention of past contributions in this paragraph is only introductory to the main theme. For bibliographical details of the earlier discussions see Vööbus, A., History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient 1 (CSCO 184, Subsidia 14, 1958), hereafter cited as HASO.Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Vööbus, A., Celibacy, a Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church (Stockholm, 1951); summary in HASO i, 93–5, 175–8.Google Scholar

page 59 note 3 Adam, A., ‘Grundbegriffe des Mönchtums in sprachlicher Sicht’, Z.K-G. LXV (1953–1954), 209–39;Google ScholarBeck, E., ‘Ein Beitrag zur Terminologie des ältesten syrischen Mönchtums’, in Antonius Magnus Eremita (St Ans. XXXVIII [1956]), pp. 254–67;Google Scholaridem, ‘Asketentum und Mönchtum bei Ephraem’, O.C.A. CLIII (1958), 341–62;Google ScholarKretschmar, G., ‘Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach dem Ursprung früh-christlicher Askese’, Z.T.K. LXI (1964), 27–67;Google ScholarNagel, P., ‘Die Motivierung der Askese in der alten Kirche’, T.U. XCV (1966);Google ScholarBlack, M., ‘The Tradition of Hasidean-Essene Asceticism; Its Origin and Influence’, in Simon, M. et al. Aspects du Judéo-Christianisme (Paris, 1965), pp. 19–32;Google ScholarGribomont, J., ‘Le Monachisme au sein de l'Eglise en Syrie et en Cappadoce’, Studia Monastica VII (1965), 7–24;Google ScholarGuillaumont, A., ‘Le dépaysement comme forme d'ascèse, dans le monachisme ancient’, Annuaire de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sect. des Sc. Rel. LXXVI (1968–1969), 31–58;Google Scholaridem, ‘Le nom des “Agapfetes”’, Vig.C. XXIII (1969), 30–7;Google Scholaridem, ‘Monachisme et éthique judéo-chrétienne’, in Judéo-Christianisme (Rechenhes…offertes en hommage au Card. J. Daniélou), Paris, 1972, pp. 199–218 (= R.S.R. 60, 1972);Google ScholarGrégoire, R., ‘Notes Philologiques sur le vocabulaire de la vie religieuse,’ Parole de l' Orient 1 (1970), 301–26.Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 Nedungatt, G., ‘The Covenanters of the Early Syriac-speaking Church’, O.C.P. XXXIX (1973), 191–215, 419–44.Google Scholar

page 60 note 2 Connolly, , ‘Aphraates and Monasticism’, J.T.S. VI (1905), p. 529; Gribomont, ‘Le Monachisme’, p. 13; Guillaumont, ‘Monachisme et éthique’, p. 204.Google Scholar

page 60 note 3 Connolly, , ‘St Ephraim and Encratism’, J.T.S. VIII (1907), 41–8.Google Scholar

page 60 note 4 ‘Asketentum’, pp. 343–4.

page 61 note 1 P.S. 1, 341. 11–344. 9. The translation is my own. Previous English renderings by Burkitt and Connolly are in J.T.S. VI (1905), 528–31.

page 61 note 2 With the following lines cf. Deut. xx. 5–8, but ‘contest’ (agônâ) has frequently been substituted or inserted, doubtless from I Cor. ix. 24, etc.

page 61 note 3 Cf. Phil. iii. 13.

page 62 note 1 ‘Herald, ’ (kārôzâ) is among many terms studied in my forthcoming Symbols of Church and Kingdom: a Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge, 1975). ‘Covenant’: this is among the places in early Syriac literature where qyāmâ seems almost to mean ‘Church’. Cf. G. Nedungatt, ‘The Covenanters’, pp. 196–9. The phrase following ‘before baptism’ is a central and insoluble crux for the general interpretation of the passage, because no punctuation imposes itself; are the following categories part of the total ‘Covenant’ (as Beck understood in his version) or in apposition to it, and therefore all that the Covenant comprises, as Burkitt took it and Connolly did not disagree?Google Scholar

page 62 note 2 On this concept see Beck, ‘Asketentum’, p. 349.

page 62 note 3 See Connolly, ‘Aphraates and Monasticism’, pp. 530–4, 538–9, with an interesting reference to Origen, In lud. IX, 2. The passage about dogs in fact reveals a curious little Christian midrashic complex involving Lazarus, the Syrophoenician woman and Isaiah lvi. 10–11, with further clues in Aphrahat xx, in Gregory of Elvira (Tr. Orig. 14) and (as Dr S. P. Brock has pointed out to me) in Ps.-Chrysostom in PG 59, 654.

page 63 note 1 CfYadin, Y., The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Oxford, 1962), pp. 304–5 and Introduction, pp. 65–70.Google Scholar

page 63 note 2 Black, M., The Scrolls and Christian Origins (London–Edinburgh, 1961), pp. 27–32Google Scholar, and idem, ‘The Tradition’, pp. 19–32. It should be remembered that nazîr is a title of Christ in the Syriac Acts of Judas Thomas (hereafter AJT), 48 (A. F.J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas [Suppl. NovT v, 1962], pp. 90, 243), and nazîrûta remained a word for ascetical self-denial.

page 63 note 3 ‘Ed. E. Beck, CSCO 186, Ser. Syr. 82.

page 63 note 4 E. Beck, Introduction to his translation (CSCO 187, Syr. 83), pp. viii–xii; De Halleux, A., ‘Un clé pour les hymnes d'Ephrera dans le ms. Sinai Syr. 10’, Le Muséon LXXXV (1972), 171–97Google Scholar; idem, ‘La transmission des hymnes d'Ephrem d'après le ms. Sinai Syr. 10’, in Symposium Syriacum 1972 (OCA 197, 1974), pp. 21–62, esp. p. 38.

page 64 note 1 Syriac in CSCO 186, Syr. 82, p. 164; my version, though I diverge little from that by Johnston, A. E. (from the old Roman edition) in Select Library of…Fathers XIII (Oxford, 1898), 274 ff. ‘Victorious waters’, Syr. zakkāyê, containing an untranslatable play on this and its other meaning of ‘pure, innocent’.Google Scholar

page 64 note 2 CSCO 186, Syr. 82, p. 173. Because of the difficulties in the text I give the Syriac in transliteration:

16 Hâ saypâ d-Māran b-gaw mayyâ / d-hû pāleg bnayyâ w-abāhâ.

Saypâ hû gêr ḥayyâ d-hâ ‘ābeá / pûllāgâ d-ḥhayyê beyt māyôtê.

Hâ ‘āmdîn w-hāweyn / btûlê w-qaddîšê,

da-nṣhēt(w) ‘amad(w) wa-lbeš(w) / l-haw ṣhad Iṣhîdāyâ.

Hâ s‘aw beh saggî’è / āp tûhmê āp yaldâ āp ‘ûtrâ.

17 Aynâ gêr da ‘mad wa-lbeš leh / l-Iṣhîdāyâ Mārhôn d-saggî’ê,

memallê leh dûktâ d-saggî’ê / da-hwâ leh Mšîṣhâ gazzâ rabbâ.

(Metre shows that the first vowel of îhîdāyâ is in theor ye-and not a syllable.)

page 64 note 3 In 16. 7 the conjunction da-allows ‘who have…’, ‘when they have…’ or ‘because they have…’. 16. 9–10 is obscure and ‘feels’ as if the text is disturbed, but the general sense seems clear. In 16. 8 and 17. 2 Iṣhîdāyâ evidently represents μονογεν⋯ς, ‘Only-begotten’, not μοναχ⋯ς.

page 65 note 1 CSCO, ibid. p. 191. ‘Who is…’: or ‘for He is…’.

page 65 note 2 A. Adam, ‘Grundbegriffe’, pp. 217–22; E. Beck, ‘Ein Beitrag’, pp. 254–61 and ‘Asketentum’, p. 344; A. Guillaumont (starting, like Adam, from the very important lexicographical discussion by Eusebius in PG 23, 689B), ‘Le nom des “Agapètes”’, pp. 34–7 and ‘Monachisme et éthique’, pp. 199–210.

page 65 note 3 On syncrisis see Wright, A. G., The Literary Genre Midrash (Staten Island, New York, 1967), p. 109 (= CBQ XXVIII [1966], 436) and the detailed studies he mentions there. Aphrahat has further examples, especially in Dem. XXI (On Persecutions), 9–20 (cols. 953–81). In the present passage I call Joshua ‘Jesus bar-Nun’ to bring out the identity of his name with that of ‘Jesus our Saviour’, and I use the one word ‘nation’ for 'ammâ in its regular senses of Israel (singular) and ‘Gentiles’ (plural). See further my forthcoming SCK.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 CSCO 186, Syr. 82, p. 154. Ephrem has allusions to Jos. v. 2 in H.Nat. 26, 11, H.Virg. 49, 2 and a brief comment in the Severus Catena (Ed. Rom. 1, 295F) but none of these alludes to baptism or to îṣhîdâyûtâ. Dom J. Gribomont asked me the very interesting question whether the ‘sword’ in H.Epiph. 8, 16 could have been made from one of the stones taken from the water (Jos. iv. 5) and whether the ‘separation of sons from fathers’ could be anything to do with the generation which was not allowed to leave the desert and their sons who now were circumcised. I cannot find this implicit in Ephrem, nor find any possible Jewish source of such ideas, but would welcome any information pointing in these directions, for Dom Gribomont's hints are in authentic midrashic style. Certainly there was early interest in the stone ‘swords’, for the LXX has an addition about their subsequent history (Jos. xxi, 42d) on which Origen's comment is even more striking than that on Jos. v. 2. (Cf. In lesu Naue, XXV, 1–2, GCS Or. VII, pp. 458–60.)

page 66 note 2 Tertullian, Adv. Marc, III, 14, 1–16, 5 (CC 1, 526–9); Adv. lud. IX, 16–22 (CC II 1369–71) –N.B. Tertullian's full list contains more than in Table 1, and the allusion to Heb. iv. 12 is clearer in Adv. lud. IX, 18 than in Adv. Marc. 11, 14, 3; Hilary, Tract. Myst. 11, 6 (CSEL LXV, p. 33) – Hilary is the closest of all to Aphrahat on this theme; did he learn some eastern traditions during his exile?; Theodoret, Quaest. in los. 4 (PG 80, 468A–C).

page 67 note 1 Justin, Dial. 113, 6–7 (ed. E.J. Goodspeed, Die ältesten Apologeten, p. 230); Origen, In lesu Naue, V, 5 and XXV, 1–2 (GCS Or. VII, 317–18, 458–60); Cyprian, Testimonia 1, 8 (CC III, 12); his main stone passage, however, is separate, in 11, 16 (ibid. pp. 51–3). On Tertullian and Cyprian depend Lactantius, Inst, IV, 17, 9–16 and Zeno, Tract. 1, 3.

page 67 note 2 Harris, J. Rendell, Testimonies, 11 (Cambridge, 1920), 54–7.Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 Ed. Guillaumont, A. and others (Leiden–London, 1959), pp. 10–12.Google Scholar

page 70 note 2 ‘The “Single One” in the Gospel of Thomas’, J.B.L. LXXXI (1962), 271–8.Google Scholar

page 70 note 3 Quispel, G., ‘L'Evangile salon Thomas et les origines de l'ascèse chrétienne’, in Aspects du Judéo-christianisme (Paris, 1965), pp. 35–51;Google ScholarMénard, J.-E., ‘Le milieu syriaque de l'Evangile selon Thomas et de l'Evangile selon Philippe’, Rev. Sc. Rel. XLII (1968), 262–6; A. Guillaumont, ‘Monachisme et éthique’, p. 202.Google Scholar

page 70 note 4 Ed. Guillaumont and others, pp. 18–19. The saying is quoted by Irenaeus and in Pistis Sophia, 134; see Gärtner, B., The Theology of the Gospel of Thomas (London, 1961), pp. 228–9. Is there conceivably a remote echo of Gideon's choice?Google Scholar

page 70 note 5 Klijn, ‘The “Single One”’, cf. Guillaumont, ‘Monachisme et éthique’, p. 211 n. 40.

page 70 note 6 Syriac, ed. Frankenberg, W., Die syrischen Klementinen mit griechischem Paralleltext, T.U. XLVIII (1937), 108–14;Google ScholarLatin, ed. Rehm, B., in GCS, Pseudo-klementinen 11 (1965), 67–71.Google Scholar

page 70 note 7 Greek, ed. Rehm, B. in GCS, Pseudoklementinen 1 (1953), 163–4Google Scholar; Syriac, Frankenberg, p. 272. The passage echoes ibid, XI, 3 (GCS pp. 154–5, Frankenberg, p. 256) in a number of significant words, but not in the gospel allusions.

page 74 note 1 Greek Acts 48 (ed. Bonnet, p. 164) and 60 (p. 177).

page 74 note 2 Bardaişan of Edessa (Assen, 1966), p. 211.

page 74 note 3 Ed. W. Wright, Apocr. Acts of the Apostles, Syr. p. 301, tr. p. 267; Klijn, The Acts of Thomas, 131, p. 135. The terminology of ‘number’, ‘fold’ etc. is discussed more fully in my SCK.

page 74 note 4 CfGuillaumont, A., ‘Situation et signification du “Liber Graduum” dans la spiritualité syriaque’, in Symposium Syriacum 1972, pp. 311–22.Google Scholar

page 75 note 1 A Manichaean Psalm-Book II, p. xx.

page 75 note 2 See Henricks, A.–Koenen, L., ‘Ein griechischer Mani-Codex (P. Colon. Inv. Nr. 4780)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik V (1970), 97–216, esp. pp. 133–60.Google Scholar

page 75 note 3 Cf. the ‘Sermon on the Great War’ in Manichäische Homilien, ed. Polotsky, H.J. (Stuttgart, 1934) PP. 7–42. esp. pp. 14, 27, 29.Google Scholar

page 75 note 4 CfNagel, P., ‘Die Psalmoi Sarakoton des Manichäischen Psalmbuches’, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung LXII (1967), 123–30; A. Guillaumont, ‘Le dépaysement’, pp. 31–58, esp. 46–7; Klijn, The Acts of Thomas, pp. 165–6; G. Quispel, L'Evangile selon Thomas (in Aspects du Judéochristianisme), pp. 42–4, 51. These authors refer to a homily on Aksnāyûtâ, posthumously fathered on Ephrem, which mentions îhîdāyê, agônâ and crowning, but is mainly a tirade against dealings with women.Google Scholar

page 75 note 5 A Manichaean Psalm-Book II, p. 137, 48–51.

page 76 note 1 p. 91, 20–7. Ihîdāyâ/μονογεν⋯ς can be recognized under ouōt, ‘single one’ in the ‘Bema Psalms’, ‘by a single lamb he saves his sheepfold’ (p. 10, 3–4) and in the passage quoted below from the ‘Psalms of Thomas’, p. 223.

page 76 note 2 P. 93, 2–4, 8–9, 14–20, 25–6. The last phrase is specifically Manichaean, though it uses a traditional image.

page 76 note 3 Kephalaia, vol. 1, ed. Ibscher, H. (Stuttgart, 1940), p. 191.Google Scholar

page 76 note 4 Allberry, p. 67, 6; cf. p. 68, 14–15.

page 76 note 5 P. 45, 30. Cf. the ⋯ν⋯ρ δ⋯ψυχος in Jas. i. 8 (cf. iv. 8). Kephalaia, LII (128), on the kingdom divided against itself, though directly related to Matt. xii. 25 etc., may also refer to ‘double mindedness’.

page 77 note 1 Allberry, p. 223, 1–7. ‘Single’ (ouōt) must render îhîdāyâ/μονογεν⋯ς.

page 77 note 2 CfSäve-Söderbergh, T., Studies in the Coptic-Manichaean Psalm Book (Uppsala, 1949), pp. 85–166.Google Scholar

page 77 note 3 Mandäische Liturgien (Berlin, 1920), p. 26;Google ScholarcfSegelberg, E., Maṣsbuta: Studies in the Ritual of the Mandaean Baptism (Uppsala, 1958), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

page 77 note 4 Lidzbarski, pp. 149–50, 152, 154. On G Thom see the discussion above.

page 77 note 5 Cf. Vööbus, HASO 1, 97–101.

page 78 note 1 ‘Ein Beitrag’, p. 261. The latter sense would make qyāmâ semantically parallel to ma‘amād in Qumran and Mishnaic Hebrew, though the Qumran sect's word for itself as an institution is rather yaṣhad.

page 78 note 2 Grundbegriffe, pp. 226–8.

page 78 note 3 Die Motivierung, pp. 41–4.

page 80 note 1 I feel that Ephrem's approval for marriage is subtly overstated by Leloir, Dom L., ‘La pensée monastique d'Ephrem et Martyrius’, in Symposium Syriacum 1972 (pp. 105–31), 114–18 and in the discussion, p. 134.Google Scholar

page 80 note 2 Isaac of Antioch, Hom, XXXII, ed. G. Bickell, vol. 11, 108–41; ed. P. Bedjan, 1, 674–9.

page 80 note 3 Ed. Rahmani, I. E. (Mainz, 1891), pp. 126–7.Google Scholar