On Tuesday the 21st of
November Bata Bardak gave a paper on St Ephraim the Syrian’s ‘Hymns of the
Pearl’ to the Spiritual Reading Group at the Carmelite Library. His selection
of readings from the hymns is found at (2) on this blog, following the paper
here.
A
prolific writer of hymns, poems and sermons, St Ephraim (or Ephrem) the Syrian has been described as the most significant of
all the fathers of the Syriac-speaking church tradition. Celebrated by all the
Orthodox Churches as well as the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, he
remains an especially beloved saint of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Alongside
his poetic works he also produced numerous works of practical theology that
were so popular they were translated into Greek, Armenian, Coptic and Georgian,
and later into other languages including Latin and Slavonic.
Ephraim
lived in a time that is variously labelled Early Byzantine, Late Antiquity and
Early Christian. The fourth century was a time of great cultural and religious
change and witnessed a clash of empires and cultures – and Ephraim was caught
up in the midst of these events.
One
of the most significant developments in the fourth century was the adoption of
Christianity as a state religion by a number of kingdoms. In 301 King Tiridates
III established Christianity as the state religion of Armenia, making Armenian
the first Christian nation. In Ethiopia, King Ezana of Axum established
Christianity as the state religion in 330, and shortly afterwards, in 334,
Mirian III, King of Iberia, established Christianity as the state religion in
Georgia.
Meanwhile,
in the Roman Empire, the Edict of Milan decriminalized Christianity in 313, and
in 330 the Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium where he
established a Christian court.
During
the early centuries of the Church the Sees had functioned independently and had
variations in their teachings. A dispute developed when Arius, a priest in
Alexandria, asserted that Christ was a created being thus refuting the
Incarnation. Constantine summoned a council at Nicea in 325, known as the First
Ecumenical Council, to address the heresy of Arianism and to define orthodox
doctrine for the whole Church. According to tradition the participants included
318 bishops. (1) The council formulated the first draft of the
Nicene Creed, also known as the Symbol of
Faith, which defined orthodoxy. Only two bishops refused to sign and were
subsequently deposed by the Church. In 380 the Edict of Thessalonika made
Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
However,
bordering three of these new Christian states was one of the leading world
powers, the Sassanian Persian Empire, the arch-rival of the Roman-Byzantine
Empire for more than 400 years, and constant threat to the Armenians. The
Persian religion was Zoroastrianism. The Sasanian rulers of Persia had
initially tolerated Christianity but with their neighbouring rivals officially
adopting Christianity, Christians came to be viewed with suspicion, being
perceived as enemies of the Persian Empire and were persecuted.
Saint
Ephraim was born c.306 in the city of Nisibis in the contested border region
between Sassanid Assyria and Roman Mesopotamia. Rome had only recently acquired
the region from the Persians, in 298. Ephraim’s parents were part of the
growing Christian community of Nisibis. At that time Nisibis was a cosmopolitan
city that included Jews, Christians and pagans and where numerous languages
were spoken. The Christian community used Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the
language spoken by Christ.
In
his youth Ephraim was a disciple of Saint Jacob (James), Bishop of Nisibis, and
one of the 318 participants at the Nicene Council. Ephraim was baptized as a
youth which was the common practice at the time, and appears to have become a
‘son of the covenant’, an unusual form of Syriac proto-monasticism.
The
‘members of the covenant’ played an important role in early Syriac
Christianity. Before the development of monasticism proper, most Syriac churches
included a community of men and women who had committed themselves to sexual
abstinence and the service of the church. Members of these communities were
known as sons or daughters of the covenant. These communities differed somewhat
from later concepts of the ascetic life in that the members lived among the
community, both Christian and non-Christian, adhering to a strict ascetic
lifestyle while maintaining full contact with the world around them. They
viewed the spiritual life as a journey of steps towards God.
Jacob
appointed Ephraim as a teacher and he was ordained as a deacon shortly after
his baptism. As part of his educational office Ephraim started composing hymns
and writing biblical commentaries. He sometimes referred to himself as a herdsman
and his community as a fold. He is regarded as the founder of the School of
Nisibis which later developed as the centre of learning in the Syriac Orthodox
Church.
Following
the death of the Emperor Constantine in 337, Shapur II of Persia began a series
of campaigns into Roman North Mesopotamia. After numerous sieges over a
twenty-five year period, Nisibis eventually surrendered in 363 and the entire
Christian population was expelled. Ephraim, along with the other Christians,
eventually settled in Edessa in upper Mesopotamia.
Ephraim
was in his late fifties by this time but he was immediately given a ministry in
a new church and appears to have continued teaching, possibly at the School of
Edessa. Edessa had long been at the heart of the Syriac-speaking world and was
full of rival philosophical and religious communities. Numerous sects including
Arians and gnostic sects were proclaiming themselves as the true church.
Surrounded by this confusion, Ephraim set about actively defending Nicene
orthodoxy. A particular rival was the gnostic Bardaisan, a popular and
charismatic preacher who had attracted a large following. Ephraim’s response
was novel and highly successful. He set about writing a great number of hymns
defending orthodoxy. He then rehearsed all-female choirs to sing these hymns,
set to Syriac folk tunes, in the forum of Edessa.
Particularly
influential were his Hymns Against
Heresies which contained doctrinal themes designed to protect Christians
from the heresies that threatened to divide the early church. These hymns used
colourful metaphors to describe the Incarnation of Christ as fully human and
divine and asserted that this unity represented peace, perfection and
salvation.
Ephraim
is reputedly the first to make the poetic expression of hymnody a vehicle of
orthodox
theological teaching, incorporating it as an integral part of the Church’s
worship. He is regarded as the first hymnographer of the Church and is referred
to as the “Harp of the Holy Spirit.”
Many
of Ephraim’s sermons, commentaries and hymns were translated into Greek in his
own lifetime. These Greek translations were greatly admired and some admirers
claimed that they “surpassed the most approved writers of Greece” (2)
In
373 the plague broke out in Edessa, and while ministering to its victims,
Ephraim himself succumbed and died shortly after. He had served in Edessa for
ten years.
Symbolism
St
Ephraim, in his writings, speaks of the natural world and the Bible as God’s
two witnesses, nature and scripture both acting as pointers to spiritual
reality and truth.
For
example, in the Paradise hymns he writes:
In his book Moses described
the creation of the natural world,
so that both Nature and Scripture
might bear witness to the Creator:
Nature, through man’s use of it,
Scripture, through his reading it;
they are the witnesses
which reach everywhere,
they are to be found at all times,
present at every hour. (3)
For
Ephraim nature and scripture testify to God by means of the symbols and types
which they contain. Symbolism in the fourth-century, however, was used in a
much stronger sense than our modern understanding where one object represents
another but is essentially different. For example, the dove is a symbol of the
Holy Spirit but the two are different things. The term used by Ephraim was raza which is usually translated as
“symbol” but actually means “mystery”. In its plural form raze refers to the liturgical Mysteries and Sacraments. In
Ephraim’s perception a symbol actually participates in some sense with the
spiritual reality it symbolizes.
Sebastian Brock explains this in the
following passage:
“This
difference in understanding affects St Ephraim’s attitude toward the material world.
For St Ephraim every symbol “reveals” something of what is otherwise “hidden”
One
understanding of the opposition between “hidden” and “revealed” is that
“hiddenness” refers to God, knowledge of whom would have been totally
inaccessible to created human beings had he not first revealed aspects of
himself to his creation…..
“Hiddenness”
is something characteristic of the “raze” both in the sense of “symbols”
(whether in Nature or in Scripture) and in the sense of “Sacraments”. (4)
In
Ephraim’s words:
A yearning for Paradise
invited me to explore it,
but awe at its majesty
restrained me from my search.
With wisdom, however,
I reconciled the two;
I revered what lay hidden
and meditated on what was revealed.
The aim of my search was to gain
profit,
the aim of my silence was to find succour. (5)
The Hymns of the Pearl
In his writings, Ephraim draws on a threefold heritage. He employs the
methods of early Rabbinic Judaism while also drawing on Greek science and
philosophy, and at the same time exploiting the Mesopotamian/Persian tradition
of mystery symbolism. His most important works are his lyric, teaching hymns
which are full of rich, poetic imagery drawn from biblical sources, folk
tradition, and other religions and philosophies. Among the most famous
of these is a small group of five poems known as the Hymns of the Pearl, which are included at the end of his Hymns of Faith.
In
the Hymns of the Pearl Ephraim uses
the image of a pearl, which he turns over in his hand, for an extended series
of meditations on the mystery of the Incarnation. The image of the pearl is
universally recognised as a symbol of wisdom and purity, but in the Syriac
tradition the pearl is particularly rich in meaning due to the mythology
surrounding its origins. In Syriac mythology the pearl is born when lightning
strikes the mussel in the sea. From this conjunction of fire and water the
mussel opens and the pearl is born – “a precious stone born from flesh’.
Ephraim draws on this myth to make an analogy with the Incarnation of Christ.
The pearl’s miraculous birth from two disparate elements corresponds to
Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit. The raising of the
pearl from the depths of the sea also represents the ascent from the Jordan as
well as the ascent from the tomb. The pearl also reflects Christ-like qualities
in that it is the only jewel that radiates light naturally without any tooling
or cutting by human hands. Ephraim also engages in some word play between the
word “diver” (amoda) and “baptized” (amida) that unfortunately is lost in
translation. The diver’s action in diving for the pearl parallels that of the
person who is baptized and finds the Pearl.
St
Ephraim’s literary output was immense. The church
historian Sozomen credits him with
having written over three million lines. (6)
Although some works have been lost and many only survive in Armenian
translations, over four hundred hymns composed by Ephraim are still extant. Their literary quality is undisputed and they
still breathe with the same freshness as the day they were written.
St
Ephraim is commemorated throughout the Christian world. The Eastern Orthodox
Churches celebrate his feast day on the 28th of January, the
Oriental Orthodox Churches on the 7th Saturday before Easter. In the
west the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches commemorate him on the 9th
of June. In 1920 the Roman Catholic Church declared Ephraim a Doctor of the
Church.
Notes:
1.
230
signatures have survived but there are indications that the list of signatures
is defective. Traditionally 318 bishops participated at the Council.
2.
Sozomen [Salminius Hermias
Sozomenus] (c. 400 – c. 450) Historia Ecclesiastica
3.
Ephrem
the Syrian – Paradise Hymn No.5, verse 2
(Translated by Sebastian Brock)
4.
St
Ephrem the Syrian – Hymns on Paradise,
Crestwood, N.Y., St Vladimir’s Press, 1990. (Introduction and
translation by Sebastian Brock). p.41 ff.
5.
Ephrem
the Syrian – Paradise Hymn No.1, verse 2
(Translated by Sebastian Brock)
6.
Sozomen.
Op. Cit.
References:
St
Ephrem the Syrian – The Harp of the Spirit: Poems of Saint Ephrem the Syrian,
Aquila Books, 3rd ed.
2013 (Introduction and translation by Sebastian Brock).
St
Ephrem the Syrian – Hymns and Homilies of St Ephraim the Syrian: with an introductory
dissertation by John Gwynn, Veritatis Splendor Publications, 2012
St
Ephrem the Syrian – Hymns on Paradise,
Crestwood, N.Y., St Vladimir’s Press, 1990.
(Introduction
and translation by Sebastian Brock).
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Ephrem_the_Syrian (accessed
2/8/2017)
John
Anthony McGuckin (ed) – The Encyclopedia of Orthodox Christianity, Wiley-
Blackwell, 2011.
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