Ephrem the Syrians

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Icon of St. Ephrem of the Syrian

Ephrem the Syrians (also Ephraem , Ephraim , Ephrem ; Aramaic ܡܪܝ ܐܦܪܝܡ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ Mor Aphrem Sûryoyo ; * at 306 in Nisibis , today Nusaybin ; † June 9, 373 in Edessa , today Şanlıurfa ) was a late antique saint , writer and doctor of the church . He taught as an ascetic in Nisibis until Emperor Jovian had to cede the city to the Persians in 363 . Since then he has lived near the city of Edessa.

He is considered the founder of the Persian school and, alongside his older contemporary Aphrahat, one of the greatest theologians of the Syrian Church . Since Ephrem lived before the great divisions, he is highly valued and venerated as a saint in many Eastern and Western churches . In 1920 he was appointed by Pope Benedict XV. with the encyclical Principi apostolorum Petro declared Doctor of the Church .

The feast of Ephrem the Syrian is celebrated in the Protestant , Anglican , Coptic and Catholic churches on June 9th (previously: February 1st), in the Orthodox churches on January 28th.

Life

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Ephräm was born around the year 306 in Nisibis (today: Nusaybin / Turkey), a border town between the Roman and Persian empires. According to one variant of tradition, he is the son of a Christian mother from Amida and a pagan priest from Nisibis, according to another the son of Christian parents from the area around Nisibis.

Ephrem was baptized at the age of 18 and from then on was under the influence of James , the first bishop of Nisibis. At that time, however, much to the annoyance of Ephrem, the major Christian church was considered a “Palutian”, a heretical sect ( adv. Haer. 22). Bardaisanites , Marcionites, and Manicheans made up the majority of Christians in Nisibis and Edessa. The special piety of the “ Bundessons ”, an ascetic community similar to monasticism, shaped Ephrem. However , he opposed the actual monastic movement, which was influenced by Manichaeism in Mesopotamia . Because of his piety and intelligence, he was appointed teacher of the school of Nisibis , and later appointed its head. A legend tells that he was ordained a deacon there by Bishop Basilius of Caesarea .

In 363, during the border conflict , Emperor Jovian ceded the city of Nisibis to the Persians (see Peace of 363 ). Thereupon Ephrem left his hometown together with many other Christians and, after short stays in the area of ​​Beth Garmai and Amida, settled in Edessa (today: Şanlıurfa / Turkey), the capital of the Osrhoene . At that time Edessa was the Roman center of that region, but at the same time it was also the city with the largest Christian community. It is unclear whether Ephräm founded the later famous Edessa school (also Persian school ) here or whether an existing school experienced an upswing through him and his students.

According to tradition, Ephrem continued to live as a hermit in a hermitage, spending his nights praying and studying the scriptures. However, this is probably the later interpretation of his membership of the federal sons . Gregory of Nyssa left us the following portrait of him: “Ephrem is an emulator of the first apostles; he can serve as a model for all monks and hermits. He lived without a bag or a stick and had neither silver nor gold. His food was oat bread and vegetables, his drink was just water. His body was like a clay skeleton. "

Until his death, Ephrem continued his work as a teacher, as an exegete , as a polemicist , as a preacher and as a religious poet. Ephrem died in Edessa in Mesopotamia on June 9, 373, at the time of Emperor Valens .

Works

Ephrem wrote his works in Syriac . The basis of his teaching is his good knowledge of the entire Bible, which he mostly quotes paraphrasing. In contrast, the contemporary Greek theologians and their concepts such as person, essence and nature are largely unknown to him. The terms he used remain indefinite and possibly come from the early Syrian church.

In his works, Ephrem is concerned with a seamless, imperceptible transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Adam is chosen and pure before the Fall and wears a robe of light. Its characteristics are virginity and domination. These attributes follow from the fact that he is the perfect image of God. This likeness and the attributes associated with it are lost in the Fall and are restored in Christ and in the final state of paradise.

In his exegetical writings, Ephrem comments on the books of Genesis , Exodus , Joshua , Judges , 1st Samuel , 2nd Samuel , 1st Kings , 2nd Kings , 1st Chronicle , 2nd Chronicle and Job , the first two of which are preserved in Syriac . The same applies to the commentary on the Gospel known to him, the Diatessaron ( Gospel harmony ), while the commentary on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul, of which he considers the Third Letter to the Corinthians to be genuine, is only available in an Armenian translation.

In his dogmatic and polemical prose writings , Ephrem fights against Bardesanes , Markion and Mani . In addition to the comments and these refutations , of the prose writings only the homily about our Lord is considered genuine.

Mainly, however, he makes use of bound speech in his works . The singable poetry of Madroshé (hymns, stanzas with refrains that vary in their number of lines and the number of their syllables) and the non-singable mimré (metrical speeches, lines of 2 × 7 syllables without stanza structure) occupy an outstanding position. Of the latter, the speeches about faith , as well as the Armenian speeches about Nicomedia and Job, are considered genuine . There are also real parts in the sermones .

The singable poetry of the Madrashè Ephräms probably went back to Bardesanes, who had proclaimed his teaching in this form. Ephrem adopts this form of poetry along with its specific form of melody. The pictorial language of the 15 hymns about paradise may fall back on Jewish traditions that are often adopted and modified in the Syrian Church. In 56 hymns against the heresies he turns against the opponents Bardesane, Markion and Mani, known from the prose writings, while in the 87 hymns about faith he deals with Arianism and develops his own christology and doctrine of the Trinity .

The Virgin Mary plays a special role in Ephräm's works . Time and again he marveled at the mystery of God's work in his Marian songs , as expressed in Mary. Ephrem writes:

Nobody knows what to call
your mother, oh Lord!
If he calls her 'virgin'
- her child is against it;
'Weds', nobody recognized them.
But if your mother is
incomprehensible - who can get hold of you?

The political situation as well as the intolerant coexistence of pagan cultures, Judaism and Christianity, and the various Christian denominations in the Roman-Persian border area challenged Ephrem to explain and defend his own position. Again and again he praised the mystery of God's redeeming devotion to all people. Against theological speculation, he demanded the consistent implementation of theological insights into the Christian way of life, since to him an exclusive investigation of the greatness of God by the "brooders", probably meant the Arians, seemed inappropriate.

The most extensive critical edition with translations of the real works of Ephräm was published between 1955 and 1979 by Edmund Beck , OSB, in the series Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO). An edition with a Latin translation of the commentary on the Diatessaron was published by Louis Leloir, OSB, in the same series from 1953 and, after the discovery of additional fragments, was completed in 1991.

Greek writings by other authors (called Ephraem Graecus ) were also distributed under the name of Ephrem the Syrian .

Impact history

Ephrem Syrus (= Ephraem the Syrians): Sermones selecti , Latin; printed in Freiburg by Kilian Fischer, not after 1491. Folio. Incipit of the incunabulum .

Ephrem is the classic of the Syrian Church. His life story was overgrown early on by the formation of legends. The mass of what is preserved under his name in the original and in foreign languages ​​is impressive, without even remotely exhausting what he has created or ascribed to him. Ephräm's estate was given by Sozomenos as 3,000,000 lines of text.

Ephrem is considered to be "the greatest poet of his father's time ". He shaped Syrian-Aramaic literature in terms of form and content. His works found their way into the liturgy early on and are said to have been used in worship services two decades after Ephrem's death. In the 5th century the Syrian treasure cave was built , which paraphrases the history of salvation from creation to the crucifixion in the style of Ephrem's hymns and which was ascribed to him. For a long time it was considered a real work by Ephrem, but it is clearly under Monophysite influence.

His exegetical works are, however, supplanted early on in the cata commentaries of both Syrian denominations by the interpretations of the Antiochene school .

His works are said to have been translated into Greek during his lifetime, as well as into Armenian , Coptic , Old Ethiopian , Arabic and, via Greek, into Latin . Works in liturgical form ascribed to him are part of the Syrian , Armenian , Coptic , Greek and Slavic liturgies .

Editions and translations

literature

Web links

Commons : Ephrem the Syrians  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 25, 2006 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul S. Russell: Nisibis as the Background to the Life of Ephrem the Syrian. In: Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 8 (2005) 179-235.
  2. ↑ FAZ , from December 24, 2010, page 12: Songwriters
  3. ↑ Hartmut Leppin : Frankfurter Anthologie in FAZ-Online from July 8, 2016: Ephraim the Syrian: "Carmen Nisibenum 10" He is considered the greatest poet among the church fathers. The suffering that Ephraim the Syrians described in his verses 1,800 years ago is suddenly relevant again.
  4. ↑ D. Hemmerdinger-Iliadou: Ephrem grec . In: Dictionnaire de la Spiritualité. 4 (1060) 800-819; Wonmo Suh: From the Syriac Ephrem to the Greek Ephrem: A Case Study of the Influence of Ephrem's Isosyllabic Sermons (memre) on Greek-speaking Christianity . Diss. Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton 2000).
personal data
SURNAME Ephrem the Syrians
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ephrem
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saint, doctor of the church and writer
DATE OF BIRTH at 306
PLACE OF BIRTH Nisibis , today: Nusaybin
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 373
Place of death Edessa , today Şanlıurfa