Two Fathers of the Syrian Church

The two fathers of the Syrian Church from whose writings this volume presents a selection belong together for more than one reason, as examples of the leaders of Syriac theological thought and literature. They are the earliest Syriac authors of whom any considerable writings survive. And both of them represent the religious mind of the Syrian Church only lightly touched by influences from outside, apart from the influence of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, which ran through everything. [a]

Syriac literature, on the whole, grew out of other literatures. It consists largely of translations or adaptations from the Greek. The Syriac language, in the hands of those to whom the Syriac Church owes the admirable version of the Scriptures known as the “Peshitta,” proved able to reproduce adequately not only the lofty ideas of God, and of man’s relation to God, that belong to the related Hebrew of the Old Testament, but also the wider, subtler and more complex religious ideas for which the writers of the New Testament found their fitting vehicle in Greek. But the Peshitta, great as its value to the religious life of Syriac-speaking Christians must have been, never became for them what Luther’s Bible has been to Germany, and the “Authorized” Bible of King James’s translators to England: an inspiring force in literature, not merely raising and enriching its language but bringing every branch of it to life. Syriac literature was indeed deeply steeped in the Syriac Bible, but its level never rose above mediocrity. For the most part it imitates rather than creates. Indeed, it seldom manages to absorb what it has borrowed so as to make it its own. If a Syriac translator worked on the writings of a Greek theologian, he would often paraphrase, or even insert material of his own; if on a Greek historian, he would add a continuation; but he would seldom go further. Those who attempted independent authorship were few. A home-grown Syriac literature began with Ephraim and Aphrahat; but, setting aside a very small number of the writers who followed them, it may almost be said to have ended with them too. These two, and these alone, instead of being imitators or translators, were themselves translated and imitated by the writers of other nations. Aphrahat’s literary fate was a remarkable one: his work survived in a foreign language for foreign readers when the original had all but vanished from the memory of his own people. To Ephraim belongs the high and unique distinction of having begun, or at least given living force to, a new departure in sacred literature, and that not for his own country only but for all of Christendom. From him came, if not the first idea, at any rate the first successful example, of making song an essential part of public worship and a means of teaching theology. From him the practice spread and took hold through the Eastern churches, and it affected even those of the West. The Syriac order of worship, in all its forms, owes much of its strength and richness to his hymns, on which his fame chiefly rests; and the place that hymn-singing holds throughout the church everywhere is largely due to them. That is how it has come about that throughout the church he stands as the representative Syrian Father, as the fixed title attached to his name shows: “Ephraim the Syrian,” the one Syrian known and revered in all of Christendom. [b]

Of the two, it has lately been usual to count Aphrahat as the elder. Later in this dissertation it will be shown that the reasons for counting him so are not sufficient. For now it is enough to note that they were contemporaries, both living and writing about the middle of the fourth century, and that neither can confidently claim the right to be treated first. For convenience, then, we may rightly deal first with Ephraim, who is beyond dispute by far the first in importance, in the amount he wrote, and in fame.