The Selections in This Collection

The samples of Ephraim’s writings offered in these selections are the following: first, the Nisibene Hymns; second, the Hymns of the Nativity; third, the Hymns for the Epiphany; and fourth, three homilies: On Our Lord, On Reproof and Repentance, and On the Sinful Woman.

Of the Nativity Hymns, the first thirteen are reprinted from the translation by the Reverend J. B. Morris, published at Oxford in 1847, which was made from the Roman edition of Ephraim’s Syriac works. The rest of the series as translated here, six more, making nineteen in all, were unknown when that edition was completed in 1743. These six, and also the Epiphany Hymns, with one exception, have since come to light in the Nitrian collection of the British Museum. They were printed by Professor Lamy in his edition of Saint Ephraim, published from 1882 to 1889, in the first volume, columns 1 to 144, and in the second, columns 427 to 504. The three homilies were first printed in the same edition, in the first volume, columns 145 to 274 and 311 to 338. Our translations of these follow Lamy’s text, with a slight change here and there where there seem to be errors. These two series of hymns belong to the class of church hymns. Their titles assign them to two great feasts of the church, and parts of them are built into Syriac service books still in use. Of the homilies, the first was written for the Feast of the Epiphany, like the hymns that come before it. [a]

The Nisibene Hymns are translated from the text as first printed by Doctor Bickell in 1866, whose edition, like Doctor Lamy’s, rests on manuscripts of the Nitrian collection. They too were unknown to the Roman editors of the eighteenth century and to the English translator of 1847, and they have not appeared in English until now. When complete, the series had seventy-seven hymns. The first division, Hymns 1 to 34, deals with the fortunes of the church in Nisibis, in Carrhena, that is, Haran, and in a city left unnamed, probably Edessa. The rest, from Hymn 35 to the end, deal with death and the resurrection. The present selection contains forty-six of them. From the first division it has the first twenty-one, which concern Nisibis and are the Nisibene Hymns proper. From the second division it has two series: one of eight hymns, 35 to 42, in which Death and Satan speak alone or with each other; and the other of seventeen, 52 to 68, of the same kind, but with Man as a third speaker. [d]