Probable Dates of His Works

Of the writings in this volume, none gives internal evidence of its date except the Nisibene Hymns of the first division. Hymns 35 to 42, which are not included here, seem to belong to the later, or Edessene, period of Ephraim’s life and to the reign of Valens; that is, they are later than the year 363. The twenty-one hymns that stand first in our collection can be confidently assigned to the year of the third siege, 350, and the thirteen years that followed. Hymn 1 was certainly composed while the siege was still pressing hard. Hymns 2 and 3 were written immediately after the deliverance. Hymns 4 to 12 deal with the fortunes of the city and the country in the troubled time of invasion that came after. The rest, 13 to 21, are about the four bishops of Nisibis, one after another, under whom Ephraim lived: Jacob, Babu, Valgesh and Abraham. The last of these is not recorded anywhere else except by Elias of Nisibis, but the death of Valgesh is known to have taken place in 361. So the hymns that celebrate Abraham’s becoming bishop, 17 to 21, must be placed between 361 and 363, the year when Ephraim, with the whole Christian population of the city, was driven out by Sapor. Hymns 13 to 16 were written while Valgesh was bishop, for they compare him with his two predecessors. So they fall between the year of the siege, 350, which they speak of as past, and the year of Valgesh’s death, 361. Bickell assigns Hymns 4 to 12 to the months of Sapor’s invasion in 359; 13 to 16 to 358 and 359; and 17 to 21 to 363, in the short time between Julian’s death and the surrender of Nisibis. [a]

Most of his hymns that are clearly controversial probably belong, like most of his controversial writings, to the years of his later life at Edessa. And, as we have seen, the earliest of them that can be dated with confidence is no earlier than 350. But it would be hasty to conclude that he had composed no hymns before that date, and that in the Nisibene Hymns of the siege we have the first fruits of the vine of his vision. In 350 he must have been over forty, perhaps over fifty, years old. It is highly improbable that a fruitfulness which proved so abundant did not begin to show itself at a much earlier age, or that a body of writing of such size and importance was all produced in the last twenty-five years of a long life. The earlier authorities on his life give no definite information on this point, and the Syriac Life is vague in its statements and untrustworthy in its dates. The account given by Barhebraeus, a well-informed but very late writer of the thirteenth century, can hardly be accepted as carrying any genuine tradition, but it has probability in its favor. “From the time of the Nicene Council,” he writes, “Ephraim began to write songs and hymns against the heresies of his time.” For few of his hymns are without an argumentative spirit, though, as has been said, those that are purely controversial seem to belong to a later period. [e]

A much later author indeed, Georgius, the “Bishop of the Arabs,” writing in 714, warns us that there is no evidence for assigning any of Ephraim’s writings to the twenty years between the Nicene Council and the year 345, “especially,” he adds, “to the years before 337.” This writer, however, is arguing here in support of Aphrahat’s claim to be an independent author, against those who regarded him as a disciple of Ephraim. He rests his case on the ground that the Demonstrations of Aphrahat are dated, as we will see shortly, from 337 to 345, while no work of Ephraim’s can be shown to have been written so early. And it must be admitted that the earliest date, as noted above, that can be fixed with certainty for any of Ephraim’s countless works is 350, thirteen years later than Aphrahat’s earlier Demonstrations. Against this must be set the tradition that Ephraim was present at Nicaea, which implies that even in 325 he had made himself a notable person. There is also the probability that a man who has left such ample proof of how freely his literary gift flowed must have begun to use it before the year in which he would have passed the age of thirty, if we suppose he was born in 306, or even reached middle age, if we place his birth at the beginning of the century. The two writers were certainly contemporaries, and as yet no sufficient evidence has been found to decide which of the two was the elder.