The Sources for His Life

Fuller details, more or less genuine, are available from many quarters. In Syriac we have two Lives, a longer and a shorter; but whether the shorter is an abridgment of the longer, or rather the core from which the longer was expanded, is open to question. For both alike, the date and the author are unknown. The longer of the two is titled the History of the holy Mar Ephraim. It differs a good deal between the two copies of it that have been published, the Vatican copy and the Paris copy. It contains many things that are hard to believe, and some things that cannot be reconciled with one another or with established facts. In its main facts, however, this History is supported by the Greek authorities. These are the narratives of three fifth-century historians, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret; the brief notices of Jerome, in his On Illustrious Men, written in the year 392, and of Palladius, in his Lausiac History, chapter 101, written about the year 420; and, what carries the most weight, the almost contemporary details of Ephraim’s life contained in the speech of praise delivered on him by Gregory of Nyssa. Other Greek Lives survive: one that bears the name of a writer of Gregory’s own time, Amphilochius of Iconium, but is certainly by a later hand; one anonymous; and one credited to Simeon the Metaphrast, a writer of the tenth century. [a]

We now give an outline of what the Syriac History contains, adding here and there further details or incidents worth noting that have reached us from the other sources just named. Later on it will be our task to examine this narrative, and to find out how far its statements are believable in themselves, or are confirmed by other and earlier evidence.