[1] It is now generally recognized, thanks to Volquardsen and others,
that Ephorus is the principal authority followed by Diodorus, except
in the chapters relating to Sicilian history.
EPHRAEM SYRUS (Ephraim the Syrian), a saint who lived in Mesopotamia
during the first three quarters of the 4th century A.D. He is perhaps
the most influential of all Syriac authors; and his fame as a poet,
commentator, preacher and defender of orthodoxy has spread throughout
all branches of the Christian Church. This reputation he owes partly to
the vast fertility of his pen--according to the historian Sozomen he was
credited with having written altogether 3,000,000 lines--partly to the
elegance of his style and a certain measure of poetic inspiration, more
perhaps to the strength and consistency of his personal character, and
his ardour in defence of the creed formulated at Nicaea.
An anonymous life of Ephraim was written not long after his death in
373. The biography has come down to us in two recensions. But in neither
form is it free from later interpolation; and its untrustworthiness is
shown by its conflicting with data supplied by his own works, as well as
by the manner in which it is overloaded with miraculous events. The
following is a probable outline of the main facts of Ephraim's life. He
was born in the reign of Constantine (perhaps in 306) at or near
Nisibis. His father was a pagan, the priest of an idol called Abnil or
Abizal.[1] During his boyhood Ephraim showed a repugnance towards
heathen worship, and was eventually driven by his father from the home.
He became a ward and disciple of the famous Jacob--the same who attended
the Council of Nicaea as bishop of Nisibis, and died in 338. At his
hands Ephraim seems to have received baptism at the age of 18 or of 28
(the two recensions differ on this point), and remained at Nisibis till
its surrender to the Persians by Jovian in 363. Probably in the course
of these years he was ordained a deacon, but from his humble estimate of
his own worth refused advancement to any higher degree in the church. He
seems to have played an important part in guiding the fortunes of the
city during the war begun by Shapur II. in 337, in the course of which
Nisibis was thrice unsuccessfully besieged by the Persians (in 338, 346
and 350). The statements of his biographer to this effect accord with
the impression we derive from his own poems (_Carmina Nisibena_, 1-21).
His intimate relations with Bishop Jacob were continued with the three
succeeding bishops--Babu (338-?349), Vologaeses (?349-361), and
Abraham--on all of whom he wrote encomia. The surrender of the city in
363 to the Persians resulted in a general exodus of the Christians, and
Ephraim left with the rest. After visiting Amid (Diarbekr) he proceeded
to Edessa, and there settled and spent the last ten years of his life.
He seems to have lived mainly as a hermit outside the city: his time was
devoted to study, writing, teaching and the refutation of heresies. It
is possible that during these years he paid a visit to Basil at
Caesarea. Near the end of his life he rendered great public service by
distributing provisions in the city during a famine. The best attested
date for his death is the 9th of June 373. It is clear that this
chronology leaves no room for the visit to Egypt, and the eight years
spent there in refuting Arianism, which are alleged by his biographer.
Perhaps, as has been surmised, there may be confusion with another
Ephraim. Nor can he have written the funeral panegyric on Basil who
survived him by three months. But with all necessary deductions the
biography is valuable as witnessing to the immense reputation for
sanctity and for theological acumen which Ephraim had gained in his
lifetime, or at least soon after he died. His biographer's statement as
to his habits and appearance is worth quoting, and is probably
true:--"From the time he became a monk to the end of his life his only
food was barley bread and sometimes pulse and vegetables: his drink was
water. And his flesh was dried upon his bones, like a potter's sherd.
His clothes were of many pieces patched together, the colour of dirt. In
stature he was little; his countenance was always sad, and he never
condescended to laughter. And he was bald and beardless."
The statement in his Life that Ephraim miraculously learned Coptic falls
to the ground with the narrative of his Egyptian visit: and the story of
his suddenly learning to speak Greek through the prayer of St Basil is
equally unworthy of credence. He probably wrote only in Syriac, though
he may have possessed some knowledge of Greek and possibly of Hebrew.
But many of his works must have been early translated into other
languages; and we possess in MSS. versions into Greek, Armenian, Coptic,
Arabic and Ethiopic. The Greek versions occupy three entire volumes of
the Roman folio edition, and the extant Armenian versions (mainly of
N.T. commentaries) were published at Venice in four volumes in 1836.
It was primarily as a sacred poet that Ephraim impressed himself on his
fellow-countrymen. With the exception of his commentaries on scripture,
nearly all his extant Syriac works are composed in metre. In many cases
the metrical structure is of the simplest, consisting only in the
arrangement of the discourse in lines of uniform length--usually
heptasyllabic (Ephraim's favourite metre) or pentasyllabic. A more
complicated arrangement is found in other poems, such as the _Carmina
Nisibena_: these are made up of strophes, each consisting of lines of
different lengths according to a settled scheme, with a recurring
refrain. T.J. Lamy has estimated that, in this class of poems, there are
as many as 66 different varieties of metres to be found in the works of
Ephraim. These strophic poems were set to music, and sung by alternating
choirs of girls. According to Ephraim's biographer, his main motive for
providing these hymns set to music was his desire to counteract the
baneful effects produced by the heretical hymns of Bardaisan and his son
Harmonius, which had enjoyed popularity and been sung among the
Edessenes for a century and a half.
The subject-matter of Ephraim's poems covers all departments of
theology. Thus the Roman edition contains (of metrical works) exegetical
discourses, hymns on the Nativity of Christ, 65 hymns against heretics,
85 on the Faith against sceptics, a discourse against the Jews, 85
funeral hymns, 4 on freewill, 76 exhortations to repentance, 12 hymns on
paradise, and 12 on miscellaneous subjects. The edition of Lamy has
added many other poems, largely connected with church festivals. It must
be confessed that, judged by Western standards, the poems of Ephraim are
prolix and wearisome in the extreme, and are distinguished by few
striking poetic beauties. And so far as they are made the vehicle of
reasoning, their efficiency is seriously hampered by their poetic form.
On the other hand, it is fair to remember that the taste of Ephraim's
countrymen in poetry was very different from ours. As Duval remarks:
"quant a la prolixite de saint Ephrem que nous trouvons parfois
fastidieuse, on ne peut la condamner sans tenir compte du gout des
Syriens qui aimaient les repetitions et les developpements de la meme
pensee, et voyaient des qualites la ou nous trouvons des defauts"
(_Litter. syriaque_, p. 19). He is no worse in these respects than the
best of the Syriac writers who succeeded him. And he surpasses almost
all of them in the richness of his diction, and his skill in the use of
metaphors and illustrations.
Of Ephraim as a commentator on Scripture we have only imperfect means of
judging. His commentaries on the O.T. are at present accessible to us
only in the form they had assumed in the _Catena Patrum_ of Severus
(compiled in 861), and to some extent in quotations by later Syriac
commentators. His commentary on the Gospels is of great importance in
connexion with the textual history of the N.T., for the text on which he
composed it was that of the Diatessaron. The Syriac original is lost:
but the ancient Armenian version survives, and was published at Venice
in 1836 along with Ephraim's commentary on the Pauline epistles (also
only extant in Armenian) and some other works. A Latin version of the
Armenian Diatessaron commentary has been made by Aucher and Mosinger
(Venice, 1876). Using this version as a clue, J.R. Harris[2] has been
able to identify a number of Syriac quotations from or references to
this commentary in the works of Isho'dadh, Bar-Kepha (Severus),
Bar-salibi and Barhebraeus. Although, as Harris points out, it is
unlikely that the original text of the Diatessaron had come down
unchanged through the two centuries to Ephraim's day, the text on which
he comments was in the main unaffected by the revision which produced
the Peshitta. Side by side with this conclusion may be placed the result
of F.C. Burkitt's[3] careful examination of the quotations from the
Gospels in the other works of Ephraim; he shows conclusively that in all
the undoubtedly genuine works the quotations are from a pre-Peshitta
text.
As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of Nicaean
orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either the Nestorian or
the Monophysite heresies which arose after his time. He regarded it as
his special task to combat the views of Marcion, of Bardaisan and of
Mani.
To the modern historian Ephraim's main contribution is in the material
supplied by the 72 hymns[4] known as _Carmina Nisibena_ and published by
G. Bickell in 1866. The first 20 poems were written at Nisibis between
350 and 363 during the Persian invasions; the remaining 52 at Edessa
between 363 and 373. The former tell us much of the incidents of the
frontier war, and particularly enable us to reconstruct in detail the
history of the third siege of Nisibis in 350.
Of the many editions of Ephraim's works a full list is given by Nestle
in _Realenk. f. protest. Theol. und Kirche_ (3rd ed.). For modern
students the most important are: (1) the great folio edition in 6
volumes (3 of works in Greek and 3 in Syriac), in which the text is
throughout accompanied by a Latin version (Rome, 1732-1746); on the
unsatisfactory character of this edition (which includes many works
that are not Ephraim's) and especially of the Latin version, see
Burkitt, _Ephraim's Quotations_, pp. 4 sqq.; (2) _Carmina Nisibena_,
edited with a Latin translation by G. Bickell (Leipzig, 1866); (3)
_Hymni et sermones_, edited with a Latin translation by T.J. Lamy (4
vols., Malines, 1882-1902). Many selected homilies have been edited or
translated by Overbeck, Zingerle and others (cf. Wright, _Short
History_, pp. 35 sqq.); a selection of the _Hymns_ was translated by
H. Burgess, _Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus_ (1853). Of the two
recensions of Ephraim's biography, one was edited in part by J.S.
Assemani (B.O. i. 26 sqq.) and in full by S.E. Assemani in the Roman
edition (iii. pp. xxiii.-lxiii.); the other by Lamy (ii. 5-90) and
Bedjan (_Acta mart. et sanct._ iii. 621-665). The long poem on the
history of Joseph, twice edited by Bedjan (Paris, 1887 and 1891) and
by him attributed to Ephraim, is more probably the work of Balai.
(N. M.)