Maria Doerfler, Emmanuel Fiano, and Kyle Smith, eds. Syriac Encounters: Papers from the Sixth North American
Syriac Symposium, Duke University, 26-29 June 2011
Blake
Hartung
Saint Louis University
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
TEI XML encoding by
James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2018
Volume 21.1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv21n1prhartung
Blake Hartung
Review of: Syriac Encounters: Papers from the Sixth North American
Syriac Symposium, Duke University, 26-29 June 2011
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol21/HV21N1PRHartung.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2018
vol 21
issue 1
pp 246–251
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
File created by James E. Walters
Maria Doerfler, Emmanuel Fiano, and Kyle Smith, eds. Syriac Encounters: Papers from the Sixth North American
Syriac Symposium, Duke University, 26-29 June 2011, Eastern
Christian Studies 20 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015). Pp. xx + 498; €85.
This volume comprises a selection of twenty-four papers given at the Sixth
North American Syriac Symposium, held at Duke University in 2011. It offers
an impressive and fairly comprehensive look at the current state of Syriac
scholarship as it has broadened beyond its origins in Semitic philology and
“Oriental” Christian studies.
The initial group of essays, “Poetics and Representation,” begins with a
plenary lecture by Susan Ashbrook Harvey, in which she argues that
privileging commentary literature has left scholarship with an
overwhelmingly negative image of Eve in the Syriac tradition. She contends
that a more complex portrait of Eve emerges from the Syriac liturgy, which
would have been the setting in which most women and men encountered the
figure of Eve. Harvey’s interweaving of literary and visual evidence makes
this an especially compelling look at the relationship between form and
content in biblical exegesis. The second essay in this section, by Jeffrey
Wickes, is narrower in focus, examining a single hymn by Ephrem. Wickes
gives a nuanced reading of Ephrem’s “self-representation,” and in particular
how he used biblical language and characters to position himself and his
poetry in relation to God. In the final essay, Robert Kitchen introduces a
previously unknown metrical Life of Jacob of
Serug by the eleventh-century miaphysite Ṣa‘īd bar Ṣabūnī. Kitchen
describes its manuscripts and summarizes its contents, with specific
attention to how Ṣabūnī constructed the life of Jacob in response to his own
context.
The second section of papers, “Language and Identity,” begins with an essay
by Christine Shepardson. She draws upon recent scholarship on “linguistic
diversity” in northern Syria and argues that John Chrysostom invoked
differences between “urban” Greek- and simple, faithful “rural”
Aramaic-speakers in order to present a rhetorical challenge to his urban
Antiochene audience. This essay is especially valuable in that it draws upon
new scholarship on language use in Late Antique Syria and applies it to
nuance our understanding of Syriac texts. The second and third papers in
this section, by Riccardo Contini and Heleen Murre-van den Berg, were
initially delivered as plenary lectures at the Symposium. Contini’s essay
offers what the author calls “a first tentative approach” to linguistic
thought in (particularly East Syrian) exegetical works (p. 96). He finds
that Syriac exegetes tended to be unaware of or give little attention to
linguistic issues in the Hebrew Bible. Contini concludes that although they
paid great attention to the meaning of words, this linguistic reflection did
not develop beyond what might be called “folk linguistics” (p. 112). In her
incredibly informative paper, Murre-van den Berg explores the revival of
Classical Syriac as a “unified and unifying national language” (p. 120) for
the Syriac communities of Iraq in the twentieth century, transcending
confessional boundaries. Finally, she identifies Iraqi Kurdistan as the
current center of the revitalization of Classical Syriac. With the political
turmoil and violence currently endangering even the relative stability of
northern Iraq, one can only hope that such trends can continue.
The third section of the volume, “Resurrection and Apokatastasis,” begins
with an essay by Charles Stang, focusing upon Evagrius of Pontus’
reflections on the act of writing his “Letter to Melania,” with attention to
how these reflections connect to his understanding of the apokatastasis, or “restoration of all things.” Stang
argues that for Evagrius, “pure, receptive minds” (p. 158) can become God’s
“letters,” receiving divine “writing” without mediation. In the second
essay, Nestor Kavvadas examines the apologetic objectives of the
little-known treatise
On Providence (now
recently published by Kavvadas
Nestor Kavvadas, ed. and trans., Joseph Hazzaya, On Providence: Text, Translation and
Introduction, Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 8
(Leiden: Brill, 2016).
) by the eighth-century East Syriac
author Joseph Ḥazzaya, arguing that this defensive work was written prior to
Ḥazzaya’s condemnation by the ecclesial hierarchy in 786/790. Kavvadas’
essay highlights Ḥazzaya’s “pedagogical” interpretation of the Genesis
creation accounts, and his careful promotion of the doctrine of the apokatastasis, which flows out of his
understanding of divine pedagogy.
Maria Doerfler’s paper on the reception of Evagrian thought in Syria opens
the fourth section, “Nile and Tigris.” She focuses on how Philoxenus
“socializes” Evagrius by mediating his ascetic thought through an “orthodox”
framework. The second article, by Karel Innemée, takes a very different
turn, examining the tenth-century wooden doors of the famous Deir al-Surian
(“Monastery of the Syrians”) in Egypt. Innemée provides a detailed
description of the doors and explains the recent process of conservation
which began in 2010. The final paper, delivered by Amir Harrak as a plenary
lecture, looks at the conditions of non-Muslims in the Abbasid caliphate,
and the caliphate’s wars with the Byzantines from the standpoint of the
writings of the ninth-century Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Dionysius of
Tell-Maḥrē.
The fifth section of the volume, “East and West” opens with an essay by
Nathanael Andrade. Andrade explores a single Edessene legal document from
the third century, highlighting the ways that the document expresses Roman,
Syrian identity in the idiom of the Syriac language. The second essay, by
Alberto Camplani, focuses upon a particular Manichaean claim about
Bardaisanite psychology. This essay, while valuable and well-researched, is
poorly organized and difficult to navigate. For example, the author
interrupts the paper with a lengthy rebuttal of Ilaria Ramelli’s work on
Bardaisan, and the conclusion neglects to address the specific Manichaean
characterization that prompted the study. In the final essay, Craig Morrison
examines the intercessory prayers in the Acts of
Thomas and their function in the narrative. The subtitle of this
essay (“Intercessory Prayer in Early Syriac Literature”) is somewhat
misleading, as the work focuses almost solely on the Acts. It also shows very minimal engagement with
other scholarly literature, in stark contrast with the other papers in this
volume.
The sixth section of the volume, entitled “Greek and Syriac,” begins with a
paper by Alberto Rigolio on Syriac monastic transmission of “secular” Greek
literature, specifically six texts by Lucian, Plutarch, and Themistius.
Rigolio argues that “the moralizing nature of these pieces played an
important role in their translation as well as in their transmission within
Syriac manuscripts” (p. 296). The next essay, by Kathleen McVey, situates
the Letter of Mara bar Serapion in the
context of the “Second Sophistic” movement of the second and third
centuries. In particular, she examines the appearance of the character of
Palamedes in the letter, noting that the treatment of the character aligns
well with his treatment by Greco-Roman authors of the early imperial period.
In her plenary lecture, Alison Salvesen focuses on Jacob of Edessa’s revised
version of the Old Testament, suggesting that Jacob produced this enigmatic
text for pedagogical purposes, to demonstrate the value of Greek in
clarifying the Peshitta. This careful and valuable study draws upon evidence
for Jacob’s life, examines the format of the earliest manuscripts of his Old
Testament, and draws comparisons with biblical citations in his other works.
The final essay in this section, by Ute Possekel, deals with disputes
between Chalcedonians and miaphysites through the lens of the eighth-century
correspondence between Leo of Harran, a Chalcedonian, and his friend Eliya,
a convert to miaphysitism. Possekel takes the friendly correspondence as
evidence for the presence of ongoing dialogue (and not simply polemic)
between the communities.
Sidney Griffith’s plenary lecture begins the seventh section of the volume,
entitled “History and Influence.” This essay offers an excellent overview of
the status quaestionis
regarding the relation of Syriac to the study of early Islam and the Qur’an.
Specifically, he argues that the “Syriacisms” of the Qur’an and its
conscious critiques of Christian theology and practices indicates that the
Arabic-speaking Christian “dialogue partners” (p. 393) of the Qur’an emerged
from Syriac-speaking traditions known to have existed on the Arabian
periphery. In the second essay of this section, Andy Hilkens examines the
depiction of the Turks in the twelfth-century Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Great and its two Armenian
translations. Hilkens sheds light on the dynamic processes of translation in
Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, arguing that the two Armenian
translations are, in fact, independent adaptations. The third essay, by
Alessandro Mengozzi, offers an introduction to the Book of Khamis bar Qardaḥe, including a survey of the
scholarship, an overview of its extant manuscripts, and a description of its
contents. It is, therefore, an excellent introductory resource for future
research.
The final section of the volume, “Text and Object,” begins with an essay by
Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent on “relic discourse” in Syriac
hagiographies which present relics as sources of healing, as substitutes for
the presence of the saints, and as representations of “friendship with the
saint” (p. 446). These aspects of “relic discourse” explain the anxiety
which led to episodes of “relic theft” (p. 449), and to ecclesial
regulations on their transportation. The second essay, by Stephanie Bolz,
examines three particular Syriac magic bowls from Sasanian Persia.
Specifically, Bolz argues that the “adjuration formulae” on the bowls are
Jewish in origin. The presence of Jewish formulae in Syriac may attest to
widespread transmission of magical formulae across religious boundaries.
Lucas Van Rompay’s essay, the final paper of the volume, catalogues two
Syriac manuscripts held by Duke University: a West Syrian Gospel manuscript,
likely from the tenth or eleventh century, and a Maronite divine office,
cop-ied sometime between the sixteenth and eighteenth century.
The great weakness of conference proceedings volumes is that the number of
authors and diversity of subject matter can often make them feel disjointed
or incoherent. Unsurprisingly, this volume occasionally has such an uneven
quality. The editors of this volume should therefore be commended for the
introduction and mode of organization, by which they attempt to weave
together these disparate pieces of research on the basis of common themes.
That being said, the greatest benefit of this volume is something akin to
that of reading an issue of Hugoye: one
receives a broad sampling of current research across the various
sub-disciplines of Syriac scholarship. For this reason, this volume will no
doubt be a valuable resource for libraries and scholars for many years to
come.