Le vie del sapere in ambito siro-mesopotamico dal III al IX
secolo: atti del convegno internazionale tenuto a Roma nei giorni 12–13 maggio
2011
Emanuel
Fiano
Fordham University
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2020
Volume 23.2
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv23n2prfiano
Emanuel Fiano
Le vie del sapere in ambito siro-mesopotamico dal III al IX
secolo: atti del convegno inter- nazionale tenuto a Roma nei giorni
12–13 maggio 2011
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol23/HV23N2PRFiano.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2020
vol 23
issue 2
pp 426–429
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.
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C. Noce, M. Pampaloni, and C. Tavolieri, eds., Le vie del sapere in ambito siro-mesopotamico dal III al IX
secolo: atti del convegno inter¬nazionale tenuto a Roma nei giorni 12–13
maggio 2011, OCA 293 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2013). Pp.
373; €38.
This volume collects papers originally presented at an international congress
held in Rome in 2011, on the topic of “paths of knowledge” in the
Syro-Mesopotamian world between the third and ninth centuries. The eighteen
contributions are preceded by a Preface and by an Introduction which helpfully
groups them thematically (p. 12; though with the mistaken mention of an author
not present in the book and the omission of another one who is). In this brief
review I will limit myself to a minimal summary of all the essays.
Paolo Bettiolo’s “Le scuole nella Chiesa siro-orientale: status quaestionis e prospettive della ricerca” (pp. 17–46) focuses on
the East Syrian scholastic model (late fifth to eighth centuries). The author
sets up a typology of exegetical-theological schools, examines the link
connecting them to Christian elites and to East Syriac monastic learning, and
highlights the role of Theodore of Mopsuestia in their training. In “Storia di
Roma – storia di Antiochia: la storiografia romana tardoantica riflette una
prospettiva antiochena?” (pp. 47–58), Susanna Elm discusses the Antiochene
setting of the writings of the fourth-century historians Eutropius and Festus in
relation to their treatment of Rome’s expansionism toward Persia at the time of
Julian and Jovian. Elm suggests that those authors’ cautious attitude toward the
Roman campaign may reflect an Antiochene perspective on the events. Elisabetta
Abate, in her “Le catene della tradizione nella Mišnah”
(pp. 59–73), compares four passages of this Jewish compilation that articulate
the “chain of transmission” of religious knowledge, adding an excursus about the
institutional structure of the rabbinic movement.
Aryeh Kofsky, in “Theology and Hermeneutics among Syriac Christianity, Greek
Christianity and Contemporaneous Judaism (4th–5th Centuries): Paradigms of Interaction” (pp. 75–
90), surveys the Christological views of Aphrahat and Ephrem.
Kofsky interrogates “the influence of early Syriac Christianity on Greek Syrian
Christianity and, further, on the school of Antioch” (p. 84), paying particular
attention to those two authors’ “low anthropology and Christology” (p. 87). René
Roux’s “Sapere teologico e sapere profano all’inizio del VI secolo: l’esperienza
di Severo di Antiochia a Beirut” (pp. 91–103) describes Severus’s sojourn in
Beirut (from 487 to 492) and his early contacts with Christian theology,
dwelling especially on the influence of his study of Roman law upon his
theological method. In “Libanius’ Pro Templis and the Art
of Seeing Syria through Rhetoric” (pp. 105–114), Edward Watts offers a reading
of Libanius’s proposals for ending religious violence in Oration 30 that emphasizes the limited sway the rhetorician held in
Antioch at that time. Gerrit Jan Reinink, in “The School of Seleucia and the
Heritage of Nisibis, the ‘Mother of Sciences’ ” (pp. 115–131), argues that it
was the arrival of Mar Aba at Seleucia and the appointment of Ishai—both were
students of Abraham of Bet Rabban, a teacher at the School of Nisibis—that
propelled academic activities in the Sasanian capital.
“Poesia e conoscenza nei madrāšē di Efrem: fra Nisibi e
dintorni” (pp. 133–148), by Emidio Vergani, explores among other things the
metaphors used by Ephrem to refer to knowledge, as well as the limitations the
Syriac theologian placed upon knowledge as a tool in the path toward salvation.
In “Provvidenza, libertà e legame anima-corpo nella lettera 2 di Timoteo I a
Rabban Boḵẖtīšōʿ, archiatra di Hārūn al-Rašīd” (pp. 149–175), Vittorio Berti
investigates the contribution of theology and philosophy to medical science
through a letter by Timothy I, patriarch of the Church of the East. Sabino
Chialà, in “Lettura e cultura negli ambienti monastici siro-orientali” (pp.
177–190), shows, based on both hagiographical and canonical evidence, that while
reading was generally held in high esteem in the East Syriac monastic milieus, a
contrary tendency may be noticed in the sixth-century spiritual reform of
Abraham of Kashkar and in his followers. Chialà also analyzes the
course of studies completed by Rabban Bar ʿEdta at the Great Monastery of Mount
Izla, as presented in his Vita. Marco Demichelis, in
“Baṣra, Cradle of Islamic Culture: An Analysis of the Urban Area that Was the
Early Home of Islamic Studies” (pp. 191–220), details the political and cultural
factors that led this city to become an even greater center of Islamic
intellectual production than the capital Damascus.
In “Biblical Predictions of the Prophet Muḥammad among the Zaydīs of Yemen (6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries)” (pp.
221–240), Sabine Schmidtke calls attention to the links between different
Yemenite Zaydi theologians’ treatments of biblical prophecies about the advent
of the Prophet. Her treatment, which starts with the twelfth-century scholar
Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Raṣṣāṣ, integrates untranslated passages of
the authors’ treatises. David Thomas, in “Explanations of Christian Doctrines in
the World of Early Islam” (pp. 241–252), provides an overview of
Christian-Muslim theological dialogue in the early centuries of Islam. The
author emphasizes the lack of mutual understanding between the two communities
and shows how attempts at dialogue rapidly devolved into the exchange of
formalized arguments, without any true engagement. Carmela Baffioni’s “Il
‘computo delle proposizioni’ nel MS Esad Effendi 3638 e la tradizione
siro-araba” (pp. 253–278) examines an anonymous text, titled On the Composition of the Premises and appended to the epistle about
Aristotle’s On Interpretation (Letter 12) composed by the
Ikhwān al-Ṣafā (Brethren of Purity). Baffioni provides a translation of the Composition (pp. 257–278) and explores various links to
the Syriac and Arabic philosophical traditions. In “The Cross¬ing Paths of Greek
and Persian Knowledge in the 9th-Century Arabic ‘Book of Degrees’” (pp.
279–303), Alexandre M. Roberts provides an introduction to, and summary of, an
unpublished treatise of genethlialogical astrology (i.e., astrology related to
the fate of a newborn). Roberts indicates that the work presents itself as an
heir to ancient Greek wisdom while being terminologically indebted to Sasanian
culture (a culture that, he argues, played an important role in the
eighth- through tenth-century Greek-to-Arabic translation movement).
With her “Teaching the Hearts: Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiya’s Role in the Spiritual
Formation of the Intellectual Élite in Al-Baṣra, II Century of the Hegira”
(pp. 305–319), Shirine Dakouri offers a portrait of a prominent eighth-century
Sufi mystic, pondering the religious significance of her womanhood and the role
of the “female element” (p. 305) in Sufism. The last two contributions, by
editors Carla Noce and Claudia Tavolieri, are both devoted to the role of music
in the third- through fifth-century education of women in Roman Syria. The two
essays, which were conceived jointly, carry identical titles but different
subtitles. Noce’s “Una vita tra silenzio e canto: alcune considerazioni sul
ruolo svolto dalla musica nella formazione religiosa delle donne cristiane in
ambito siro-occidentale” (pp. 321–349) discusses the dialectic between women’s
silence and pious singing found in ancient Christian sources (rooted in biblical
and Graeco-Roman traditions). Noce also re-reads the dossier of Paul of
Samosata, identifying Antioch as a place where tensions between ecclesiastical
factions revolved also around the use of liturgy and the role played in it by
women. Claudia Tavolieri, in “Una vita tra silenzio e canto: l’importanza
dell’educazione musicale delle donne in alcuni esempi tratti dalla letteratura
siriaca” (pp. 351–373), tackles the interplay of music and female education by
sampling Syriac works such as Ephrem’s madrashe, the Acts of Thomas, and the Vita of
Abraham of Qidun, additionally establishing connections with Christianity’s Old
Testament background. In spite of occasional editorial oddities (some
contributions contain a bibliography while others do not, and one lone
contribution is followed by an abstract) and of some heterogeneity in the
authors’ styles of presentation and academic modes, the collection holds
together quite nicely. As a whole, the volume is successful in directing the
reader’s attention to the forms, institutions, and avenues for the transmission
of knowledge within and across the diverse religious and linguistic cultures of
the Syro-Mesopotamian region.