Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch. The Early Church Fathers. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. vii + 200. ISBN 0-415-23402-6 (paperback). $29.95.
Lucas
Van Rompay
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2005
Vol. 8, No. 2
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/hv8n2prvanrompay
Lucas Van Rompay
Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch. The Early Church Fathers. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. vii + 200. ISBN 0-415-23402-6 (paperback). $29.95.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol8/HV8N2PRVanRompay.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 8
issue 2
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.
Syriac Studies
Severus of Antioch
Christology
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1] Severus
of Antioch is one of the most important authors of the
Syrian-Orthodox and Coptic-Orthodox Churches. According to
historians of the imperial church he held the patriarchate of
Antioch from 512 to 518, the year in which he was deposed, at
the beginning of the reign of the Chalcedonian emperor Justin.
His followers, however, continued to consider him their
patriarch until his death in 538. Severus’s leadership,
which lasted 26 years, was of crucial importance for the
formation and consolidation of the anti-Chalcedonian,
Miaphysite movement.
[2] While
Severus wrote his numerous works in Greek, very little has been
preserved in that language. It is only in recent years that
Greek fragments, which are preserved in exegetical Catena
manuscripts, are being systematically published and studied.
See particularly F. Petit, La chaîne sur
l’Exode, I. Fragments de Sévère
d’Antioche (Louvain, 1999), with a second volume,
covering the remaining books of the Octateuch and the books of
Kings, forthcoming (2006). The gradual loss of interest in
Severus’s Greek works marks the shift of the
anti-Chalcedonian movement from the Greek to the Syriac and
Coptic cultural areas, a shift which took place in the sixth
and seventh centuries and reached its completion in the early
Islamic period.
[3] In view
of the loss of the original Greek Severus, the existence of an
extensive corpus of Syriac translations is all the more
important. Many of these translations were produced during
Severus’s lifetime and are preserved in sixth-century
manuscripts. Even if they do not represent the actual wording
of Severus’s original writings, they give us access to
the milieu of the mid-sixth-century anti-Chalcedonians in Syria
and Egypt, many of whom were bilingual (Greek and Syriac or
Coptic), and many of whom were instrumental in shaping what
would later become the Syrian-Orthodox and the Coptic-Orthodox
Churches. Compared to the importance of the Syriac transmission
of Severus’s works, the Coptic evidence is much more
modest, although it once may have been significant. From Coptic
and Syriac, Severus’s name and fame became part of
Christian-Arabic literature, from which his legacy later
reached Ethiopia. The Arabic and Ethiopic fields have not yet
been fully explored, even though remarkable progress has been
made in recent years. Youhanna Nessim Youssef’s 2004
edition and translation of an Arabic Life of Severus,
corresponding to the Ge’ez version published by E. J.
Goodspeed in 1909, may be singled out: The Arabic Life of
Severus of Antioch Attributed to Athanasius of Antioch
(Patrologia Orientalis, 49,4; Turnhout, 2004).
[4] The
present volume, which is edited by Pauline Allen and C. T. R.
Hayward, is a most welcome one, as several of Severus’s
works have remained relatively little-known in the English
speaking world. One finds here long excerpts from various
works, most of them newly translated. The translations are by:
Robert Hayward (Texts 1-15: extracts from various theological
works and Cathedral Homilies, nos. 13 and 14; Text 17: Homily
no. 72; and Texts 18-25 and 27-28: extracts from various
letters), Iain Torrance (Text 16: Homily no. 18), Witold
Witakowski (Texts 29-34: Hymns), and Pauline Allen (Text 26:
fragment from a letter). The omission of the translators’
names from the respective chapters and from the Table of
contents is misleading and unfortunate.
[5] Except
for text no. 26 (ten lines from Greek), all other translations
are from Syriac. The English translations are particularly
welcome for Severus’s theological works, which have been
published mostly with Latin translations, and for his homilies,
the editions of which are accompanied by French translations.
To my knowledge, one more homily has been translated into
English, namely no. 52 (On the Maccabees), in R. L. Bensly,
The Fourth Book of Maccabees and Kindred Documents in
Syriac (Cambridge, 1895), p. xxvii-xxxiv. As for
Severus’s letters, most of these have been published by
E. W. Brooks (in 1902-1904 and in 1916-1920, respectively) with
excellent English translations, which these new translations do
not substantially improve. The dossier of letters exchanged
between Severus and a certain Sergius (after 518), published
and translated into Latin by J. Lebon in 1949 (CSCO 119-120 /
Syr. 64-65), was made available in English by Iain R. Torrance
in his Christology after Chalcedon. Severus of Antioch and
Sergius the Monophysite (Norwich, 1988), 143-236, an
important complement to the theological texts translated in the
present volume.
[6] The
first three chapters of the book provide well-written
introductions to (1) Severus’s life, (2) Severus’s
thought, and (3) Severus’s works. In the broader
historical sketch of the Miaphysite resistance to the Council
of Chalcedon one might have preferred to see a bit more nuance
in the description of Justinian and Theodora in their alleged
roles of opponent and supporter of the anti-Chalcedonians,
respectively. It is also incorrect, I think, to see in John of
Tella’s ordinations of priests in the late 520s the birth
of “a separatist and independent church” (p. 28).
The Miaphysites’ alienation and separation from the
imperial church should rather be seen as a gradual process,
spanning the entire sixth and even part of the seventh
centuries.
[7] Building
upon earlier studies by J. Lebon (1951), R. Chesnut (1976), A.
Grillmeier (1995), and I. Torrance (1988), a laudable effort is
made here to analyze, understand, and contextualize some basic
ideas of Severus’s theology, which is profoundly
Cyrillian (p. 34-38). In view of this, the following statement,
which serves as a conclusion, is unsatisfactory (p. 37-38):
“Despite the orthodox language in which such
soteriological principles are enunciated by Severus and other
monophysites, it is difficult to escape the impression that it
was not only Julian of Halicarnassus who believed that, while
Christ was a true human being, he was not an ordinary one. The
interpenetration of the two natures results in a dominance of
the divine nature in the union, and the exchange of properties
(communicatio idiomatum) seems one-sided.” Not
only is the use of the term “orthodox” problematic
in this context, but the application of a non-Miaphysite
“orthodox” meta-discourse introduces a theological
prejudice that hampers historical understanding.
[8]
“The Early Church Fathers” series has so far
produced a number of important volumes. Severus of
Antioch, who was one of the protagonists in a period of intense
theological discussion and stood at the intersection of the
Greek and Syriac worlds, has a well-deserved place in it. The
highly readable translations provided in this volume will
further increase awareness and understanding of this important
tradition within early Christianity.