Nisibis as the background to the Life of Ephrem the Syrian†
Paul S.
Russell
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
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license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv8n2russell
Paul S. Russell
Nisibis as the background to the Life of Ephrem the Syrian†
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol8/HV8N2Russell.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
Ephrem
Ephraem
Ephraim
Nisibis
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This paper is an attempt to collect
together what is known about Nisibis before and during the life
of Ephrem the Syrian (306-373). It is important to see him
against the backdrop of the place that formed him rather than
the place in which he spent the final years of his life, so it
is to Nisibis that we should turn for insight into
Ephrem’s basic thoughts and concerns. I hope that this
information may stir readers to reflect on Ephrem as a child of
his birthplace and to see him in a slightly different light
than before.
[1]
Even of Nisibis, which was clearly the central place in the
eastern part of the Mesopotamian shelf, we have only scraps
of external information from the Parthian and earlier Roman
period. The effect of our ignorance is above all that we can
supply no significant context or background against which to
set the writings of the greatest figure in early Syriac
Christianity, Ephrem, born in Nisibis in the early years of
the fourth century.
Millar, Roman Near East, 482.
The study of early Syriac Christianity has
centered on Edessa from the time that Eusebius made it
prominent by including the Jesus/Abgar correspondence in his
history of the Church.
History of the Church, 1.13.
Bauer’s use of Edessa and the
documents about the early Church there
The documents are most easily found in W. Cureton,
Ancient Syriac Documents. Bauer’s treatment is
found in Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy.
has tended to focus
the attention of Western scholars on the degree of
trustworthiness to be assigned to the Abgar legend. After
having invested so much energy in a drawn-out discussion of the
establishment of the Church in Edessa, moving to the unspoken
assumption that that discussion covered the pre-literary
history of Syriac-speaking Christianity has seemed a natural
step. It is a misguided step, however.
[2] The roll
of very early Christian writings produced in Syriac that
survive to our day is not a long one: Sebastian
Brock
“Eusebius and Syriac Christianity”,
221-226.
lists three passages in The Chronicle of
Edessa, the inscription of Abercius of Hierapolis (died
ca. 200), two passages from Julius Africanus, The Book of
the Laws of the Countries, the central elements in the
martyr acts of Shmona, Guria and Habbib and what Dr. Brock
calls “the scant fragments of Bardaisan’s works
preserved by later polemicists” as forming the earliest
stratum of evidence. With the exception of the very uncertain
Odes of Solomon and some probable, but lost, works
lying behind The Acts of Thomas, there is nothing else
on which scholars can agree. These seem to be the chief of the
surviving pieces from before the arrival on the scene of the
two great fourth century contemporaries: Aphrahat and Ephrem.
With their activities come the first large bodies of texts that
survive to be mined for information on the life and thought of
those early Semitic Christians.
[3] Our
problems are not solved by the arrival of these works on the
stage of history, however. Instead, these writings confront us
with new puzzles. Aphrahat seems destined to remain just a name
to us, but Ephrem’s life and work can be studied as
united elements of a single whole with a specific location in
time and space. The enterprise of locating the particular
pieces of this corpus, though, is fraught with difficulty, due
to the lack of autobiographical references his works provide
and the scarcity of earlier materials.
A discussion of the difficulties associated with
the historical study of Ephrem can be found in Paul S. Russell,
“St. Ephraem, the Syrian Theologian”.
These circumstances
make broad knowledge of the time and place in which Ephrem
lived even more desirable, since that background could be a
powerful light to shine on the works to help us see what they
contain. Because of this, our knowledge of the city of Nisibis
and the life of those living there, Christian and non-Christian
alike, should hold a prominent place in the mind of any student
of Ephrem. This has not been the case for most students of
Ephrem, however.
[4] Nisibis
was Ephrem’s home and formative environment. He passed
almost six decades of his life there before his exile in Edessa
began. Despite this, even the basic emotional and psychological
fact that Edessa can never have been “home” to him
seems to have escaped the notice of modern readers of his
works. Though both of these places are far from us in time and
space and foreign to us in very similar ways, we should not let
that similarity to the foreigner make us assume that they were
much the same to Ephrem.
[5] I would
like to suggest that Nisibis should be the first place we look
to find the background of Ephrem’s works rather than
Edessa. The fact that he spent so much more of his life in
Nisibis is important, of course, but it may be even more
important to consider the fact that his formation as a human
being, a Christian thinker and writer, and as an observer and
analyzer of the world must all have taken place in Nisibis. In
the same way that an American, born in the 1950s, can never
escape some degree of mental connection between Germany and
totalitarianism, because of its all-pervasiveness in
conversation and writing during his formative years, so would
Ephrem’s chorus of inner voices have been tuned to a
Nisibene register rather than an Edessene one. Until modern
readers try to read Ephrem primarily as a Nisibene author, they
will have failed to approach him on his own ground, I
believe.
I do not dispute the connection of some of
Ephrem’s works with Edessa, of course. Any time a piece
can be placed in history, usually on the grounds of internal
evidence, I am eager to benefit from that fact. My objection
stems from a conviction that Edessa has pushed Nisibis into the
shadows when our imaginations are at work on Ephrem and his
writings.
[6] In order
for us to begin to read Ephrem this way, we must gather about
us all we can discover of Nisibis and its character so we can
try to match what we can see of Ephrem’s native city with
his concerns and views. However, as soon as one begins to
attempt this project, an intractable problem arises.
[7] One of
the reasons that modern scholars turn their imaginations so
readily to Edessa as the backdrop for an early Syriac author is
that our knowledge of Edessa is, relatively, so far advanced.
Every student of Syriac must read J. B. Segal’s seminal
work on the city,
Edessa the Blessed City.
but we have a number of very useful works
besides this one that serve to make the student’s eye
turn to Edessa whenever early Syriac Christianity is under
consideration.
This is not the place for a complete bibliography,
but the shelf that sits (tellingly) nearest at hand as I write
has on it: Steven K. Ross, Roman Edessa London:
Routledge 2001, H. J. W. Drijvers, Cults and Beliefs at
Edessa Leiden: E. J. Brill 1980, Han J. W. Drijvers &
John F. Healey, The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa &
Osrhoene Leiden: Brill 1999, Javier Teixidor,
Bardesane d’Edesse
la première
philosophie syriaque Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf
1992, and H. J. W. Drijvers, Bardaisan of Edessa Assen
1966. There is nothing like any of these volumes to help a
modern reader become acquainted with Nisibis.
Since we all read Syriac works with information
about Edessa in our heads, we naturally see connections with
Edessa in the works of Ephrem. It is not illegitimate to look
for these, of course, but do we see them because they are, in
truth, connections with Edessa or do we see them because they
are connections with the Late Antique Near East? How many of
the elements that seem “Edessene” in Ephrem’s
works really are so and how many are ambiguous? If we knew more
about Nisibis, we might set our knowledge of the two cities
side by side and see which of the two seems the more likely
source for Ephrem’s thoughts, but we know little of
Nisibis and the comparison could hardly be made on equal terms.
In this paper, I try to begin to redress that balance.
[8] It is
important to realize, at the outset, that it is not possible to
produce a treatment of Nisibis with anything like the same
sophistication and detail that our knowledge of Edessa has
achieved. Edessa has been investigated systematically on the
ground and Nisibis is, as yet, essentially untouched by modern
archaeology.
I have been told of some investigations going on,
especially around the old Baptistery, but have been able to see
no photographs or drawings and have heard no mention of any
publications of findings at Nisibis.
The maps of Nisibis I have been able to discover
and examine
Plate XV in Dussaud, Topographie,
Plate IX in Mommsen, Provinces, Plate III in Neusner,
History vol. IV, folding endmap from Debevoise,
History of Parthia, the map that is found as
illustration 1 in Mango, “The Continuity of the Classical
Tradition” after page 116 and the following maps from the
Library of Congress Map Collection: H 215-30 23331 Turkish 1946
[G-XIV Blatt Nr. G-XIV Siirt (1:200, 000)], G 7430 S 200 G 41
German 1941 [Blatt Nr. H-XV Nusaybin (1:200, 000)], G 7430 S
200 G 4 German 1941 [Nusaybin H/XV (1:200, 000)], G 7430 S
250.G 7 [Mardin Sheet 25 Intelligence Division War Office
1902/revised 1915 (1: 250, 000)], G 7430 S 200 G 7 [Sheet G 15
Nusaybin (1:200, 000)] and G 74 30s 250. G 4 [Blatt Nr 54
Mardin (1:250, 000)]. (These last were the best the very
helpful staff at the Map Collection could discover in the
Library of Congress Collection.) All these maps do little more
than illustrate Nisibis’ position on east/west and
north/south routes of travel and its placement on the edge of
the high ground over-looking the plain to the south and east.
(I assume that interest in the area in the last decade has led
to the discovery of whatever map resources the collection at
the Library of Congress holds. Some of these were released
especially by the CIA for me to examine, so I think it likely
that I saw all there is to see.)
are of too large a scale to be useful for
someone wanting to gain a sense of the site, and reflect the
military focus of the interests of all their modern creators.
The most basic tools are lacking for study of Nisibis.
[9] This
lack explains my approach in this paper. Rather than
synthesizing the information I have been able to collect down
to a smooth and organized summary, I have, instead, decided to
try to present, stated systematically by topic and category, as
much of what I have found as possible. As our knowledge of
Nisibis grows, I expect that others will be able to make more
intelligent use of this information than I can, now, at the
start of the process. I imagine this paper’s usefulness
to lie in its containing as many items as possible, so that a
reader can refer to it to check if a detail he has identified
in a writing, describing the physical situation of the city,
the name of a bishop, the mix of ethnic groups in the
population, for example, might refer to Nisibis. I hope that
someone reading something from Ephrem’s pen might be able
to refer to this compendium to see if other sources I have
discovered could shed light on what he is reading. The
organization of the material into categories will, I hope, make
it easier to locate the particular material sought. I hope that
the manner of presentation of this paper has not made it more
awkward to read than necessary, but I have tried very hard to
aim at completeness rather than polish. We are too close to the
beginning of this process to trim off what may seem extraneous
to us, now. We do not know enough to know what will be
extraneous and what will be useful. A high polish is not always
the effect at which historical work should aim, however much I
admire it in its place. The reader will notice, also, that I
have posed a number of questions in this paper that I cannot
answer. These are intended to highlight both possible lines of
thought and our present lack of certainty.
[10] A
useful way to look at our knowledge of Nisibis before and
during Ephrem’s life may be to think of a complete,
well-rounded view of the city as being a mosaic, while what
survives for us are merely a small number of the tesserae.
While we do not have enough of the original to reconstruct it
fully, or even to get a sense of the whole design, by careful
consideration and comparison of the pieces we do have, we may
be able to discern some things that the pieces, examined
individually, would not show us. We may be able to get a better
sense of the probabilities of different views of the original.
We may, cautiously, make some observations about the absence of
elements we would have expected to find, though this is
perilous and must always be approached with great caution. A
systematic examination of all the facts we can collect about
Nisibis may allow us to understand something more of the broad
background of life in Late Antique Mesopotamia. Keeping these
facts in the backs of our minds may help us to draw Ephrem, in
our imagination, back from Edessa to Nisibis and think of him
more nearly as he was likely to have considered himself: not as
“the deacon of Edessa”, but as the Nisibene
refugee.
[11] I am
grateful to the scholars, unknown to me, who served as readers
for this paper for Hugoye. I have benefited from their
suggestions and been led to new sources by them that I did not
know. In one regard, however, I think it necessary to part
company with them. They seemed to think that I should take more
notice of what is generally known of Mesopotamia in Late
Antiquity, especially of the neighboring areas. In other words,
they seemed to suggest that I place Nisibis more explicitly
against the backdrop of what is broadly known of the region. I
have decided not to follow this suggestion and would like to
explain why. Since we know so little of Nisibis itself and
since our knowledge of all of the ancient Near East is
extremely spotty, and so much formed by the particular
preoccupations of the archaeologists involved, as Ball
Ball, Rome
in the East,
235. Whittaker, Frontiers, 53, echoes this
characterization of the archaeological work done in the Roman
Near East as “undeveloped”.
makes
clear in his discussion of the interpretation of the remains of
a particular area:
Thus the [perceived] pattern of rural settlement and
development is affected not so much by the actual remains but
by archaeological fashion. We have already observed ... how
academic priorities can distort the received view of urban
continuity. The rural surveys, in concentrating too
exclusively on specific research interests, have resulted in
the true picture being distorted.
We cannot proceed as if we had a complete or representative
body of information at our disposal. Whatever we might gather
about Nisibis in particular would soon be submerged by the
comparative flood of facts and artifacts relating to other
cities and sites. Any hope of beginning to gain an idea of
Nisibis’ own individual character would not survive the
flattening effect of having the vast majority of information
stem from elsewhere. In composing this piece I have, to a large
degree, taken for granted the reader’s acquaintance with
the broad outline of the political and cultural history of the
Roman Near East and have tried to focus my gaze solely on
Nisibis in the hope of beginning to gain a sense of its
peculiar characteristics. I am willing to accept a spotty and
incomplete result because I think that is a fair and
responsible rendering of the state of our knowledge of Nisibis
at present, given its predominantly literary basis. Until
modern archaeological work can be performed at the site and the
materials uncovered have been analyzed by scholars, I do not
think that we can expand the boundaries of our detailed picture
very much. I think this paper is useful and I think its
contents are helpful to the reader of Ephrem, but I do not
think that it marks the completion of this necessary task.
Rather than making this paper more rounded and attractive by
filling in its gaps with information from other locales, I have
chosen to leave its incompleteness obvious to the
reader’s eye, both as a salutary reminder of the state of
our knowledge and as a spur to undertaking first-hand
investigation on the ground, when that again becomes
possible.
Physical Situation
[12] We
should begin with the consideration of the physical situation
of the city of Nisibis. Nisibis sat, and sits, on the southern
edge of the high ground above the bend of the Mesopotamian
plain. It stands as a fortress on the edge of a natural wall
that is the mountain range, or range of high hills, that
stretch across the northern edge of the center of the curve of
the Fertile Crescent. If Pigulevskaja’s suggestion that
the Greek name for the region or valley in which Nisibis lies,
“Mygdonia”, comes from the Syriac word
magda’ = ‘fruit’ is correct,
Les villes, 51.
that
would give us good reason to think that the area seemed much
more fertile than the general run of farm land in that part of
the world. It might also explain why a city had been built
at that particular place to control that important
region. It was always important to have steady food
supplies near at hand if an ancient city were to
survive.
A further note of caution before we
begin: Millar, Roman Near East, 226, makes an
important point by warning that it remains difficult to study
areas near the borders of modern states. The fact that
Nisibis has been in an area of unrest for a very long time has
been one of the factors in keeping modern, scholarly knowledge
of its history at such a low point. Unfortunately, I
cannot foresee a time when that circumstance will
change. Indeed, it seems more likely to grow worse and for
there to be much loss of valuable artifacts and materials
before they can be recovered.
[13]
Nisibis stood astride important routes both from the east to
west, that is, from Arbela or Seleucia-Ctesiphon to Edessa or
Harran, and from the north the south, that is, from Armenia to
the Mesopotamian plain. This position, it is important to
remember, determined not only the city’s importance in
war, but also its importance in trade.
[14]
Nisibis stood by the side of a river, the Mygdonius (whose name
echoes that of the area), which flows into the upper
Euphrates.
Late Antiquity, 606.
It was also so close to the Tigris to the
east, and so highly elevated above the flatter land in that
direction, that Ammianus Marcellinus reports having been able
to see from Nisibis fires burning to the east as evidence of
the Persian incursion across the river in 359.
18.6.9, Walter Hamilton trans., 153. This
incident is mentioned by Matthews, “Ammianus and the
Eastern Frontier”, 551.
[15] This
position, both of natural and strategic importance, meant that
the city was of great military value to whatever political
state controlled it. Thus we hear from Dio Cassius:
Dio’s Roman History,
Translated by Cary, vol. 3, 11 (Book 36.6).
Lucullus reached this city in the summer time, and although
he directed his attacks upon it in no half-hearted fashion,
he effected nothing. For the walls, being of brick, double,
and of great thickness, with a deep moat intervening, could
be neither battered down anywhere, nor undermined ...
The fortifications that greeted the Romans’ on their
arrival on the scene show that the need to protect the city as
a precious asset already had a long history. Such
formidable defenses were not the product of a brief building
spree or one ruler’s whim, but were evidence of
long-standing, serious concern for the site’s
protection. The city had a very long history due to its
natural desirability. This explains its having been
continuously occupied for as far back in time as we can trace
the history of the region.
[16]
Along with the city’s antiquity, we should be aware of
its individuality. It is important to remember the strongly
localized quality of life in the ancient world. Indeed, we
should remember the localized quality of life in all ages
before our own, if we consider our own age to begin in the
middle of the 19th century with the wide
distribution of steam-powered travel both on land and on sea.
It has been well said:
Louth, “Unity and Diversity”, 3.
Stoneman, Palmyra, 53-54, makes the same point of the
oasis city of Palmyra and its territory.
... we need to remind ourselves just how diverse and
disparate the communities of the fourth century—and not
just the Christian communities—were. The basic unit was
the city—polis, civitas—with
its surrounding countryside. Except in the case of a few
great cities, especially Rome and Constantinople, the city
and its surroundings were a self-contained economic unit.
They were also self-governing, governed by local notables ...
The Roman Empire made no attempt to erase this prevailing
sense of locality.
[17] It
is important to remember, when we consider Nisibis, or any
ancient city, that we are studying an entity that had much more
of an individual life than is common for a city in our own
place and time. This should make us cautious in our use of
evidence from neighboring regions and cities.
Ethnic Mix
[18] The
ethnic mix of the city of Nisibis during Ephrem’s
lifetime is impossible for us to discover in any detail, so far
removed in time as we are now.
Millar, “The Problem”
passim, shows clearly the scarcity of hard evidence,
so far identified, that can shed light on either the extent of
Hellenistic cultural presence during the period of Greek and
Roman rule or its depth of penetration. He stresses also,
ironically, the scarcity of evidence for non-Greek cultures in
the Hellenistic period. Modern scholarship, as yet, is unable
to provide a baseline picture of either side of the great
cultural divide between Greek and barbarian in the Late Antique
Near East. All of the following attempt to review what is known
of Nisibis should be treated with caution as a result of our
general ignorance.
Pigulevskaja
N. Pigulevskaja, Les villes, esp.
49-78: “Nisibe, Ville Frontière”.
holds that the
name of the city seems to be Aramean in its root. If true, this
would put Nisibis into the context of the very widespread
Aramaic language world that seems to have stretched from the
Mediterranean littoral to the interior of Persia.
Frontiers, 25-26 discusses this
spread.
[19] It
seems clear that the Greek population of Nisibis grew
progressively as the time of Hellenistic occupation continued,
which was the normal thing in Near Eastern cities. It also
seems that, in comparison to other cities of the Hellenistic
occupation, Nisibis was very little Hellenized and that the
Syrians in it remained much the most important part of the
population. It was, of course, given, officially, the name of
‘Antioch in Mygdonia’,
Jones, Cities, 216. Jones says
this name is first attested in the 2nd century BC
under Antiochus Epiphanes.
but the use of the old name
seems to have returned with the fall of the Seleucids and we
should expect that the traditional name was commonly used by
the Syrian population throughout the Hellenistic period. Jones
attributes at least part of the lack of permanent Hellenistic
influence on the local populace to its “chequered
history” (a very reasonable suggestion) and cites the
continuation of brother/sister marriages as an example of the
cultural orientalism that survived even to the time of
Justinian and Justin II.
Jones, Cities, 222.
Jacob Neusner, speaking more
broadly of Mesopotamia, gives a very credible account of the
likely ethnic mix of the city:
History of the Jews 1, 2-3.
Because of its antiquity and changing fortunes, the region
was, by the second century BCE, a mosaic of peoples,
languages and cultures. In addition to Jews, who had been
exiled there in the sixth century BCE, and remained in large
numbers, the Babylonian region contained numerous
Babylonians, who spoke Aramaic and also (through their
priests) preserved Akkadian; Macedonians and Greeks; Syrians,
Arabs, and other Semites; Armenians and Iranians; and
occasional Indians and Chinese. Many of the cities had
largely Hellenized populations, particularly Seleucia,
Charax-Spasinu and Artemita; others, particularly Babylon and
Uruk, were centers of the ancient Babylonian cuneiform
civilization; while still others, particularly Ctesiphon,
were populated by great numbers of Parthian government
officials, troops and traders. Yet few cities were inhabited
by a single ethnic or religious group, and all exhibited a
measure of Hellenistic culture; Susa, far to the east,
conducted its municipal affairs according to accepted
Seleucid forms and in the Greek language long into the
Parthian period, while Babylonians, Syrians, Jews, and Greeks
mingled in the streets of Seleucia. We know, moreover,
that the Greek and native Babylonian elements were intimately
intertwined.
[20]
Another note of caution would not come amiss at this
point. While we may know that different languages were in
use in the same place at the same time, this does not
necessarily tell us who the people were who were using
them. When we have epigraphic evidence we do have
something solid to hold on to, but it is important to realize
that this evidence is of strictly limited value. It is too easy
to think that we know who would have been using which languages
in certain locations at certain times, but our knowledge is
rarely dependable in that regard. Despite the fact that
all scholars seem to agree that the Christian community in
Nisibis was less Hellenized than that in Edessa (perhaps
because it lies farther to the east), we must remember that the
earliest Christian inscription from Nisibis, found in the
baptistery of the church building there, was put up by Bp.
Vologeses in Greek, not in Syriac. Of course, this might
have been analogous to the common custom in American Episcopal
churches of putting inscriptions inside their buildings in
Latin (or even Greek!) despite the fact that no one, including
the priest and the stone carver, is able to read these when
they are completed. Christians of earlier times were not
necessarily more innocent of cultural, social and theological
pretensions than their modern brethren. In other words, that
inscription may tell us something about the ethnic make-up of
the Christian community in Nisibis at that time, or it may not,
and there seems to be no certain way to determine which of
these is the appropriate conclusion to draw.
This point will be discussed more fully
below at paragraph 43 ff.
[21] Bp.
Vologeses, himself, is an interesting person to
consider. While bishop of the Christian community in a
city that seems to have been mostly Syriac-speaking, he put up
an inscription in the new showplace of his church
(commemorating his having had a hand in building it, no less),
but he did so in Greek! “Vologeses”, by the
way, is not a Greek or Syriac name, itself, but rather one of
Parthian extraction, and would have been associated with the
Roman Empire’s rival to the east in the minds of the
Christians of Nisibis.
“The Parthians spoke Parthian Pahlavi,
a North Iranian dialect akin to Sogdian” says The
Oxford Classical Dictionary “Parthia’, 651.
(Vologeses IV of Parthia besieged
Nisibis in 197.
Pigulevskaja, Les villes, 76, Also,
Vologeses I (52-80 AD) founded Vologesocerta near Babylon as a
rival to Seleucia-Ctesiphon, The Oxford Classical
Dictionary, 953.
) I think it is a sign of a certain
open-mindedness on the part of the Christian community that
Bishop Vologeses’ family (if he was born in Nisibis) did
not feel social pressure to give him a more
‘Christian’ name. It seems that, whatever language
Vologeses himself spoke as his “native tongue”, it
could not have been both the same as that in which his people
worshipped (Syriac) and that in which the inscription was
composed (Greek). Was it neither of these, but rather
Armenian or Persian? It is hard to imagine a family without
roots to the north or east choosing such a name for their
son.
Robert, “Une Nouvelle
Inscription”, 323, makes the same general point about
on-going cultural influence as evidenced by the Persian name
(Mithras) of the Bishop of Hypaipa, present at the Council of
Nicaea.
Clearly, the Christian community, itself, knew
more variety in background among its members than we can
discover at this point.
Religious Mix
[22] The
mix of religions present in Nisibis during and before the life
of Ephrem cannot be reconstructed in detail. We can, however,
rehearse some of the facts that we do know and then try to
assess what they tell us about what Ephrem’s religious
environment would have seemed like to him.
[23] As
far as paganism is concerned, while we know for certain that it
must have been present, we know really very little about which
cults were represented in Nisibis. Ephrem himself, in the
10th and 11th of his Hymns on
Nicomedia, makes specific reference to the use of
astrology and incantations among the people in Nisibis.
David Bundy, “Vision for the
City”, 201-203.
There
is evidence also, of the survival of local non-Hellenic cults
into this period.
Fergus Millar, “Empire, Community and
Culture”, discusses what is known of this native Semitic
paganism. H. J. W. Drijvers, Cults and Beliefs,
discusses what is known of Edessene paganism, but the local
nature of pagan practice and belief makes this information
unusable to describe Nisibis, however suggestive it may be.
It seems that there is good reason to
conclude that traditional Semitic paganism (that is, cults
addressed to some of the many local deities common in the Near
East before the conquests of Alexander, such as Hadad, Bel and
Shamash) continued on throughout the Hellenic period into late
antiquity, but we know virtually nothing about it in detail.
Millar is quite correct in commenting “…we have no
way of knowing what myths or beliefs attached to these
cults”.
“Empire, Community and Culture”,
163.
It seems certain, judging by literary evidence
and by the archaeological work carried out elsewhere in what
was once the Seleucid domain, that there would have been local,
quite un-Hellenized cults, some Hellenic imports (likely poorer
and less well attended after the arrival of Roman rule under
the early Empire) and some cults that included elements from
both backgrounds. Even this general picture, however, takes us
beyond our fact-based knowledge and should not be pressed. The
lack of modern archaeological work in the area and the lack of
Syriac pagan writings leave us dependent for information on
passing references in Jewish and Christian works. (Islamic
works are too late to be considered contemporary sources, and,
so, offer further difficulties, if one tries to use them with
this in mind. I have avoided them for this reason.) It is one
of the difficulties inherent in the sort of written materials
that survive from the period that their Christian or Jewish
nature means that the lives and practices of pagan people are
almost completely neglected. For example, Stoneman
Palmyra, 71 ff.
says
that the cult of the Roman emperor is absent in Syria, but I
would prefer to say that we have not yet found evidence of it
and so may assume that it was not common. I do not think that
our knowledge is extensive enough to enable us to claim that we
know that something did not exist in this area at all.
[24]
Numismatic evidence, always, in some respects, pleasantly
specific, shows coins minted by the city with images of
Caracalla, Macrinus, Gordian III and Tranquillina, Otacilia
Severa and Philip Junior on the obverses, while the reverses
show either the Tyche of the city or, on that of Otacilia
Severa, a temple of the Tyche with the Tyche seated between its
pillars.
MacDonald, Hunterian Collection,
315-316, Plate LXXIX.
This last shows a sign of the
constellation Aries, a detail included on some of the others.
Otacilia Severa is also shown with a river god swimming at her
feet. The Tyche is so general a symbol that it says nothing
about Nisibis in particular. The constellation may be a
reflection of the same interest Ephrem describes in Hymns
on Nicomedia 10 + 11. Hill displays Nisibene coins showing
Macrinus, Severus Alexander, Severus Alexander with Julia
Mamaea, Julia Mamaea, Gordian III, Gordian III and
Tranquillina, Tranquillina, Philip Senior and Otacilia
Severa.
Hill, Greek Coins of Arabia Mesopotamia
and Persia, 119-124, Plate XVII.
This slightly different group of coins shows
almost exactly the same range of decoration as those in the
Hunterian collection. I think it makes sense to conclude that
this array of images reflects the interests and
self-understanding of the city rather than of the imperial
figures who caused the coins to be struck. All of these symbols
fit easily into the life of the city and its cultural
interests, as we know them. Drijvers
“The Persistence”, 39-40.
warns that we
should take notice of the cult of a city’s Tyche and of
astrology. He considers these to have been lively rivals to the
growth of Christianity and helpful gauges of a city’s
cultural profile and its cultural change over time.
[25] We
do know, on the other hand, quite a bit more about Judaism in
Nisibis and its surroundings. Jacob Neusner makes quite clear
that Nisibis was an important place in the Jewish
Diaspora to the east of Palestine.
Jacob Neusner, History of the Jews
1, 13.
We know that the
Jews in Nisibis were not cut off from their brethren in the
homeland, but rather supported them with funds when the times
demanded. Moreover, it is clear that the feeling of having an
active attachment went in both directions. A good example of
this is the flight of the students of Rabbi Akiba who went to
Nisibis to stay with Rabbi Judah ben Bathyra during the Bar
Kokba war.
History of the Jews, 1.122. A city
“Nisibis” is also mentioned in Josephus, Jewish
Antiquities 18.312, as having been the site of a
collection point for the Temple offering of Jews in that area.
Because this passage describes Nisibis as on the Euphrates, the
editor of the Loeb edition, L. H. Feldman, note a, p 180, vol.
9, suggests that this must be a different city from
Ephrem’s Nisibis. Since the river in Ephrem’s
Nisibis, the Mygdonius, ran into the Euphrates downstream from
the city, I can imagine Josephus thinking of it as a branch of
the Euphrates. The reference is uncertain, but likely to be our
Nisibis, in my judgment.
[26]
Neusner takes very seriously the prominence of Judaism in
Nisibis and credits the presence of Tannaitic
‘Tannaitic’ refers to the
rabbinic tradition before the period of the formation of the
Mishnah or Talmud.
teachers there
as a reason for the slow growth of Christianity in Nisibis,
especially as compared to the growth of the church in Edessa,
which did not have that Tannaitic presence.
History of the Jews, 1.180:
“Christianity built its base at Edessa, and Tannaitic
Judaism at Nisibis, and both were represented by (sic) the
outset at least by men actively engaged in spreading their
respective doctrines. Thus what Edessa was to
Christianity, Nisibis was to Tannaitic Judaism”, cf. 1,
183 for further argumentation in support of this point.
If this
suggestion is correct, it may provide a useful handle for the
modern student of Ephrem to grasp when considering both
Ephrem’s method of approach to understanding Scripture
and his rhetorical customs when interacting with Judaism. It
may also shed some light on the social and ethnic profile of
the church in Nisibis. It would be wrong to think that the
Christians were limited to people of Jewish extraction, but
suggesting that a relatively large portion of the Christians
(relative, that is, to the size of the whole group) had Jewish
forbears seems quite reasonable. Consider the following passage
in which Neusner reflects on the competing penetrations of the
rival religious groups (Tannaitic Judaism and Christianity)
into the Jewish population in Mesopotamia.
Neusner, History of the Jews, 3,
358.
How shall we understand these facts? They indicate the
penetration of an undifferentiated Jewish population by
rival, organized parties at pretty much the same time. To say
that one or another group ‘failed to make
headway’ is probably misleading. What must have
happened is that where Pharisaism established itself, it shut
out Christianity, just as Christianity excluded Pharisaism if
it preceded the arrival of a rabbinical school. The two
parties, Pharisaism and Christianity, shaped the pre-existing
“Judaism” to suit their respective purposes.
[27] The
rivalry between the two religions in Mesopotamia, and to the
east, was not only intellectual. Neusner points out that the
Jews were, sometimes, the motive force for the persecution of
Christians in Persia after 344.
Neusner, History of the Jews, 4,
25. His later article, “Babylonian Jewry”, offers a
clarifying note to this point in its conclusion that there is
only one instance in the surviving literature of an actual
claim of Jews being involved in the persecution of Christians
in Persia under Shapur II. Neusner concludes that the different
fates of the two religious communities in Persia stemmed from
the government’s justified suspicion of the political
loyalty of the Christians. While the Jews seem to have regarded
the sufferings of the Christians with complacency, this is a
very different thing from their being agents of persecution,
Neusner rightly concludes.
Bar Hebraeus seems to have
thought that the actions of the Emperor Julian echoed the
violence of this rivalry in some places,
Chronography, I.61.
which shows, to
my mind, a sense of this sad state of affairs being
long-standing.
[28]
Manichaeism was also a religious force in this part of the
world during Ephrem’s lifetime. Mani himself may well
have been a follower of Shapur’s army on its invasion
into the Roman territory,
Dodgeon and Lieu, The Roman Eastern
Frontier and the Persian Wars, 65, which contains
Alexander Lycopolitanus, Contra Manichaei Opiniones
Disputatio, 2.
and it seems clear that, by the
time of his death in 276, his followers and their religion had
already entered into Roman territory. This spread seems to have
followed the routes of trade, as religions usually did.
Samuel N.C. Lieu, Manichaeism in
Mesopotamia, esp. 38-53, addresses the diffusion into
Mesopotamia and Syria. The Cambridge History of Iran 3
(1), 497 says “The land of the two rivers lay open to all
sides, and has always been a melting-pot of races and cultures.
Through it eastern writings, too, streamed into the
west.” It seems reasonable, then, to assume some presence
of cultural and religious influences from the east in Nisibis,
even though we catch only brief glimpses of them in the records
we have.
It is clear that Ephrem was very
interested in Manichaeism. He wrote against it in his Prose
Refutations of Mani, Marcion and bar Daisan and showed
some degree of knowledge about its content of teaching and
religious practice.
It has been usual for scholars to assume
that the Prose Refutations stem from Ephrem’s
final decade in Edessa. Drijvers, Bardaisan, 127 says,
“All his life, as monk, ascetic, and prolific author,
Ephrem Syrus (306-373) made a stand for the cause of orthodoxy,
for which he tried to gain acceptance in Syria. A native of
Nisibis, he left this town in 363, when it became part of the
Sassanide kingdom. After some wanderings, Ephrem then went to
Edessa, where he founded the famous “School of the
Persians” of which he was the first head. Now he was
really confronted with heresies, which proliferated
particularly in Edessa, and he fought against them with all his
might.” Ross, Roman Edessa, 123, says,
“Arriving in Edessa after Rome’s surrender of his
native Nisibis to the Persians in 363 CE, Ephrem found his new
home to be a hotbed of what he considered to be execrable
heresies. Christians of the strain approved by Ephrem,
worshipping in a church established 50 years earlier by the
orthodox Bishop Quna, were lost among a throng of followers of
other teachers of a more or less ‘heretical’
bent.” Neither of these two excerpts supplies citations
from Ephrem’s writings or elsewhere that would lead one
to the conviction that Edessa was more full of ideas Ephrem
didn’t share than Nisibis, yet the point is assumed to be
true. (I will not multiply passages from other scholars, but it
would not be a difficult task.)
If this idea of Ephrem being sparked to write the Prose
Refutations by the perilous state of Christianity in
Edessa is correct, then we cannot assume that this level of
contact was also present in Nisibis. If this assumption is
another effect of the common default assumption of intellectual
activity being a characteristic of the Church in Edessa, then
we might think it wise to reconsider whether we are in a
position to assign a provenance to the Prose
Refutations at all. My conviction is that the state of our
knowledge does not permit us to decide between these two
possibilities.
Jason David BeDuhn
The Manichaean Body, note 37, p.
282.
refers to the
following sentence of Ephrem from the edition of Mitchell,
I.cxix. His understanding of its meaning emphasizes
Ephrem’s knowledge of his theological opponents.
“For their works are like our works as their fast is
like our fast, but their faith is not like our faith.”
Of course, Ephrem cannot allow this observation to stand
alone, but draws appropriate polemical conclusions:
“And, therefore, rather than being known by the fruit
of their works they are distinguished by the fruit of their
words. For their work is able to lead astray and (yet)
appear as fine, for its bitterness is invisible; but their
words cannot lead astray, for their blasphemies are
evident”.
This ability to distinguish between the varying divergence
between Manichaeism and Christianity in the areas of practice
and doctrine is surely evidence of enough acquaintance with the
Church’s competitor to allow Ephrem to engage it on more
than one level. It makes sense to think that Ephrem had
had some contact with Manichaeans himself, whether they were
travelers through Nisibis or permanent residents of the
city. His knowledge of their actions has the air of being
first-hand, to my ear. John C. Reeves’ compilation of
citations of Manichaean writings he has drawn from
Ephrem’s Prose Refutations
“Manichaean Citations”,
passim.
supports this
conclusion in detail. Ephrem seems either to have had access to
Manichaean writings himself or to have had prolonged close
contact with well-instructed Manichaeans and have heard their
teaching and argumentation. The relevance of this to his life
in Nisibis is still in question, however.
[29] A
cemetery has been discovered on the Dalmatian coast that
contains gravestones of both Manichaeans and Christians who are
described as having come from Nisibis.
Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman
Empire, 86.
I suggest that a
willingness to share a burial ground with another religious
group should be taken as evidence of close familiarity, though
not necessarily approval. That close familiarity makes the kind
of contact Ephrem seems to have had with Manichaeism seem
plausible. Our evidence does not allow us to be more specific
than that, as yet.
[30]
There must have been other religious groups present in the city
of Nisibis, also. For example, because the city was an official
center of trade between the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire
and was one of the designated pass-through points for travelers
moving from one territory to the other, there must have been
Zoroastrians in Nisibis on a regular basis. I have been able to
find no reference to any Zoroastrian organization or cultic
center in the city, but their presence must have been a usual
thing.
Evidence of Zoroastrian presence within
Roman bounds is difficult to come by. It seems certain that
Zoroastrians visited Roman lands and lived there, sometimes, we
may assume, for long periods of time, for purposes of trade.
However, concrete evidence of this is not well known. (I have
been given a citation in a Persian source for the text of the
treaty entered into with Rome by Yazdegerd I in 409, which
offered toleration for Christians in Persia and for
Zoroastrians in Roman territory, but my present circumstances
have not allowed me an opportunity to see that reference yet.)
Cumont
Oriental Religions, 144.
speaks of temples at “Zela
in Pontus and Hierocaesarea in Lydia” but offers no
details. De Jong
Traditions, 283-284.
mentions sanctuaries of Anahita in Lydia.
Boyce and Grenet
A History of Zoroastrianism, 354.
speak of evidence of worship of Ahura
Mazda in northern Syria and Antioch in the Third Century. James
R. Russell
Zoroastrianism in Armenia, esp.
Chapter 16 “Children of the Sun”, 515-539.
gives evidence for the survival of
Zoroastrianism in Armenia into the 20th century,
which shows how completely its roots could take hold in an area
outside the Persian heartland. All this agreement lends weight
to our logical conclusions, but the continuing lack of
specific, concrete evidence of cultic activity in Nisibis
prevents us from forming any idea of the number of people who
would have been involved in Nisibis or any idea of their
community’s profile through time.
[31] We
do know that the Persian government protested difficulties
suffered by Zoroastrians in Roman territory in the
mid-5th century. Surviving fragments of the writer
Priscus contain mention of this.
Lee, Pagans and Christians,
172-173, offers the passage in English.
An embassy from the Persian king also arrived with complaints
about those of their own people fleeing from them [to the
Romans] and about the Magians living in Roman territory from
ancient times—that the Romans, wanting to divert the
Magians from their ancestral practices and laws, were
harassing them over their sacred rites and not allowing them
to keep the so-called unquenchable fire alight at all times
in accordance with their law. ... The Romans responded that
they would send someone to discuss everything with the
Parthian [sic] king, for there were no fugitives
among them and they were not harassing the Magians over their
religious observances. ... Constantius, who was prefect for
the third time, and was of consular rank and a patrician, was
sent as envoy to the Persians.
“Not allowing them to keep the so-called unquenchable
fire alight at all times” sounds like interference in the
normal worship of fire temples, which means, if we assume that
the complaint referred to specific incidents rather than taking
a stereotypical form, that fire temples must have been present
in Roman territory. Unfortunately, we are given no locations
for these temples.
[32] The
cult of Mithra, which clearly shows connections of some sort
with Persia, was wide-spread in the Roman Empire, reaching all
the way to Hadrian’s Wall. Unfortunately, experts do not
agree on how much, if any, real Zoroastrian influence is found
in that tradition. Discovery of its presence in Nisibis would
not advance our knowledge appreciably. Mithraism has not been
found in Persia, itself, which indicates some kind of
separation of the cult from its putative homeland.
Frye, Heritage, 249. The long and
detailed attempt to characterize and assess the true character
of the religion of the Orontids (an Iranian dynasty ruling
Commagene during the second and first centuries BC) found in
Boyce and Grenet, A History, Chapter 10, shows the
difficulty of making value judgements based on scattered and
fragmentary physical remains, unsupported by any local written
materials, epigraphic or literary. This supports my reluctance
to move beyond the obvious implications of the evidence we
have.
[33] The
growing identification of Christianity with the Roman State,
the extent and importance of which modern western scholars like
to debate, seems to have been accepted as present and to have
been perceived as threatening by the rulers of Persia, to the
east.
This is one of Neusner’s central
conclusions in “Babylonian Jewry”, passim.
This threat seems to have been met,
particularly under Shapur II (309-379), despite the fact that
the Zoroastrianism of the Sassanians seems to have been heavily
influenced by Zurvanism, a “Zoroastrian heresy which,
after the Islamic conquest, vanished in favour of
orthodoxy”,
Frye, Heritage, 252. For a full
treatment of this strand in Zoroastrianism, see Zaehner,
Zurvan.
with a corresponding identification of
the Zoroastrian faith with the Persian state. The resulting
clash led to a situation inside Persia in which: “The
heads of the Christian martyrs were offered to
Anahita,”
Neusner, History of the Jews, IV,
18 and also in The Cambridge History of Iran, 3.886.
Anahita being a goddess associated by
Zoroastrians with water, an important sacred element. What
effect on the relations between Christians in the Roman border
lands and the Zoroastrians among them and to the east of them
did this conflict have? We cannot say, as yet.
[34]
Experts in Zoroastrianism cannot agree on when, or how, the
religion achieved standardization in its scriptural inheritance
or its body of doctrine.
Neusner, History of the Jews, IV.9.
Frye, Heritage, 252, mentions that this
standardization may have been spurred by the superior
organization of the Church. Zaehner, Zurvan, Chapter 1
“The Zoroastrian Sects”, describes this difficulty
in some detail. It seems unlikely, from his presentation of the
sources and nature of the uncertainties, that any particular,
clear outline of the history of the development of
Zoroastrianism as a formally organized tradition will be
accepted soon by a majority of specialists.
Neusner opines that the
persecution of the Christians by Shapur II was
“political, not narrowly religious”, but the border
between those two spheres is not always clear and was usually
less clear in Late Antiquity than we, in the modern West, think
it should be. It seems safe to say that Christians living in
Roman territory on the boundaries of the Persian Empire would
have felt threatened by Persian power, as such, and were
unlikely to perceive, or be comforted by, any distinction
between the political and religious elements in that hostile
power.
Ross, Roman Edessa, 22, mentions
this sense of a religious threat to the East and seems to
imagine it beginning to arise with the rise to power of the
Sassanids in 226.
[35] We
can be certain that the large religious groups known to us by
name would not have been the only ones present in Nisibis
during Ephrem’s lifetime. Ephrem’s Hymns
against Julian, 2.22, which mentions the fact that the
Persian conqueror
This must refer to the occupation of Nisibis
after 363, it seems, since no other Persian conquest of Nisibis
occurred during Ephrem’s lifetime.
left the church alone but tore down pagan
temples in Nisibis, seems to refer to different types of groups
that are hard for us to identify. McVey translates the passage
as follows:
McVey, Hymns, 240.
The Magus who entered our place regarded it as holy, to our
disgrace.
He neglected his fire temple but honored the
sanctuary.
This might be taken as describing the
presence of a Fire Temple in Nisibis or might be a contrast of
Shapur’s general support of the Persian religion with his
mercy toward the Church. In the absence of other, clearer
references, we cannot be certain.
He cast down the [pagan] altars built by our laxity;
He destroyed the enclosures to our shame.
The term of particular interest to us is the one she renders
as “enclosures”. Her note on the word says:
“Beck suggests that heretical cult rooms are meant,
citing CH (Hymns against Heresies) 1.18.1, where the
reference is to the Bardaisanites. That is, the cult
places are destroyed by Shapur to the shame of Christians, who
should themselves have destroyed them.” This word,
hbwšt’, seems to have an overtone of
people being shut up together. It later comes to be used
for things like monastic cells. It puts me in mind here,
though, of the “conventicles” of Dissenters during
the aftermath of the English Reformation. That is, it
seems to be a word that is used of groups that seem, to the
speaker, to be a bit shady, but it doesn’t carry any
particular identifying content of its own. Gnostic groups
would be an easy fit with it, but so would any groups that
Ephrem might not approve of. It seems impossible to tell
if he has in mind Christian groups he doesn’t like or
other sorts of questionable characters. We should refuse
to come to a conclusion when our evidence does not lead us to
do so. Thus, this passage can serve as evidence of a number of
religious groups meeting in Nisibis of whom Ephrem did not
approve, but I do not think we know enough to be certain that
they described themselves as Christian and, if they did, what
form of Christianity they practiced. We could have guessed at
their presence, but we still cannot guess at their
identity.
[36] It
makes sense to assume that business and war brought all sorts
of people to Nisibis. It makes sense to assume that Ephrem grew
up and lived almost his whole life in a city in which all sorts
of religious practices and religious groups were present, at
least as they passed through from east to west, north to south,
or vice versa. Exactly which groups were present, however, we
cannot discover from the materials we have at hand. While this
may help us understand his great interest in arguing with, and
against, religious thought of all kinds, the details of our
knowledge do not allow us to sort the works of Ephrem that
survive into Nisibene and Edessene groups based on the rival
religious groups and figures that are mentioned, because, even
when we know a group was present in Edessa, we are not able to
say that it was not also present in Nisibis.
Cultural Elements
[37] It
is certainly clear that a variety of cultural influences was at
work throughout the life of the city of Nisibis. However, how
to describe these in any detail, and even the period in which
each was most particularly active, is impossible for us to map.
As Millar says,
Roman Near East, 225.
A social and economic history of the Near East in the Roman
period cannot be written. None of the conditions for such a
history are present.
It does seem clear, however, that Nisibis was less fully
Hellenized than Edessa. There seems to be, as one would
expect, a lessening of Greek and Roman cultural weight as the
eye moves to the East.
Brock, “Greek and Syriac”, 152,
mentions the Euphrates as a useful dividing line between the
western tendency to leave inscriptions in Greek and the Eastern
tendency to leave them in Syriac. This makes Vologeses’
inscription in the baptistery an unusual one in its location,
we should note.
But this is a conclusion
based almost wholly on general trends and logical
reasoning.
Millar, “Paul of Samosata”, 1-8,
argues very strongly for the strength of the Aramaic cultural
milieu in this period, though as a culture very different from
the highly literate Hellenistic pattern. He says (7-8)
“But all the indications are that it remained a rustic
vernacular with no claim to rival Greek as a language of
culture.”
Our very scanty knowledge of particulars
in Nisibis is at its most vexing in this regard. There are some
facts, however, which need to be mentioned regarding
Hellenistic influences there.
[38]
First, it is possible that the Stoic philosopher Apollophanes
came from Nisibis.
Neusner, History of the Jews 1, 9.
Five citations of his work survive in Arnim, Stoicorum
Fragmenta, 90, 404-408 in Arnim’s numbering. It is
interesting that one of them is in Latin, from
Tertullian’s De Anima, 14. Clearly, some note
was taken of this Hellenic son of the East.
We also know that Greek was used far to
the east of Nisibis, for example at the Sassanid court, even by
Shapur II.
Elton, Frontiers, 6.
We should remember that the earliest Christian
inscription in Nisibis, that found in the baptistery built by
Bishop Vologeses, was written in Greek. The study of
architecture also reveals to us the importance of the Greek
influence in the region of Nisibis, even long after
Ephrem’s life was over and the region had fallen under
Persian rule, never to be Roman again.
Mango, “Continuity”,
passim.
It is an
important point to note that there is evidence for Hellenistic
influence to be found in rural areas as well as inside the city
walls.
Possekel, Evidence of Greek
Philosophical Concepts, 26, ff.
This, of course, argues for a much fuller
degree of cultural penetration than the presence of evidence
only in urban sites would demand.
[39] I
must digress here to consider and respond to an article of
Fergus Millar that has just been pointed out to me.
Millar, “Ethnic Identity”.
The
issues it treats are relevant to many of the sections of this
paper, but I have chosen to address them here because Millar
uses the language of the baptistery inscription at Nisibis as
his focal point in addressing Nisibis and because his paper is,
itself, directed at the intersection between ethnic identity,
culture and religion, which seems to fit in best at this point
in our progress.
[40]
Millar depicts the Church in the Roman Near East as being a
primarily Greek speaking entity during the life of
Ephrem.
e.g. 165, 166, 167, 168, 176.
He makes note of the fact that epigraphic
evidence of Christian inscriptions in Syriac has them appearing
first in Mesopotamia and only later coming into the lands west
of the Euphrates.
e.g. 162, 163, 176.
This seems to lead him to think that the
appearance of the Syriac language in inscriptions was a process
of something new moving into a previously all Greek context, at
least as far as public Christian usage was concerned. This is a
very different basic picture than the one that has undergirded
this study and I would like to take issue with it.
[41]
Millar, as I read him, takes the Greek language inscription in
the baptistery at Nisibis and Egeria’s report of the dual
language liturgy at Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) as two of his
central founding facts.
These are introduced at 166 in his paper.
Millar says:
The liturgy, in Aelia at least (we have no evidence for
elsewhere), allowed for repetition in ‘the Syrian
language’ of the bishop’s words uttered in Greek.
That introduces one point I would like to address.
[42] The
second point may be found earlier on the same page when he
speaks of Nisibis directly:
Nisibis, by contrast, was a significant city, and was also
the birthplace, and the original place of residence, of
Ephraim, the greatest of Christian writers in Syriac. But,
none the less, the earliest Christian inscription from there,
recording the construction of the baptistery (which is still
standing) by bishop Vologeses in 359/360, is again in Greek.
Only a decade later, Nisibis was to be lost to the Persians.
But the churches of the central and western part of
Mesopotamia, and of Osrhoene, areas which remained Roman,
continued to use Greek as their official language.
[43] This
concluding thought seems to reappear on the next page when
Millar says:
If the surviving pagan cults of the Near East did not find
any written expression in languages other than Greek, and if
‘the Syrian language’ can be seen as only slowly
acquiring a public role within the Greek-speaking Church,
that does not mean that major issues were not associated with
the interplay of ethnicity, language, and religion.
[44] His
second point lies, I think, in the overlap between what he
means by “official language” in the first quotation
and “public role” in the second. I would like to
take the question of the evidence for liturgical language use
first.
[45] In
the strict sense, in the mold of Egeria’s eye-witness
description of the liturgical practice at Aelia Capitolina, I
agree that we have no witness (to my knowledge) of the
liturgies of the Late Antique Roman East during Ephrem’s
lifetime. One of the things that bedevils students of Ephrem is
that we have no concrete place to put our feet when we try to
imagine how he worshipped and how his work was used until the
homily of Jacob of Serug celebrating him in the late Fifth or
early Sixth Century.
A Metrical Homily, (ed.) Amar.
Still, it is the universal opinion of
students of Syriac (as far as I know) that the great majority
of Ephrem’s surviving works were produced and intended
for liturgical use. I have never heard a hint of the idea that
the liturgy in which they were included might have been
primarily conducted in Greek. Generally, since the time of
Jacob, Ephrem has been spoken of as someone who was addressing
the average worshipper in the congregation, with the assumption
that he, and they, were all part of one Syriac-speaking
Christian body. The language of Ephrem’s work itself, and
the large size of the corpus that survives, are
commonly taken as concrete evidence of the language of his
original milieu and of his work being incorporated into that
tradition almost immediately, thus surviving for us to read. I
see no reason to doubt that general picture. Millar does not
argue against this view, but his paper seems to assume
something very different. I do not think that the evidence from
Aelia Capitolina (a special case, in Christian terms, if ever
there was one) can properly be applied to Nisibis as an aid to
interpretation. I have argued elsewhere in this paper
Paragraphs 17-18.
for
the individuality and particularity of ancient city life and
think that the principle holds good in this case. Let me move
to the next point, for now.
[46] The
question of a language being the “official” one of
an early Christian community and its having “a public
role” in the community life is one I would like to
address. I admit that these are deep waters and, as Egeria
reminds us of Aelia Capitolina, more than one language could be
used at the same time in the same community for the same
liturgical purpose. Still, I do not think that, in Christian
terms, it makes sense to imagine any language being the
“official” one of a community, in Late Antiquity,
except the language used in worship. I expect that there were
then, as there are now, many places in the Church where more
than one language was in liturgical use in the same locale. It
cannot be ruled out as a possibility that a Greek language
liturgy was held in Nisibis during the life of Ephrem. (It
would be extremely interesting to know if this were so. It
would have a great impact on how we imagine his works to have
begun being translated into Greek, for instance.) However, I do
not think that the appearance of the baptistery inscription is
sufficient warrant for us to conclude that Greek was the
“official” language of the city’s Christian
community. That Greek had “a public role” (as well
as Syriac) in Nisibene Christianity I take as established fact:
the one because of the inscription and the other because of
Ephrem’s own works, but that Greek in any way
predominated in community use in Nisibis during Ephrem’s
life seems extremely unlikely to me. How could this have been
so and have left us with no hint of its presence in all of
Ephrem’s writings? More evidence is surely required
before we over-turn the settled picture of language use in
Nisibis.
[47]
Despite the fact that I have already tried to make this point
above,
Paragraph 20.
M. C. A. Macdonald’s article
This piece has just come before my eyes by
following Millar’s paper under discussion in the 1998
volume of Mediterranean Archaeology.
on
what language use, as evidenced in epigraphy, can actually tell
us about the ethnic identity of ancient people is so apt for
this point that I cannot proceed without discussing it.
Macdonald, “Epigraphy and
Ethnicity”.
[48]
Macdonald describes throughout his paper the uncertainties
inherent in making use of the language or script used in
inscriptions to try to sort the writers (or patrons paying for
the carving) into groups by background and culture. He makes
some very useful distinctions among different sorts of
inscriptions as a part of this reflection and has this to say
about inscriptions created for public display, among which we
must group the baptistery inscription of Vologeses in
Nisibis.
Macdonald, “Epigraphy and
Ethnicity”, 180-181.
Formal, monumental inscriptions, carved by a professional
mason, usually tell us little about the language(s)
habitually used by the titular ‘author’ of the
text. They are for public consumption and many different
factors will have governed the choice of the language or
languages in which they are couched. Among these, prestige
must always have been an important consideration. How many
village churches in the depths of the English countryside
contain monuments to dead squires in Latin, a language which
none of the congregation could read and which the squire
himself had probably long since forgotten? Similarly, it is
dangerous to assume from the wealth of Greek formal
inscriptions throughout Syria that the population in general
spoke (let alone, read) Greek, rather than (or, even, as well
as) Aramaic or another Semitic language. ... it is essential
to look at each inscription within its context and part of
that context is the interplay of written and spoken
languages, and of degrees, and different types of
literacy.”
[49] This
brief passage expresses my own thoughts about the Nisibene
inscription very exactly. Since we know (or think we do) that
the Christian community in Nisibis worshipped in Syriac during
Ephrem’s lifetime, and since we are confronted with this
public, ornamental inscription in the baptistery in Greek, does
it not seem more reasonable to conclude that there is some
other explanation for the language of the inscription than that
the Nisibene Christian community actually functioned in Greek?
Let us look at one possibility that arises immediately for
consideration.
[50]
Sidney Griffith has written eloquently about Ephrem’s
deep attachment to the greater Christian Church that lay mostly
to the west of Nisibis.
Griffith, “Ephraem, the deacon of
Edessa”.
Might it not be possible that
that feeling of attachment was not unique to Ephrem in his time
and place but that many in the community also thought of
themselves as being deeply attached, as Christians, to the
Christian Roman Empire? With the Persian Empire on their
door-step more and more hostile to Christianity, this does not
seem an unreasonable thing to suggest. If so, might not the
choice of language for the baptistery inscription be a further
manifestation of that desire of the community to cling to their
western brethren rather than a sign of their liturgical or
“official” language? This cannot be certainly
known, but it seems more likely to me than the conclusion that
Ephrem spent six decades in a Greek language Christian
community while writing a whole library of Syriac Christian
liturgical pieces. 400 hymns and 30 verse homilies
This was my rough count in “Ephraem,
the Syrian Theologian”, 80.
seems
like a lot to have produced if only the last decade of his life
was spent in a Syriac language community. Who would have been
the intended audience for the Nisibene Hymns, in that
picture? I think we are better off thinking a more Syrian
picture of the Christian community in Nisibis was the most
likely.
[51] In
the end, the concrete evidence Millar discusses makes clear
that we have very little evidence at all to apply to this
question of cultural and linguistic distribution in the Late
Antique Near East. I think that we should, in that case, resist
the temptation to generalize from what we have and make note of
our particular facts. I would want to resist overturning what
our extensive literary remains seem to indicate on the strength
of a single inscription, as concrete as that may be. It is
important not to allow one’s imagination to be so
inhibited by the lack of physical evidence (as yet discovered)
that one finds oneself led to a conclusion that instinct would
otherwise avoid.
[52]
There are, of course, many facts that point to the activity of
the Semitic, Aramaic, influence on Nisibis and its region. The
first, and most obvious, of these must be the dropping out of
use of the Greek name for the city, ‘Antioch in
Mygdonia’, and the large number of variants in spelling
and pronunciation of the native name of the city, Nisibis. Both
of these serve to show the strength of the native tradition
about the city’s identity. The breadth of usage of the
traditional name is shown in the variant spellings and the
weakness of the official attempt to change its name to one that
would serve the government’s greater glory makes the
number of locals firmly attached to the government seem
small.
Dussaud, Topographie, 523.
[53] The
exact nature of the culture passed down by those living in
Mesopotamia in an Aramaic-speaking milieu is very difficult for
us to gauge. Almost all the information we have about this
Aramaic cultural stream comes to us through a Jewish filter.
While we know that there were many non-Jewish Aramaic speakers,
we have very little writing that they produced surviving for us
to read.
Millar, “Empire, Community and
Culture”, 159-160 describes what there is. Harrak,
“Trade Routes”, argues very strongly for the
strength of the Semitic culture in the Near East throughout the
pre-Islamic period. This point about the weight of the Semitic
culture in this period is hotly contested.
[54] Our
acceptance of the vibrancy of the Aramaic culture is made
stronger by the fact that no record of Greek games, whether
athletic or literary, survives from east of the Euphrates
River.
Millar, Roman Near East, 234.
Anyone who is familiar with the importance the
Greeks attached to these games, especially, perhaps, those on
the margins of Greek culture trying to identify themselves with
it,
This must be one of the reasons that the
Hellenized king of Macedonia, Alexander, kept a copy of the
most Greek object imaginable, The Iliad, with him in
his tent at all times. He was staking a claim to a Greek
identity that many residents of Greece, proper, would never
have granted was his by right.
will realize that an area that produced no
games was, in a very real sense, producing no Greeks. Palmyra,
for example, seems to have had no gymnasium, baths or
amphitheater.
Stoneman, Palmyra, 67.
It is interesting to note, by the way, that
Dio Cassius, when describing the inhabitants of Nisibis about
the time that Lucullus captured the city in 68 BC, calls them
barbaroi, the surest and clearest way of indicating
that he did not consider them to be Greeks.
Dio Cassius 36.6.2, mentioned by Millar,
Roman Near East, 443-4.
[55] It
is important for us to remember that most of our evidence from
the Near East comes from the areas that were under the greatest
Hellenistic influence. The highly literate nature of the
culture the Greeks produced and inspired sparked the production
of a great mass of written evidence, literary and epigraphic,
that may well exaggerate the size of their influence. The study
of Late Antique Hellenism is a field that enjoys a large body
of raw material, but the almost complete absence of Aramaic
language literary remains, Jewish religious writings aside,
means that Late Antique Aramaic culture is a closed book to
us. There is no way for us to know what reality this lack
of evidence indicates. We must match the silence of the
past with silence of our own. Thus, Millar is moved to
say,
Roman Near East, 493.
Above all, the notion that there was a ‘Syrian’
culture, embracing equally the zone of Syriac literature and
Roman Syria, goes beyond our evidence.
Of course, this predicament tells us nothing about the
existence, or lack of one, of a Syrian culture. It tells us
only the nature of the evidence that survives for us to
examine.
[56] It
may well be that we moderns give too much weight to matters of
language when we consider cultural identity. Especially for us
North Americans, who tend to think of different languages as
impermeable walls that separate one group of people from
another, languages seem to isolate groups of people from each
other.
Brock, “Greek and Syriac”, 153,
says “It was undoubtedly the case that large numbers of
people in Syria in Late Antiquity were bilingual in Greek and
Aramaic; what is more difficult to establish is whether some of
the more educated among these could also be described as
bi-cultural, that is to say, people who felt at home in both
Greek and Syriac literary cultures.” This suggestion,
which brings to the fore the possibility that we need not seek
to draw boundaries between the Hellenistic and Semitic cultural
worlds, is useful. It encourages us to realize the
individuality and malleability of human lives. Especially for
those living in true border areas, those marking cultural as
well as political divisions, such as Nisibis, life offered a
wide array of possible influences and choices among which
groups, families and individuals moved as seemed best and most
advantageous to them.
[57] Han
Drijvers,
Han J. W. Drijvers, “East of
Antioch”, 3.
in speaking with reference to Edessa, warns
his readers not to refine too much on the barriers set up by
language differences in the Near East of Late Antiquity:
The border area fostered a continuous exchange of goods and
ideas, and stood open to influences from all directions. That
means that the question of language is not decisive: almost
all writings that originated in that area and date back to
the first three centuries A.D. are handed down in the Syriac
and a Greek version, and it is often very difficult to
establish which was the original. I would like to add: it is
not that important either! Whoever was literate in that
particular time and area usually knew both languages, and it
may even be supposed that most texts were written down in two
versions from the very outset. That does not mean that
writings and ideas stemming from the east Syrian region
belong without any differentiation to the mainstream of Greek
Christian literature as we know it from more western areas,
but their special features are not exclusively due to the
fact that they were written by chance in Syriac and often
also transmitted in Greek. Rather, the whole cultural and
religious situation determined their particular content and
tendencies, which react on and reflect that situation.
While we may be suspicious that a scholar who was himself so
adept at learning languages might have tended to minimize the
difficulties attendant on all linguistic variety, his point is
worth consideration. We may be led to over-emphasize the
barrier raised by languages because of our own experience of
strangeness in studying ancient Semitic tongues.
[58] It
is also worth noting, in this regard, a warning that Millar
puts forward when he is considering the evidence that comes
down to us about the Late Antique Near East. Millar makes the
point that much of this evidence is connected to military
activity. The concerns of the ancient military authors (and, of
course, those from whom they gathered their information would
have known this) center very largely on the relationship
various areas and cities had with the continuation of Roman
rule. This is natural, considering the role of the Roman army
in holding on to the fringes of the empire. One of the
byproducts of this fact is that every city and area, and those
inhabitants of it who might have come in contact with the Roman
authors, would have had good reason for emphasizing, even
over-emphasizing, the attachment they felt toward Rome and the
cultural connections they enjoyed with the lands farther to the
West.
Millar, Roman Near East, 442.
This means, of course, that we must be very
careful when we make use of ancient evidence to discover
cultural affinities between the Mediterranean and these areas.
Ancient writers, and witnesses, were not striving for the
dispassionate stance of a modern, scholarly ethnographer.
[59] We
know, of course, that there were other strains of cultural
influence at work in the area. The presence of Manichaeism in
the Roman Empire and in the region of Nisibis is, itself, a
sign of exposure to currents stemming from the interior of the
Parthian/Persian empire.
Millar, Roman Near East, 503.
We might remember, also, that the
bishop in Nisibis who built the baptistery that survives to
this day, at least partially, was named Vologeses, which
clearly points to personal ties leading farther to the
East.
[60] I
think that Millar’s point about the significance of the
creation of a Syriac Christian literature as the Church grew
among Aramaic speakers is a useful one. There certainly must
have been cultural life in the community already, waiting to be
harnessed for Christian use, but we cannot see through this
culture’s Christian production to the pre-existing
cultural base behind it.
Millar, Roman Near East, 510.
Still, it is very unlikely that
this Syriac Christian literature was a wholly new creation,
spurred into being by the arrival of the Gospel. Logic and
cultural probability both urge us to imagine an active Aramaic
language culture in the pre-Christian period, beyond the bounds
of the more easily traced Jewish community as well as within
it.
[61] What
effect on the life of the city would its proximity to the
imperial border have had? Elton holds that the presence of
borders tends to increase traffic towards and across them,
rather than decreasing it.
Frontiers, 77. Bardy, La
question des langues, 26, thinks that the border conflicts
between Rome and Persia/Parthia threw the Syriac-speaking
Christians of the area back toward their Greek brethren to the
West. He does not expand on this point, but it seems to come
from an idea of the border as a hostile barrier. He supports it
by noting the presence of so many translations of Greek works
among the extant body of Syriac literature. This last point,
based on the nature of Syriac literature, is a fascinating one,
much debated by modern scholars. I would approach the question
by wondering whether it might not be wiser to think that the
large numbers of translated works were the result of
theological, rather than cultural, affinities with those to the
West, but I must pass over it for now. As far as the former
point is concerned, I side with Elton’s picture. A
support to that decision is offered by the description and
details of cross-border movements presented by Lieu in
“Captives, Refugees and Exiles”, passim.
Hodgson, “The East as Part”, also argues in support
of borders as movement control areas rather than fortified
lines of the World War I type, meant to seal off the enemy.
The economic life and settlement
that was sparked across the top of England by the building of
Hadrian’s Wall is a good example of this effect at work.
The effect would, logically, be increased in the area of a
pass-through point, such as Nisibis. This should give us pause
in the same way that Drijvers’ point about languages
should give us pause. Linguistic variety and political
boundaries may not have separated Mesopotamia from the east as
much as we would have expected to be the case. Stoneman
Palmyra, 81 ff.
makes
the point that Rome’s border defences were insufficient
to provide a real bulwark against attack and notes, to my
surprise, that no Persian or Parthian border fortifications
have been discovered by archaeologists, thus far. This must
argue strongly against their being necessary for warfare, since
both those states repeatedly engaged Rome in war. Stoneman
suggests the possibility that they were intended to manage the
flow of traffic across the border, which seems reasonable. I
also wonder if Rome, usually governed by men from other parts
of its extensive territory, might not have built border forts
in Mesopotamia because it commonly did so on the other edges of
its territory, rather than for any particular, locally
appropriate, purpose. Large governmental organizations often
choose consistency over practicality through bureaucratic
inertia. It may be a mistake, again, to think of borders as
walls rather than, perhaps, as funnels. Procopius, speaking
about a border area near Armenia, has this to say:
This is quoted at Elton, Frontiers,
97.
... the two frontiers were mixed up. The subjects of both the
Romans and the Persians had no fear of the other and were not
suspicious of attack, but they intermarried and held joint
markets and farmed together.
Possekel reminds us
Evidence of Greek Philosophical
Concepts, 30.
that the earliest surviving
Syriac manuscript already contains translations from Greek
works. She even makes the point that some of these works show
signs of having been corrected from earlier translations. This,
too, supports the idea that the various groups in the Late
Antique Near East did not live in isolation from one
another.
[62]
Another interesting point relevant to the cultural mix in the
area is found in Ammianus Marcellinus’ mention of a
palace in Nisibis set aside for royal visits.
Mango, “Continuity”, 121, n. 88.
This, in
itself, would surely increase the city’s influence on
life and trade across longer distances than usual for a place
its size. The crown was always a major patron and the presence
of a royal residence in a city on the border would have a great
impact on the economic, as well as the social, life of the city
and the regions around it. Along these lines, we know that
Nisibis had a mint in the Third Century.
Mango, “Continuity”, 125.
This would also
be a center of positive economic activity and a means of
connection with the larger world. Both of these facts are
further demonstration of the prominence of Nisibis’ place
in the thoughts of those exercising political power over the
area.
Political History
[63]
There is no point in rehearsing all the back-and-forth
struggling between Rome and her rivals to the east: Persia and
Parthia, for the control of Nisibis.
R. N. Frye, Cambridge History of
Iran, 3.139, sums up the military history of the age as
follows: “In the long series of wars between the
Sasanians on one side, and the Romans followed by the
Byzantines on the other, the frontier remained more or less
constant in upper Mesopotamia. It is true that sometimes
Nisibis, Singara, Dārā and other cities of upper
Mesopotamia changed hands, but the stability of the frontier
over centuries is remarkable. Although the possession of
frontier cities gave one empire a trade advantage over the
other, one has the impression that the blood spilled in the
warfare between the two states brought as little real gain to
one side or the other as the few metres of land gained at
terrible cost in the trench warfare of the First World
War.” Greatrex, “The Background and
Aftermath”, passim, provides a clear sense of
the complexity of the period’s military history while
considering only a focused topic during a brief period.
For our
purposes, we need only understand how Nisibis functioned in the
life of Mesopotamia and the political states that bordered on
it. This role would have been ingrained in Ephrem’s view
of the world as a part of his upbringing. So, we will try to
take a broad enough look at Nisibis’ role in the
political realm to help us understand this importance.
[64]
Nisibis is mentioned already in cuneiform texts
Pigulevskaja, Les villes, 50.
This is in relation to a campaign of Admirari II (911-890 BC).
In 896 Admirari besieged Nisibis with much excavation and
effort and managed to capture the city. Nisibis’ role in
that military episode foreshadowed much of its activity during
Ephrem’s life, almost 1300 years later.
and seems
to have kept its importance in all periods because of its
natural position. The fact that Nisibis was the location of the
treaty-signings between Rome and Persia shows its natural role
as the meeting point of these two powers. The fact that its
position allowed its possessor to project control of important
routes explains why Armenia and Rome warred for its control as
well as Persia and Rome.
Pigulevskaja, Les villes, 52-57.
It is interesting to know that
a new city, named Tigranocerta and built about 37 Roman miles
north-east of Nisibis, served as the southern capital of the
Armenian kingdom of Tigranes for a time. This attempt to
reproduce the natural advantages attached to Nisibis shows the
desirability of the location in the eyes of people from the
north as well as on the east and west.
M. Chahin, The Kingdom of
Armenia, 229.
The brief life
of that city is most likely due to its position not enjoying
the necessary physical attributes that the traditional site
provided. Nature limits the number of areas suitable for
settlement in Mesopotamia.
[65] When
Rome solidified her rule, Nisibis became the capital of the new
imperial province, Mesopotamia Provincia.
Pigulevskaja, Les villes, 77,
Lightfoot, “Facts and Fiction”, 107. cf. Ammianus
Marcellinus 19.9.6.
This shows us that Rome assumed a connection between possession
of Nisibis and exercising control over that area.
Lightfoot, “Facts and
Fiction”, 107, says: “Until its surrender in 363
Nisibis was not only the headquarters of the dux
Mesopotamiae but also often served as the forward
mustering-point for the mobile forces of the magister
militum per Orientem.
It is likely that there was a legion
present in Nisibis during this period, though we have no
concrete evidence of this.
Lightfoot, “Facts and
Fiction”, 108.
The presence of a Roman legion
would have stirred the political, cultural and religious pots
in the city all at once, though just how the effects would play
out would depend on the particular legion present and where it
had been raised.
[66]
There are natural military considerations common to all
combatants in every age. (Though how these make themselves felt
changes from age to age as technology changes warfare.) The
persistence of the interest of all powers in the region in
occupying and holding Nisibis is an important witness to its
practical usefulness. This also means that the city’s
inhabitants, in every age, would tend to see many people of all
sorts passing through their midst. They would also have a
natural interest in news of all sorts from every corner of the
compass, given their history of involvement in warfare. The
urge for self preservation is a strong spur to attention.
[67]
Political events before the life of Ephrem conspired to make
Nisibis in his day even more central in importance than it
might have been. Palmyra, a center of trade and travel that was
profiting enough from these to extend its reach to oversee
caravan travel over a wide area,
Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion, 11,
mentions silk fragments in tombs in Palmyra as the earliest
evidence of the silk trade with Rome. Palmyra’s control
of caravan routes and its maintenance of military outposts as
far east as the Euphrates are mentioned by Millar,
“Empire, Community and Culture”, 155-156. The
disappearance of such an important presence would naturally
create a vacuum that competitors would rush to fill. Cf. also
Stoneman, Palmyra, 52, on the importance of Palmyra
stemming from its location. The removal of that “pivot of
two great empires”, as Stoneman calls it, would naturally
create an opportunity for a city such as Nisibis to take a more
central role.
had been the victim of
its queen’s attempt to break free from Roman domination
in 272 and Nisibis and Edessa must have enjoyed comparative
increases in their own roles.
Bundy, “Vision for the City”,
189.
[68]
Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium, which the
Cambridge Ancient History describes as: “... a
description of the Roman world written in Latin under
Constantius by a person of very average intelligence and
education, though well traveled. Probably he was a
merchant.”, includes the following as section
XXII:
Expositio Totius Mundi, 156 (my
translation).
After these, there is our country, for it follows Mesopotamia
and Osrhoene. Mesopotamia indeed has many and various cities,
whose outstanding qualities I would like to relate. There are
Nisibis and Edessa, which, among all of them, have the best
men and are very acute in business and good at hunting. They
are particularly wealthy and adorned with all [material]
goods, for, purchasing from the Persians, they make trading
journeys and sell [goods] throughout the whole land of the
Romans, except for bronze and iron, because it is not
permitted to hand over bronze or iron to enemies. But these
cities always take their stands according to the wisdom of
the gods and the emperor. Having celebrated walls, they
always undo the might of the Persians in war. They are
fervent in business and travel through all provinces [of the
empire very] successfully. Hence, Edessa of Osrhoene is,
itself, a splendid city.
The central focus of this passage on trade, and the Roman
Empire’s attempts to regulate trade that it reports, show
that these border cities benefited, financially, as much from
their position as they may have been made vulnerable by it,
militarily. This dual impact of the proximity of the border
supports Elton’s suggestion of these areas being regions
of increased activity rather than deserted military
zones.
Elton, Frontiers, 88 ff.
[69] The
repeated assaults on Nisibis during this period cannot be
reconstructed by us in detail. Even the actions of Shapur
during the famous third siege and his use of the water of the
river against the city’s walls, to which Ephrem is
thought to refer in the first three of the Carmina
Nisibena, are, in Lightfoot’s opinion,
Lightfoot, “Facts and
Fiction”, 114 ff.
beyond our real understanding. (We should note, also,
Ephrem’s mention in Memre on Nicomedia 15.113 of
the presence of elephants with the besieging forces as an
enlightening detail that shows just how wide the experience of
these border cities could be.) The conclusion we should draw
from all this activity is clear, however: so great a value was
placed on possession of Nisibis by Shapur that he was willing
to waste armies and move rivers to acquire it.
[70] The
direct approach having failed for Shapur, Arsacius of Armenia
(an ally of Persia at that point) arrived in Mygdonia in 359
and treated the surroundings of Nisibis to such severe
depredations they were left with only 10 percent of their
previous population.
Fiey, Nisibe, 32.
(This seems a strategy along
the lines of the North's decision to burn the Shenandoah Valley
and devastate Georgia and the Carolinas as a means of subduing
the Confederate armies during the latter part of the American
Civil War.) Nisibis having proved too tough a nut to crack
directly, Persia thought that it could make life there
unlivable. Ancient cities depended on their immediate
neighborhoods for their sustenance, with the very few
exceptions of some large seacoast cities such as Rome,
Alexandria and Constantinople. A city like Nisibis, far from
the sea and not even on one of the two great rivers of
Mesopotamia, would have been especially vulnerable to indirect
assault of this kind. If this approach had been continued over
time by Persia and her adherents, it must have starved out
Nisibis in the end, even without the spectacular defeat of
Julian and his army in 363.
[71] The
political role of Nisibis, then, was to be the means of
projecting power either on Rome's behalf toward the East or on
behalf of Persia toward the West. Its great importance in
assisting the power that controlled it to protect the border
region made it an irresistible target, no matter who held it at
any particular time. The very same qualities that supported its
wealth and cosmopolitan character also made it a bone of
contention. All these results of its natural position, both
desirable and undesirable, gave to the people of this city a
natural tendency to pay greater attention to the peoples and
powers around them and to be more careful to develop a good
understanding of the practicalities of power and the desires of
political states than would people living farther from the
frontier war zone. It is not surprising that a lifelong
inhabitant of the city, such as Ephrem, would have a broader
view of the world than one might expect to find in a person who
was never a great traveler.
History of Christians in Nisibis
[72] At
this point, it is not possible for us to identify a firm date
for the arrival of Christianity in Nisibis as a resident
religion. Christian communities tended to stretch their
antecedents back into the past in search of an apostolic
connection, as Edessa did, so famously, in the Addai legends.
So, even if we had clear, specific testimony to the start of
Nisibene Christianity, it might not be wholly convincing.
Evidence from elsewhere about a community is more likely to be
dependable, especially if it can be shown to have an early
origin, because the urge for self-aggrandizement is less likely
to be present. We are fortunate in the case of Nisibis in
that this sort of clue, in fact, does provide our best guess
for a terminus ante quem for the Nisibene
community. It makes sense to conclude that Christianity
must have been present in Nisibis before 215 since the burial
inscription of Abercius, which mentions Nisibis, seems to have
been used as a model by a certain Alexander, son of Antonius,
about that time.
Bundy, “The Life of Abercius”,
163. Note 2 on that page provides a number of references to
other scholarly treatments of the inscription and attendant
questions. (Note that, since we know nothing whatever of
Abercius’ churchmanship, we can make no conclusions about
who the Christians he saw in Nisibis were and what they
taught.)
The funerary stone of Abercius survives
in a damaged state in the Vatican collection. This physical
artifact is a very rare piece of evidence, indeed.
Kant, “Earliest Christian
Inscription”, provides a color photograph of the stone
and a reconstructed text of the inscription, as well as a
picture of a reconstruction of the monument. He also provides a
narrative of its discovery and a discussion of its value and
connection to the monument of Alexander.
[73]
Chaumont
La christianisation, 6.
thinks the epitaph of Abercius shows that
Christians “n’étaient pas rares” in
Osrhoene, even including Nisibis, at the time he visited there.
She also, however, states clearly that she thinks the Christian
communities in Nisibis and Edessa were naturally connected,
with the latter taking the lead. We have seen above that
Neusner considers the two cities to have had quite different,
almost opposite, situations as far as the prevalence of the
Synagogue and Church are concerned. I think it likely that
Chaumont has assumed an importance for the Church in Edessa
that our surviving texts might suggest but that the situation
on the ground, as far as we can glimpse it, does not. The
Edesso-centric nature of our records of early Syriac
Christianity makes this a very difficult question to settle,
while making its consideration a useful urge to caution.
[74]
Fiey
“Les Évêques de
Nisibe”, 123.
thinks Christians were in Nisibis by the end
of the first century “modestement bien sûr”.
He also accepts the Abercius inscription as reliable. He notes,
too, that Roman occupation of Nisibis in 297 meant persecution
for the Christians. Logic would suggest that the absence of
that persecution before 297 would have helped whatever sprigs
of Christianity there were in the city to grow more freely.
Burkitt, Cambridge Ancient
History XII, 493, is much more uncertain about the early
spread of Christianity to the East.
[75]
Fiey
“Les Évêques de
Nisibe”, 124.
credits the Edict of Milan with being the
occasion for the establishing of a bishopric in Nisibis. He
thinks this was a natural step in response to the city's
political importance, but doesn't say anything about the size
of its Christian community having been a factor in this step of
institutional maturation. Certainly, Shapur’s stressing
his role as a Zoroastrian monarch more and more in his
public demeanor as his reign progressed would have made the
seating of a bishop in Nisibis an obvious way for the Romans to
stake a claim to the city by making the Church there more
noticeable. The Christianity of the city would serve as a clear
point at which Nisibis would appear
“unPersian”.
It is generally agreed by modern scholars
that the motivation of Shapur II in oppressing Christians in
his realm was, at base, political and that its religious
element was taken on as a means of heightening the contrast
between his realm and Christian Rome. In other words, the
persecution of Christians by Persia is seen as a by-product of
the renewed desire for war with Rome. Lebourt, Le
christianisme; Neusner, “Babylonian Jewry”;
Moffett, Christianity in Asia all agree on this.
Gilman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, see it more
as a case of the shah allowing the Zoroastrian hierarchy to do
what they had been wanting to do. These seem reasonable
conclusions to me, though I think our knowledge of the
motivations of ancient figures is very uncertain, especially
given the scarcity of pre-Islamic materials from inside Persia.
Still, none of this affects the usefulness to either side of
gestures based in the religious realm.
[76]
Ephrem’s imaginative description of the early growth of
the Church in Nisibis, crediting the three early bishops with
nurturing their flock through the various stages of
growth,
This is described in Carmina
Nisibena 1-21. Fiey, “Les Évêques
de Nisibe”, describes what Ephrem says about these
figures at 125-132.
would seem to fit very well with a memory of
a Christian community that had been small, weak and informally
structured up to the time of the legalization of Christianity.
There is no hint in the Carmina Nisibena of a diocesan
structure before the Fourth Century. (These hymns are a unique
source of information on the early growth of the Nisibene
Church from the inside, but are not meant to convey the sort of
historical chronology that modern students would like to
have.)
[77]
Millar, correctly,
Roman Near East, 462-463.
says all that we really know in any
detail of early Syriac Christianity begins at the end of the
Third Century. Christianity does seem to have had some history
of being present in the region before that time, though. Thus,
he says,
... by the end of the 3rd century it was claimed
that the king Abgar who had been ruling in Osrhoene at the
time of Christ had been a convert.
This widely accepted, but certainly incorrect, legend shows
that there had been enough time between the Church’s
beginning in the region and the end of the 3rd
century to put the start of the Church into the past beyond the
current memory of the people, but it does not show much more
than that. Bundy
“Vision for the City”, 190.
rightly points to Ephrem as the
starting point of real records.
The identity of the Christian believers, their social status,
ecclesiastical organization, and belief structures are
unknowable. It is only fourth-century texts that begin to
provide data regarding this city. Ecclesiastical records,
such as they are, begin with Ephrem of Syria.
[78]
Certainly, the corporate life of Christians in Nisibis before
the time of bishop Jacob, whose rule of the community began
during the very early years of Ephrem’s life, is
something we can only speculate about on the basis of hints
dropped during the period of Jacob and his successors. No
earlier materials survive.
[79]
Elias of Nisibis
Chronologie, cited at Fiey,
Nisibe, 23.
(975-after 1049)
Patrologia Syriaca, 218.
assigned
Jacob’s accession to 308/9 and the construction of the
Church to 313-320. It may well be that the Christian community
during the period of the ban on the Church had grown large (or
wealthy) enough to build and was merely waiting for the
political climate to change. The Edict of Milan and the
execution at Antioch by Licinius of Theotecnus, the leader of
the attempted revival of traditional paganism that accompanied
the persecution of Christians as part of the social reforms
sponsored by the Emperor Maximin Daia in 306-313,
The course of this persecution is
described at 377 ff. in Frend, Martyrdom and
Persecution. Eusebius, History of the Church,
recounts its course, and exults in the death of Theotecnus, in
Bk 9 passim.
may have been enough to spur the Christians in Nisibis to take
the risk of public construction.
[80]
Jacob was quite a renowned figure in the mind of the early
Church. We know of at least 55 texts, beyond Ephrem’s
Carmina Nisibena, that report some information about
him.
Bundy, “Jacob of Nisibis”,
238.
Jacob was the first person added by
Gennadius to Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus and
Theodoret placed him first in his A History of the Monks of
Syria, which shows that he was known in both Latin and
Greek speaking circles. Much of this reportage appears to be
legendary, but the prominence of this Nisibene figure in the
mind of other Christians must, at least, have carried with it
some awareness of the existence, and importance, of the
community he led. His fame extended to inclusion in the lists
of martyrs in Lyons and Rome.
Bundy, “Jacob of Nisibis”,
239.
The prominence this
notice must have given to the Christians in Nisibis is
remarkable, but does not further our detailed knowledge of the
community’s history.
[81] The
report of Jacob’s presence at Nicaea,
Fiey, Nisibe, 23. This is one of
the four things that Bundy, “Jacob of Nisibis”,
248, considers to be dependable facts known about Jacob.
might also be
more the result of the new emperor's desire to include the
Church all the way to the empire's eastern border in his public
embrace than a reflection of the particular size and vibrancy
of the Christian community there.
This might also explain the presence of
the Bishop of Palmyra at Nicaea, since Palmyra was certainly
greatly reduced in practical importance since its devastation
as a result of its conquest under Zenobia. cf. Millar,
“Empire, Community and Culture”, 156.
We must beware the
pitfall of assuming important communities stood behind a
well-known figure. Augustine was always the leader of a
minority group in his native Hippo,
van der Meer, Augustine the
Bishop, 102 ff.
and
Northampton, Mass., despite the presence of Jonathan Edwards,
was certainly no Puritan ecclesiastical center. We should not
allow Jacob’s notoriety or Ephrem’s creativity to
lead us to assume that the Christian community in Nisibis was
large or important. Extraordinary people can be produced by
very ordinary circumstances. We need only recall the long
career of Bach as a small town organist to be reminded of this
fact.
[82] The
fact that Jacob’s body was a great talisman in Nisibis
for centuries after his death
Fiey, Nisibe, 25.
is further support for
his having been, in some sense, that church’s founder.
There seem to have been no earlier great figures with whom his
memory had to compete. How different this is from Edessa, where
Jesus himself was said to have been involved in the
church’s life, along with one of the 12!
[83] As
best we can reconstruct the sequence, the succession of bishops
in Nisibis during the life of Ephrem was as follows:
Jacob, who died after Nicaea, probably in the Summer of
337;
Burgess, “The Dates”, 8,
argues that the burial of Jacob within the walls of Nisibis
establishes that his death occurred during the siege of the
city. He also convincingly argues for the siege beginning just
after the arrival in Persia of the news of the death of
Constantine.
Babu, who died after the third siege of the city by the
Persians in 359;
Fiey, Nisibe, 28.
Vologeses, whose name appears in the baptistery inscription,
which is a contemporaneous witness dated to 359/60 and
independent from the works of Ephrem, died in
361/362.
Fiey, Nisibe, 33.
The inscription is translated by Sebastian Brock as
follows:
Sebastian Brock, Hymns on
Paradise, 11.
This baptistery was erected and completed in the year 671 [=
A.D. 359/60] in the time of Bishop Vologeses through the zeal
of the priest Akepsimas. May this inscription be a memorial
to them.
Because this text is unique in being the only surviving
inscription in Nisibis we can be quite certain that Ephrem,
himself, saw, it is appropriate to give the original as
reconstructed.
This is how the text runs in Jarry, but
should not the last word be “τουτον”?
ανηγερθη
το
[βαπ]τισ[τηριον
τουτο
και
ετελεσθη
ετους
ΑΟΧ εν
χρο
νω
[Ου]ολα[γεσου]
επισκοπου
σπουδη
Ακεψυμα
πρεσβυτερου.
Γενητε
αυτων η
μνη
[μη]
εντ[υ]πιον
τουτου.
[84]
Vologeses’ courage as a leader of the Church in Nisibis
during the third siege is praised in the 15th
Memra on Nicomedia. Ephrem calls him “a priest
who was a general”
15.152 Bundy’s translation in
“Bishop Vologese”, 62.
in lauding his spiritual
leadership and its role in the repulse of the Persians.
[85]
Abraham was bishop of the community at the time of its
displacement to the West following the loss of Nisibis to
Persian control in 363.
[86] That
sequence of only four leaders makes a very brief institutional
life for the church of Nisibis and we cannot advance much
beyond a skeletal picture of even that short period, all of
which lay within Ephrem’s lifetime. What can we
discover about these figures that will lend some color to the
picture and an idea of their characters and how they actually
functioned in the life of the Church in Nisibis? As we
would expect, Ephrem’s works provide virtually all our
information. The most prominent and concentrated place to
find it is in the first 21 of the Carmina
Nisibena.
[87] It
seems clear, to begin with, that Bishop Jacob was the brightest
star of the four.
Bundy, “Jacob of Nisibis”,
passim.
It is not only the fact that he came
first in time that set him apart. As the leader of the
Christians in Nisibis, Jacob is mentioned a much greater number
of times than any other figure.
Bundy, “Jacob of Nisibis”,
238.
Our surviving information
does not permit us, however, to view even Jacob in any detail.
Bundy
“Jacob of Nisibis”, 248.
summarizes our knowledge as
follows:
This analysis of the Jacob narratives suggests that
trustworthy data about Jacob of Nisibis are very restricted.
It can only be affirmed with reasonable certainty that: (1)
he was a Bishop of Nisibis; (2) he participated in the
council of Nicea as an anti-Arian; (3) he was known by
Ephrem; (4) he achieved renown after, perhaps before, his
death; (5) he died in 337/338; (6) he was initially buried in
Nisibis, and, (7) he served four different regions of the
fourth and fifth century world as an ideal bishop,
contextualized according to different models.
These, unfortunately, are not the most pertinent details for
modern students who wish to know more of the life of the Church
in Nisibis during the time of Ephrem.
[88]
Ephrem calls himself “pupil” of the first three of
these bishops,
Carmina Nisibena 14.25 + 26.
Gwynn’s translation, found at 187.
which must be, as regards at least some
of them, a sign of ecclesiastical deference instead of a
natural respect for one’s elders, since he was an elderly
and accomplished man at the time he wrote that line. The
comment is an illuminating one in that it seems to place Ephrem
firmly inside the traditional, institutional Church. However
deep this feeling may have run in Ephrem,
Gwynn’s translation, found at 187.
cf. Carmina Nisibena 19.16 for another set of
characteristics of the three bishops.
its expression
surely reveals him as not entertaining anti-institutional views
on the appropriate role to be played by the laity and minor
clergy.
[89]
Carmina Nisibena 17.11, directed at Abraham and so
from the very end of Ephrem’s life in Nisibis, credits
each of the first three of the bishops with a particular
virtue.
Thou shalt be unto us a wall as Jacob, and full of tenderness
as Babu, and a treasury of speech as [Vologeses].
[90] It
seems that, as the community grew, its needs changed and, says
Ephrem, were met by the differing qualities of its leaders.
There also seems to have been an increasing need for formal
organization of the Christian community. So, we find Ephrem
advising the new bishop, Abraham:
Carmina Nisibena 18.11.
Gwynn’s translation, found at 188.
Appoint for thee scribes and judges, exactors also and
dispensers, overseers also and officers: to each assign his
work, lest haply by care should be rusted, or by anxiety
should be distracted, the mind and the tongue, wherewith thou
offerest supplication, for the expiation of all the people.
It is hard to know exactly how to take this direction to
Bishop Abraham. It might be an indication of the existence of
many and varied ecclesiastical offices, but it need not be so.
Carmina Nisibena 14.1 had earlier said
Gwynn’s translation, found at 182.
Under the three pastors, there were manifold shepherds; the
one mother that was in the city, had daughters in
all regions.
This is a more general comment and seems a clear indication
of the existence of multiple congregations under the oversight
of the bishop of Nisibis. Sozomen
History of the Church, 5.3.
English translation at 328 in Hartranft.
recounts that the emperor
Julian wrote to the inhabitants of Nisibis, who were asking for
help against the Persians, and refused to succor them because
they had become Christians. He told them to ask again when they
had returned to paganism, Sozomen says! We would expect a group
to grow in size if it enjoyed freedom to function and imperial
favor, and complexity is usually an unavoidable accompaniment
of growth. Still, we know that some small religious groups
delight in intricate structures, while some large churches
fight against institutional development.
A good example of the resistance to
institutional change is the continuation of the custom of
having only 7 deacons in the Church in Rome long after the
Church there had reached a larger size than these officials
could readily handle. Lietzmann, History, II.250,
reports the constitution of the Roman clergy under Cornelius
(251-253) to have included 7 deacons. (One disadvantage of such
a limited roster was experienced when all 7 deacons and Pope
Sixtus II were martyred in August of 258, according to the
report of Kidd, History, I. 477.)
We must
remember to be a bit cautious when trying to gauge the size of
the community by the length of the list of offices discussed by
its members, though it is surely reasonable for us to posit an
increase in size for this period in the life of the Church in
Nisibis.
[91] We
know that the church had some internal variety in its
structure.
Carmina Nisibena 19.6.
Gwynn’s translation found at 189.
Unto Moses Joshua ministered, and for the reward of his
ministry, from him received the right hand. Because to
an illustrious old man thou hast ministered, he too gave thee
the right hand. Moses committed unto Joshua, a flock of
which half were wolves; but to thee is delivered a flock,
whereof a fourth yea a third is sanctified.
Are we to take this as evidence of a strong presence of
those in some sort of formal religious life: “Sons or
Daughters of the Covenant”? Are we to think that
‘sanctified’ means those already baptized,
following the suggestion of some scholars that baptism in
Syrian Christian churches was accompanied by a celibate
life?
Burkitt, Early Christianity, 50
ff. and Early Eastern, 125, ff. and Vööbus,
History of Asceticism, I.13 are among these.
The most certain conclusion is that there
were, among the recognized members of the Christian community,
the clergy aside, at least two categories of members: those who
were ‘sanctified’ and those who were not. The
Church was clearly gaining formal structure.
Can any example be found in
Christian history, setting aside groups like the Shakers who
are consciously separatists and require celibacy of all
members, in which such a large proportion of the whole has been
formally committed to celibacy? It seems to me that to
claim to have found such an oddity requires a clearer basis in
evidence than we have with regard to the early Syriac-speaking
Church. I grant that they, in common with virtually all
Christians of other ages and places, had a much greater
reverence for celibacy (and discussed it more) than Christians
in the modern West, but I am far from certain that that is a
sign of their having been so unusual.
[92] We
also hear credible reports of structure and organization in
liturgical practice at the time of Ephrem. The homily of Jacob
of Sarug on Ephrem
A Metrical Homily on Holy Mar
Ephraem, Joseph P. Amar, 40-50, 96-102.
contains some descriptions of changes
in liturgical practice credited to Ephrem. The most
prominent of these is the inclusion of women and girls in the
liturgical singing that made up a part of the worship. There is
not very much more than this, however, that we can say with
real confidence about the shape and particular activities of
the Christians in Nisibis during the life of Ephrem.
[93] It
is virtually certain that Ephrem was engaged in formal
instruction of students in the Bible. We have commentaries
of his that survive and the tradition associates him very
strongly with this work. However, we cannot say anything
about the sort of milieu in which this teaching took place, or
even if it was for the clergy and other special groups, or for
the membership of the congregation as a whole. (Logic points
strongly to such study having been undertaken by a limited
group, but there is no evidence to support that conclusion and
the list of Christians who have engaged in serious study who
would not have been expected to do so by the usual gate-keepers
of education is very long and continues to grow. Our
expectations in this area are a very uncertain guide.)
[94] It
is extremely frustrating that, just when the Church in Nisibis
is beginning to take on shape in our vision and we can hope for
some firm basis from which to approach Ephrem’s work, the
cart is upset and the bulk of the community is forced to make
its way west to Edessa. Unfortunately, such is our melancholy
case.
[95] So,
we come to the end of our rehearsal of what can be known about
Nisibis during the life of Ephrem there. It is not a picture
with many fine details, but it does furnish some backdrop
against which we can hope to see him a bit more clearly. The
student of Ephrem should not despair at the vagueness of our
knowledge of his circumstances before his shift to Edessa. A
general sense of his background can be useful when reading his
works, and knowing the limits of our knowledge is always a
useful element in scholarly study. It must be admitted, though,
that we never quite leave the mist behind when we are studying
Nisibis or the life of Ephrem the Syrian. He remains at a
distance from us, despite our best efforts.
Post Script
[96] I
hope that an edited version of this paper will serve as an
introductory chapter of a volume intended as a companion to the
works of St. Ephrem the Syrian. I would be very grateful for
any suggestions for additions or corrections._______
Notes
† I would like to thank the anonymous readers
from Hugoye as well as Dr. Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra of
Hebrew University, Dr. David G. K. Taylor of Oxford University,
Dr. James Russell of Harvard University, Adam Becker of New
York University, Dr. Mark Dickens of Cambridge University, Dr.
Edwin Yamauchi of Miami University of Ohio and Dr. Glen
Bowersock of Princeton University for supplying me with
information and suggestions that were helpful in filling in
gaps and giving a clearer shape to this paper that had been
electronically damaged as well as being incomplete. Please
accept my apologies if this list is incomplete.
136 Jarry, “Inscriptions
Syriaques”, 243. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr.
David G. K. Taylor of Oxford University for this reference.
143 Sidney H. Griffith has argued convincingly
that it went very deep in Ephrem. See his “‘The
marks of the ‘True Church’”; “Setting
Right the church of Syria”; and “Ephraem, the
deacon of Edessa, and the Church of the Empire”.
_______
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