Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
Deacon, poet, and theologian. Born probably of Christian parents in the early
years of the 4th cent. in the region of
Ephrem’s genuine writings fall into four main categories, prose, artistic
prose, stanzaic poetry (madrāše), and 7+7 syllable
couplets (memre).
1. Prose: Commentary on Genesis and part of Exodus (ed. R. M. Tonneau, CSCO
152–3); Commentary on the Diatessaron (ed. L. Leloir, 1963, 1990), whose
final editing was probably after his death; Commentaries on Acts and the
Pauline Letters which only survive in Armenian translation; various works
against
Prose Refutations,
I–II [1912, 1921]).
2. Artistic prose: memrā on our Lord (ed. Beck, CSCO
270–1); Letter to Publius (ed. S. P. Brock,
3. Madrāše (‘Hymni’). Nearly
400 madrāše survive, using some 50 different metrical
patterns, designated by their melody titles (qāle).
According to
madrāše. These are transmitted in collections of
various sizes, and are all edited by E. Beck: on the Church (CSCO 198–9); on
the Crucifixion (CSCO 248–9); on Faith (CSCO madrāše that must
be slightly later, are: on Abraham of Qidun and Yulyana Saba (ed. Beck, CSCO
322–3); on the Confessors (ed. Beck, CSCO 363–4); on Epiphany (ed. Beck,
CSCO 186–7).
4. Memre (‘Sermones’). Since
the seven-syllable memre, certainly not by
Ephrem, came to be attributed to him. The six memre
on Faith (ed. Beck, CSCO 212–3) are definitely genuine. Of the four further
collections of memre edited by Beck (Sermones I–IV, CSCO 305–6, 311–2, 320–1, 334–5), only
the following are considered by him to be genuine: I, 1–3; II, 1 (on Jonah
and Nineveh) and the core of 4 (On the Sinful Woman, Luke 7); and IV, 2
(perhaps). All the rest in these volumes date from times later than Ephrem;
this also applies to memre in Beck’s further volumes,
CSCO 363–4 (Nachträge) and 412–3 (on Holy Week). Only
some excerpts from a collection of memre on Nicomedia
survive in Syriac, but a complete Armenian translation preserves it (ed. C.
Renoux, PO 37, 2–3).
The dating of Ephrem’s writings, to before or after his move from Nisibis in
363, for the most part remains uncertain. Very probably composed before 363
are the memre on Faith, the madrāše on Paradise, and at least most of the Nisibene collection
(the first can be dated exactly, since it describes the flooding of the
surroundings during the siege of Nisibis in 350). The madrāše against Julian must date from shortly after the emperor’s
death in 363, during his Persian campaign. It would seem reasonable to date
with confidence to his Edessan period those works which include references
to Bardaiṣan (Prose Refutations, madrāše against
Heresies); likewise the madrāše on Faith, many of
which are concerned with the later developments of Arianism.
The madrāše collections are preserved in 6th-cent.
mss. (not always quite complete). This is fortunate since later mss. (almost
all liturgical) provide only excerpts, often mixed in with later material;
furthermore they attribute to Ephrem numerous poems which are certainly not
by him (see Studia Patristica 33 [1997], 490–505). An
important clue to the early transmission of the collections is provided by
an early index of qāle (ed. A. de Halleux,
Ephrem was already known outside Syriac circles to
CPG
3905–4175 provides a guide to these. Translations
were made from Greek into Latin, Slavonic, and other languages; those into
Armenian, however, were directly from Syriac.
Ephrem was also a profound thinker, preferring to express his theological vision through poetry, rather than prose. Though his importance for the Christian tradition as a whole was recognised by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, when he proclaimed Ephrem to be a Doctor of the Universal Church, it is only in fairly recent years that his significance as a theologian has begun to be properly appreciated.
The iconographical tradition either depicts him as a deacon (thus on a
10th-cent. icon at
The dates of his liturgical commemorations vary in the different Churches. Syr. Orth., Saturday of the 1st week of Lent (with St. Theodore); also 28 Jan. and 19 Feb.; Maron., 27 Jan.; Ch. of E., Friday of 5th week after Epiphany (Syriac Doctors). Greek and Russian Orthodox, 28 Jan. Roman Catholic, 9 June.
See Fig. 49c.