by Scott McGill
Arguments have, therefore, been advanced that in a number of the works mentioned above the influence of classical rhetorical teaching can be detected. Deliberative rhetoric has been seen in the Liber graduum, with its exhortations to a life of perfection, and in forensic rhetoric in the memra of Narsai in defense of the three doctors of the East Syriac Church, Diodore, Theodore, and Nestorius. In Balai’s poem on Joseph, an influence from classical rhetoric has been suggested in the arrangement of the speeches and the author’s use of rhetorical figures and techniques of persuasion (Phenix 2008).
What appear to be the clearest examples of such influence, however, fall within the sphere of epideictic: the oration (memra) on John bar Aphthonia by an anonymous monk of the monastery of Qenneshre, and that on Severus of Antioch by George, bishop of the Arab tribes (d. 724). The monastery of Qenneshre was originally located near Antioch and migrated to Qenneshre on the banks of the Euphrates around 530, under the leadership of John, who himself, as far as we know, wrote exclusively in Greek. In subsequent years the monastery was celebrated as a center for the study of Greek, and its alumni included most of the notable Syriac Aristotelian scholars of the seventh century, including George. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that classical rhetorical theory was taught there both before and after the migration from the Orontes to the Euphrates (Watt 2010, chapter 5). Syriac writers who studied Greek philosophy may be assumed, like their Greek counterparts, to have previously studied rhetoric. Thus it is not surprising to find evidence of rhetorical knowledge in the prologue to Sergius of Reshaina’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories (Hugonnard‐Roche 2004, chapter 8). About the same time, the early sixth century, a highly rhetorical prologue was prefaced by Joshua the Stylite to his historical work (on both these writers, see below).
The oldest example of Syriac epistolography is the Letter of Mara bar Serapion to His Son Serapion, which has been variously dated from the first to the fourth century. The letter is in the style of advice from a pagan philosopher to his son and may be one of the few remaining pieces of pagan Syriac literature. However, its allusions to Jesus as a “wise king” and its references to his death at the hands of the Jews and the fall of Jerusalem make a Christian origin perhaps more likely (Merz and Tieleman 2012). Indubitably from the fourth century, we have a Letter of Ephrem to Publius in artistic prose on eschatological matters, and from the fifth, the legendary correspondence between Jesus and Abgar of Edessa already noted above in the Doctrine of Addai. Among numerous letters from writers of the fifth and sixth centuries, particularly worthy of note are a considerable number by Philoxenus, frequently comprising lengthy theological arguments, and two historically important letters of (the miaphysite) Simeon of Beth Ashram (possibly revised in transmission), dealing respectively with the martyrs of Najran and the influence of Barsauma of Nisibis on the spread of dyophysite Christology.
3.6 Historiography
Most Syriac historiography is in the form of chronicles (Debié 2009; Witakowski 1987). The earliest local chronicle is the sixth‐century Chronicle of Edessa, which covers events in Edessa from 133 BCE to 540 CE, although the first and longest entry is an account of a flood in 201 CE that mentions damage done to “the sanctuary of the church of the Christians.” It knows nothing of the story of the beginning of Christianity in Edessa told by Eusebius and the Doctrine of Addai. The Chronicle of Arbela has an account of the beginning of Christianity there, but it is uncertain whether it is a sixth‐century work, as claimed by its editor, or a forgery. An important work of a later date, the Khuzistan Chronicle from the seventh century, is a valuable source for the period of Heraclius, the end of the Sasanian Empire and the Arab conquests. Other local chronicles from the late antique period have not survived as independent works but have sometimes been incorporated, in whole or in fragments, in chronicles assembled in a later period. The genre of the world chronicle became known in Syriac through Syriac versions of those of Hippolytus and Eusebius, but original Syriac examples of the genre, or chronicles utilizing either of these sources, are known only from the seventh century and later.
Earlier than the sixth century translation of Eusebius’s Chronicle was the fifth‐century version of his Ecclesiastical History, which, unlike the Chronicle, has mostly survived. It served as the model for this genre in Syriac, for which there are two important works from the sixth century. From John of Ephesus’s three‐volume work, only the third is complete, ending in 588 CE, but book 2, covering the period 449–571, was used and adapted in the late eighth‐century Chronicle of Zuqnin (Harvey 1990; van Ginkel 1995). The Ecclesiastical History of Pseudo‐Zacharias is a complex work. Books 1–2 consist of diverse historical or legendary pieces, while books 3–6 are an adapted translation of part of the Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias Rhetor. Later books, some of them preserved only fragmentarily or in some cases completely lost, cover the reigns of the emperors Anastasius, Justin I, Justinian, and Justin II (Greatrex 2011). Slightly later, on the East Syrian side there is an Ecclesiastical History by Barhadbeshabba Arbaya, and by Barhadbeshabba of Halwan (possibly, but probably not, the same person) a history entitled Cause of the Foundation of Schools, going back to biblical and classical times but with a focus upon the Persian School of Edessa and the School of Nisibis.
Even earlier than the Chronicle of Edessa is an anonymous work generally known as The Chronicle of Joshua [or Pseudo‐Joshua] the Stylite, also preserved not independently, but incorporated in the Chronicle of Zuqnin. It is, however, in its form not purely a chronicle or in its content purely local. The first of the two main sections is, indeed, a local Edessene chronicle, providing an annalistic account of plague, famine, and epidemic in the city in 494–502. The second, however, is a continuous narrative of the Roman–Persian war of 502–506, in which Edessa is merely one of the locations. The work begins with a rhetorical prologue addressed to a (real or fictitious) abbot named Sergius, continues with an account of events in the Roman and Persian Empires leading up to the war, and ends, following the two main sections, with a rhetorical epilogue. While the Edessene section covering 494–502 can therefore be characterized as a chronicle, the work as a whole is more akin to the genre of a political history, albeit with some elements of Christian divine intervention (Luther 1997; Trombley and Watt 2000).
3.7 Philosophy and Translation
The earliest known Syriac writer on philosophy is Bardaisan, but nothing of his work has survived except for brief citations or allusions found in later writers mostly opposed to him, such as Ephrem. A philosophical dialogue, probably by his pupil Philip, has however survived, in which he appears as a speaker. Known as the Book of the Laws of the Countries from an ethnographic section, it is a treatise on fate and freewill and was much influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias (Drijvers 1965; Dihle 1979; Teixidor 1992; Ramelli 2009). Nothing more of serious philosophical interest is known from the earlier part of the period, but the situation changes radically for the late fifth or early sixth century, when Syriac interest in Aristotelian philosophy, in its late antique Neoplatonic form, suddenly comes into view. Its beginnings are associated with Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536), who studied in Alexandria, translated many works of Galen, and became an archiatros in Reshaina. Sergius may have been drawn to Alexandria to study medicine there, but it is clear that he also studied philosophy. As previously noted, he wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories and intended (as he made clear in it) to do the same for the entire Alexandrian Aristotelian curriculum, but for whatever reason we know only of that on the Categories. He did, however, also write a shorter introduction to philosophy addressed to a Philotheos (Aydin 2016), and he translated two philosophical treatises supposedly by Aristotle but outside the Alexandrian school corpus: De mundo and On the Causes of the Universe (the latter known from an Arabic version to be by Alexander of Aphrodisias). In addition to Alexander, Sergius may have been sympathetic to some aspects of the thought of Bardaisan, and later Bardesanites may in turn have been appreciative of the cosmol
ogical writings of Sergius (King 2011).
In the prologue to the Commentary on the Categories, Sergius credits Aristotle with being the principal source and beginning of knowledge not only for Galen and physicians like him but also for all subsequent philosophers. Unlike his Alexandrian teachers, he gives no indication that the study of Aristotle should be followed by that of Plato. Sergius was a Christian (who perhaps knew Philoponus in Alexandria) and presumably, on this account, did not follow Proclus’s reading of Plato, which he could have heard in Alexandria from Ammonius, which in effect offered a philosophical rationale for pagan religion. However, a further translation made by him was that of the Pseudo‐Dionysian corpus, and from his work known as A Treatise on the Spiritual Life, which he (subsequently) prefaced to this translation, it appears that he envisioned Pseudo‐Dionysius’s Neoplatonizing interpretation of the Bible, rather than Proclus’s of Plato, as the culmination for Christians of the Aristotelian curriculum. He may well have recognized Pseudo‐Dionysius’s dependence on Proclus and might even have known the true identity of the “Areopagite.” Later sixth‐century Syriac writings on Aristotle are commentaries on the Isagoge, De interpretatione, and Analytica priora I.1–7 by Proba and two works by Paul the Persian: a Treatise on Logic and an Elucidation of the De interpretatione (Hugonnard‐Roche 2004, chapters 5–12).
While Sergius wrote in Syriac, if he expected his readers to read Aristotle himself, he must have assumed they would do so in Greek. Nevertheless, anonymous translations of Categories, De interpretatione, and Analytica priora I. 1–7 did appear in the course of the sixth century (Hugonnard‐Roche 2004, chapters 1–4; King 2010). Sergius certainly did not assume that his readers would or could access the first of these (which might be later than his lifetime); it is possible, but not at all certain, that Proba was responsible for the other two. With philosophy it is therefore particularly clear what is, however, also the case in many of the other literary areas and authors surveyed here, namely, that much late antique Syriac literature, while distinctive in several ways, has nevertheless to be seen in close association with the Greek. Greek influence came about in two ways: through the fact that many Syriac speakers (including of course the translators) were bilingual, or at any rate were proficient readers of Greek; and through the translations themselves. From the biblical translations of the second to third and subsequent centuries through the numerous translations of Christian theological works (among which the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus are worthy of particular mention both for their extent and their influence) to the secular philosophical and medical versions from the fifth and sixth centuries, translations from Greek form an important part of Syriac literature (Brock 1999; Schmidt and Gonnet 2007). This activity continued without interruption into the Islamic period, during the first few centuries of which Syrians and Syriac literature played an important part in the intellectual life of the new civilization and contributed to the impact of late antique culture on the Islamic world. Late antique Syriac literature is thus an important element both of pre‐Islamic late antique culture and of the continuing vitality of that culture in the years following the Arab conquest of the region (Lössl and Watt 2011, pp. 165–257). Many texts extant in Syriac manuscripts have still to be published, and future research on this literature may be expected to add not only to our knowledge of individual authors within it but also to our appreciation both of its links with, and distinctiveness from, late antique Greek literature and of its importance to the intellectual and cultural history of the Middle East.
REFERENCES
Amar, Joseph. (2011). The Syriac Vita Tradition of Ephrem the Syrian. Louvain: Peeters.
Aydin, Sami. (2016). Sergius of Reshaina: Introduction to Aristotle and his Categories. Syriac text, with introduction, translation, and commentary. Leiden: Brill.
Brock, Sebastian. (1992). The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St. Ephrem. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.
Brock, Sebastian. (1999). From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Brock, Sebastian. (2009). A guide to Narsai’s homilies. Hugoye 12 (1): 21–40.
Brock, Sebastian. (2013). The Harp of the Spirit: Poems of Saint Ephrem the Syrian. Cambridge: Aquila Books.
Debié, Muriel. ed. (2009). L’historiographie syriaque. Paris: Geuthner.
de Halleux, André. (1963). Philoxène de Mabbog: Sa vie, ses écrits, sa théologie. Louvain: Université catholique de Louvain.
Desreumaux, Alain. (1993). Histoire du roi Abgar et de Jésus. Turnhout: Brepols.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Coptic
David Brakke
Coptic literature originated and reached its highest level of achievement in late antiquity, and its study engages some of the central themes of late ancient history, among them the relationships between a wider Mediterranean tradition (“Greece” or “Rome”) and a regional/national tradition (“Egypt”) and between religious life and literary culture. The question of bilingualism and thus of biculturalism is apparent in the Coptic language itself, for it is the last stage of the Egyptian language written in the Greek alphabet (plus between six and eight Egyptian characters), and even works that native Coptic speakers composed feature numerous Greek loan words (Greco‐Coptic). Nearly all works of Coptic literature are religious in nature, and its only truly great author, Shenoute (347–465), was a monastic author who addressed issues of Christian theology, ethics, and ascetic practice with a rhetorical brilliance that would have dazzled any ancient orator. The struggle over imperial attempts to impose the Council of Chalcedon colored and inspired much of what Copts wrote after 451. Translation, Christianization, and empire gave birth to Coptic literature, determined its forms and genres, and motivated its most outstanding works.
