Culture and Religion: Early Groups and Features
The most striking feature of early Syrian Christianity, and the most difficult to assess, is its inherent asceticism. For the early church of the Syrian Orient, asceticism was not a marginal phenomenon, an activity of extremists hovering at the fringes of the mainstream Christian church; nor was it an external element, arriving from the "exotic" religions of the East and assimilated into the budding Christian ethos. Extremists there were, and external influences there were. But for the early Christian communities of the Syrian Orient, asceticism was at the heart of Christian understanding and Christian life.[25]
During the fourth century, a common movement prevailed throughout the Christian communities of the Roman Empire: to bring the various forms of Christianity as a whole into conformity, in essence following the characteristics of the "mainstream" Greco-Latin churches. This movement brought a number of changes to the texture of Syriac spirituality. One such change was the idea that asceticism could be a separate vocation within Christianity, distinct from the practices of the laity and from the requirements of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.[26] But in earliest Syrian Christianity, asceticism held a fundamental place. It was basic to the Syrian understanding of the Bible, both in model and in precept; it was essential sacramentally; and it was devotional, practiced to various
degrees by the laity as well as by the consecrated. Moreover this ascetically toned spirituality is found in almost all forms of early Christianity in the Syrian Orient, whatever the particular perspective—"orthodox," Gnostic, Marcionite, or Manichean.[27]
Syrian Christianity inherited from Judaism[28] a religious tradition that stressed the importance of behavior. Both the Old and the New Testaments gave ample witness that devotion to God meant pursuing God's purpose with body as well as with soul, starting with the abandonment of society's comforts—family, home, and community. Moses, Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, and Paul, as well as Christ, were favorite models for the Syrians. Here as elsewhere, the Syrian Orient displayed the tendency to literalize symbols; that is, the literal and figurative aspects of interpretation were seen to be the same, and so too were one's actions and their symbolic meanings.[29] Asceticism as symbolic behavior provided the believer the means for enacting biblical images of salvation. The significance of asceticism was enhanced by the particular Bible in use: Tatian's Diatessaron was until the fifth century the most popular version of the Gospels in the Syrian Orient, and often the only one. Tatian not only edited the Gospels into a harmony but further made clear by his editing and manner of translation (sometimes close to paraphrase) that renunciation was the model presented in the Gospels and was indeed demanded of the Christian believer in all circumstances.[30]
The influence of the Diatessaron encouraged those who saw the Christian ideal of renunciation in terms of a dualist understanding: the material world and the physical body were inferior to those of the spiritual realm, if not outright channels for evil. There were, however, further Biblical models developed in early Christian writings that were not grounded in a dualist perspective but led nonetheless to an ascetic basis for Christian life; and these, in the ethos of Syrian spirituality, were seen to present models for literal, physical translation into the life of the believer.
In the earliest Christian sources from the Syrian Orient (as elsewhere in the Christian realm), a favorite epithet for Christ was the Heavenly Bridegroom.[31] The marriage feast parables in the Gospels produced an imagery through which Christian believers understood themselves as betrothed to Christ, an image developed early on in Syrian baptismal tradition.[32] By this image, the believer was declared wholly given to God, body and soul. Celibacy was an ubiquitous value in early Syrian Christianity. But celibacy was not necessarily a matter of refusing to participate in the imperfection of the physical world. It was a matter of being utterly devoted to God. Body and soul were in this view inseparable.
Thus into the third century, and perhaps longer, celibacy was often a vow taken at baptism, or later after having one or two children.[33] Two categories of celibacy were recognized: the bthuile, "virgins," and the qaddishe, "holy ones," the married who practiced continence. Spiritual marriage, the way of the qaddishe , was commonly followed as a means of combining the social functions of marriage with the life of faith.[34] Indeed, when the mainstream church attempted to curtail the practice of spiritual marriage in Christian communities during the late third century and thereafter, the Syrian Orient proved the most difficult to change in this respect. The idea of celibacy was, for Syrian spirituality, more than an ideal; it was fundamental. Hence, in earliest Syrian Christianity, the word bthula , "virgin," could also mean "Christian," whether male or female, lay or religious.[35]
The growth of the bnay and bnath qyama , consecrated lay offices for both men and women, was also important. Well-established as a part of Syriac Christianity by the third century, these "Covenanters," or "Sons and Daughters of the Covenant," lived a celibate and regulated life—by the fifth century, canonically ruled—and served the Church while living in the Christian community. They functioned together with the normative ecclesiastical structure and were a feature of the Syriac churches that survived into the Islamic period. The Sons and Daughters of the Covenant were organized as a kind of elite congregation within the church, offering a vocational form of Christian life available to the laity.[36] Emphasis on celibacy and service to the church, then, were widely found in Syriac Christianity before the growth of a separate ascetic movement.
The eschatological settings of the marriage feast parables in the New Testament also encouraged the ascetic nature of Syriac Christianity.[37] To engage in activities that furthered the existence of this earthly life only delayed the inevitable—and desired—arrival of the eschaton.[38] Christ as Second Adam had opened the gates of Paradise anew for those who were saved and promised their return to that state of grace lived by the First Adam and Eve before the Fall.[39] To hasten the fulfillment of this event, the believer lived in its expectation and sought in every way possible not to contribute to the continuing existence of this earthly realm, for example, by the procreation of children.
But even further, the Syrian understanding brought a literal living out of life in the eschatological Paradise, as prefigured by Adam and Eve. More than a matter of celibacy, this understanding sometimes led the believer to adopt a life of stark symbolism: living naked in the wilderness exposed to the elements, eating only raw fruit and herbs, dwelling among the wild beasts, and leading an unbroken life of prayer. These
precursors of the monastic movement understood the Christian life in its absolute sense; the believer was saved and so no longer part of the fallen world.[40] The believer lived what the true eschatological reality promised. To live as if it had already come was to hasten its actual coming; but there was, too, a palpable sense that to live as if it had already come was to accomplish its actuality.
Early Syrian Christianity evoked extreme action through a spirituality that called for lived symbols. Such action pointed to one more characteristic intensifying the sense that Christianity without asceticism was incomplete (perhaps even unthinkable):[41] that is, the idea of "singleness."[42] A notion rooted in Judeo-Christianity's emphasis on single-minded devotion to God, "singleness" gave particular meaning to the ideal of celibacy. The believer was to be single-mindedly focused on the divine; the believer lived a single, unmarried life to enable that focus. Christ himself had lived such a "single" life of devotion to God's purpose. In Syriac, the word meaning "single one," ihidaya, was also used to connote Christ as the "only begotten" ("single") one of God; it became a word commonly used for and interchangeable with other technical terms for the ascetic or the monk. Just as in earliest Syrian Christian terminology the word meaning "virgin," bthula, could also mean "Christian," so too the word for "single one" (and indeed, for "only begotten") could also mean an ascetic and later a monk.
Thus from various sources Syriac spirituality nourished the conviction that to be a Christian was to be single-minded, and to be celibate, and to live a life of renunciation. The roots of Syrian asceticism, then, surpassed those of dualism. Traditionally, scholars have sought to understand the phenomenon of early Syrian asceticism in terms of a dualistic ethos, which was in fact distinctly bred into the popular religious culture of late antiquity, particularly in the Christian East.[43] The major heretical groups present in the Syrian Orient shared an understanding that separated the spiritual and physical realms and from various angles glorified celibacy. The Marcionites sought to fulfill literally the apostolic injunction that in Christ there is neither male nor female; the Manicheans and some Gnostics understood matter to be evil and so encouraged dissociation from it; baptism was interpreted in some groups as betrothal to Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom, and thus reduced earthly marriage to adultery.[44]
The presence of such a strongly dualistic mind-set could not but affect the wider popular attitudes of the Syrian Orient during the early Christian centuries. The ideas discussed earlier here—renunciation, celibacy, Paradise fulfilled, and singleness—all lend themselves easily to
dualistic developments. Certainly, such developments did take place and are to some extent responsible for the direction that Syrian asceticism took when it emerged during the course of the fourth century as an autonomous and defined movement within the orthodox Christian culture.[45] But it would be misleading to regard heterodox dualism as the only source of Syrian asceticism. On the contrary, the most influential and enduring aspect of early Syrian Christianity was the concept of the essential "oneness" of the believer's self, a "oneness" of body and soul. The importance of religious behavior is here placed in context: what one does with one's body is indistinguishable from what one believes.