Culture and Religion: Early Ascetic Forms
The clearest early expression of this oneness in relation to the divine is seen in the Odes of Solomon , perhaps our oldest nonbiblical Syriac text.[46] Scholars have reached no consensus on the original language of these hymns—Greek or Syriac—or on their date: theories range from the late first to the third century, with the late second century being the most likely.[47] But there is no doubt that they are Syrian in provenance, and they illustrate this aspect of Syrian spirituality particularly well. The Odes reflect an all-consuming love of God, with the imagery of betrothal as much a bodily experience as a spiritual understanding.[48] There is a sensuousness, an intense physicality to the expression of worship in these hymns, devoid of sexuality despite the bridal imagery that underlies it.[49] So, for example, Ode 40:
2. As a fountain bursts forth its water,
so my heart bursts forth the praise of the Lord,
and my lips bring forth praises to Him.
3. And my tongue becomes sweet by His anthems,
and my limbs are anointed by His odes.
4. My face rejoices in His exultation,
and my spirit exults in His love,
and my soul shines in Him.[50]
The act of self-giving is such that the believer is borne into the presence, and even into the very being of God;[51] one of the greatest difficulties a scholar has with these Odes is to separate (in some of them) the voice of Christ from that of the believer—to such a degree is the act of union absolute. This union is played out in another image, both physical and spiritual: the believer prays in the form (position) of a cross and in
that stance is mystically lifted into the presence of God as was Christ himself.[52] But the image is qualified: it is the cross that leads to resurrection, to the throne of glory, rather than the crucifixion that the believer symbolically becomes in the act of prayer. The distinction is crucial. Nowhere in the Odes do we hear of the suffering of Christ, an omission that contributed to the questionable orthodoxy of these hymns. Here the cross holds the symbol of Christ's exaltation, and of supplication; no more, but also no less.[53]
In the fourth century, the imagery of betrothal remained primary. At the same time, the fourth century brought the first real encounter with persecution and martyrdom that the Syrian Orient had known. For the Greco-Latin churches, persecution was a recurrent if sporadic event from Christianity's beginnings. But to the east of Antioch, matters transpired differently. Apart from a brief but contained outbreak in Persia in the 270s,[54] the earliest Syriac Christian martyrdoms occurred between 306 and 310, in the instance of the Edessan martyrs Shmona, Guria, and Habib.[55] Legend later added the prestige of earlier occurrences: during the fifth century, the literary cycle of the Edessan martyrs was expanded to include the Doctrina Addai , recounting the martyrdom of Aggai late in the first century;[56] and the Acts of Sharbil, Babai, and Barsamya , whose deaths were set in Edessa in 105 (though the events described would better place them in the persecutions of Decius).[57] But we have no evidence that these earlier martyrdoms took place, and the accounts as we have them are clearly part of the literary flowering that fifth-century Edessa engendered.
Thus the Syrian Orient was able to develop its Christianity largely without the threat of martyrdom and its particular framing of devotion to God.[58] Moreover, persecution was less severe when it did come. The final persecution campaigns at the turn of the fourth century witnessed the martyrdom of several Christians in Edessa and other major cities.[59] In the 340s, the Christian communities of Persia suffered more, in widespread campaigns conducted under Shapur II and coinciding with the Roman Empire's change to a favorable policy for Christianity.[60] A result of this chronology is that Syriac martyr passions draw on the ascetic imagery of Syriac spirituality rather than the reverse—as, for example, in the Life of Antony of Egypt , where asceticism is named living martyrdom.[61]
Shmona and Curia were two Christian laymen put to death in Edessa around the year 306. An account of their martyrdoms was written soon after.[62] In it, the two men speak without artifice: as Christians, they belong to God. Shmona says, "Our belief is our life in Christ."[63] Such conviction effectively transmutes the meaning of life and death. With words
heard in other Christian martyrdoms, Shmona says, "We are not dying . . . but living according to what we believe."[64] What is death is life; to live would mean to be dead. Indeed, Guria recalls the scripture, "He who loses his life for my sake shall find it."[65] They draw comfort from the stories they have heard of martyrs in other times and other places.[66] In sharp contrast to the contemporary accounts of martyrs by Eusebius of Caesarea, they are in no way "prepared" or "trained" to meet this event, as Eusebius' philosopher martyrs had been.[67] Equally striking is the absence of Satan's presence in these stories and in those of the other Edessan martyrs. The officials involved are portrayed as horrid enough but are never identified with the Adversary, as so often happens in Greek and Latin martyrs' passions.[68]
Shortly after these two deaths, the deacon Habib met a similar fate in Edessa. His story, by the same author, is even more emphatic.[69] When Habib refuses to make sacrifice even after severe torture, the governor exclaims in exasperation, "Does your doctrine teach you to hate your bodies?"[70] The governor implies either that Habib can utterly disregard his body or that he delights in the demise of his physical existence to the greater glory of his spiritual one—both ideas dear to Eusebius, as others.[71] But Habib responds with the simplicity of his Syrian predecessors: "We do not hate our bodies. We are taught that he who loses his life shall find it."[72] Rather than distinguishing between his body and his soul, Habib questions what true life and true death are, the question raised by the action of Christ in the resurrection.[73] Both the governor's question and Habib's response were repeated in the later account of the martyrdom of Sharbil, written contemporaneously with Simeon the Stylite's ascent on his pillar and the outcry of similar protest that his action provoked.[74]
Together these texts make no body/soul distinction but rather speak of life and death as matters for which the physical and spiritual meanings are inseparable. And in that statement we have a reasonable summary of what asceticism means, a meaning held equally by both Western and Eastern Christians: to be dead to the world as it is and alive to existence in the kingdom of God, an existence actualized by the ascetic's practice. Here we see life and death each understood as a state of existence in its own right, and each continuous both here and in the hereafter. They are mutually exclusive of one another, both in this world and the next.
In addition to martyrdom, the fourth century brought a shift in the Syrian Orient from Christianity as an ascetic religion to Christianity as a religion with asceticism as a possible vocation. The shift is marked in the
writings of Aphrahat the Persian (fl. 336–345) and Ephrem Syrus (d. 373), both "proto-monks" in the movement towards monastic communities.
Aphrahat is primarily concerned with celibacy as the starting point of Christian vocation.[75] It is the mark not only of betrothal to Christ, a joyful gift freely given and freely received,[76] but also of the call to participate in the holy cosmic war against the Adversary.[77] In his Demonstration 6, "On the Bnay Qyama," Aphrahat interweaves the concepts of betrothal to Christ, renunciation, service, holy war, and eschatology in a rich tapestry of biblical imagery and models representing a tradition he has inherited, the roots of which may well stem from Qumran and early sectarian Judaism.[78] He does not speak of the body as something to be subjugated to the soul—language pervading the roughly contemporary Life of Antony . Rather, body and soul are God's, as one; both are for His use and His work.
It is Ephrem who extols the exquisite beauty of betrothal as an image, addressing Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom, "The soul is your bride / the body your bridal chamber."[79] Or again, "O Lord, may the body be a temple for its builder / may the soul be a palace of praise for its architect."[80] For Ephrem, alienation of body and soul is the result of the Fall. In his Hymns on Nisibis 69, he writes:
3. . . . for you had joined them together in love, but they had parted and separated in pain.
4. The body was fashioned in wisdom, the soul was breathed in through grace, love was infused in perfection—but the serpent separated it in wickedness.
5. Body and soul go to court to see which caused the other to sin; but the wrong belongs to both, for free will belongs to both.
Now, however, the work of the incarnation has reconciled them once again:
14. Make glad the body with the soul; return the soul to the body; Let them have joy at each other, for they were separated but are returned and joined once more.[81]
Thus Ephrem can rejoice, "We love our bodies, which are akin to us, of the same origin."[82] And he can write this way at the same time that others are describing the startling Syrian ascetics living naked in the wilderness, their hair like eagles' feathers, physically enacting the image of life before the Fall, the true life of the saved believer.[83] It was Ephrem, too, who could exhort that virginity alone without acts of service was an insufficient offering to God, and that chaste marriage combined with
good works could be a better way: "their conduct having filled the place of virginity. For . . . their spirit was bound in the love of their Lord . . . with the desire for Him permeating all their limbs."[84]
The common thread that ties the early varieties of Syrian Christianity to an orthodox tradition is the understanding that body and soul must be united in the act of devotion. What changes over time are the context and circumstances in which the thread is found. In Syriac martyr passions, one finds a commentary on the meaning of asceticism: suffering, or hatred of the body, is neither the goal nor the purpose, but devotion of the whole self is. Aphrahat and Ephrem write about the meaning of devotion to God at a time when Syrian asceticism is shifting toward a defined movement. The extremity that came to characterize Syrian asceticism during the fifth and sixth centuries is well known. It may be that its harshness reflects the impact of the earlier dualistic ethos, or indeed the incorporation of the martyr experience into a spirituality that had come to bloom without that threat. Yet Aphrahat and Ephrem offer witness that the increasing extremity was not born only out of influence from a dualistic ethos but also could come from the search to live out, with one's whole self, betrothal (self-giving) to God.[85]
The two figureheads for Syrian ascetic tradition, praised in the hymns of their own day as well as in later legend, were Jacob of Nisibis (d. 338) in Persia and Julian Saba (d. 366/367) in Mesopotamia.[86] Each took to the wilderness to focus solely on the divine.
Jacob was a solitary in the mountains outside Nisibis.[87] During the spring, summer, and autumn seasons he lived exposed in the brush with the sky for his roof. In winter, he stayed in a cave. He ate only wild plants and denied himself the comfort of fire (for warmth or for cooking) and of clothing, having only his hair for a tunic. His spiritual excellence brought rewards: whatever he asked, God granted, blessing him further with the gift of prophecy. Not surprisingly, Jacob's virtue was discovered by others, and he was ordained bishop of Nisibis. He left his mountains but did not change his way of life. As bishop, he pursued a career of public good works and private asceticism. During the Arian crisis, Jacob traveled to the Council of Nicea to battle for orthodoxy. During the Persian siege of Nisibis he worked among the populace, strengthening their defense and sabotaging the efforts of the Persian soldiers. In the eyes of his public, his effective leadership was the result of his effective asceticism.
Julian Saba's life followed a parallel but contrasting course.[88] Julian, too, was an anchorite. He lived in a cave in the desert of Osrhoene and ate once a week, restricting his diet to meager quantities of barley bread, salt, and spring water. Prayer and psalmody were his primary activities. Julian's way of life brought him growing fame and soon a growing band
of disciples. They settled in nearby caves, ate as he did, and under his leadership practiced an asceticism of prayer, psalmody, and labor. Over time Julian's renown spread, and so too did testimonies to the deeds wrought by his prayers. Like Jacob, Julian returned for a time to society to work in opposition to the Arian challenge. Once he was taken seriously ill but worked his own cure by prayer as he had done for many others. Theodoret of Cyrrhus wrote that the illness was a reminder of Julian's humanity.[89] Appropriately, Julian died in the quiet of his desert home.
Both Jacob and Julian found that the course of their ascetic withdrawal led them back to human society: for Jacob, by ordination to the see of Nisibis, and for Julian, by the growth around him of an ascetic community. Both worked to express divine purpose through action. Both saw fit to reenter worldly affairs by intervening in the crises of war and religious controversy. Neither claimed that his holy resolution absolved him of such commitments. Above all, neither softened his private way of life. The example they set terrified their enemies. It was said that armies were turned and dragons slain by their act of prayer.[90]
Jacob and Julian represent the archetypal Syrian saint, and their stories can be seen as blueprints for the hagiographies to follow. Within their mold, the Syrian Orient developed its ascetic tradition, centering on the individual whose life of devotion gained authority in both the divine and human realms. Yet the earlier features of Syriac Christianity were not supplanted. A separate ascetic institution began to arise during the fourth century, but its demarcation was not always clear. The tradition of the lay ascetic remained, the individual who lived a regulated life of chastity and prayer within society and who served the needs of the local congregation. Ephrem Syrus was himself one such individual, working tirelessly for the bishops of Nisibis and Edessa and known for his exceptional efforts on behalf of the needy when Edessa suffered a famine.[91] There continued in Syrian Christianity the understanding that faith required vocational activity and commitment from its adherents. At the same time, the growth of asceticism as an institution raised other issues for the Syrian Christian community.