Jacob Of Serugh Research Articles

Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler

Reviewed by: Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Blake Leyerle Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Maria E. Doerfler Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 396. ISBN: 9780520304154 In this nuanced and exquisitely written study, Maria Doerfler takes readers on an extended survey of the richly variegated terrain of loss. Drawing on hymns, as well as on homilies and commentaries, she not only assesses the response of clerics to child mortality but also illuminates the affective responses of bereaved parents. Throughout the work, she stresses the powerful role of the liturgy in scripting emotions, and she explores how expressions of grief are typically gendered. The merits of this splendid work are many. Chief among them is the rich array of cited evidence. With impressive ease, Doerfler ranges across genres and linguistic communities, weaving Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian sources into a conversation usually solidly dominated by Greek and Latin authors. To extend and clarify her analysis, she draws on contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, adduces ancient material evidence, and cites voices from the medieval period, as well as from our own. Epigraphs to the chapters are as likely to feature quotations from recently published manuals on parenting as extracts from documentary papyri, a verse from Galit Hasan-Rokem's poetry as a passage from Theodoret. An introductory chapter sets up the study. Although information about the death of children in Late Antiquity remains frustratingly scanty, the experiences of one particular group of children, namely biblical characters, "were amply—one might even say excessively—documented and discussed" (5). The fact that most of these children, (Abel, Isaac, Jephthah's daughter, and the Maccabean mother's seven sons) are adult offspring underscores how this study is as much about parental bereavement as it is about the death of subadults. For if theological treatises, borrowing from philosophical writings, often conclude that an early death is a boon to both the deceased and their families, the reactions of biblical characters suggest otherwise. In their unrestrained grief, they offer vital, if often overlooked counternarratives (12). After a helpful summary of the social, religious, and ritual contexts surrounding children's death and commemoration, each subsequent chapter focuses on one or two of these dramatis personae. Chapter 2 focuses on scripture's first bereaved parents. Presented as paragons of suffering, Adam and Eve functioned not only to moderate but also to elevate the grief of ordinary parents. The laments placed into Eve's mouth by Ephrem, among others, invited parents to set their own loss within that narrative framework, and thus they offered reassurance that their children—just like Abel—would enjoy a paradisiacal future (59–71). Chapter 3 takes up the binding of Isaac, which Doerfler presents not as an exceptional story but as a familiar horror: "the threatened death of an aged couple's only son—and with it, the end of the family's lineage" (77). Portraying Abraham as a paragon of piety and emotional restraint, homilists urged parents to respond to the surrendering of their children—to martyrdom or the ascetic life, as well as to premature death—in a similarly pious and trusting manner (82–88). Realism enters, however, in the [End Page 252] figure of Sarah, whom homilists insert into the narrative to give voice to maternal grief and to theological protest. Her words allow "writers to express what Abraham in these texts could not, but what late ancient audiences evidently felt the situation required" (96). Indeed, for some homilists, Isaac's survival was due to her vociferous lament (99–101). In an especially brilliant chapter, Doerf er illuminates how the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the death of the Maccabean mother's seven sons function as parallel narratives to the Akedah. Although Jephthah is praised by Jacob of Serugh as a model parent, one who balanced allegiance to the divine and devotion to his family, for most early commentators, he is "a compromised hero, a counterfeit Abraham, a dangerous example" (116). Condemned as much for his overt expression of grief as for his rash vow, his mourning...

Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity. By Maria E. Doerfler

Maria Doerfler takes on the cheerless topic of childhood mortality in her first book, winner of the AAR’s Best First Book Award for 2022. Doerfler writes gracefully and sensitively, opening up a world unfamiliar to many of us: Syriac Christian theological treatises, homilies, and sermons, particularly the work of Ephrem Graecus, Jacob of Serugh, Narsai, and other eastern Christian writers from the fourth to sixth centuries. Some of these sources have long been available but have not yet been mined for the particular focus that consumes Doerfler; others, she makes available to English-language readers for the first time. She deftly weaves together fragments of a hidden phenomenon: despite its ubiquity, the death of children—not to mention societal responses to it—remains largely absent from both the literary and the archaeological record. Death in childhood was all too common in antiquity, but for most of us, it remains something to which we mercifully cannot relate. It is that emotional distance that made this topic one that was, prior to Doerfler’s book, uncharted territory within scholarship, and it is that same emotional distance that makes this issue possible to bear today. Like the authors she discusses, Doerfler never succumbs to sentimentality nor to morbid description.

Review: Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh, by Philip Michael Forness

Review: <i>Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh</i>, by Philip Michael Forness

The Gendered Body in Verse: Jacob of Serugh and Romanos Melodos on the Woman with a Flow of Blood

Abstract This article examines the reception history of the story of the woman with a flow of blood as recounted in Mark 5:25–34, Matthew 9:20–22, and Luke 8:43–48 within the writings of two late antique poets: Jacob of Serugh (ca. 451–521 CE) and Romanos Melodos (b. ca. 485 CE). In their poetic compositions, Jacob and Romanos retell and interpret biblical stories employing narrative expansions and the attribution of imagined speech. The Syriac poet, Jacob of Serugh, wrote in the form of narrative poems, or mēmrē, while Romanos perfected the form of the Greek kontakion. Like prose homilies, these poems reached Christians from across the social spectrum, providing spiritual instruction and delighting audiences. Previous reception histories of this biblical narrative have largely overlooked late antique and early Byzantine poetry performed within the liturgical space. In addition to filling this lacuna in scholarship, this article also highlights how these understudied poems contribute to our understanding of early Christian discourses of (im)purity. Romanos emphasizes the symbolic value of the gendered body, blending the imagery of stain, impurity, and sin. In contrast, Jacob’s lexical choices and poetic style underscore the woman’s physical and emotional strife. Through speech and the description of the woman’s bodily state, both poets provide dramatic depictions of the woman’s encounter with Jesus that enrich our understanding of how late antique Christians interpreted this biblical story.

Giving Voice to Pain: New Testament Narratives of Healing in the Poetry of Jacob of Serugh

The late antique Syriac poet, Jacob of Serugh (451–521CE), composed narrative poems or mēmrē on a variety of biblical stories featuring miraculous healings. This essay approaches the subject of pain through examining two of these works: Homily 169 about the woman with a bent spine from the Gospel of Luke (13:10–17) and Homily 170 about the woman with an uncontrolled flow of blood found in the Gospel of Mark (5:25–34) and recounted in Matthew 9:20– 22 and Luke 8:43–48. Composed for liturgical performance, Jacob's poems feature expanded descriptions of the women's bodies and imagined speeches. Through his crafted persona as poetic narrator, Jacob rendered the anomalous female body as a symbol for the sinful human condition, reflecting larger interpretative traditions surrounding these biblical stories. In addition to this exegetical approach, Jacob's poetic form allowed him to dramatise these encounters with Jesus through embellished, first-person speeches. Jacob centres the listener's attention on the physical pain, emotional distress, and the social implications of the bodily conditions of the biblical characters. As a result, his poetry resists the erasure of the female body through the closure of symbolic readings. He embedded his meditations on pain and the social consequences of physical impairment within an overarching anti-Jewish polemic. These complex literary representations project ideals of faithful suffering and Christian identity that were formative for the Syriac Christian communities who heard and preserved Jacob's writings.

The Anonymous Source for Marcion's Gospel in British Library, Add. 17215: An Identification and Analysis

For over a century, studies on Marcion have cited a quotation attributed to him in a fragmentary Syriac manuscript: London, British Library, Add. 17215 (fols. 30–3). An English translation of the relevant passage appeared in 1893, but no subsequent study has returned to the Syriac text itself. While this text has hitherto been cited as an anonymous Syriac source, this article identifies it as a letter by Jacob of Serugh (d. 520/1) and offers preliminary remarks on the implications of this identification for future research on Marcion's Gospel and his thought.

Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh. By Philip Michael Forness. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2018. xv + 322 pp. $100.00 cloth.

Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh. By Philip Michael Forness. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2018. xv + 322 pp. $100.00 cloth.

Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East. A Study of Jacob of Serugh, written by Philip Michael Forness, 2018

Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East. A Study of Jacob of Serugh, written by Philip Michael Forness, 2018

Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler

Reviewed by: Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Oana Maria Cojocaru Maria E. Doerfler Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Oakland, CA: California University Press, 2020 Pp. 416. $ 29.95. The book focuses on how late antique people responded to the challenging issue of childhood mortality which was part and parcel of the everyday life of Christian communities. Parents who asked themselves why their children suffered and died so young or how they were to cope with this tragic event may have found their answers in liturgical narratives composed by various Christian authors of the fourth to the sixth centuries, in both the Latin West and the Greek and Syriac East. The overarching argument of Doerfler is that these narratives, crafted around a few well-known biblical characters who experienced tragic losses themselves, were intended to provide psychological, moral, and theological support to bereaved parents. After outlining in the Introduction the scope and structure of her study, in Chapter One Doerfler situates children’s deaths in their socio-historical and ritual contexts by discussing the burial practices and commemoration of departed children. Mindful of the meagerness of archaeological data concerning children’s funerary practices, the author skillfully combines material and textual evidence that give some insight into a range of practices surrounding the death, burial, and commemoration of children, which vary according to the geographical location, financial means, and family preferences. Chapter Two focuses on the liturgical narratives inspired by Genesis 4, which records the killing of Abel by Cain, an occasion for exegetes to portray Eve and Adam as epitomes of parental bereavement, and to teach their audience how to grieve their own dead children. Eve is featured as particularly shaken by Cain’s fratricide: she has not only lost Abel, but also Cain who was punished to wander the world. Doerfler argues that Eve’s suffering envisioned especially by the Syriac writers acted as a mirror through which bereaved parents could internalize their [End Page 665] experience of losing their dear children. One consolation for their loss was the idea preached in the patristic literature, according to which, the departed children would enjoy their afterlife in paradise. Chapter Three deals with the Akedah (Genesis 22)—another biblical story that inspired Christian exegetes to explore the theme of childhood mortality within the context of parental submission to the divine will and the sacrifice of children to God. Abraham’s composure when fulfilling the divine command to kill his own son provided the opportunity for late antique writers to envision various scenarios of what Sarah might have said or done when finding about her husband’s intention to sacrifice Isaac. She becomes “a compensatory figure” (96), “a vital voice for parental grief, lament, and recrimination in aspects of the late ancient exegetical tradition” (99). Chapter Four deals with the intertextual connection of the Akedah with two other biblical narratives that present parents sacrificing their children: Jephthah’s killing of his only daughter (Judges 11), and the mother of the Maccabean martyrs (2 Maccabees 7). In stark contrast with Abraham, whose stoic attitude and readiness to fulfill God’s command to kill his own child was praised by various homilists and commentators, Jephthah aroused heavy criticism for his emotional display at the prospect of killing his own daughter. Against this adverse view of Jephthah’s manifestation of grief, Jacob of Serugh saw him as “a model of balancing grief with duty” (116), “a fundamental human—but not, for that reason, a less admirable—response to moral conflict and especially bereavement” (117). If Jephthah’s character diverges from the masculine ideal of how grief should be expressed, the Maccabean mother, who completes the triad of biblical parents who sacrificed their children, represents the manly woman who displays resilience in the face of her sons’ deaths, a role model for family relationships and spiritual formation of children, as well as “an exemplar of both old and ‘new’ motherhood, of triumphant stoicism, and deep parental attachment and suffering” (142). Chapter Five examines how the story of Job was deployed by homilists and commentators for different strategic...

Słowo, które staje się obrazem, w tradycji chrześcijan syryjskich

Word which becomes an image in the tradition of Syriac Christians. The paper examines the subject of figurative art in the theological space of the tradition of Syriac Churches. Even if in the early stage of their existence those communities were an integral part of Byzantine Empire, they developed a totally different pattern of the imaging, which didn’t consist in icons or in the other forms of the traditional art. The main focus of the Syriac theological painting was to use the written word. Such an approach wasn’t a result of any prohibition inherited from the Jewish tradition or of an internal iconoclasm, but it arises from the mentality and spiritual sensitivity of the people from the Middle East. The author recalling a few works of Ephrem the Syrian, Aphrahat and Jacob of Serugh shows some examples of texts where the word assumed function of the painting brush

Without shame or desire: the pronouncements of Jesus on children and the kingdom, and early Syriac attitudes to childhood

This paper demonstrates the techniques used by five Syriac writers of the mid-fourth to early sixth centuries in interpreting the dominical injunction in Matt 18:3 to become like children in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Unlike modern critical approaches, early Syriac exegesis of this saying is shaped less by the surrounding context than by association with other scriptural texts, in a manner more reminiscent of Jewish midrashic technique. The writers are Aphrahat, Ephrem, the author of the Book of Steps, Narsai and Jacob of Serugh. This study notes the interaction in some of the sources with their interpretation of Gen 2–3 and demonstrates the influence of the writers' pre-existing protology and eschatology on their exegesis of the New Testament passage. Recurring themes include whether Adam and Eve were believed to be children before the fall; whether the goal of the believer should be a return to a state of prelapsarian innocence; the existence of sexuality before the fall; and how to imitate angels as well as children. Key terms used in the sources are ̆sabrutā ‘infancy’ or ‘naivety’, and gmirutā ‘perfection’ or ‘maturity’, and the rather different concepts they represent in the five writers.

A Metrical Homily of Jacob of Serugh on the Mysteries, Types and Figures of Christ

A Metrical Homily of Jacob of Serugh on the Mysteries, Types and Figures of Christ

Jacob of Serugh's Verse Homily on Tamar (Gen.38)

Jacob of Serugh's Verse Homily on Tamar (<i>Gen.</i>38)

Jacob of Serugh, Select Festal Homilies

Jacob of Serugh, Select Festal Homilies

The Credo of Jacob of Serugh: a Return To Nicaea and Constantinople

The Credo of Jacob of Serugh: a Return To Nicaea and Constantinople