The Authorship and Dating of the Syriac Corpus attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis: A Reassessment
A large portion of the Syriac works attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis survives in the form of collected poetic anthologies. This paper argues that previous attempts to assign authorship and date of composition to Ephrem’s hymn cycles mistakenly treat these works as if they were treatises written by Ep...
| Published in: | Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2018
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| In: |
Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Ephraem Syrus 306-373
/ Hymn
/ Collection
/ Authorship
/ Dating
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity KBL Near East and North Africa |
| Further subjects: | B
Ephrem of Nisibis
Syriac Christianity
Late Antique Poetry
Textual Transmission
Authorship
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | A large portion of the Syriac works attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis survives in the form of collected poetic anthologies. This paper argues that previous attempts to assign authorship and date of composition to Ephrem’s hymn cycles mistakenly treat these works as if they were treatises written by Ephrem. Scholars have tended to treat the hymn cycles as units and to judge the authenticity of each cycle as a whole. By contrast, this paper contends that the cycles postdate Ephrem and were assembled and supplemented by later editors. It further proposes that the heterogeneous origin of most of the hymn cycles makes it impossible to date them to a particular time in Ephrem’s career. To hypothesize a date of composition is to assume that Ephrem composed the hymns in that cycle at a particular time and collected them as a unit. Likewise, this paper contends that scholars must be frank about the general lack of historical evidence, which severely challenges our ability to contextualize fourth-century Syriac poetry. The paper concludes by proposing a new approach to questions related to authorship and date of composition, one focused on smaller metrical sub-units (meter-melodies) that comprise the large hymn cycles. |
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| ISSN: | 1612-961X |
| Contains: | In: Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/zac-2018-0033 |