Breaking the Mind: New Studies in the Syriac Book of Steps. Edited by Kristian S. Heal and Robert A. Kitchen
The Book of Steps or Liber Graduum is an odd text. Surviving in only one complete manuscript from the twelfth century, this collection of thirty memre or discourses is something of a poor relation even within modern Syriac studies where it tends to recede before more familiar figures such as Aphrah...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
|
| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 72, Issue: 2, Pages: 997-1000 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
|
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The Book of Steps or Liber Graduum is an odd text. Surviving in only one complete manuscript from the twelfth century, this collection of thirty memre or discourses is something of a poor relation even within modern Syriac studies where it tends to recede before more familiar figures such as Aphrahat and Ephrem. Prior to the modern era it seems never to have penetrated beyond the Syriac-speaking world and has only limited attestation within that tradition. Part of the issue here is the peculiarity of its ascetic vision. While undoubtedly profound in its scriptural witness and full of fascinating insights into the Christian life, the Liber Graduum maintains a rather strict division between the ‘upright’ and the ‘perfect’—the upright being charged with the material support of the perfect whose principal duty is prayer and contemplation. Such two-tier schemas of Christian polity are generally associated with heterodox forms of Christianity—with Manichees, Messalians, and Cathars, amongst others. Indeed, much of the scholarly conversation around the Liber Graduum following the editio princeps of Michael Kmoskó in 1926 revolved precisely around its relationship to Messalianism given the apparent convergence of some of its tenets with certain of the condemned propositions associated with the Messalians. Fortunately, recent research on Messalianism has hugely problematized any sort of facile equation of the Liber Graduum with Messalianism, thus opening up the possibility of encountering and interrogating this text without constant and often circular reference back to the Messalian tendency. This is an opportunity seized by many of the contributors to this volume—not that any of them quite solves the intractable Messalian question. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/flab129 |