The past decade has been good to students of Syriac Christianity. From the margins of the field of Early Christian Studies (or even “Patristics”), Syriac has moved, if not to the center, so at least to the comfortable mainstream of the discipline. That is not to say that devotees of Augustine and Origen need to worry about losing their footing, merely that we have come a long way since I was advised – in the not-so-very-distant past! – that writing a dissertation on Syriac topics would be a professional death sentence.
It is perhaps a mark of these developments that, much like its Greek and Latin counterparts, the study of Syriac Christianity has developed its own set of “household names” – for, concededly, a rather rarefied group of households. Chief among them is Ephrem, a fourth-century writer whose extensive oeuvre combines the virtues of an early date, a singular influence on later writers, an (arguably) “orthodox” perspective, and outstanding literary appeal. Unsurprisingly, recent years have witnessed the production of a number of seminal studies on Ephremic themes – a collection to which Hartung’s volume makes a pleasing contribution.
Imagining the Death of Jesus in Fourth-Century Mesopotamia: A Study of Ephrem of Nisibis seeks to address a deceptively simple question: “what, according to Ephrem, did the suffering and death of Jesus mean?” (3) The latter places readers firmly in Christological territory, even in the realm of atonement theology. Indeed, throughout the volume, Hartung, salutarily, avoids treating Ephrem as entirely sui generis: comparisons with the atonement theologies (vel sim) of Gregory of Nyssa and others throughout the work serve to elucidate both the distinctives of Ephrem’s theological vision and the spaces where he and his younger Greek contemporaries evidently drew on a shared fundus of source material. (It is to the book’s credit that the “obvious” comparanda – that is, to say, other Syriac sources – do not really enter the discussion until the final chapter on “Time, Chronology, and the Crucifixion,” inasmuch as for much of the book the questions Hartung identifies in Ephrem have more obvious counterparts elsewhere.)
The book nevertheless does not aspire to crafting a systematic theology of atonement for Ephrem. It rather offers a selection of glimpses into the narrative worlds Ephrem creates for his audiences across a wide range of different texts. The latter reveal, Hartung suggests, often complementary but far from fully integrated theological ideas; under his careful stewardship, Ephrem remains an “occasional” writer, taking his cues from the biblical text, the needs of his communities, and his liturgical surroundings.
Chapter 1 (“Introduction”) accordingly provides the reader with a primer both on Ephrem himself and on his social and intellectual environs, as well as on atonement theology in early Christian writings more broadly. (The latter topic occupies a scant two pages and should obviously not be read in lieu of, say, Grillmeier’s magnum opus. The section nevertheless successfully underlines Hartung’s commitment to treating Ephrem within the context of patristic thought more broadly.)
Chapter 2 (“Ephrem’s Biblical Imagination”) expounds some of the biblical sources from which Ephrem constructs his vision. Chief among these is Matthew 27:52–53: the opening of tombs and rising of the dead in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’s death on the cross. The latter, affectionately known as the “Zombie” passage among students of the gospel, appears with surprising prominence throughout Ephrem’s writings, shedding light both on the role Jesus’s descent into Sheol played in his imagination, as well as the centrality of a bodily resurrection in his anti-heresiological thought.
Chapter 3 (“Dramatizing the Defeat of Death: Personification and Performance”) turns to a couple of relatively neglected Ephremic writings, the prose Mêmrâ on Our Lord, and a selection from the Hymns on Nisibis. Both present the audience with Death personified, albeit in changing, evolving guises. While the Mêmrâ”s Death is thus all greedy mouth and hungry stomach, the versions presented in the Carmina Nisibena emerge as fully realized, even sympathetic characters whose allegiance with Satan is complicated by their ultimate role as agents of the Divine.
Chapter 4 (“Dramas of Jewish Rejection: Jews and the Death of Jesus in Ephrem’s Theological Imagination”) takes up one of the most complex – but best-explored in prior literature – topics in Ephrem’s writings: the role of Jews and Judaism in Jesus’s death. The results are predictably grim, with, for example, Ephrem’s consistently characterizing all of the passion narratives’ antagonists as Jewish. Here, as in other late antique writings, Christian heretics come to be known (and tarred and feathered) under this label as well, resulting in a multilayered tapestry of invective and supersessionism surrounding the passio.
Chapter 5 (“The Economy of Debt and Payment: Economic Imagery, Benefaction, and the Death of Jesus”) treats the theme of Jesus’s death in the context of economic metaphors, including those of debt, repayment, and ransom. To this end, Hartung draws on late antique notions of benefaction, elucidating Ephrem’s Jesus as a generous patron covering the debts humanity has incurred. This singular – and, to be sure, unparalleled and unparallel-able – act calls forth human participation: through ritual and ethical acts, Christians both imitate Christ and show their reciprocal appreciation for his intervention. Hartung contrasts this imagery, so prevalent in Ephrem’s poetry, with the latter’s rejection of “ransom” discourse in his prose-refutations against the Marcionites – one of the book’s most effective demonstrations of Ephrem’s sensitivity to context and audience in his writings.
Chapter 6, already noted above, charts Ephrem’s relationship with the Quartodeciman controversy: the question of how churches ought to calculate the date of Easter. While Nicaea had ordered the calendrical decoupling of the feast from the Jewish Passover, Hartung argues, Ephrem’s experience with the pre-Nicene conjunction of the two shaped his paschal homilies. Ephrem accordingly invests a great deal of energy into rethinking the Passover, including the Exodus narrative, in a Christian framework. Equally interesting is the chapter’s analysis of Ephrem’s answer to the “three day problem”: the question of how Jesus, within the chronology laid out in the gospels, could be said to have spent three days and three nights in the tomb. The proposed answer once again hinges on Ephrem’s embeddedness in broader late antique, including Greek, practices of knowledge creation and meaning making – a fitting high note on which to conclude the study.
This is, to be sure, an impressively wide range of inquiries, directed at an expansive corpus of writings. Potential readers will nevertheless be reassured to know that Death of Jesus is impressively clear, accessibly written, and carefully organized, with copious subheadings and regular reviews of the author’s central arguments. As such, the book has a great deal to offer to readers of varying backgrounds and interests. Syriac scholars already familiar with Ephrem’s writings will appreciate the virtuosity with which Hartung’s inquiry ranges across different, even comparatively marginalized texts. Historical theologians will encounter in it a nuanced portrayal of Ephrem as neither wholly other nor altogether familiar. Church historians and students of late antiquity more broadly will appreciate the book’s efforts to situate Ephrem’s writings in their religious, performative, and socio-historical contexts. As with any work on Syriac topics, this volume neither proposes nor should be treated as the last word on the questions it takes up. In substance as in methodology, however, it presents a commendable model for future inquiries.
