Blake Hartung, who has already written several worthwhile articles on aspects of Ephrem’s writings, here provides what he describes as ‘a major revision’ of his doctoral dissertation of 2017. The subject is obviously one of central importance to Ephrem’s thinking, and so it is welcome to have careful study of the ways in which he discusses it in the course of both his prose and verse writings. After an introduction where Hartung rightly points out the difficulties of attempting to fit Ephrem’s views on the death of Jesus into the framework of different atonement theologies, he focuses on five different aspects of Ephrem’s treatment of the Gospel narratives and his exegetical approach, starting with his use of Matthew xxvii.52–3, the raising of the bodies of the saints, when, as the Odes of Solomon (iv.14) none too decorously put it, ‘Sheol vomited and spat out the dead.’ Where the more general term ‘the dead’ may reflect the reading of the Diatessaron, Ephrem, who links the event closely with Jesus’ final ‘cry’ (verse 50), seems, however, to have known the reading of the Old Syriac, ‘the righteous’, preserved in Sinaiticus Syriacus. ‘The cry’ in turn provides an association with the passage in John v.28, ‘those in the tombs will hear the cry of God and will live’ (the italicised words being the reading of the Old Syriac Curetonianus; cf. verse 25). Given the important connection between ‘life’ and ‘salvation’ in the Gospel of John and, above all, in early Syriac Gospel translation where sozein and soteria are regularly rendered by ḥya ‘to live’ and ḥayye ‘life’, it becomes clear why the passage in Matthew xxvii is of particular importance to Ephrem: on the one hand it served as testimony of Jesus’ divine identity in that in death as well as in life he could raise the dead; and on the other hand, thanks to the link with John v, it took on an added eschatological dimension, pointing forward to the final resurrection. Having untangled some of the exegetical complexity of Ephrem’s thinking, Hartung goes on to show how Ephrem was then able to put his understanding of these passages to good use in his polemic with the followers of Marcion and of Bardaisan.
Hartung’s second sondage concerns the dramatic personification of Death in a number of Ephrem’s writings, most notably in the Sermo de domino nostro, in artistic prose, and in the second half of the Carmina Nisibena. He rightly disassociates Ephrem’s views from those of Gregory of Nyssa who introduced the imagery of Christ as a ‘fishhook’, serving as a means of deceiving Satan. In the Sermo, Christ’s divinity is just ‘hidden’ from Death (as it was for those who did not believe in him during his ministry)’ rather than ‘disguised itself’ as Hartung misleadingly has (following the translation by J. Amar), which introduces the later idea of intentional ‘deception’, which Hartung in fact rightly rejects. The highly dramatised dialogues and arguments between Death and Satan, three of which are close adaptations of the ancient Mesopotamian genre of the Precedence Dispute, raise questions about Ephrem’s intended audiences and the liturgical or para-liturgical context for which they were written; though no clear answers are possible, a discussion is offered.
The following chapter turns to the thorny topic of Ephrem’s anti-Jewish polemic in the context of the death of Jesus. Many questions arise: at whom was the polemic really aimed? How great a threat were the Jewish communities of Nisibis and of Edessa perceived to be – especially in the light of Julian’s support for the rebuilding of the Temple, against which Ephrem reacted forcefully in his madrashe against Julian? Again, how much is just rhetoric (to which one needs to add, how much was it also a manifestation of psogos, or vilification of one’s opponent in a litigious context). In general, Hartung provides a balanced discussion, and importantly he points out that the anti-Jewish language of many of the madrashe is absent from the prose works, suggesting that it was occasioned by certain specific contexts where Ephrem saw his audience as in need of having clear boundary lines drawn. In view of this it would seem unwise to use the term ‘supersessionism’ (thus especially pp. 108, 130) in connexion with Ephrem’s views: his audience is indeed being urged to see that their (perhaps recent) Christian faith as having replaced Judaism, but this is not to be taken as a generalised statement.
Building on Gary Anderson’s illuminating studies of ‘sin’ described as ‘debt’, together with recent studies on patronage and euergetism in the New Testament and early Christianity, Hartung next has an illuminating chapter on Ephrem’s ‘economic imagery’, insofar as it was used with reference to the death of Jesus. The main biblical starting point is Colossians ii.14, the cancellation of ‘the document of debt’: the accumulated debt, going back the Adam’s transgression, is seen by Ephrem as having been repaid by means of an ex gratia payment made by ‘the Rich One’ (De nativitate iii.10). In various places Hartung points out that Ephrem’s preferred verb in this context is pra, to (re)pay (which he misleadingly describes as ‘non-biblical’ , p. 152 n. 4, and p. 155). This (re)payment is definitely not being made to an angry Father, let alone as a ransom paid to Satan; rather, it effects a reconciliation (De crucifixione 8.5), restoring a broken relationship between humanity and God.
The final topic covered is the problem of how to count the ‘three days and three nights’ of Matthew xii.40; for this Ephrem offered a solution in his obscure sixth madrasha on the crucifixion. The chapter represents a reworking of a paper published in a collective volume entitled A. M. Butts and R. Darling Young (eds), Syriac Christian culture (2020). As elsewhere in the book Hartung helpfully sets Ephrem’s approach against the wider background of early Eastern Christianity, in this case that of Gregory of Nyssa, the Didascalia and Aphrahat. According to Hartung’s understanding (pp. 218–19) of Ephrem’s poem, the first day and night consisted of Friday morning + Friday’s darkness from 12pm - 3pm, the second, Friday 3pm to sunset + the night of Friday/Saturday, thus counting a full day as the sequence of daytime + nighttime, rather than (as one would have expected) nighttime + daytime, as is clearly the case with Aphrahat (Dem. 12i.7), who begins the three days with the Last Supper. Although Ephrem never explicitly links the question of the three days with the Last Supper, in a number of passages he sees a very close connection between the Last Supper and the death of Jesus (for example De Azymis 2.7), and so it would seem quite likely that he too took the Last Supper as his starting point and followed the expected sequence of nighttime followed by daylight.
Is there any other aspect that is missing from the five topics chosen by the author? One important verse in particular comes to mind, John xix.34, the piercing of the side of Christ. Although Hartung has a few references to it in passing, he does not go on to explore Ephrem’s rich typological and symbolical exegesis of the verse.
Throughout, Hartung has rightly emphasised the foundational importance for Ephrem of the biblical text; likewise, at several points, he has justly stressed that Ephrem’s approach is not a systematic one, although to call it ‘thoroughly unsystematic’ (p. 152) is going too far: while Ephrem is certainly ‘unsystematic’ in the sense of ‘not systematic’, he is not ‘unsystematic’ in the sense of ‘haphazard’, as implied here. In this wider context Hartung makes the important point that Ephrem’s approach will sometimes differ markedly, depending on the different genre and different audience he has in mind. It is a pity that in several cases transcriptions of Syriac words are wrongly vocalised, and occasionally there are errors in the reproducing of the Syriac text (otherwise very helpful) of longer passages that are cited. In the translation of De crucifixione 3.1 at p. 205 ‘fortieth [day]’ is an unfortunate slip for ‘fourteenth [day]’.
