Thanks to the work of distinguished scholars including Robert Murray, Sebastian Brock, and Edmund Beck, the theological poetry of St. Ephrem the Syrian is widely appreciated. However, its beauty is difficult for modern readers to reconcile with the vitriol of the anti-Jewish rhetoric in his hymns and verse sermons. The present work, a revision of the author's doctoral thesis, attempts to contextualize Ephrem's work in the theological politics of his era. Shepardson argues that Ephrem, geographically situated on the borders of the Christian Roman Empire, first in Nisibis and then in Rome, had a mission to promote the tenets of the Council of Nicaea, and that this included attacking the “Jewish” beliefs of subordinationist Christians by identifying them with God's rejected People. Thus, Ephrem tells us more about the Christianity than the Judaism of his time.

Shepardson's thesis is generally convincing, and comparison with the anti-Arianist polemic of Ephrem's Greek contemporaries Athanasius, Chrysostom, and the Cappadocians tends to support her argument. This reviewer's only quibble would be that apart from pages 32–33, citations from Ephrem's hymns are presented textually as prose. This obscures their genre as sung poetry and thus their impact on the audience, though Shepardson does refer to “liturgical anti-Jewish rhetoric” (158). It would also be interesting to speculate on the legacy of such hymns once their anti-Arian purpose had been forgotten and they were known only in written form and by the clergy and monks who would surely have thought they were directed only at Judaism.