It was not too long ago that the study of the Christian Orient was quite the esoteric field. Now, under the umbrella of late antique studies, the field is coming under the purview of more and more scholars. This is, of course, by no means to say that no problems remain. The origins of the Syriac church—or churches as Saint-Laurent rightly notes—is just such a case in point. Though there is no dearth of source materials much remains to be studied and sorted out: sources are contradictory, anachronistic at times, woven from both historical fact and legends, and often have underlying agendas that need to be painstakingly resurrected for the proper understanding of the modern reader.
The study under review here was originally submitted as a dissertation to Brown University under the supervision of Susan Harvey. In the short space of its somewhat revised version, Saint-Laurent discusses seven important documents that are of significant importance for the beginnings of the various early Syrian churches. These seven accounts, of various lengths, are not at all from a single, homogeneous Syrian church; they range chronologically from the early fourth to the beginning of the ninth century. They also span the various christological divisions of the Syrian churches: Nicene/orthodox (Acts of Thomas, Teaching of Addai); Church of the East/Nestorian (Acts of Mari); West Syrian/Miaphysite/Jacobite (the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, two Lives of Jacob of Baradaeus, the Lives of the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus, and the Life of Ahudemmeh). In addition, they generally take place within different geographical locales: Edessa and its environs; an area roughly corresponding to modern Iran; the remaining areas of Middle East: modern Iraq, Jordan, etc., respectively.
Saint-Laurent in no way disregards the historical importance of these texts; nonetheless, her primary purpose is neither their historicity nor their historical background, but rather the literary aspects, the intertextuality of all seven of these texts. Saint-Laurent refers to all seven as “missionary texts,” though one could easily argue that those texts titled “Lives” are rather hagiographical texts, which happen to focus on missionaries. Whatever their labels, Saint-Laurent examines these texts as portraits, or even as she puts it, “as sacred objects or works of art” (2). These seven texts all follow, grosso modo, a discernible literary pattern already found in the Acts of Thomas, the earliest of these texts. Utilizing the common “symbols” of monarch, city, missionary, bible and, in the end, conversion of monarch and city (a symbol that has roots long before the Acts of Thomas as Saint-Laurent seems to claim), Saint-Laurent demonstrates how each of these texts is concerned to show the holiness of the missionary and the unstoppable power of the only God, the triune Christian God, whom that missionary serves. Thus, the portrait serves as the foundational myth for this newly-founded community (and thus its christological preference!) and is thus “an essential genre for understanding the complex and gradual process through which the Syriac-speaking communities became” a particular church (13).
Each chapter provides a quick overview of the text being analyzed, followed by an analysis of the particular symbols of most importance and how the author of the text uses them to weave his tale, as well as a short summary of the historical circumstances of the events (both background and ccontemporary), as well as the key players depicted in the text in question.
While it has not shed all the vestiges of its original dissertation genre (mostly notably, some repetitive “reminders” recur from chapter to chapter), this work of Saint-Laurent constitutes the first real comparative study of this important collection of seven texts—each has been studied individually, and nearly all exist in modern editions and translations, and will thus be a reliable foundation for further study of these texts. While she notes the importance of the Acts of Mari for the establishment of the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and its own hierarchy, it might also be worthwhile to demonstrate just how the chronologically later of these texts are written specifically to “replace” or to “undo” the earlier texts from another christological tradition, most importantly in this regard, the Life of Ahudemmeh. It seems to this reviewer that there is clearly sufficient material for such a monograph on each of these texts, another indication of the usefulness of this study.
Both author and printer ought also to be lauded for a text that is also remarkably free of error. Apart from the unfortunate intrusion of a Latin ex into the Greek phrase mia physis ek duo (8), and the few occasions of the ubiquitous but nonetheless erroneous expression “hearken back” I failed to notice any other such errors.
