Evagrius was born in 345 in Asia Minor. He received a classical education in his home region of Pontus where he was close to Basil the Great, who ordained him lector; then he was invited to Constantinople by bishop Gregory Nazianzus, another of the Cappadocian Fathers, where he had an active role in the Second Ecumenical Council of 381. There was a flamboyant streak to his character, and a chronicler noted that he changed his clothes twice a day and later left the city hurriedly following an indiscreet affair with the wife of a nobleman of the city. After a period in Jerusalem he settled in the Egyptian desert where he became known for his extreme asceticism, which perhaps contributed to his death at the early age of fifty-five in 399. This mixture of classical education, teaching of the Nicene faith and ascetic discipline led to his production of an extensive body of writing with letters, treatises, scholia on Scripture and also kephalia or collections of short statements, often arranged in sets of a hundred and so known as centuries.
However this bringing together of classical learning, Nicene theology and desert asceticism proved controversial. Soon after his death, debate and division broke out first in Egypt and then later, in the sixth century, in the Palestinian desert. The writer Cyril of Scythopolis records a visit he made to the monk Cyriacus when he asked him about the teachings associated with Origen and Evagrius, such as pre-existence and the final restoration. Cyriacus replied that they are ‘dangerous, harmful and blasphemous’. The outcome of the controversy was that the writing of Evagrius, along with that of Origen and Didymus, was judged heretical by church councils at Constantinople in 553 and at later councils. Following this condemnation many of the writings of Evagrius were not preserved and so were lost.
However the Evagrian corpus has been reconstituted. Some of the texts with ascetical teaching, notably the Praktikos which is included in this volume, had been preserved. Some had been attributed to other authors and so had survived under their names. Then there are shorter passages which were discovered in writings of other authors. In some cases the Syriac translations had been preserved, and these had been further translated into Armenian and other languages.
This translation of the Gnostic Trilogy is a contribution to this process. The idea for the book arose out of a Syriac symposium in 2011 and over more than a decade the group of five scholars has worked together to provide a new and comprehensive version of this important text. The result is far more than a translation. It brings together several versions in Greek and Syriac, placing them alongside each other to show the variations between texts. Then there are references to other relevant places in the trilogy and in other texts of Evagrius, the Bible and other authors. So for each kephalaion there up to six versions and a list of cross references so showing the history and development of the text. There are no references to secondary literature although there is a bibliography of both primary and secondary sources. There are helpful indices to guide the reader through the material. A clear introduction identifies the various texts used and how they relate to each other.
The result is a comprehensive translation of this important work which can be used as a source for study and research. As the translators comment, the text can be read from beginning to end; or a word or theme can be followed through the use of the index and the cross references; or – perhaps – a short section might be read and re-read slowly and reflectively to enter into the thought world of the writer, a process which, as noted by the translators, can take months or even years.
The work, here referred to as the Gnostic Trilogy, consists of three texts which together provide a comprehensive study of Evagrius’ theology. They follow his three-fold structure with progression from ascetic practice and its psychology or Praxis; to methods of study of the natural world or Knowledge; to the approach to the relationship with God or Theology. It does not try to describe and speak of the nature of the Trinity but rather to show how the Godhead can be approached.
The approach to each of these three works varies. The Praktikos provides a psychology of the ascetic life, with its analysis of the eight passions which passed into the western tradition as the seven deadly sins. There have been several English translations of this. Since the complete Greek text has survived the translators have placed a single Syriac version alongside it, with the references to passages of the Trilogy and other authors adding to the understanding.
The Gnostikos, which concerns knowledge of the world around, is a much shorter work with fifty kephalaia. It has not appeared in an English translation, so here the Greek fragments are translated and also the Syriac texts, so that there can be up to six versions of a single kephalaion.
The Kephalaia Gnostika is the longest work with six centuries of kephalaia. Around a quarter of the text has survived in Greek in various sources and these are all translated. Then there is a complete Syriac version which survives in nine manuscripts, known as S1. There was an important discovery by Antoine and Claire Guillaumont of a further Syriac version in a text in the British Library, announced in 1952 and published in 1958. This contains more speculative material and has become known as S2. It is accepted as being the older version while the more widely copied S1 was an expurgated revision which simplified the text and removed some of the more daring speculations. In this version all the Greek fragments are translated and also the two Syriac texts in full.
Placing the different versions alongside each other provides some thought-provoking reflections. Take for example 3.88 of the Kephalia Gnostica. In S2 it is rendered as ‘Blessed is he who has arrived at infinite knowledge’ while S1 has ‘blessed is he who has arrived at infinite ignorance’. The comments show that ignorance is the dominant reading with the word knowledge appearing in one manuscript. Together they point to the apophatic theme of Evagrius’ thinking. The translators suggest that this apophatic theme lies behind the feature of the centuries of this work in that there are ninety rather than a hundred kephalaia, with this incompleteness showing the limits of knowledge and that there is always more to be said. At the heart of the Evagrian system is Theoria, a Greek word which the translators retain preferring it to possible English equivalents of contemplation or observation. So we read in the Kephalaia Gnostica at 5.30 that the ‘kingdom of heaven is the Theoria of beings’ and then in 6.1 that ‘what is the Theoria of beings the holy book has not made known but it has taught clearly how we might come to it by the practice of the commandments and the truth of knowledge’. These kephalaia bring us to the heart of Evagrius’ disciplne.
This version is a further step in the process of recovering the theology of Evagrius and will add a valuable resource which will lead to further research. It enables the reader to enter into both the thought of Evagrius and to see how it has been interpreted and passed on.
