The Contribution of Biblical Interpretation to the Syriac Renaissance

THE SYRIAC RENAISSANCE

PEETERSLEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA

2010

Edited byHerman Teule & Carmen Fotescu Tauwinklwith Bas ter Haar Romeny & Jan van Ginkel

EASTERN CHRISTIAN STUDIES 9

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CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI

Herman TEULE, The Syriac Renaissance . . . . . . . . . 1

David G.K. TAYLOR, ‘Your Sweet Saliva is the Living Wine’:Drink, Desire, and Devotion in the Syriac Wine Songs of Khamis Bar Qardahe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Martin TAMCKE, Leben aus den Ursprüngen. Zur Funktion des Lesens und schriftlicher Überlieferung bei Giwargis Warda . 53

Gerrit J. REININK, George Warda and Michael Badoqa . . . . 65

Carmen FOTESCU TAUWINKL, A Spiritual Author in 12th CenturyUpper Mesopotamia. Abu Ghalib and His Treatise on Monastic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Dorothea WELTECKE, A Renaissance in Historiography? Patriarch Michael, the Anonymous Chronicle ad a. 1234, and Bar cEbroyo. 95

Jan VAN GINKEL, A Man Is Not an Island. Reflections of the Histori-ography of the Early Syriac Renaissance in Michael the Great 113

John W. WATT, Graeco-Syriac Tradition and Arabic Philosophy in Bar Hebraeus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

N. Peter JOOSSE, Expounding on a Theme: Structure and Sourcesof Bar Hebraeus’ ‘Practical Philosophy’ in The Cream of Wisdom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Hidemi TAKAHASHI, A Mimro on Maphrian Gregory BarÒawmo∑afi Bar ‘Ebroyo by Dioscorus Gabriel of Bar†elli, Bishop of Gozarto d-Qardu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

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Helen YOUNANSARDAROUD, ‘Aßdiso‘ Bar BriÈa’s († 1318) Book of Paradise: A Literary Renaissance? . . . . . . . . . 195

Bas TER HAAR ROMENY, The Contribution of Biblical Interpretationto the Syriac Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Mat IMMERZEEL, Medieval Syrian Orthodox Church Decoration: Deir al-Surian and Deir Mar Musa . . . . . . . . . 223

Bas SNELDERS, The Relationship between Christian And IslamicArt: West Syrian Christians in the Mosul Area (Twelfth-Thirteenth Century). A Preliminary Note . . . . . . . 239

Ray MOUAWAD, The Syriac Renaissance Viewed from Îesno Ziad (Kharput), near Melitene . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Nada HÉLOU, Les Fresques du Liban: maniera graeca ou maniera syriaca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Adel SIDARUS, La Renaissance copte arabe du Moyen Âge . . . 311

Jos J.S.WEITENBERG, Armeno-Syrian Cultural Relations in the Cilician Period (12th -14th c.) . . . . . . . . . . 341

Index of Personal Names and Literary and Artistic Works . . . 353

Index of Geographical Names . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Index of Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

VI CONTENTS

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1 On this project, see ed. R.B ter Haar Romeny, Religious Origins of Nations? The Christian Communities of the Middle East (Leiden, 2009).

2 Giorgio Vasari, Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri (Florence, 1550).

THE CONTRIBUTION OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION TO THE SYRIAC RENAISSANCE

Bas TER HAAR ROMENY

As my research within the Leiden project on the identity formation of the West Syrians focuses on their biblical interpretation, I set myself the task for this symposium of assessing the contribution of exegesis to the Syriac Renaissance.1 One of the main things I kept asking myself while working on this contribution is: if we had only had exegetical texts at our disposal, would we have used the term ‘Syriac Renaissance’? I am afraid that the result of my investigations is more negative than I had expected.

The Concept of a Syriac Renaissance

In order to find out whether exegetical works of the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries would support the idea of a Renaissance, one could try to find out whether they possess the characteristics generally ascribed to a Renaissance, or one could limit oneself to the characteristics that those who defend the proposition of a Syrian Renaissance bring forward. Combining these approaches might give us a matrix that would allow us, perhaps, to indicate which aspects, if any, of a Renaissance are supported by the exegetical literature of the period.

The term Rinascita or Renaissance was made famous by Giorgio Vasari in his 1550 book on Italian art from Cimabue to Michelangelo.2 Vasari refers to a revival of art in his country, and the rediscovery of the aesthetic norms of Classical Antiquity. Though for Vasari Renaissance was an aesthetic term, referring in the first place to a return to Antiquity, rather than a completely new start, nineteenth-century historians such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt used it for the period Vasari

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206 B. TER HAAR ROMENY

3 For the wider use of the term, see for instance, Renaissance & Renaissances, WAU mededelingenblad klassieken aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1e lustrum (Amster-dam, 1983), as well as ed. W. Treadgold, Renaissances before the Renaissance: Cultural Revivals of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Stanford, 1984).

4 P. Kawerau, Die jakobitische Kirche im Zeitalter der syrischen Renaissance: Idee und Wirklichkeit, Berliner byzantinistische Arbeiten, 3 (Berlin, 1955; 2nd ed., Berlin, 1960).

5 Kawerau, Die Jakobitische Kirche (see n. 4), pp. 50-52; 2nd ed., pp. 56-59.

discussed in his book, connecting the term with changes in the way reality was seen: the end of Mediaeval societal structures, the discovery of new countries and peoples, the spread of the art of printing. Such develop-ments gave people the idea that they were standing on the brink of a new era. We should warn, however, that since then the term has also been used in a more general sense, referring to the flowering of culture, with-out the connotations of a new period or a revival of Antiquity. Thus we can speak of the Carolingian and Ottonian Renaissances in the history of Western Europe.3

When it comes to the term ‘Syriac Renaissance’, it appears that many authors use this phrase without further ado. Others simply refer to Peter Kawerau’s Die jakobitische Kirche im Zeitalter der syrischen Renais-sance.4 The subtitle of the book is Idee und Wirklichkeit, which would indeed suggest that here we should find the full rationale behind the use of the term. This is not the case, however. Kawerau does not discuss the idea of a Syriac Renaissance, but just sketches a picture of a reality that is extremely bleak. What he describes is not just a Waterloo. It is rather a dying animal that raises its head for the last time. He accepts the term totenähnliche Dürre for the scholarly climate of the period, and tells us that there were just a few places were sciences could blossom and just a few scholars of import who carried the tradition further.5 The first para-graph in his section on Forms of Devotion deals with unbelief. He fills six pages writing about the general lack of order within the West Syrian Church, as exemplified by greed, simony, lack of discipline, and the inheritability of high positions. The three pages which follow are indeed dedicated to movements towards reform, but one of these deals with the fact that these were only temporarily successful and deemed to failure. Thus, I would say that for a defence of the term Renaissance, one should not turn to Kawerau. Given the contents of the work, one could even suggest that the subtitle Idee und Wirklichkeit was intended as implicit criticism: the idea exists, but the reality is different.


THE CONTRIBUTION OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION 207

6 Kawerau, Die Jakobitische Kirche (see n. 4), p. 3; 2nd ed., p. 3 with n. 21.7 Professor Dorothea Weltecke, personal communication.8 Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich-palästi-

nensischen Texte (Bonn, 1922), pp. 285, 290-191.

This brings up the question of where Kawerau found the term Syriac Renaissance, and why it is taken for granted by so many scholars. Now in the first edition of his study, he introduces the term without further reference. In the second edition, however, he added footnotes in several places. Here it appears that Anton Baumstark’s history of Syriac literature was his source.6 This 1922 work is all-encompassing and complete to such an extent, that nobody has dared to rewrite it. Soon after its publica-tion, it became the standard reference. It has guided generations of schol-ars. As a colleague wrote to me, ‘We all get acquainted with Baumstark in the course of our studies, at the latest in the second Syriac course, and so his views become an almost natural way of thinking when one writes one’s own thesis.’7

For Anton Baumstark, the Syrian Renaissance is a true Wiedergeburt des nationalen Schrifttums.8 One of the factors Baumstark mentions is the influence of renewed contact with the Greek-speaking world. This would explain why the revival of literary life took place in Melitene: Byzantine military successes had moved the border in this direction. He adds that it was only natural that people would take up the older literature anew. As an example, he mentions the philological interest in the heritage of classical Syriac poets of the fourth and fifth centuries, which would show the actual Renaissance character of the movement. Here he clearly fol-lows the traditional Renaissance concept of Giorgio Vasari. On the other hand, he does not deny the fact that the movement also came under the influence of the Islamic-Arabic cultural and intellectual life of the time. Yet, other factors that influenced the movement would have been formed by the first Crusade, which would have strengthened the identity (Sebst-gefühl) of the Syrians, and the arrival of the Mongols. Interestingly, Baum-stark says that only for the West Syrians can one speak of a really new beginning for the development of their literature in the Syriac language, though the East Syrian literature, which had seen a more continuous devel-opment, does share its Renaissance character.

Central to Baumstark, then, is the fact that the East and West Syrian literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries links up with the ear-lier tradition, and especially what he calls the ‘classical’ period of the fourth and fifth centuries. A different approach is found in Herman



9 H. Teule, ‘Gregory Barhebraeus and His Time: the Syrian Renaissance’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, 3 (2003), pp. 21-43. See also Herman Teule’s article in the present volume.

10 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8). A very complete modern survey of Syriac biblical interpretation is found in two articles by Lucas Van Rompay: ‘The Christian Syriac Tradi-tion of Interpretation’, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation, I. From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), I. Antiquity, ed. M. Sæbø (Göttin-gen, 1996), pp. 612-641, and ‘Development of Biblical Interpretation in the Syrian Churches of the Middle Ages’, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation, I. From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), II. The Middle Ages, ed. M. Sæbø (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 559-577.

11 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), p. 290.12 On this work, see Van Rompay, ‘Development of Biblical Interpretation’ (see n. 10),

pp. 568-569 (with further references).13 A. Scher, ‘Notice sur les manuscrits syriaques conservés dans la bibliothèque du Patri-

arcat chaldéen de Mossoul’, Revue des Bibliothèques, 17 (1907), pp. 227-260, on p. 228

Teule’s article on ‘Barhebraeus and His Time’.9 He sees the main char-acteristics in the ecumenical spirit of the time and its openness to the world of Islam. Though these are not usually seen as Renaissance char-acteristics, it is clear that they are the kind of things people nowadays value highly; in fact, they are also the substance of some of the more positive chapters of Kawerau’s book. As long as one keeps in mind that one widens the definition of Renaissance, I have no problem with accept-ing the features mentioned by Teule as possible Renaissance character-istics. Let us therefore continue and see which exegetical works should form the basis of our inquiry.

Available Works and Bibliographic Ghosts

The search for twelfth- and thirteenth-century exegetical works involves a good deal of ghost-hunting. I am referring to bibliographic ghosts: references to authors or texts that on further inspection appear never to have existed. Whoever tries to get a picture of the exegesis of the period and relies on Baumstark, rather than on the modern survey by Lucas Van Rompay, would get the impression that there was notable activity on the East Syrian side in exegetical matters.10 Thus Baumstark mentions one Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos, teacher of the monastery of St Michael near Mosul in the twelfth century, as the possible author of a large col-lection of scholia on the Old and New Testaments.11 He is referring to the collection known as the Anonymous Commentary.12 Baumstark based his view here on a suggestion by Addai Scher.13 In actual fact, there is



14 G.J. Reinink, Studien zur Quellen- und Traditionsgeschichte des Evangelienkom-mentars der Gannat Bussame, CSCO, 414, Subsidia, 57 (Leuven, 1979), n. 4 on pp. 2-3.

15 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), pp. 308-309.16 Reinink, Studien (see n. 14), pp. 2-3; cf. J.-M. Vosté, ‘À propos de la date du Gannat

Bussame’, Revue Biblique, 42 (1933), p. 82. 17 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), note to p. 309 on p. 354.18 On Ibn a†-™ayyib’s exegesis, see among others G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen

arabischen Literatur, II. Die Schriftsteller bis zur Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, Studi e Testi, 133 (Vatican City, 1947), pp. 162-169, as well as J.C.J. Sanders’s edition of the Genesis commentary: Ibn a†-™ayyib. Commentaire sur la Genèse, CSCO, 274-275, Arab., 24-25 (Leuven, 1967).

no reason to connect Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos to this text, as Reinink has explained.14 First, the exegete Sabriso‘ mentioned in the Gannat Bussame is called Sabriso‘ d-Paulos, and cannot be identified with the twelfth-century teacher Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos, as he is quoted in the Gannat Bus-same within a quotation of ∑harbokt, who is now dated much earlier. Second, since this identification has to be given up, there is no longer any reason to assume that the twelfth-century Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos wrote any exegetical work. His namesake d-Paulos lived earlier, but the connection between him and the Anonymous Commentary, which is now usually dated at the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century, remains speculative.

Baumstark also mentions the Gannat Bussame itself.15 On the basis of the idea that Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos would have been its youngest con-tributor and that ‘Abdiso‘ Bar Brika was already unfamiliar with the name of its author, calling him the ‘Turkish Interpreter’, he dated the Gannat Bussame to the early thirteenth century. Now that the identification of Sabriso‘ d-Paulos with Sabriso‘ Bar Paulos has been abandoned, Rein-ink pleads, with Vosté, for the tenth century.16 In his appendix, Baumstark finally also mentioned the two short East Syrian works published by Hoffmann as being of an even later date than the Gannat Bussame.17 Though this is possible, so far no clear indications for dating these works to the period of the Syrian Renaissance have come up. Further examination of Baumstark’s work thus leaves us, it seems, with no East Syrian exeget-ical text written in Syriac in the five centuries before Isaac Esbadnaya’s fifteenth-century Poem on the Divine Economy.

The situation is not as bad as this might indicate, however. First of all, we have to remind ourselves that the East Syrians had also started to write exegetical texts in Arabic. I will mention in passing the name of Ibn a†-™ayyib, who was active in the eleventh century.18 Second, and this is more important for our subject today, there is a Syriac collection of



19 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), pp. 232.20 Reinink, Studien (see n. 14), n. 9 on p. 185.21 Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), note to p. 294 on p. 354.22 O.H. Parry, Six Months in a Syrian Monastery, being the Record of a Visit to the

Head Quarters of the Syrian Church in Mesopotamia, with Some Account of the Yazidis or Devil Worshippers of Mosul and El Jilwah, Their Sacred Book (London, 1895), p. 337.

23 Or Catena Severi; on this work, see R.B. ter Haar Romeny, ‘Ephrem and Jacob of Edessa in the Commentary of the Monk Severus’, in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone. Stud-ies in Honour of Sebastian P. Brock, ed. G.A. Kiraz (Piscataway, NJ, 2008), pp. 535-557.

24 Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls: A History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, trans. M. Moosa (2nd ed., Piscataway, NJ, 2003).

25 Mar Filoksinos Yohanna Dolabany, Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in Za‘faran Monastery, Dairo Dmor Hananyo, ed. Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim (Mardin, 1994).

Questions on the Divine Economy that may have to be dated within our period. On the basis of a note in a much later hand in a Vatican manu-script, Baumstark attributed this work to Înaniso‘ Bar Srosway, who would seem to have lived in the second half of the ninth century.19 As Reinink pointed out, the collection quotes the grammarian John Bar Zo‘bi, who lived around the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This must be the terminus post quem of the work.20 It is possible, then, that we are dealing with a thirteenth century work. It quotes many authorities, among whom Iso‘dad, but I have not been able to study this work.

Among the West Syrians, the situation is much clearer. We have the exegetical works of Dionysius Bar ∑alibi and of Bar Hebraeus. One might say that two authors do not make a Renaissance, but they are two giants, so we should certainly give them the benefit of the doubt. Even here there is a bibliographic ghost, however. In the supplementary notes at the end of his book, Baumstark mentions that the twelfth-century author John, bishop of Mardin, wrote a ‘Catena commentary’ possibly on the whole Bible, based on Ephrem, Jacob of Edessa, and Chrysostom.21 He quotes O.W. Perry as the source of this information. This must be Oswald H. Parry, who wrote a book in 1895 entitled Six Months in a Syrian Mon-astery.22 In this book he gives a list of the manuscripts of Deir el-Za‘faran. Among the ten manuscripts he has seen there was indeed a commentary on the Bible, ‘compiled from works of St. James (of Nisibis or Baradaeus) and St. Efrem’. Baumstark must have added the name Chrysostom by analogy with the Commentary of the Monk Severus,23 as Parry does not mention him. I have tried to find out more about this manuscript, but Igna-tius Aphram Barsoum,24 who knew the collection of Deir el-Za‘faran very well, does not seem to mention this work in his Scattered Pearls, nor have I been able to trace it in Dolabany’s catalogue.25 It is possible that Parry



26 S.D. Ryan, O.P., Dionysius Bar Salibi’s Factual and Spiritual Commentary on Psalms 73-82, Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, 57 (Paris, 2004), p. xvii, with full references.

27 D. Kruisheer, ‘Reconstructing Jacob of Edessa’s Scholia’, in The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation: A Collection of Essays, eds. J. Frishman and L. Van Rompay, Traditio Exegetica Graeca, 5 (Leuven, 1997), pp. 187-196, on p. 196.

28 J. Reller, Mose Bar Kepha und seine Paulinenauslegung, nebst Edition und Überset-zung des Kommentars zum Römerbrief, Göttinger Orientforschungen, 1. Syriaca, 35 (Wies-baden, 1994), esp. pp. 210-214.

took one of the manuscripts with memre of Ephrem and Jacob for a com-mentary.

In short: the question we are left with is to see to what extent Diony-sius Bar ∑alibi’s exegesis and that of Bar Hebraeus contribute to any of the aspects of a Renaissance — traditional and modern — mentioned in the first section.

Dionysius Bar ∑alibi’s Commentary on the Bible

Dionysius Bar ∑alibi wrote a Commentary on the Bible, the Old and New Testaments. In his recent monograph on a section of the commentary on the Psalms, Stephen Ryan describes how Dionysius was known in his own days as the ‘star of his generation’ and ‘the pride of the Syrians’, whereas modern authors describe him as an unoriginal compiler of earlier authors.26 Margaret Gibson uses the term ‘larceny’. J. Rendel Harris is only slightly more positive, as he recognizes that the ‘dust heap of his liter-ary remains’ could contain ‘grains of possible gold’, as it was a ‘magazine of early traditions’. However, originality is not a typically Renaissance characteristic: it became important only in the days of Romanticism. Therefore it is not a criterion that is relevant to this study.

I should add that the problem of originality plays a role for all compi-lations, and thus for most Syriac commentaries from the seventh century onwards. It is interesting to see that authors often set the end of original literature just after the person they are writing about. Thus, Dirk Kruisheer writes that Jacob of Edessa was ‘one of the last to make an original con-tribution to West Syrian exegesis’,27 whereas Jobst Reller, writing about Moses Bar Kepa, seems to be willing to include the latter person.28 One should also realize that even a work that does not contain any new material still shows how the compiler dealt with his sources and which choices he made. This does tell us something about his preferences and circumstances. Thus in order to see what contribution Dionysius made, we will need to



29 D. Bundy, ‘The Genesis Commentary of Dionysius bar Salibi’, in Studia Patristica, XXV, ed. E.A. Livingstone (Leuven, 1993), pp. 244-252, on p. 245.

30 L. Schlimme, Der Hexaemeronkommentar des Moses bar Kepha, II, Göttinger Orientforschungen, 1. Syriaca, 14.2 (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 756-861.

31 Ryan, Dionysius (see n. 26). A complete listing of the earlier literature mentioned is found ibidem, pp. 15-23.

32 As, for example, Baumstark, Geschichte (see n. 8), p. 296, seems to suggest.33 Thus, for instance, W. Baars, New Syro-Hexaplaric Texts (Leiden, 1968), pp. 21-22.

see how he dealt with his sources, which choices he made, and whether he added anything of his own. David Bundy promises us that in the Commentary on the Old Testament, ‘a clear perspective on theology and history is revealed, which is distinctively personal to Dionysisus [sic] Bar ∑alibi.’29 We shall see that this statement is probably too optimistic, yet not completely untrue.

Though there is no full edition of his Commentary on the Old Testa-ment, Dionysius has been served well by doctoral students. There are a number of Chicago dissertations from the period between 1929 and 1934, which offer translations (but not editions) of various parts of his work, as well as a number of more recent dissertations from Australia. Those from Melbourne contain editions and translations of part of the Psalms commentary and Isaiah, those from Sydney cover Kings and Jeremiah. In addition, Lorenz Schlimme has given a study and partial synoptic trans-lation of the Hexaemeron commentary of Moses Bar Kepa and the cor-responding part of Dionysius Bar ∑alibi’s commentary.30 The most recent and most comprehensive study is Stephen Ryan’s Harvard dissertation, which was published in a commercial edition in 2004.31 In addition to a critical edition and translation of Dionysius’ comments on Psalms 73-82, it gives a thorough study of earlier literature, the structure and sources of the commentary, as well as the manuscript tradition.

In handbooks and studies there are a number of conceptions and ideas with regard to Dionysius’ commentary that need to be corrected on the basis of these studies. The main thing is that we should stress that the way the commentary is set up and the use of sources differ from book to book. This means that we can no longer say that Dionysius made a factual and a spiritual commentary for every book,32 and that the former was based on the Peshitta and the latter on the Syro-Hexapla.33 For some books, Ben Sira in particular, Dionysius made just one commentary, for most others he did indeed make two, but for the beginning of the Psalms and Jeremiah he made three. The usual situation is that we find a factual commentary and a second commentary that is defined as spiritual, factual and spiritual, or mixed. These commentaries were presented in parallel columns.



34 Ryan, Dionysius (see n. 26), pp. 37-43.35 Ibid., pp. 41-42, 44.36 Ibid., p. 34.37 Ibid., p. 52 and Chapter 4.38 On Procopius and his method, see R.B. ter Haar Romeny, ‘Procopius of Gaza and

his Library’, in From Rome to Constantinople: Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron, eds. H. Amirav and R.B. ter Haar Romeny, Late Antique History and Religion, 1 (Leuven, 2007), pp. 173-190.

39 Introduction to the commentary on the Gospels in the free rendering of M.H. Simpkin, The Psalm-Commentary of Dionysius bar Salibi, I (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1974), pp. 64-65; Syriac text quoted by J.S. Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana, II (Piscataway, NJ, 2002 = Rome, 1721), pp. 157-158.

40 Schlimme, Der Hexaemeronkommentar, II (n. 30), p. 812. Interestingly, he is much more positive about Moses Bar Kepa, the subject of his studies.

On the basis of Dorothea Weltecke’s studies on the layout of Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle, Ryan suggests that the fact that the factual com-mentary is usually presented in the inner or leftmost columns indicates that Dionysius found this commentary less important.34 It may have been intended for a different audience.35 In any case, this use of columns in exegetical works was an innovation on the part of Dionysius.36 The fact that we have three columns for some books, as well as the textual basis of the commentary, seems to be determined by the sources Dionysius was working with.37 In cases where he announces that the mixed or spiritual commentary is based on the Septuagint, but where in fact we do find some influence from the Peshitta as well, he seems to have taken a com-mentary translated from Greek as his basis. The biblical text often con-sists of readings translated from the Greek with the rest of the source commentary, showing a marked influence by the Peshitta. In such cases he did not use the Syro-Hexapla.

As to his method, an important aspect is the condensing and shorten-ing of the material. Just like Procopius of Gaza,38 he suggests that he made a much fuller, longer collection of sources, which he presents in an abbreviated form in his new commentary. His own description of his method and intentions is most accurate, I found:

We have noticed that it is not possible to bring together all of these com-mentaries on the Scripture into one book; indeed, they would exceed many volumes in length. Therefore what we have done here is to take a summary of the sense of these commentaries and to bring them together, cutting out some of their more prolix verbiage…39

Schlimme writes about Dionysius that ‘die Qualität der Exzerptions-technik des Dionysios bar Salibi als hochgradig mangelhaft und schlecht angesehen werden muß’.40 He complains about the arbitrary manner



41 J. Rendel Harris, Introduction to M.D. Gibson, The Commentaries of Isho‘dad of Merv, Bishop of Îadatha (c.850 A.D.), I, Horae semiticae, 5 (Piscataway, NJ, 2005 = Cambridge, 1911), pp. xi-xxxii, on p. xxxi.

42 The best analysis is that by Schlimme, Der Hexaemeronkommentar, II (n. 30), 756-861, who also gives a German translation of the text, as well as a synoptic presentation of Moses Bar Kepa and Bar ∑alibi for Gen. 2:8-15. Bundy, ‘The Genesis Commentary’ (n. 29), which was published much later, has unfortunately not taken account of this work, and therefore overlooked the role of Moses Bar Kepa. W. Boyes, The Commentary of Dionysius bar Salibi on the Book of Genesis (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chi-cago, 1930), provides a list of authors mentioned by Dionysius without further analysis.

43 See L. Van Rompay, Le commentaire sur Genèse-Exode 9, 32 du manuscrit (olim) Diyarbakır 22, version, CSCO, 484, Syr., 206 (Leuven, 1986), pp. xlvii-lii, with note 48, as well as R.B. ter Haar Romeny, A Syrian in Greek Dress: The Use of Greek, Hebrew,

of selecting material from his sources and about the fact that he moves quickly from verse to verse, without leaving the reader time to think. I would say that these aspects can be seen in a more positive light. Moses Bar Kepa does not make choices and is extremely wordy, which resulted in a commentary that was unwieldy. From a reader’s point of view, Dionysius work was absolutely necessary.

Dionysius’ Sources

It would seem that Dionysius usually took as his point of departure one or two sources, adding some material from others. For the commen-tary on Matthew, J. Rendel Harris has suggested that one could ‘make an equation in the form Bar ∑alibi = Isho‘dad + Bar Kepha’.41 For the beginning of the factual commentary on Genesis this would work, though Moses Bar Kepa is really the main source here.42 There are just a few notes from Iso‘dad, some lines going back to Jacob of Edessa’s Hexae-meron, and a few quotations from a deacon from Nisibis called Surin. There is no direct contact with any earlier exegesis, as far as I can see. Thus Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis is not quoted directly, and nei-ther are any of the many Greek authors Dionysius mentions. All this material came to Dionysius in the form of later collections. I have not seen instances where he tried to reach back and quote any of these authors directly. In this respect, his method is clearly different from that of Iso‘dad, who also relied on earlier collections, but often corrected the text or added material on the basis of the sources available to him. Thus we often find that short quotations from Eusebius of Emesa, deriving from the collection that formed his source, are accompanied by a longer and more exact quotation in Iso‘dad.43



and Syriac Biblical Texts in Eusebius of Emesa’s Commentary on Genesis, Traditio exe-getica graeca, 6 (Leuven, 1997), p. 28.

44 Authors summed up by Dionysius in a note at the end of the commentary ‘according to the Peshitta’ on Psalm 26; Syriac text and translation in Ryan, Dionysius (see n. 26), p. 55.

45 Simpkin, The Psalm-Commentary (see n. 39), p. 90.46 Ryan, Dionysius (see n. 26), pp. 68-70.47 According to G. Diettrich, Isô‘dâdh’s Stellung in der Auslegungsgeschichte des

Alten Testaments an seinen Commentaren zu Hosea, Joel, Jona, Sacharja 9-14 und einigen angehängten Psalmen veranschaulicht, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 6 (Giessen, 1902), pp. xxxix-xlii.

48 My own study, based on the material furnished by Schlimme, Der Hexaemeronkom-mentar, and Boyes, The Commentary of Dionysius (see n. 42). The Syriac text was not available to me.

The closest we come to Iso‘dad’s approach is in the case of a small number of instances where Dionysius replaced the indication ‘others say’ from Moses Bar Kepa by ‘the Nestorians say’. This happened in cases where Dionysius found the opinion he did not agree with not only in Moses Bar Kepa, but also in Iso‘dad. When an opinion was useful to him, he did not need to break the anonymity and mention ‘the Nestorians’, but when he disagreed, he did.

It would be a mistake to think that the equation of Rendel Harris is valid for all books Dionysius commented on. As I indicated, the situa-tion differs from book to book and from type of commentary to type of commentary. Even within a book there can be differences. Thus for Psalms 1-26 Dionysius added a third column with comments from a certain ‘Andrew the Priest, of Jerusalem’. Perhaps because the com-mentary became unwieldy, he did not continue with this author, who had furnished him with the opinions of ‘Origen especially, Severus [of Antioch], the Theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus], Basil, Didymus, Cyril, Hesychius, John [Chrysostom], Athanasius, Theophilus, and Theodoret the Nestorian’.44 In the factual commentary on Psalms 73-82, studied by Ryan, Iso‘dad furnishes some 45-50% of the material. Marjorie Simp-kin, however, states that in the commentary on Psalms 1-72, the subject of her thesis, the use of Iso‘dad varies considerably from Psalm to Psalm, though in general it seems to be more selective than in Ryan’s section.45 In the mixed commentary Iso‘dad is quoted only sporadically. For the section of the Psalms Ryan deals with,46 the Minor Prophets47, and the beginning of Genesis48, it has also been established that Iso‘dad was Dionysius’ source for material going back to Theodore of Mopsuestia, the Interpreter par excellence of the East Syrians. Occasionally, though, it is possible that other links existed, such as the quotations of Theodoret



49 Ryan, Dionysius (see n. 26), p. 71-81.50 Ibid., p. 81-85.

in Andrew, and the possible use of the DenÌa-Gregory Commentary in the Commentary on Psalms.

Further sources for Dionysius’ Psalms commentary include the com-mentary on Psalms attributed to Athanasius, probably available to Diony-sius in the longer Syriac version and used in the mixed commentary, as well as the Great Psalm Commentary by Daniel of ∑alaÌ, likewise quoted in the mixed commentary.49 About fifty per cent of both the factual com-mentary and the mixed commentary on the Psalms remain unaccounted for. The situation in the beginning of Genesis, where almost all comments can be traced back, suggests that we should not conclude too hastily that Dionysius started writing himself. We simply do not have all the sources available to him any more. In particular, we could think of Moses Bar Kepa, who is credited with a Psalms commentary by some biographers.50

Dionysius and the Idea of a Syriac Renaissance

Looking back and reminding ourselves of the possible characteristics of a Renaissance, we can indeed say that Dionysius’ exegetical works constitute to some extent a new beginning: he would seem to have been the first after Moses Bar Kepa (ninth century) to present a full new exe-getical collection in Syriac. However, there is definitely no return to the classical period. Dionysius does not make any effort to move beyond the later collections and reach back to the original authors. He follows the well-known recipe: one takes the collection of one’s predecessor and reworks it once more.

If we are looking for an ecumenical spirit, it is clear that on the one hand, Dionysius is incorporating much material from Iso‘dad; on the other hand, we must say that he does not mention him, but in contrast to Moses Bar Kepa, uses the term ‘the Nestorians’ whenever he wants to distance himself from the opinion given. In comparison to Moses Bar Kepa, this would seem to be a step backwards. In fact, Dionysius’ treat-ment of Iso‘dad fits in very well with what we know about his attitude towards other creeds, which was far from positive. He is the author of a work ‘against all heresies and beliefs that exert pressure on our orthodox faith’, which contains chapters against the ‘idol worshippers’ (i.e., pagans), Muslims, Jews, East Syrian Dyophysites, Byzantine Chalcedonians, and,



51 For all this, see now C.H. MacEvitt, Creating Christian Identities: Crusaders and Local Communities in the Levant, 1097-1187 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton Uni-versity, 2002), Ch. 6.

surprisingly, also the Armenians, who are after all supposed to be his co-religionists. These writings do not try to understand the position of the adversary, but clearly indicate the borders between the communities. Only the Crusaders, or Franks, as he called them, receive a more positive treatment, even though they are Chalcedonians.

The background to Dionysius’ attitude is formed by the political situa-tion of that time. The Middle East of those days was divided into several spheres of influence, and various parties were trying to conclude alliances with each other. It was the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos who was particularly active in this field, as he aspired to become the emperor of a reunited and restored Roman Empire. In order to extend his influence in the southern part of what we now call Turkey, he needed to reach an agreement with the Armenians. In view of this, Armenian and Byzantine delegations met to discuss Christology and exchanged the most wonderful ecumenical formulas. The Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of the moment, Michael the Syrian, had already had quite some trouble with the Arme-nians, who were active in his area. He could only try to restore the balance by talking to the Franks. Actually, he also needed their support and pres-tige to fight off his adversaries within the Church, who disputed the legit-imacy of his election to the Patriarchate.51 Therefore, one can imagine that his friend Dionysius exerted himself to stress the positive aspects of the Franks (‘the real Romans’) and the negative ones of the Byzantines (‘Hellenes, thus pagans’), and even tried to blacken the name of the Arme-nians with theological arguments — quite a tour de force. His adversaries on the other hand could simply follow the Byzantine ecumenical pro-gramme. All this must have been quite confusing to the ordinary layman.

Bar Hebraeus

As indicated at the beginning of this paper, we would also discuss Bar Hebraeus, and it is thanks to him that I am able to finish on a more positive note. The political situation of his days, a century after Diony-sius, was completely different. The power of the Byzantine emperors had been broken by the Fourth Crusade, which was directed against them. The Mongols had gained strength in the East, while the Islamic dynasty



52 H. Takahashi, Barhebraeus: A Bio-Bibliography (Piscataway, NJ, 2005), pp. 147-159.53 J. Göttsberger, Barhebräus und seine Scholien zur Heiligen Schrift, Biblische Stu-

dien, 5.4/5 (Freiburg, 1900), pp. 170-181.54 Thus for instance Boyes, The Commentary of Dionysius (see n. 42), pp. 50-51, and

Van Rompay, ‘Development of Biblical Interpretation’ (see n. 10), p. 575.55 The same situation also applies to Bar Hebraeus’ commentary on Kings; see A.

Sauma, Gregory Bar-Hebraeus’s Commentary on the Book of Kings from his Storehouse of Mysteries, Studia semitica upsaliensia, 20 (Uppsala, 2003), pp. 85-122, especially the table on pp. 119-121.

56 T. Jansma, ‘Barhebraeus’ Scholion on the Words “Let There Be Light” (Gen. I, 3) as Presented in His “Storehouse of Mysteries”. Some Observations on the Vicissitudes of the Exposition of a Biblical Passage’, Abr-Nahrain, 13 (1972-73), pp. 100-114, on pp. 106-107.

of the Ayyubids had entered the stage in Egypt, swiftly making its way to Syria. Bar Hebraeus was born in Melitene, but spent most of his life in what we now call Iraq and Azerbaijan, where he had to deal with the Mongols, who initially had a very tolerant religious policy. As a Maphrian, he was the highest Syriac Orthodox clergyman in the former Persian territory, and the second in rank after the Patriarch.

Bar Hebraeus is the author of many works, among which there is a commentary on the Old and New Testaments, the Storehouse of Mysteries. In addition, there is exegetical material in other books, in particular the Lamp of the Sanctuary. Even though several parts of the former work have been published,52 this commentary and especially its use of sources has not received due attention. Johann Göttsberger lists the names of authors men-tioned, but leaves the question open of to what extent Bar Hebraeus used later collections.53 The general assumption nowadays seems to be that Bar Hebraeus’ main source was Dionysius Bar ∑alibi.54

I can only speak about the Genesis part of the Storehouse of Mysteries, and must warn against general conclusions. For this book, however, I am convinced that Bar Hebraeus went further. For instance, we do not need to assume that he relied on Dionysius Bar ∑alibi for his quotations of Iso‘dad: he has a number of Iso‘dad quotations that cannot be traced in Dionysius.55 The same would seem to be true for Bar Hebraeus’ use of Moses Bar Kepa. It would appear that he had direct access to his work. Though it remains possible that he used Dionysius as well, it is not necessary to assume this. And Bar Hebraeus went even further. In a pas-sage on Gen. 1:1 in the Lamp of the Sanctuary, we see that he follows Moses Bar Kepa, but copies a fuller quotation of Jacob of Serug where Moses has a short reference only. On this basis Taeke Jansma assumed that also in the Storehouse of Mysteries Bar Hebraeus used Jacob of Serug a number of times.56 A real return to the Syriac authors of the



57 L. Van Rompay, ‘La littérature exégétique syriaque et le rapprochement des tradi-tions syrienne-occidentale et syrienne-orientale’, Parole de l’Orient, 20 (1995), pp. 221-235, on p. 234.

58 Teule, ‘Barhebraeus and His Time’ (see n. 9), pp. 36-37.

fourth and fifth centuries we do not find, nor did he access the Greek exegetes he mentions in their original tongue, but at least Bar Hebraeus did not content himself with the last collection compiled before him, as did Dionysius Bar ∑alibi.

In terms of his openness to other Christians, the Storehouse of Mysteries is also more interesting than Dionysius’ commentary. Bar Hebraeus not only accessed Iso‘dad independently, as I indicated, but his philological interest also brought him to the so-called Masoretic tradition of the East Syrians: manuscripts with notes concerning the right spelling and pro-nunciation of the Bible.57 He gives many comparisons in pronunciation between the East and West Syrian traditions. Some of his non-exegetical works go even further. It appears that he saw the Christological differences as just a matter of terminology. Bar Hebraeus also recognized that Mus-lims determined the cultural and scientific standards of the moment, and he considered a good knowledge of Arabic very important. But it is not just in the fields of philosophy, natural sciences and law that Bar Hebraeus followed Islamic models. His Laughable Stories is inspired by an Arabic example and he accepted an Arabic framework for his Syriac grammar, rather than a traditional Syriac one. Even in mysticism and spirituality he appears to have used Islamic examples.58

In the case of Bar Hebraeus too, we have to guess at what the motives were for his ecumenical attitude and his openness towards the Islamic world. It is clear that he admired Islamic scholarship and science, with their Greek foundations. It was the dominant discourse of the day, to which somebody with his broad mind and inclination to study simply had to relate. With regard to his ecumenical attitude, one could think of idealism, but in his case, as in that of Dionysius, pragmatism is also an option. His biography indicates that he was a very clever and at times opportunistic politician, who always knew which way the wind was blow-ing. His Church formed a small minority in the territory of his Maphri-anate. The Mongol overlords were still Shamanist, and Islam was also strongly represented there. Most Christians in the area were Dyophysite East Syrians. Such circumstances called for a diplomat, and a diplomat Bar Hebraeus was. As the leader of his Church, he often visited the Mongol court, and it was only natural that he would follow and support their politics of tolerance.



59 J.-B. Chabot, Littérature syriaque (Paris, 1934), p. 114.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, I would say that the contribution of exegesis to a possible Syriac Renaissance was rather limited, as far as the extant sources allow us to see. Dionysius indeed made a new start by taking up, after two centuries, the tradition of making exegetical compilations. To a very limited extent, Bar Hebraeus also answers to what Baumstark con-sidered the main characteristic of a Renaissance: a return to the sources. If it is justified to speak of a Carolingian and Ottonian Renaissance, the exegetical sources would perhaps also allow us to use the term Syriac Renaissance, though we should bear in mind that this is not the sort of Renaissance Baumstark and his followers had in mind. If we follow Her-man Teule’s criterion and look at the ecumenical spirit of the period, the exegetical works are not very helpful either. Especially in Bar Hebraeus, we see a rapprochement with the East Syrians, even to such an extent that one gets the feeling that he is speaking of one single Syriac tradition, though existing in two varieties. Yet, it does not seem to have been the main characteristic of the period, and ecumenism also seems to have had a pragmatic rather than an idealist background.

It is interesting to see that the idea of a Syriac Renaissance has become generally accepted among German orientalists after Baumstark, whereas it would seem to be much less common among the French. Jean-Baptiste Chabot described the period under study as that of the décadence et fin of Syriac literature,59 a dynamic equivalent rendering of Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’. Gibbon was of course speaking of the twilight of the Roman Empire, but this example shows how our labelling of periods influences our understanding of what happened. Now we call this period ‘Late Antiq-uity’, and many scholars find it the most interesting period of ancient his-tory. Instead of ‘Decline and Fall’, people have started to speak of ‘Devel-opment and Change’. However, it has taken quite some time and trouble before the reassessment of this period became possible. This should warn us against making rash interpretations of the data from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries according to a positive Renaissance scheme or a nega-tive Decline and Fall paradigm.

On the one hand, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries formed a period in which the Syriac Orthodox Church was hampered by large-scale internal problems and corruption. As a result of this, it stood little chance when at the end of the thirteenth century, the pressure from Islam increased.



On the other hand, it was a time in which a number of great spirits tried to turn the tide with a series of important publications and other initia-tives. The particular political and economic circumstances of these centu-ries created opportunities for them. They also had good reason to clarify the position of their community vis-à-vis others. The pressure from the Byzantines to reach an understanding on the issue of Christology had confused people. The arrival of the Crusaders had added to this, but had also broadened the horizon of the West Syrian Christians. A new exchange between cultures became possible. In their own times, their success may have been limited, but scripta manent: Dionysius Bar ∑alibi and Bar Hebraeus are reprinted and read up to this day in the Syriac Orthodox community. Their biblical interpretation and other works form the herit-age of this group and the basis of their identity. This heritage has two sides: clarity about what is Orthodoxy and at the same time openness towards other traditions, be they Christian or Islamic. Whether we can speak of a Renaissance or not, it is by this openness that the Syriac Ortho-dox Church distinguishes itself from many others.


The Contribution of Biblical Interpretation to the Syriac Renaissance

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