Chapter Twelve

The Syriac Transmission of Basil of Caesarea’s On The Holy Spirit

Benjamin D. Wayman

In 375, Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) penned a treatise on the person and work of the Holy Spirit that would prove amenable to many fourth-century Christians. Written during a period of sharp theological division in the church, On The Holy Spirit carefully resists doctrinal innovation beyond the creed of Nicaea while also developing a clearer discourse on the Holy Spirit. The merits of Basil’s work were so pronounced that it appears to have framed the creedal statement of the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople.1

Before the Council of Constantinople in 381, On the Holy Spirit was distributed not only to Amphilochius and his community in Iconium west of Caesarea, but perhaps also to Syrian Christians south of Caesarea where it was translated into Syriac. Basil’s pastoral sagacity, his rhetorical skill, his theological acumen, and his close connections with Syriac churches2 helped make his On the Holy Spirit desirable for

1 Lewis Ayres maintains, “Constantinople’s account of the Spirit seems

to mirror Basil’s cautious strategy of insisting that we accord the Spirit equal glory and honour, but refrain from using the terms God or homoousious.” Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 257.

2 Paul J. Fedwick underscores Basil’s numerous Syrian connections and comments: “All such contacts favoured the early penetration of Basil’s works into Syriac speaking areas.” Paul J. Fedwick, “The Translations of the Works of Basil Before 1400,” in Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, pt. 2, ed. Paul J. Fedwick (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981), 445.

transmission.3 Within a few years of its composition, Basil’s text was transmitted to a Syriac community whose translator subjected it to conspicuous revision.

David G. K. Taylor has studied the transmission of On the Holy Spirit to Syriac Christianity and has recently produced a critical edition and English translation of the text in two consecutive volumes.4 Taylor’s findings present a clear instance of how theologically motivated changes made to a text in the process of transmission have affected its meaning. The present study offers a textual and theological analysis in light of Taylor’s recent work. This analysis will show that the compositional differences contained in an early Syriac version of On the Holy Spirit (which will be referred to as Syriac I), can be explained best as the product of a translator’s theological agenda. What had in Basil’s hands been a work of theological subtlety has become, in the hands of the Syriac translator, a work of bold theological declaration that specified the divine nature of the Holy Spirit.

The study proceeds in four movements. First, it portrays salient features of content and context related to Basil’s original Greek composition, while raising the question of Basil’s bold proclamation. Next, the dating, manuscript tradition, and translation style of Syriac I is discussed, and in so doing, Syriac

3 David G. K. Taylor highlights Basil’s popularity in the Syriac speaking

church and observes, “It should thus come as no surprise that more of St. Basil’s writings are preserved in Syriac than in any other translation.” David G. K. Taylor, “The Syriac Versions of St. Basil of Caesarea’s De Spiritu Sancto,” Studia Patristica 27 (1993): 105.

4 David G. K. Taylor, ed., The Syriac Versions of the De Spiritu Sancto by Basil of Caesarea, CSCO 576, Scriptores Syri 228 (Louvain: Peeters, 1999); David G. K. Taylor, trans., The Syriac Versions of the De Spiritu Sancto by Basil of Caesarea, CSCO 577, Scriptores Syri 229 (Louvain: Peeters, 1999).

I is located squarely in the middle of the late fourth/early fifth-century controversies of the church. After addressing these textual issues, the study highlights three classes of textual revisions in the Syriac transmission that are also theologically charged and hence affect the meaning of the text. The final move of the essay occurs in two motions. First, the textual revisions in Syriac I are brought into sharp relief by first revisiting the narrative of On the Holy Spirit presented in the first section and illuminating the forces pressuring the emendations in Syriac I. Lastly, an explanation is offered for why the Syriac translator corrected Basil’s original work and proclaimed what Basil refused to state explicitly. This essay will contend that the Syriac transmission of Basil’s text can be seen as a theological work of a bold, but nonetheless pro-Basil, Syriac translator.

Basil’s On the Holy Spirit

Basil’s treatise On The Holy Spirit has been regarded not only as his “greatest theological production” but “the most significant pneumatological treatise of the entire [fourth] century.”5 Originally written in Greek and likely completed by the end of AD 375, On The Holy Spirit provides a significant witness to the discourses emerging from the theological tensions between fourth-century Christians.6 Written during what Basil describes as the “Arian schism,”7 he likens the “present condition” of the church to a “naval battle” and offers numerous reasons why one would be wise to maintain silence in

5 Mark Larson, “A Re-examination of De Spiritu Sancto: St. Basil’s Bold Defense of the Spirit’s Deity,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 19, no. 1 (2001): 77.

6 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xxv–xxvi. 7 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 30.77, trans. David Anderson, St.

Basil The Great: On the Holy Spirit (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 114.

such a volatile situation.8 But despite his own judgment, Basil explains that he is compelled by love to “trust in the Spirit’s help, and boldly proclaim the truth.”9

The degree of Basil’s “boldness” in On the Holy Spirit has had mixed reviews throughout its reception history. Even prior to Basil’s writing of On the Holy Spirit, his bold proclamation of the Spirit had been called into question by one of his own monks who had recently heard him preach. Dissatisfied with Basil’s pneumatological profession, the young monk openly criticized Basil’s theology at a banquet at which Basil’s friend, Gregory Nazianzen, was presiding. In turn, Gregory reported to Basil of “a monk who publicly upbraided Basil with talking marvelously about the divinity of the Father and the Son but…avoided speaking of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.”10 Gregory relays this charge in a letter to Basil in 372:

Basil [is]…the betrayer of the faith…[for when] I heard the great Basil teaching about God, [he spoke] most excellently and perfectly about the Father and the Son…but he belittled the Spirit….He gives obscure indications and, so to speak, faint impressions of his teaching, but he does not speak the truth boldly. Rather he floods the ear with what is

8 The whole of chapter thirty of Basil’s On the Holy Spirit discusses the

polarized theological context in which Basil wrote and distributed his text. 9 Basil, On Holy Spirit 30.79, trans. Anderson, Holy Spirit, 118. 10 Lukas Vischer, “The Holy Spirit—Source of Sanctification:

Reflections on Basil the Great’s Treatise on the Holy Spirit,” in Festschrift Gunter Wagner, ed. Faculty of Baptist Theological Seminary, Rüschlikon, Switzerland, International Theological Studies 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 207.

more political than orthodox and conceals his duplicity by the power of his speech.11

Noteworthy aspects of this charge are the claims that Basil belittles the Spirit, that he obfuscates his teaching, that he fails to confess boldly the truth, and lastly, that he employs his rhetorical skill to serve political rather than orthodox ends. Later in this study, we will revisit this accusation and address the question of whether one would have grounds for repeating this same charge after reading Basil’s On the Holy Spirit.

More recent assessments have appreciated the pastoral care evident in Basil’s discussion of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. One scholar maintains that the text “reveals a great pastoral wisdom: present all the evidence so that confession of the Spirit’s divinity is the only possible orthodox choice, but avoid, at a time when unspiritual men yearn to multiply controversies, the use of an unprecedented statement.”12 Basil’s rhetorical skill is so accomplished that, on this reading, he communicates an orthodox view of the Holy Spirit’s divinity without employing the polemically charged terminology of his contemporaries.

One scholarly assessment of Basil’s reserved vocabulary explains Basil’s caution as emblematic of his pastoral acumen: perhaps by avoiding theological novelty some will be converted to the pro-Nicene camp.13 In his discussion of the theological

11 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 58, ed. Paul Gallay, Gregor von Nazianz: Briefe, GCS 53 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1969), xx; quoted in Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxii (emphasis added).

12 Anderson, introduction to Holy Spirit, 10. 13 Ayres notes, “The care with which Basil so clearly presents the Spirit

as an intrinsic part of the divine activity, and yet avoids drawing the terminological conclusions that Gregory Nazianzen, for example, saw as ‘obvious’ is noteworthy. Basil’s caution may have been motivated in large part by the circumstances of debate: he still seems to have been trying to

caldron of fourth-century Christianity, Lewis Ayres argues that “it is misleading to assume that these controversies were about ‘the divinity of Christ.’…At issue until the last decades of the controversy was the very flexibility with which the term ‘God’ could be deployed.”14 Ayres’s insight can be applied to Basil’s On The Holy Spirit: the logic of the treatise appears to suggest subtly that “God” is the most fitting term for describing the Holy Spirit. Yet, as “one of the main pro-Nicene leaders in Asia Minor,”15 Basil composes On the Holy Spirit to clarify the rich tradition of the church without trailblazing into new terminological territory. Many scholars have concluded that Basil’s linguistic restraint stems from “the problem that there was no clear biblical support for the consubstantiality of the Spirit, and neither had it been affirmed by the Council of Nicea.”16

But Basil’s reluctance to innovate theologically did not inhibit his saying something about the Spirit. Accordingly, numerous scholars have argued that Basil, steeped in the tradition of the praying church and deeply committed to the duties of the episcopal office,17 composed On the Holy Spirit both to defend the church’s liturgy (and his variation upon it) as entice his opponents into the pro-Nicene camp and is encouraging Amphilochius to do likewise.” Ayres, Nicaea, 217.

14 Ayres, Nicaea, 14. 15 Ibid., 188. 16 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxiii. 17 Howard Griffith explains that Basil had been challenged by the

Pneumatomachoi in his own church who “accused him of innovation for using two forms of doxology” that alternated between the prepositions “in” and “with” when discussing the Spirit. Howard Griffith, “The Churchly Theology of Basil’s De Spiritu Sancto,” Presbyterion 25, no. 2 (1999): 93. Similarly, Michael Kane points out that it was “in the context of the liturgy that the controversy arose which DSS seeks to address.” Michael Kane, “St. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit: A Secret Tradition or the Rule of Faith?” Diakonia 35, no. 1 (2002): 28.

well as to confront those who denied the divinity of the Spirit.18 In his article discussing the Pneumatomachian challenge to the deity of the Spirit, Michael Haykin explains how in the early 370s, “Basil found himself locked in combat with professing Christians who, though they confessed the full deity of Christ, denied that the Spirit was fully God.”19 Unfortunately, Basil’s engagement in ecclesial combat and theological expression implicated his former friend and mentor, Eustathius of Sebaste. Haykin continues, “Leading these ‘fighters against the Spirit’ (Pneumatomachoi), as they came to be called, was one of [Basil’s] former friends…Eustathius of Sebaste (c. 300–377). The dispute between Basil and Eustathius, from one perspective a part of the larger Arian Controversy, has become known as the Pneumatomachian Controversy.”20 For Basil, this controversy was deepened by his estranged friendship with Eustathius.21 But in the end, Basil’s bond to the church proved thicker than his loyalty to Eustathius. Despite Basil’s reserved terminology in On the Holy Spirit, he was bold to defend his view of the Spirit. Accordingly, Basil’s thoroughgoing

18 Kane states, “Basil, in writing DSS, was attempting to articulate an

argument for the divinity of the Holy Spirit, while at the same time attacking the doubt cast upon unwritten tradition in the Church by the pneumatomachoi.” Kane, “St. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit,” 25–26.

19 Michael Haykin, “Defending the Holy Spirit’s Deity: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Pneumatomachian Controversy of the 4th Century,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 7, no. 3 (2003): 75.

20 Ibid. Athanasius conveys that the Arian and Pneumatomachian denigration of the Son and Spirit (respectively) also disparages the Father and Son: “ ‘for just as the Arians, by denying the Son, deny also the Father, so also these men [Pneumatomachians] by decrying the Holy Spirit, decry also the Son’ (PG XXVI, 529A-532)”; quoted in Cyril Karam, “St. Basil on the Holy Spirit: Some Aspects of His Theology,” in In Honor of St. Basil the Great 379, Word and Spirit 1 (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1979), 138.

21 The implications of this friendship will be revisited in the final section of this study.

commitment to the church and its tradition, coupled with his pastoral approach, is the dominant explanation for Basil’s guarded grammar in On the Holy Spirit.22

Basil’s linguistic care in On the Holy Spirit is epitomized by two key omissions. First, his text is “notoriously reticent about using homoousios of the Spirit.”23 Second, nowhere does Basil explicitly state that the Spirit is God. Basil, the ecclesial/pastoral theory maintains, was acutely aware that such expressions would ignite a powder keg of dispute under the tenuous scaffolding of the already tense ecclesial situation. Hence, Basil wrote his On the Holy Spirit as a clarifying statement on the person and work of the Holy Spirit that would edify the church, while also offering persuasive pastoral correction to the erring by carefully “avoiding polemical traps.”24

Syriac I: Textual Issues in Transmission

Syriac Christianity’s appropriation of On the Holy Spirit has been illuminated by David G. K. Taylor’s recent work. In his 1999 critical edition, The Syriac Versions of the De Spiritu Sancto by Basil of Caesarea, Taylor corrects a scholarly misconception that has spanned more than a century. While he confirms the former impression that two Syriac versions of Basil’s De Spiritu Sancto circulated in late antiquity, he

22 The reader will note that this ecclesial/pastoral explanation is not

incompatible with Basil’s “economic” approach as described by Hermann Dörries, but is to be seen in concert with it; see Hermann Dörries, De Spiritu Sancto: Der Beitrag des Basilias zum Abschluss des trinitariischen Dogmas (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956).

23 Ayres, Nicaea, 211. 24 Griffith, “Churchly Theology,” 106. Griffith offers a similar

assessment of On the Holy Spirit. He concludes, “The needs of God’s people, love for the erring, and supreme fidelity to Scripture shaped De Spiritu Sancto.”

demonstrates that previous scholars have misidentified the manuscripts constituting those versions. The merit of this clarification from which this study will directly benefit is Taylor’s clear portrayal of Syriac I, which is both the earlier of the two Syriac versions and the version with markedly more editorial revision. Taylor’s ability to identify Syriac I will be shown to hold great significance for those interested in how textual transmission impacts the meaning of a text. Accordingly, this section will discuss textual issues relating to the dating, stemma, and translation style of the manuscripts attesting to the first Syriac translation. This textual analysis will show that the early transmission of Syriac I, demonstrated by its key witnesses and translation style, locate the textual emendations of Syriac I squarely in the middle of the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Taylor conservatively states that On the Holy Spirit was “translated into Syriac within twenty-five years of its original composition.”25 It is of certain value to note not only that On the Holy Spirit was promptly transmitted to the Syriac Christians, but also that the “manuscripts containing Syr. I are remarkable for their great age.”26 On the basis of palaeography, translation style, scriptural citation,27 and stemmatological analysis (and a colophon in the case of MS B, in AD 509), Taylor contends that the dates of the manuscripts range from the fifth century (MS A) to the six century (MS B and MS C). Compiling a number of textual clues, Taylor concludes that “the age of the manuscripts, the nature of the biblical citations, the

25 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xii. 26 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xxvi. 27 Taylor notes that the DSS contains “citations of the New Testament

which predate the standard Peshitta text.” Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xiii–xiv.

theology, and the translation technique all strongly suggests that Syr. I was produced in the late fourth or, less probably, the early fifth century.”28 In fact, Taylor maintains that there is evidence that many of Basil’s more significant works were translated into Syriac for theologians and clergy “within a few years of his death.”29

Determining whether On the Holy Spirit was translated into Syriac before the Council of Constantinople is not critical to the argument of this study. It is worth noting, however, that the text was addressed to Gregory of Nazianzen’s cousin, Amphilochius, and appears to have been speedily delivered to him. Amphilochius became bishop of Iconium in 373 and “not only became one of Basil’s stronger supporters but also adopted an air of deference to the older man that seems to have greatly pleased Basil.”30 While Iconium is considerably west of Caesarea, the action of a council in Iconium in 376 has been argued to show “clear signs of Basil’s influence.”31 Ayres notes that this council “issued a synodal letter in support of the Holy Spirit’s divinity.”32 While this is not conclusive evidence that those in Iconium had already received Basil’s treatise, it suggests that Basil’s concern with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was either directly influencing regions much beyond Caesarea or at least was a concern held in common by his contemporaries. Before commenting on the translation style of Syriac I, it is important first to highlight how Taylor’s work clarified the previously confused scholarly construal of Syriac I. Taylor’s delineation of the manuscripts constituting Syriac I

28 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xxx. 29 Ibid., xxvii. 30 Ayres, Nicaea, 224. 31 Ibid., 224–25. 32 Ibid., 224.

illumines the distinctiveness of the early transmission of On the Holy Spirit.

Taylor’s acknowledgement that On The Holy Spirit was translated into Syriac on two different occasions initially appears to conform to the standard scholarly representation. However, Taylor’s assertion that the first version consisted of three manuscripts (rather than two) quickly blurs the established scholarly picture. Accordingly, Taylor’s first version (Syriac I) is composed of three British Library manuscripts: British Museum Add. 17143 (MS A), British Museum Add. 14542 (MS B), and British Museum Add. 14543 (MS C). Previous scholarship had neglected MS C altogether.33

Taylor’s inclusion of C in Syriac I, however, is not as provocative as his outright rejection of the previous construal of A and B as preserving “two different versions of the DSS” and his counter-claim that “they are simply two copies of a single version.”34 Taylor is aware that his critical work in establishing a “genuine” Syriac II changes the scholarly landscape in his field.35 But especially apropos to this study, by establishing a

33 Taylor’s edition critically appropriates the work of B. Pruche, Basile

de Cesaree: Sur le Saint-Esprit, 2nd ed., SC 17 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1968); Fedwick, “Translations of the Works of Basil,” 439–512; W. Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Acquired since the Year 1838, 3 vols. (London: Longmans and Co., 1870–72). He employs the critical text of C. F. H. Johnston, The Book of Saint Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, On the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892).

34 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), ix. 35 Taylor states, “The evidence for the existence of a genuine second

translation, Syr. II, is presented here for the first time infra.” Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), ix. See Martin Parmentier, review of The Syriac Versions of the De Spiritu Sancto by Basil of Caesarea, by David G. K. Taylor, Bijdragen tijdschrift voor filosofie en theologie 61, no. 4 (2000): 472–74. The review consists of one paragraph embedded within five other paragraphs that review other works as well.

genuine Syriac II, Taylor clearly distinguishes the extant manuscripts of Syriac I. Commenting on the two versions of the DSS, Taylor states, “No complete translation of the DSS in any version other than Syr. I has survived in any known library. However…there is overwhelming evidence that a second Syriac translation was produced…which now survives only in citations.”36 For our purposes, the significance of Taylor’s study is that the congruence of translation style and textual revisions evident in manuscripts A and B can be confidently treated as witnesses to the same early transmission of Basil’s On the Holy Spirit.

Using the text critical methodology of Paul Maas as his guide,37 Taylor established the text of Syriac I using three manuscripts: Ms. A (BM Add. 17143), Ms. B (BM Add. 14542), and Ms. C (BM Add. 14543). Where previous scholars saw A and B as constituting two versions, Taylor perceived two copies of Syriac I. Where previous scholarship had omitted mention of C, Taylor included it as an important witness for the first translation of the DSS. Taylor construes the stemma of the three witnesses in this manner:

36 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xxx. The primary evidence for

this second translation can be found in BM Add. 14634 (a volume of Syriac manuscript fragments).

37 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xix; see Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, trans. Barbara Flower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

α

A β

B C

Taylor uses A as the base manuscript for Syriac I. He defends his selection of A “partly because of its great age, but chiefly because in the majority of cases its readings are preferable to those of the other two manuscripts. Apart from the lacunae at the beginning and end of the manuscript its only significant deficiency is the occasional omission of phrases through homoeoarcton/homoeoteleuton.”38 In the missing portions of A, Taylor defers to B, which in his estimation is “generally superior to that of Ms. C.”39

To establish the relationship among the manuscripts, Taylor identifies a number of “separative errors…which demonstrate that neither Ms. B nor Ms. C can have been copied directly from Ms. A.”40 After showing the independence of B and C from A, Taylor argues that “six major omissions in Ms. A due to homoeoarcton/homoeoteleuton…prove that Ms. A, the oldest of the three manuscripts, cannot be the autograph copy of the translation.”41 Taylor reasons that B could not have been the exemplar for C based upon the number of instances in which A

38 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xi. 39 Ibid., 1. 40 Ibid., xix. 41 Ibid.

and C agree against B. Based on the conjunctive errors shared by B and C, Taylor concludes that B and C “derive from a common exemplar, which was distinct from that of Ms. A.”42 Taylor’s stemma clearly conveys the relationship among the extant manuscripts significant for Syriac I. With the relationship of the manuscripts in mind, and also making note that the fourth-century MS A is not the autograph copy, we will now discuss the translation style of this early Syriac transmission of On the Holy Spirit.

Taylor describes the nature of the translation of Syriac I as “highly paraphrastic,” a style that is “typical of the earliest Syriac translations of patristic texts.”43 Taylor observes that the translator of Syriac I attends more to the content than the form of Basil’s text. It follows, then, that in the case of Syriac I, “the unit of translation is usually a sentence or part of a paragraph rather than a phrase, or word.”44 While Taylor notes differences in the Syriac text based on the difficulties that commonly apply to issues of linguistic translation, this study is concerned more with the explicit emendations made to Basil’s original text that cannot be explained by such translation problems. Occupied with the logic of Basil’s argument over and against the formal construction of On the Holy Spirit, the Syriac translator not only took liberties in his paraphrastic translation of Basil’s text, but went beyond translation differences of vocabulary and paraphrasing and produced a version that diverged in significant ways from Basil’s original text.

42 Ibid., xx. 43 Taylor, Syriac Versions (edited text), xxvi. 44 Ibid., xxi.

Syriac I: Theological Issues in Transmission

When Basil’s On the Holy Spirit was transmitted to the Syriac churches, its language was not only translated from Greek to Syriac, but its (implied) argument became more overtly explicit.45 Taylor confirms that Syriac I is a prime candidate for analyzing how a text’s transmission has affected its meaning. For example, he insists that Syriac I “is a particularly fascinating subject for theological examination because of the paraphrastic nature of its translation, which suggests that the translator was interested more in the subject matter of St. Basil’s argument … and because of the translator’s apparent lack of inhibition about adding his own expositional comments to the text.”46 I would qualify that Taylor’s first comment regarding the paraphrastic nature of the translation may suggest the translator’s preoccupation with the content of the argument rather than its expression. It can also be explained as exemplifying the common translation method of Syriac Christianity in the fourth century. However, Taylor’s second suggestion attesting to the translator’s propensity toward textual emendation is certainly evident in Syriac I and offers more compelling evidence of the translator’s theological commitments. Accordingly, this section will highlight three types of textual additions in Syriac I that dramatically affect the theological meaning of Basil’s original text.

In his discussion of the theological concerns of the translator of Syriac I, Taylor underscores the frequency with which the translator adds material in order to make more explicit Basil’s argument for the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

45 The question of Basil’s implied argument will be revisited in the final

section of this study. 46 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xix–xx.

Accordingly, the first kind of textual addition for investigation are those instances where the Syriac translator repeatedly sharpens Basil’s subtle argument by expanding material in which Basil speaks only of the Father and Son to include the person of the Spirit. For example, after discussing the equal glory of the Father and Son at length, Basil concludes, “Therefore, true religion teaches us to think of the Son with the Father.”47 In the parallel section of Syriac 24.24–25, however, this concluding remark becomes, “It is correct, therefore, as a result of these things that we have heard such as they are, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in nature, and they are united in three persons.”48 Accordingly, by adding the Holy Spirit to Basil’s discussion of the Father and Son, the Syriac translator attempts to leave “no doubt in [his] reader’s mind that the Spirit is a full and equal member of the Trinity.”49

The most striking incidence of this first form of emendation can be found in the Syriac passage that corresponds to the Greek 18.45.5–14. In Basil’s text, he explains the unity of nature and the distinction of persons with respect only to the Father and Son. But Syriac I transmits:

We confess three hypostases in one Godhead of one origin, and we do not divide up the glorious nature of the Trinity into multiple gods, but we believe in one Father, and in one Son, and in one Spirit, in one likeness of three hypostases in which there are absolutely no distinctions. For just as the Father is, so also is the Son who is from him, together with the Holy Spirit, and

47 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 6.14, trans. Anderson, Holy Spirit, 30. 48 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 6.14, trans. Taylor, Syriac Versions

(translated text), 18. 49 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxiii.

these names are one in one nature, and they are three in three hypostases.50

Again, the translator of Syriac I leaves little to his reader’s imagination to wonder how the Holy Spirit relates to the Father and Son. By taking frequent liberties to expand Basil’s text, the translator conforms Basil’s treatise to his explicitly Trinitarian theological agenda.

The theological agenda driving Syriac I can be seen even more clearly in a second type of textual addition. The reader will recall that in his On the Holy Spirit, Basil is “notoriously reticent about using homoousios of the Spirit.”51 But such reticence is not to be found in the Syriac translator. Not only does Syriac I insert a number of statements about the Spirit that are not found in Basil’s text, but many of these comments “seem to be evidence that for the translator of Syr. I the consubstantiality of the Spirit was an accepted truth.”52 Thus, this second type of editorial revision concerns the divine nature, or substance, of the Spirit with respect to the Father and Son.

The most convincing instance that claims the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and Son is a unique expansion that follows the Greek 12.28. This addition reads: “The Spirit shares the nature (bat keyono’) of the divinity.” Taylor comments, “The phrase bar keyono’, ‘of the same nature’ (literally ‘son of the nature’), was a standard rendering in the fifth century of ὁµοούσιος as applied to the Son….This then is an unambiguous statement of the

50 Ibid., xxiv (Syr. 86.9–16). Basil, On the Holy Spirit 18.45.5–14, trans.

Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), 72–3. 51 Ayres, Nicaea, 211. 52 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxiv.

consubstantiality of the Spirit.”53 Taylor here shows that the Syriac translator employs the Syriac equivalent of the Greek ὁµοούσιος (used to describe the nature shared by the Son and the Father), and applies it to the Spirit. Hence, the Syriac translator not only uses a Syriac synonymy to the Greek ὁµοούσιος, but also goes beyond Basil’s theological articulation to state what, in the translator’s estimation, Basil should have said.

A third class of textual expansion of acute theological significance again pertains to Basil’s reluctance to enunciate the nature of the Spirit’s divinity. This study earlier noted the heightened ecclesiastical tension of Basil’s period and David Anderson’s admiration of Basil’s pastoral wisdom to “avoid, at a time when unspiritual men yearn to multiply controversies, the use of an unprecedented statement.”54 Anderson goes on to explain that “nowhere in the entire treatise does St. Basil bluntly say: ‘the Holy Spirit is God’ or ‘God the Holy Spirit.’ ”55 But this omission in the Greek is not followed in Syriac I. Rather, the Syriac translator declared, rather than avoided, an “unprecedented statement” on Basil’s behalf.

The Syriac translator does not appreciate Basil’s restrained discussion of the Spirit nor does he relay it in his transmission of Basil’s text. As referenced above with respect to the Arian and Pneumatomachian controversies, the Spirit’s relationship to the Father and Son was a topic of severe contention for Christians in the late fourth century. Often these discussions centered on the question of the consubstantiality of the Spirit. Not only does Syriac I declare the Spirit to be

53 Ibid., xxiv. 54 Anderson, introduction to Holy Spirit, 10. 55 Ibid.

homoousios with the Father and Son in the nearest Syriac equivalent, but it goes beyond Basil’s theological articulation in yet another form and in “two passages…calls the Spirit ‘God.’ ”56

This third category of editorial correction is the most striking of the three textual emendations here discussed. The novelty of the affirmation is not lost on Taylor. The first instance can be identified in Basil’s discussion of 1 Cor 14:25, which corresponds to 16.37.9–14 in the Greek text. On the basis of this Corinthian text, Basil contends, “ ‘Truly God is in them’, that God is known to be in the prophets because of the gifts of the Spirit, and hence the Spirit’s true status may be known.”57 Contrasting the Syriac version to this original rendering, Taylor states, “The Syriac text is quite different and reads: ‘The Spirit of God, then, is called ‘God in them’ because she is the giver of prophecy.’ ”58 The feminine adjective to refer to the Spirit was common in early Syriac writings,59 and is not the pertinent issue here. Rather, the Syriac translator’s submission that the Spirit refers to “God in them” is a textual revision that is not only doctrinally bold, but also compromises Basil’s theological subtlety. The significance of this expression can be seen all the more clearly when viewed through the lens of the theologically volatile fourth-century context.

The second occurrence of this theological innovation is even more pronounced than the previous example. Taylor explains that the passage in which this addition occurs

56 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxv. 57 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxv. Basil, On the Holy

Spirit 16.37.9–14, trans. Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), 58. 58 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxv. 59 See Taylor’s discussion of the early Syriac rendering of the Spirit in

his introduction to the translated text of Syriac Versions, xxi–xxii.

“corresponds to XXI.52.59–62 in which Basil is expounding 2 Cor 3:17 ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit’, but Syr. I rewrites this as: ‘Those who are persuaded by the speech of the Holy Spirit to believe that she is God, through her gifts she makes their lives great in her glory.’ ”60 Again, we will gloss the gendered description of the Spirit here and instead underscore that the Syriac translator at this point introduces a theological novelty of paramount importance. Where Basil composed a more subtle exposition of the Spirit, unwilling to state unequivocally the Spirit’s full divinity, the Syriac translator explicitly asserts that the Spirit is God.

The three forms of textual emendations here highlighted showcase the theological preoccupation of the translator of Syriac I. The Syriac translator modifies Basil’s original text by: 1) articulating a Trinitarian relationship in place of examples that had discussed only the Father and Son; 2) specifying the Spirit’s shared nature (homoousious) with the Father and Son; and 3) declaring that the Spirit is fully God. These expansions may stem indirectly from the paraphrastic style typical of early Syriac translations. But on the whole, these innovative and corrective additions represent a theological agenda. Regardless the reason(s) for revision, the “unprecedented statements” and pneumatologically-loaded additions made by the Syriac translator demonstrate both a dissatisfaction with Basil’s original text and a desire to correct it.

The following section will revisit the portrayal of Basil’s On the Holy Spirit offered in the first section of this study. Basil’s text will be reframed in such a manner that it will

60 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxv (Syr. 99.26–28). Basil,

On the Holy Spirit 21.52.59–62, trans. Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), 85.

become clear that this early Syriac transmission of On the Holy Spirit should be viewed as a theological work of Syriac Christianity.

Revisiting the Original Composition: Making Sense of the Syriac Revisions

Taylor asserts that tracing the influence of Syriac I is a work for a later time due to the fact that many Syriac texts from the fifth century and beyond are yet to be edited.61 Hence, in this final section of analysis, I will develop further the narrative surrounding Basil’s original composition of On the Holy Spirit. Doing so will bring into sharp relief the context influencing the Syriac transmission and shed light on the meaning and significance of the Syriac translator’s revisions. The reader will note that the merit of this approach derives from 1) the early date of the text’s transmission, which suggests a proximate ecclesial context for the Syriac translator to that of Basil in the late fourth century, and 2) the theological nature of the textual revisions in the Syriac transmission. Accordingly, we will revisit and reframe Basil’s strained friendship with Eustathius and his ecclesial and theological motivation for writing On the Holy Spirit. Finally, this analysis will offer an explanation of why the Syriac translator subjected Basil’s work to such blatant theological revision.

Friendship with Eustathius

Eustathius of Sebaste was not only a key figure among the group that would be branded the “Pneumatomachoi” (those who resisted asserting the full divinity of the Spirit), but also an early mentor for Basil. Basil had been a close companion of Eustathius in the anti-Eunomian movement, and considering

61 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxxiii.

him “ ‘more than a man,’…[Basil] followed his example as a bishop and ascetic.”62 Eustathius’ influence on Basil was so pronounced that it has been suggested that he continued to shape Basil’s view of the Holy Spirit “much longer than is normally recognized.”63 What is critical to note about Eustathius’ theological influence on Basil is that the former “was more than indifferent with regard to a ‘dogmatic progress’ improving the Trinitarian formulae; his interest lay in sanctification, prayer, and the Gospel.”64 This influence can be seen clearly in Basil’s On the Holy Spirit.65

In his “Intransigence and Irenicism in Saint Basil’s ‘De spiritu sancto,’ ” Jean Gribomont develops the work of Hermann Dörries and shows that the interlocutor of chapters 10–27 of Basil’s On the Holy Spirit “can only be the spokesman of the pneumatomachoi, namely, Eustathius.”66 Accordingly, Gribomont relates the core of Basil’s text to the pneumatological disagreement between him and Eustathius that began in the summer of 372 and had resurfaced not long after their short-lived reconciliation and doctrinal agreement in 373. Gribomont shows that Basil takes full advantage of Amphilochius’ request, to which he quickly responds in chapters 1–8 of On the Holy Spirit, and directs his publication largely to his disagreement with this former mentor. Gribomont

62 Jean Gribomont, “Intransigence and Irenicism in Saint Basil’s ‘De

spiritu sancto,’ ” in In Honor of St. Basil the Great, 122. 63 Christopher A. Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians: Past

and Present,” Modern Theology 26, no. 1 (2010): 98. 64 Gribomont, “Intransigence and Irenicism,” 122. 65 Ayres contends, “Basil’s reserve on the Spirit tends to increase not

decrease through his career, and reflects not a failure to subscribe to basic pro-Nicene logic, but the care with which he tried to combine clarity with advances towards Homoiousians in a still-fluid situation.” Ayres, Nicaea, 257.

66 Gribomont, “Intransigence and Irenicism,” 127.

concludes, “Thus, the nucleus of the treatise of 375 resumes a living, fraternal, passionate, effective conversation.…The heart of the discussion is a dramatic debate of an exceptional ecclesial value which develops the points of view most likely to win the adhesion of a fervent but conservative ascetic and which achieves a synthesis in the faith in spite of the oppositions of formulae.”67 Indeed, Basil’s argumentation suggests a dialogue rather than a work of tight systematic theology and reflects the ascetic and spiritual concerns of Eustathius’ theology.68

That the bulk of Basil’s work directly concerns Eustathius has direct implications for this study. Eustathius’ open aversion to “dogmatic progress” is reflected by Basil’s reserved approach in On the Holy Spirit. Moreover, when Eustathius was pressed to articulate his view of the Spirit’s nature at a synod in 364, he replied: “I neither chose to name the Holy Spirit God nor dare to call him a creature.”69 Based on the form and content of Basil’s argument in On the Holy Spirit, one wonders on what points the two former friends would disagree.70 It is possible that Basil did hope, once again, to persuade his old friend to his understanding of the Holy Spirit.

67 Ibid. 68 For example, Gribomont notes that the progression of Basil’s dialogue

in On the Holy Spirit “leans upon Eustathius’ own concessions, such as the themes of sanctification, of adoration, of the magnitude of the works and of the names of the Spirit. Such a tight dialogue, which leads to an assent, is the common work of those who seek God together.” Ibid., 129–30.

69 Socrates, Church History 2.45; quoted in Haykin, “Defending the Holy Spirit’s Deity,” 75.

70 Discussing scholarship’s vague understanding of the disagreement between Eustathius and Basil, Philip Rousseau explains, “The course of their dispute is confused, interwoven with other preoccupations. Basil’s disenchantment with Eustathius focused on his Trinitarian theology, and in particular on his attitude to the Holy Spirit, whose divinity he seemed to oppose.” Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 239.

Basil’s Motivations

In the first section of this study, Basil’s motivation was described as ecclesial/pastoral, and it was noted (see note 22) that this description is not incompatible with the “economic” description that has been offered by Gribomont, Dörries, and others.71 After revisiting Basil’s estranged friendship with Eustathius and noting Eustathius’ aversion to doctrinal innovation, more can now be said that illuminates Basil’s intention and approach in On the Holy Spirit. Basil’s work was indeed pastoral, economic, ecumenical, and ecclesial. But more specifically, On the Holy Spirit was Basil’s attempt to state, in a manner that proved amenable to a broad constituency, a traditional view of the Holy Spirit without pigeon-holing himself or his bishopric in one of the various polemical camps that littered the fourth-century church. While Basil was indeed bold to descry the theological shortcomings of the Arians and Pneumatomachians, he avoids locating himself with any specific group, just as he avoids calling the Spirit “God.”

If Basil’s aspiration to “boldly proclaim the truth” is to be positively assessed, the nature of his bold proclamation requires a nuanced explanation.72 Based on its terminology or innovation alone, Basil’s “boldness” receives a low-mark. Basil’s avoidance of the polemically charged ὁµοούσιος would

71 Following the work of Dörries, Gribomont explains, “It is the economy of Basil, that is, his reserve and his silences, then the interpersonal dialogue which he held with his friends and his adversaries, and finally the function of charismatic monachism, which attract above all the interest of this very ecumenical theologian.” Gribomont, “Intransigence and Irenicism,” 111.

72 This position is contrary to that argued by Mark Larson who, in his “A Re-examination of De Spiritu Sancto,” asserts that Basil’s “bold proclamation” is “self-evident” (84).

have been obvious to his contemporaries who might recall that fifteen years earlier, in his letters to Serapion, Athanasius had “said that the Spirit was consubstantial, homoousios with Father and Son.”73 More still, Basil’s aversion to such bold expression would have been further highlighted when compared to the theological articulation of his close friend and fellow Cappadocian, Gregory Nazianzen.

The reader will recall that it was Gregory Nazianzen who relayed to Basil a young monk’s misgivings about Basil’s pneumatology. But given Gregory’s view of the Holy Spirit, Basil’s sharp response to Gregory is understandable; Gregory is clearly using the monk’s charge as his own veiled critique of Basil’s theology.74 At this point, Gregory had already “clearly said the Spirit was God.”75 However one might argue that Basil accomplished his goal of bold proclamation, one must not neglect to acknowledge the fact that his explicit pneumatological articulation paled in comparison to that of Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen. Accordingly, Basil’s articulation of the Holy Spirit in 375 would be liable to the same charges leveled against him by Gregory Nazianzen’s monk informant in 372. Thus, while the ecclesial/pastoral

73 Karam, “Saint Basil on the Holy Spirit,” 143. 74 In his biography of Gregory Nazianzen, John McGuckin states, “Basil

knows very well, that he is being pushed, and that Gregory is hiding behind the convention of rebuking someone else who dared to criticize Basil, while all the while he is mounting the criticism himself.” John A. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 216.

75 Ibid., 217. Similarly, in his Fifth Theological Oration preached in the summer or fall of 380, Gregory would declare, “What, then? Is the Spirit God? Most certainly. Well, then, is he consubstantial? Yes, if he is God.” Gregory of Nazianzus, The Fifth Theological Oration—On the Holy Spirit 31.10, ed. Edward R. Hardy, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, Christology of the Later Fathers, LCC 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 199.

model may help explain Basil’s orienting concern in his work, it does not sufficiently account for what has been perceived by others as insufficient boldness in Basil’s pneumatology.76

In his provocative article, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians: Past and Present,” Christopher Beeley challenges the entrenched tradition that portrays Basil as “an ardent defender of the divinity of the Holy Spirit and its consubstantiality with God the Father.”77 Beeley shows that Basil’s traditional reputation is largely due to Gregory’s Letter 58 to Basil and his Oration 43 “In Praise of Basil.” In his discussion of Letter 58, Beeley states that readers have misread the letter and “taken Gregory’s account at face value, ignoring the sarcasm with which Gregory is in fact criticizing Basil’s [sic] for his refusal to confess the Spirit’s divinity—a rhetorical force that is confirmed by Basil’s angry reply.”78 Beeley contends that much of the contemporary picture of Basil has been constructed of proof-texts that have been ripped out of their literary contexts, and has not done justice to the rhetorical subtlety of the original material.79 Accordingly, he maintains

76 McGuckin states, “Gregory more or less told Basil to his face while he was still alive that his pneumatology was insufficient, and that was one of the reasons they had so seriously fallen out.” McGuckin, St. Gregory, 301.

77 Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians,” 92. 78 Ibid. A similar observation is made by Jean Gribomont in his 1979

study, “Intransigence and Irenicism” (see note 62). In many respects, Beeley can be seen to be developing some of Gribomont’s findings in their strongest form.

79 Similarly, in his biography of Gregory, McGuckin laments that scholarship has tended to read Gregory “literalistically, taken for the face value of his words—a fatal way of underestimating the subtlety of an ancient rhetor…Often little care was taken to penetrate deeper than the surface meaning of the text.” He also draws attention to Gregory’s Letter 58 as a representative example of his skillful rhetoric that has been traditionally misread. He contends that “the text is meant, not so much as a testimony that Basil served as his only source of theological ideas, rather as a subtle deconstruction of Basil’s pneumatology, seen to be such by its recipient, and

that close examination of the sources reveals a much different picture of Basil’s theological commitments.

Beeley’s portrait of Basil has a number of intriguing features that help illuminate Basil’s motivation behind On the Holy Spirit. First, Beeley underscores that at the council of Constantinople in 360, Basil was in the company of the centrist Homoiousians and that his homoiousian leaning would be a long-term feature of his theology.80 Second, Beeley clarifies the generic quality of Basil’s affirmation of the Spirit’s deity. He contends that the nature of the Spirit’s divinity, as presented both in Basil’s Contra Eunomium (c. 363/4) and On the Holy Spirit, is not plainly indicated by Basil. Rather, “Basil’s primary way of explicating the status of the Holy Spirit is to speak of the ‘communion with respect to nature’ that the Spirit shares with the Father and the Son.”81 Accordingly, Beeley maintains that while Basil does affirm the divinity of the Spirit, it is in this qualified sense, and should not be glibly assumed to imply consubstantiality with the Father and Son or that the Spirit is God.82 Hence, a third feature of Beeley’s portrayal is his insistence that compared to the “homoousian framework of Athanasius and the full Trinitarianism of Gregory Nazianzen,”83 an attack on his position which drew forth a furious rejoinder which Gregory then ‘innocently’ protests as an overreaction.” McGuckin, St. Gregory, xxi.

80 In a similar vein, when discussing Basil’s Contra Eunomium, a text Rousseau regards as a “work written from a Homoiousian and Eustathian point of view,” Rousseau determines, “Its fundamental convictions were to last to the very end of Basil’s life.” Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, 99, 132, respectively.

81 Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians,” 92. 82 Beeley summarizes, “Basil thus argues for the divinity of the Holy

Spirit, first against the Eunomians and later against the Pneumatomachians, by applying a traditional anti-modalist framework, emphasizing the Spirit’s singularity and self-subsistence as holy, sanctifying, and hence sharing communion with the Father and the Son in its nature.” Ibid., 94.

83 Ibid., 92.

Basil proves that he is undeserving of his traditional reputation as a bold articulator of the Spirit’s divinity.84 On Beeley’s reading, Basil is inaccurately named as the famed inheritor of Athanasian orthodoxy, particularly with respect to his doctrine of the Spirit.85

Beeley’s final assessment makes explicit the implications of his account of Basilian theology. Where previous scholarship has averred that Basil clearly implied the Spirit as God and consubstantial with the Father and Son despite the fact he never explicitly stated as much, Beeley discounts this argument from silence. Instead, Beeley concludes that Basil’s pneumatology is “an unresolved composite of several different elements.”86 He notes that Basil was always agnostic about the Spirit’s generation and that his “famous ‘economy’ ” stemmed from his pneumatological uncertainty. Beeley concludes that Basil’s unresolved pneumatology:

represents an incomplete homoiousian position, that is, a type of Eusebian theology that has become fixed and skewed in certain ways. Basil’s Trinitarian theology is Eusebian-homoiousian through and through, from his early

84 Similarly, McGuckin notes that it was Gregory Nazianzen who was

largely responsible for this view of Basil’s pneumatology. McGuckin explains that it was Gregory’s “own theological construct of the Homoousion of the Spirit that was to win the day, becoming the official interpretation of that [Niceno-Constantinpolitan] creed for later generations, and his own construct that was even to be read backwards into the intention and mindset of Basil himself: a rhetorical device he himself had invented (and published—as soon as Basil had died).” McGuckin, St. Gregory, xxii.

85 Johannes Quasten described Basil as “a second Athanasius in the defense of orthodoxy;” see Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 3, The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature from the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Chalcedon (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960), 204; quoted in Larson, “A Re-examination of De Spiritu Sancto,” 65.

86 Beeley, “The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians,” 98.

Contra Eunomium to his death in 379; he is a fundamentally anti-modalist theologian, and he does not become a homoousian, as has been claimed. The consistency of Basil’s pneumatology before and after his break with Eustathius shows that he remained under the influence of his former master much longer than is normally recognized.87

In this provocative portrayal of Basil, Beeley weaves together several threads that have been discussed in this study. Notably, he locates the source of Basil’s theological posture within major circles of influence (e.g., that of Eusebius and Eustathius), in contradistinction from others (e.g., that of Athanasius or Gregory Nazianzen). But most importantly, he implies that the reason why Basil did not boldly state that the Holy Spirit was God or claim the Holy Spirit’s consubstantiality with the Father and Son is simply because Basil did not believe it. Or at least Basil, on Beeley’s account, did not hold to such a view of the Holy Spirit with adequate confidence.

Beeley’s portrayal, however, need not be embraced in toto to be of use for this study. Rather, Beeley’s depiction of Basil’s theology serves two complementary ends useful for this analysis. First, Beeley represents Basil in such a way as to make sense of the accusation waged by Gregory Nazianzen’s monk-informant, which was also a charge entertained by some of Basil’s colleagues who had themselves made bolder declarations regarding the Holy Spirit or felt the need to do so.88

87 Ibid. 88 The most notable of whom is Gregory Nazianzen himself. In his

discussion of the banquet wherein the young monk criticized Basil’s pneumatology in 372, McGuckin distinguishes the lack of boldness on Basil’s part from that displayed by Gregory. McGuckin states that Gregory’s “clarity of Nicene homoousianism and his bold theologization of the Trinity had attracted a following among the ascetics, and some of the brethren

Second, Beeley’s portrayal suggests that it is not self-evident that Basil’s treatise implies that the Spirit is God or is consubstantial with the Father and Son. Rather, Basil’s On the Holy Spirit did not settle, beyond suspicion, questions regarding his view of the Holy Spirit. The question of how Basil thought he was speaking boldly is for our purposes, then, not the important question. Rather, the degree of Basil’s boldness in articulating an orthodox pneumatology is a question that concerns us only insofar as how one specific individual has responded.

The Syriac Translator

Despite Basil’s intention to proclaim boldly the truth, the marked revision by the Syriac translator suggests that he deemed Basil insufficiently bold. Perhaps the extent to which the translator found Basil’s articulation unsatisfactory could be quantifiably assessed by the number of pneumatological corrections, expansions, and emendations he made to Basil’s text. While we will not revisit the details of the revisions mentioned above, the reader is encouraged to bring the revisions to mind as we now surmise the reasoning behind the Syriac modifications of Basil’s text. Based on those revisions and Taylor’s assessment of common concerns in Syriac theology, two key theological commitments of the Syriac translator will be presented. Finally, this study will discuss the provenance of Syriac I and explore Basil’s connections with Syriac Christians beyond Caesarea.

Without question, the Syriac translator has presented a bolder Basil than Basil himself desired to present. In his

present for the festival at his Church criticized Basil’s ‘economy’ of speech, contrasting it unfavorably with Gregory’s parrhesia.” McGuckin, St. Gregory, 216.

discussion of the translator’s theology, Taylor makes two broad assessments that illuminate the concerns of the Syriac translator. First, Taylor suggests that based on the nature of the Syriac revisions, the translator is preoccupied with the lack, at times, of the spirituality driving Basil’s argument. Taylor shows that the interpolations increasingly suggest the translator’s impatience with Basil’s approach in the treatise, particularly in passages where he deems that a more spiritual angle of argumentation would be more fruitful. Taylor explains, “The translator’s frustration with some of the lines of argument of the DSS can thus be traced to his experience of the spiritual life and to his sense of awe at God’s self-humiliation in his double incarnation, the incarnation into humanity in the Son and the incarnation into the human language.”89 But the fact that the translator’s frustration stems from a preference for a more spiritual argument that emphasizes the divine condescension underscores the translator’s affinity to Basil’s treatise in the first place.90 Basil’s ascetic leanings and commitment to the spiritual life, decisive marks of Eustathius’ mentoring, help explain why his treatise was desirable for transmission to Syriac Christians.91 Indeed, Basil’s On the Holy Spirit was not void of such spiritual concerns. Rather, the Syriac translator preferred a more

89 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxx. 90 Commenting on the significance that the Syriac translator transmitted

On the Holy Spirit in the first place, Taylor remarks, “The most fundamental theological statement is made in the identity of the work itself.…One must presume, unless there are indications to the contrary, that the translator was broadly in agreement with the theological arguments and ideas of the work chosen for translation, though one has no way of knowing whether such agreement predated this study of the work or was a consequence of it.” Ibid., xx.

91 Note also Taylor’s observation that Basil’s “study of the Ascetica…was taken to Syria during Basil’s own lifetime and translated soon after,” thereby reinforcing the Syrian commitment to ascetic spirituality. Ibid., 105.

thoroughgoing spirituality than Basil himself offers in his treatise.

A second theological concern indicated by the Syriac translator’s emendations is his overriding commitment to God’s extravagant love.92 This second theological characteristic stems from his interest in spirituality, but is both more comprehensive in its scope and specific in its declaration. The end of spirituality, for the Syriac translator, can be clearly seen in a major interpolation that enunciates “God’s overwhelming love for humanity.”93 This love for humanity, for the Syriac translator, is unequivocally the love of the Spirit who, as God, shared with the Father and the Son the same substance. To fail to describe the Holy Spirit in this way would be to betray the fundamental convictions of his faith community. For the Syriac translator, a bolder Basil was required so that the transmission of the treatise would enjoy a long history of use and dissemination in his community.94

While the theological commitments of the Syriac translator’s community can be inferred from the nature of his revisions, identifying the geographical region or specific people

92 Basil shares a similar theological commitment here as well.

Discussing Basil’s ascetic history in a chapter titled “The Ascetic Writings,” Rousseau states, “At the root of the ascetic, enthusiastic, committed Christianity defended by Basil was love of God and one’s neighbour. The Asceticon opens with that emphasis, giving it priority.” Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, 205.

93 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxx. Noting that this theme is prevalent in Syriac spirituality, Taylor references Sebastian P. Brock, Spirituality in the Syriac Tradition, Moran Etho 2 (Kottayam: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute, 1989), 84–86.

94 Taylor explains, “The translator was not interested in simply producing a calque of the Greek text but in creating a living, vital, work of theology which would mix the best of St. Basil’s treatise with the insights of his own religious tradition.” Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxxi.

to whom Basil’s text was transmitted proves more difficult. In his effort to locate the provenance of Syriac I, Taylor eliminates East Syria. Not only does Syriac I not appear in any East Syrian manuscript, but it is unclear to what extent Basil’s On the Holy Spirit was known to any East Syrian scholar. Taylor determines instead that based on the extant manuscript evidence, “the DSS, and Syr. I in particular, was considered an important theological work amongst the West Syrians for at least five hundred years after its first translation.”95 Beyond the acknowledgement that Syriac I was transmitted among western Syrians, little more can be said about the specific identity of the community of reception, much less the translator behind Syriac I. The question, then, remains: What “Basil” was known to western Syriac Christians? Was the Basil of the Greek text or the bolder Basil of Syriac I the cause for the ongoing transmission of On the Holy Spirit among western Syriac Christians? While these questions will need to be put aside until more work is done, some preliminary comments can be made about the Syriac translator’s community and why such editorial revisions were made.

The Syriac translator’s community was likely in close contact with Basil. In his article, “Basil of Caesarea’s Contacts with Syriac-speaking Christians,” David G. K. Taylor considers the nature of Basil’s relationship with Syriac Christians south of Caesarea. Taylor notes that Syriac Christianity translated more of Basil’s works than any other language group in late antiquity, and he also underscores that such translations (particularly that of the Ascetica and the De Spiritu Sancto) occurred quite early. Why did Syriac Christians take such an interest in Basil’s works?

95 Ibid., xxxiii.

Taylor provides two main explanations for the Syriac transmission of Basil’s writings. First, he notes, “[I]t seems likely that he visited his close friend Eusebius, bishop of Samosata in Euphratensis, on several occasions.”96 Not only did Basil visit this friend and ecclesiastical ally frequently, but it appears that Eusebius returned the favor, visiting Caesarea on occasion. In addition, Taylor states that various letters from Basil suggest that he had met with other Eastern church leaders, and perhaps had even done so in their own cities.

Basil’s ecclesial connection to the Syriac churches set the stage for a second feature, which helps to explain the enthusiastic Syriac transmission of his writings. It appears that Syriac Christians found in Basil an episcopal leader who held in common with them a similar theological frame of mind. Taylor explains, “As part of his mission to strengthen the Nicene orthodox against the attacks of the Arians, Pneumatomachoi, and other heretics, Basil appears from his extant letters to have initiated and fostered correspondence with allies, or potential allies, in neighbouring provinces, amongst whom were several bishops with responsibility for predominantly Syriac-speaking populations.”97 In his effort to unite the churches within and surrounding Basil’s episcopal jurisdiction, Basil built a far-reaching network of support. Taylor concludes, “In an age when the churches in much of Syria and Asia Minor were bitterly divided the Syriac Christians were St. Basil’s most stalwart and loyal supporters.”98 Although it would be imprudent to

96 David G. K. Taylor, “Basil of Caesarea’s Contacts with Syriac-speaking Christians,” Studia Patristica 32 (1997): 215.

97 Taylor continues, “Thus letters survive which are addressed to the bishops of Sarug, Haran, and Edessa in the province of Osrhoene, Perrhes and Samosata in Euphratensis, Himeria in Mesopotamia, and Beroea and Chalchis in Coele-Syria.” Ibid., 216.

98 Ibid., 217.

conjecture the identity of the Syriac translator or his community at this point, it can be confidently asserted that this community was a pro-Basil community who held him and his writings in high esteem. Despite this affinity, it is clear that the Syriac translator did not venerate Basil’s On the Holy Spirit as too sacred for editorial enrichment. Thus, the Syriac translator of On the Holy Spirit exploits the vagueness of Basil’s theologically subtle treatise and transforms it into a work of bold theological declaration that his own community would find particularly amenable.

There remains much work to be done regarding the influence of Syriac I on Syriac Christianity. This study has shown that textual and theological analysis of Syriac I proves a fruitful method of inquiry in the meantime. The early transmission of Basil’s On the Holy Spirit in concert with numerous revisions of theological significance present Syriac I as a work of great interest for exploring how theological concerns have led to the alteration of a text in the process of transmission and thereby changed its meaning. By illuminating the context and content of Basil’s original Greek text, this study has brought into sharp relief the forces influencing the Syriac translator’s blatant textual revision toward his own theological ends. Not only has the Syriac translator dared to expand and correct Basil’s original work, but he has boldly proclaimed what Basil refused to state explicitly. Indeed, Syriac I “is not merely a Greek text in Syriac clothes[,] it is truly a work of Syriac theological literature.”99 As a theological work of no small significance, the transmission of Syriac I merits future study to illumine the theological histories and ecclesial communities constituting Syriac Christianity in late antiquity.

99 Taylor, Syriac Versions (translated text), xxxii.