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| Materials for His Biography.
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II.—Materials for His Biography.
Fuller details, of more or less authentic character, are forthcoming in many quarters. In Syriac, we have
two Lives, a longer and a shorter; but whether the latter is an
abridgment of the former, or is rather the nucleus from which the other
has been expanded, is questionable. Of both alike, the date and
the authorship are undetermined. The longer of the two is
entitled, the History [tash itha] of the holy Mar
Ephraim. It varies not a little in the two copies of it [the
Vatican and the Parisian] which have been edited;249
| 249 The former in
the Roman edition, Opera Syr., Tom. III, p. xxiii; the latter in
Lamy’s Hymni et Sermones, Tom. II. | and contains many things that are not
easily credible, and some things that are irreconcilable with one
another, or with established facts. In the main facts, however,
this History is borne out by the Greek authorities—the
narrations of three fifth-century historians, Socrates, Sozomen and
Theodoret, the brief notices of Jerome, De Viris Illustribus
(392), and of Palladius, in his Lausiac History (circ. 420) ci.,
and (what is of most weight) the almost contemporary biographical
particulars contained in the Encomium pronounced on Ephraim by Gregory
of Nyssa. Other Greek Lives are extant;—one which bears the
name of a writer coeval with Gregory, Amphilochius of Iconium, but is
certainly by a later hand; one anonymous, and one ascribed to Simeon
the Metaphrast, a writer of the tenth century.250
| 250 Of these, the one, which
is ascribed to Amphilochius, is perhaps the basis on which the longer
Syriac Life was constructed. |
We proceed to give an outline of the contents of the
Syriac History, adding to it here and there such further noteworthy
details or incidents as have reached us from the other sources
indicated. Further on, it will be our business to examine this
narrative and ascertain how far its statements are in themselves
credible, or attested by other and earlier evidence.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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