Thus the fixed points for determining the chronology of Ephraim’s life are:

1.  The death of his patron, St. Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis, in 338, after the first siege of that city.

2.  The third siege, in which he was among the defenders of the city, in 350.

3.  The surrender of Nisibis by Jovian, and its abandonment by its Christian inhabitants, 363; followed by Ephraim’s removal to Edessa.

4.  The consecration of Basil to the see of Cæsarea, late in 370, followed by Ephraim’s visit to him there.

5.  The deliverance of the Edessenes from the persecution of Valens (370–372), celebrated by Ephraim in a hymn.

6.  Ephraim’s death, 373.

To this list it would be right to prefix the meeting of the Council of Nicæa in 325, if the evidence of Ephraim’s presence at it, along with St. Jacob, were sufficient.  But it has no early attestation; and no writer prior to Theodoret (Hist. Eccles. II. 30) associates the name of Jacob with any incident in Ephraim’s life.

The date of Ephraim’s birth is nowhere directly stated, but it is usually assumed to have been early in the reign of Constantine (306–337), on the authority of the Vatican Life, which says, “In the days of the victorious Constantine, true believer, was born the holy man Ephraim.”  But the statement of the Parisian Life is less explicit, and is capable of a different meaning:—“He was in the days of the victorious Constantine.”  This merely implies that Ephraim (if the pronoun represent him) lived in the reign of that emperor.  But it rather appears that Ephraim’s father is meant, inasmuch as he is the subject of the immediately preceding sentence which describes him as a heathen priest; and the purport of the passage is, that the saint was the son of a man who not merely had been one of an idolatrous priesthood, but continued to be so after Constantine had acknowledged the Christian religion.²⁹⁷

297 The passage is as follows:  “Ephraim was a Syrian by birth.  His father was of Nisibis, and his mother of Amid.  And his father was priest in Nisibis of an idol named Abizal, which afterwards the victorious Emperor Jovian broke.  He [or it, scil., the idol] was in the days of the victorious Emperor Constantine, true believer.  But his father had this famous son, of whom is our narrative.”  The meaning may be that the idol was suffered to exist during Constantine’s reign and after, till Jovian destroyed it:  but it is now natural to understand it, as above, of Ephraim’s father.  The Vatican editor seems to have misunderstood his original, which the Parisian transcriber has preserved faithfully,—and to have altered it into accordance with his misunderstanding, by recasting the passage and substituting “was born” for “was.”

The earlier authorities give no express statement on this point; but a late tenth-century Greek menologium, that of the Emperor Basil (Porphyrogenitus), says that he “continued from the reign of Constantine to that of Valens,”²⁹⁸

298 In Migne’s Patrologia Græca, CXVI I., p. 254.

Considering, however, that the Life in both its forms affirms that Ephraim was brought by St. Jacob to the Council of Nicæa in 325—in which it is borne out by Gregory Barhebræus in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle²⁹⁹

299 I., 23 (Abbeloos and Lamy’s edition).

300 Gregory Barhebr. (Chron. Eccles., II., 10) mentions, but doubtfully, a tradition that Ephraim wrote a letter circ. 334 in which he took the part of Papas, the Catholicus, against “the Bishops of the East” who accused him of neglect and misconduct.  If this be accepted, it is additional evidence for the early date of Ephraim’s birth.

Farther:  the menologium above cited adds that he died “in extreme old age;” and the tone and tenor of his testament go far to confirm the truth of these words.  But as he died in 373, he cannot have been more than 67 years old in that year if he was born in 306.  No doubt 67 is a ripe age, but hardly sufficient to warrant the strong expression of the menologium.  Without pressing its language unduly, we may surely take it as implying that he had passed the “threescore years and ten” of the Psalmist at the time of his death—in other words that he was born not later than the first or second year of the fourth century.

Thus by rectifying the text and rendering of the opening sentences of the Life, we relieve ourselves of the supposed necessity of placing his birth in or after 306.  And his presence in the Council of 325, and his extreme old age in 373, concur in pointing to the beginning of the fourth century—if not to the later years of the third—as the probable time of that event.

However this may be, whether he was born in 306 or earlier, it is certain that by far the greater part of the long life of the “Deacon of Edessa”—all of it save its last ten or eleven years (363–373) was passed in his native Nisibis; and that he did not even attain the diaconate till he was considerably over sixty years of age, and within three years of his end.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH