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| Probable Dates of His Works. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
X.—Probable Dates of His Works.
Of the compositions contained in this volume, none yields internal evidence of its date, except the Nisibene Hymns of the
first division. Hymns XXXV.–XLII. (not included here),
apparently belong to the later (or Edessene) period of Ephraim’s
life, and to the reign of Valens,—i.e., they are later
than the year 363. The 21 Hymns which stand first in our
collection may confidently be assigned to the year of the third siege
(350) and the thirteen following years. Hymn I. was indubitably
composed while the siege was still urgent; Hymns I. and III.
immediately after the deliverance; Hymns IV.–XII. deal with the
fortunes of the city and country in a troubled time of invasion that
succeeded; the rest (XIII.–XXI.) treat of the four successive
Bishops of Nisibis under whom Ephraim lived—Jacob, Babu, Valgesh,
and Abraham. The last-named is not elsewhere recorded except by
Elias of Nisibis, but the death of Valgesh is known to have occurred in
361.317
317 Chron.
Edess., as above; Chronol. of Elias Nisib. | The Hymns therefore which celebrate
the accession of Abraham to the See (XVII.–XXI.) must be placed
in the interval, 361–363, the latter being the year when Ephraim
with all the Christian population of the city was driven out by
Sapor. Hymns XIII.–XVI., being written while Valgesh was
Bishop—for they compare him with his two predecessors—fall
into the interval between the year of the siege (350) which they speak
of as past,—and the year of the death of Valgesh (361).
Bickell assigns IV.–XII. to the months of Sapor’s invasion
in 359; XIII.-XVI. to 358 and 359; XVII.–XXI. to 363, in the
short space between Julian’s death and the surrender of
Nisibis.
It is probable that most of his Hymns that are
definitely controversial belong, like most of his controversial
writings, to the years of his later life, at Edessa. And as we
have seen, the earliest of them that can be confidently dated, is not
earlier than 350. But it would be hasty to conclude that he had
composed no Hymns before that date, and that in the Nisibene Hymns of the siege we have the first fruits of the vine of his vision. In 350
he must have been over forty—perhaps over fifty years of age; and
it is highly improbable that a fertility which proved to be so
abundant, did not begin to manifest itself at a much earlier age; or
that a literary offspring of such bulk and importance was all produced
in the last five and twenty years of a long life. The earlier
authorities concerning his life give no definite information on this
head; and the Syriac Life is vague in its statements and
untrustworthy in its chronology. The account given of
Barhebræus, a well-informed but very late writer (thirteenth
century), can hardly be accepted as embodying any genuine tradition,
but has probability in its favor:—“From the time of the
Nicene Council (he writes318
318 Ap. Assemani, B. O. I.
116. | ), Ephraim began
to write canticles and hymns against the heresies of his
time,”—for few of his hymns are without a polemic spirit,
though (as has been said) those that are purely controversial seem to
be of a later period. A much later author indeed, Georgius
“Bishop of the Arabians” (writing in 714) warns us that
there is no evidence to assign any of Ephraim’s writings to the
twenty years’ interval between the Nicene Council and the year
345—“especially (he adds) to the years before
337.”319
319 Ap.
Forget, De Vita Aphraatis, lntroductio, p. 22; see also pp.
121–126 of Forget’s Dissertation which follows; also
p. 5 of Introd. | This writer,
however, is here arguing in support of the claim of Aphrahat to be an
independent author, against those who regarded him as a disciple of
Ephraim; and he rests his case on the ground that whereas the
Demonstrations of Aphrahat are (as we shall see presently) dated
from 337 to 345, no composition of Ephraim’s can be shown to have
been written so early. And it must be admitted that the earliest
date (as above noted) that can be fixed with certainty for any of
Ephraim’s innumerable productions in 350,—thirteen years
later than Aphrahat’s earlier Demonstrations.
Against this is to be set the tradition of Ephraim’s presence at
Nicæa, implying as it does that even in 325 he had made himself a
notable person,—and the probability that one who has left such
ample proof of the copiousness of his literary gift, must have begun to
exercise it before a date at which he would have passed his thirtieth
year (supposing his birth to have been in 306), or even have entered
middle life (if we place it at the beginning of the century). The
two writers were unquestionably contemporary, and as yet no sufficient
data have been discovered to determine to which of them seniority
belongs.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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