Breaking the Mind

9. The Perfect and Perfection in the Book of Steps

156 Pablo Argárate 9. THE PERFECT AND PERFECTION IN THE BOOK OF STEPS Since the publication of Michael Kmoskó’s edition, the Book of Steps has puzzled scholars with its manifestation of an enigmatic form of Christianity .1 Among many features, however, it is the profusion and variety of religious groups portrayed throughout its thirty memre that particularly drew attention to our anonymous work. Along with some more traditional functions, such as the leaders of the community, the priests, the “sick,” and the “children,” some mysterious sorts of Christianity enter into the picture, like the group of faith and the group of love. Nevertheless, the most frequent and consistent ones are the Upright and the Perfect. This distinction is closely associated to the one between the major and minor commandments or between corporal and spiritual ministries. The origin of the separation between perfection and uprightness is traced by the Book of Steps to the very origin of humanity. Adam, created in perfection, by failing to keep God’s commandments fell from that state, and uprightness was sanctioned until the coming of Christ, who would manifest in himself the true nature of Adam and perfection. The Book of Steps portrays this perfection in a rather negative way by de1 . For a status quaestionis, see Pablo Argárate, “Das Ktābā dmasqātā”: Forschung und Bedeutung des syrischen Liber Graduum,” in Bibel, Byzanz und Christlicher Orient: Festschrift für Stephen Gerö zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by E. Grypeou, A. Toepel, T. Sailors, and D. Bumazhnov, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 187 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). t h e P e r f e c t a n d P e r f e c t i o n 157 nying the features of uprightness.2 Whereas the Upright live in the world and care for it, working, possessing, and getting married, the Perfect are characterized by radical renunciation of the world (they “fast to the world”), neither working nor marrying nor having any tie with that world. On the contrary, they closely follow Christ by taking up his cross in complete poverty and lowliness . In doing so, according to the Book of Steps, they have succeeded in acquiring the status that Adam had in paradise before the fall.3 Their functions within the community comprise of teaching to all the new life and the distinction between major and minor commandments. However, repeatedly, our book places the hallmark of perfection in unlimited love and forgiveness, in the footsteps of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The Perfect are thus required to love and forgive all without distinction: women, heretics, pagans, sinners, and even their own murderers. It is an in-depth research into this close association between perfection and love for enemies that forms the theme of this chapter. The quest for perfection builds without any doubt the center of the Book of Steps. From its very outset, already in the first paragraph of memra 1, perfection and uprightness are brought into relation with the commandments of the Lord, which fall into two major categories: major and minor commandments. Furthermore, this distinction is closely related to what is the separation between perfection and uprightness. Indeed, memra 1 begins by summarizing its topic: “In which can be found an exposition of the commandments, showing for what purpose each single one has been given and to whom, why our Lord Jesus Christ gave major and minor commandments, and how one can distinguish Perfection from Uprightness, and that through the major commandments one becomes Perfect and through the minor ones Upright.”4 2. This has led to believe that the Book of Steps might be addressed to the Upright rather than to the Perfect, the latter being more a theological category; see Robert A. Kitchen, “The Gattung of the Liber Graduum: Implications for a Sociology of Asceticism,” in IV Symposium Syriacum 1984, edited by H. J. W. Drijvers, et al, 181, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 229 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987): “The Just, who undoubtedly are the majority of the LG community, are more concretely described and are the principal audience of the LG. The Perfect are not as clearly defined and in fact, represent more a school, not an individual. Its function as a canon for the community was the purpose for writing.” 3. See Aleksander Kowalski, Perfezione e giustizia di Adamo nel Liber Graduum, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 232 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientale, 1989); Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and...