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32 Timothy Pettipiece 2. PAR ALLEL PATHS Tracing Manichaean Footprints along the Syriac Book of Steps The Syriac Book of Steps is indeed a mysterious and remarkable piece of early Christian literature. While it has languished in the relative obscurity of the Patrologia Syriaca for nearly a century, accessible primarily to those with a specialized passion for its equally neglected language, Robert Kitchen and Martien Parmentier have recently done a great service to early Christian studies generally and to those interested in early Syriac literature in particular by publishing a complete and accessible translation of this important work.1 Hopefully the publication of this text will facilitate further challenges to the longstanding paradigm of Latin West and Greek East that continues to influence so many reconstructions of early Christian history and open yet another window upon the fascinating vistas of Syriac Christianity. Yet in spite of our hopes that this publication will shed some much needed light on one of the more shadowy and poorly documented corners of the early Christian world, the reader is left with a certain degree of disappointment when faced with the fact that the Book of Steps, in its enigmatic and self-effacing way, provides precious little direct evidence of its own sociohistorical trajectory and milieu. Yet as adamant as the text is in refusing to disclose much about its environment 1. Robert A. Kitchen and Martien F. G. Parmentier, The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2004). P a r a l l e l P at h s 33 directly, perhaps we might trace some of its contours by juxtaposing some analogous textual material from a related tradition. If, as we are told, the composition of the Book of Steps ought to be dated to sometime in the late fourth or early fifth century,2 somewhere along the Romano-Persian borderland,3 then it seems sensible to me to look in the same neighborhood for points of comparison. This is at least partly why the Manichaeans seem to be obvious candidates. After all, even though Mani had been executed by Vahram I in either 276 or 277 C.E., evidence of and allusions to his legacy can be found dispersed throughout some of the earliest examples of Syriac literature. For instance, while a veiled critique of Manichaeism has been detected in the Odes of Solomon,4 a more direct Manichaean imprint may be visible in the famous “Hymn of the Pearl” from the Acts of Thomas.5 More explicitly , Aphrahat, in the mid-fourth century, characterized the Manichaeans as “children of darkness,”6 while somewhat later Ephrem polemicized against them in both his poetry7 and prose8 as heretics and purveyors of error. Even the “official” version of the introduction of Christianity into Syria found in the Teaching of Addai appears to be colored by anti-Manichaean polemic.9 2. Kitchen and Parmentier, Book of Steps, l. 3. See the fresh assessment of the situation by Geoffrey Greatrex in this volume. 4. Han Drijvers, “Odes of Solomon and Psalms of Mani: Christians and Manichaeans in Third-Century Syria,” in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Giles Quispel on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Maarten J. Vermaseren, 117–30 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981). 5. Albertus F. J. Klijn, trans., The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary, 2nd ed., Supplements to Novum Testamentum (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003); see also Paul-Hubert Poirier, L’hymne de la perle des Actes de Thomas: Introduction, texte-traduction, commentaire (Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre d’histoire des religions, 1981). 6. Alfred Adam, Texte zum Manichäismus (Berlin: Verlag Walter De Gruyter, 1969), 57, citing Aphrahat, Demonstration 3, §9. 7. See Edmund Beck, ed., “Hymni 56 contra haereses,” in Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen contra haereses, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 169, 170 (Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1957). 8. Charles W. Mitchell, ed., Ephraim’s Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan, 2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912–21); John C. Reeves, “Manichaean Citations from the Prose Refutations of Ephrem,” in Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources, edited by Jason BeDuhn and Paul A. Mirecki, 217–88, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 43 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997). 9. See Drijvers, “Facts and Problems in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity,” in East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity, 160–61 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984); Drijvers, “Addai und Mani: Christentum und Manichäismus...

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