Typological Figuration in Theodoret of Cyrrhus's Religious History and the Art of Postbiblical Narrative

Abstract

In the Religious History Theodoret of Cyrrhus makes extensive allusion to biblical figures and events while narrating the lives of fourth- and fifth-century ascetics in northwest Syria. Typological composition imposes an aesthetic of biblical correspondence which attests to the sanctity of his subjects by showing them to be equal to—and even greater than—Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Theodoret's hagiographical mode shares both the concerns and the techniques of his biblical exegesis in combat with Jews and Marcionites, demonstrating the links not only between the testaments but between the Bible and his own age. His typological system has implications for his own self-understanding, as he configures his act of composition in imitation of biblical writers, the evangelists and Moses, and his understanding of his product as a biblical text. He also calls the reader to conform to biblical models.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus's Religious History reflects the interplay of the author's roles as bishop and theologian, writer and ascetic. Turning his literary art to the representation of Syrian holy men and women, Theodoret explored a correspondence between the world of late antique monasticism and the world of the Bible. Theodoret's primary tool for placing the deeds of the local saints into a context comprehensible to his readers was the device of biblical typology, the linking of his modern-day heroes with biblical figures. In the course of the biography of James of Nisibis, a mere fourteen paragraphs in the modern edition of the Religious History, Theodoret compares the hermit turned bishop with Moses, Phinehas, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, the apostles generally, Peter particularly, and frequently with the Christ "his own Master" (1.6). The saturation of the text with such allusions reveals Theodoret's sophisticated insight not only into practices of the saints he so vividly describes, but into the practice of writing hagiography as well.

Theodoret wrote the Religious History (), subtitled the Ascetic Life (), in the year 440.² Later he would refer to the work simply as the Lives of the Saints ().³ The work consists of a series of about thirty descriptions of ascetics active in and near the towns and villages of northern Syria from the early fourth century through his own day.⁴ Theodoret organized these accounts—which he called diēgēmata or "narratives"—by whether their subjects were dead or living; the former ordered by the date of their death, the latter grouped by geography and gender.⁵ Despite Theodoret's claims to have avoided composing panegyric, the Religious History demonstrates Theodoret's extensive rhetorical and philosophical education.⁶ He wrote a nuanced, atticizing Greek, eschewing both the common dialect of the Western Syrian cities and the Syriac that was the native tongue of most of the holy men he describes.⁷ While the didactic concerns of the work show a bishop eager to educate his flock, the text's sophisticated linguistic and rhetorical level points toward a larger audience of educated Christians, monastic and lay, throughout the eastern Mediterranean.⁸ The work apparently circulated widely. At the end of the 440s in his Ecclesiastical History, Theodoret described the Religious History as "easily accessible []" to "those who wish to become acquainted with [its contents]."⁹

Theodoret did not merely write about ascetic devotion, he practiced it; moreover, he was quite familiar with hermits and monastic communities. He was born in 393 in Antioch to wealthy and pious Christian parents who had dedicated Theodoret (whose name means "given by God") to God's service before his birth.¹⁰ Already in his childhood he made frequent visits to local holy men.¹¹ After the death of his parents, Theodoret entered the monastery at Nicerte (near Apamea), where he pursued the ascetic life and began a long career as a writer.¹² He continued his ascetic regimen even after he was elected bishop of Cyrrhus in 423.¹³ Monastic bishops were common in northwestern Syria, and the Religious History provides a number of examples for Theodoret's mode of life.^14...