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21 Chapter Two u Defending Nicaea against Jews and Judaizers In the turbulent Christian controversies of the fourth century, church leaders engaged in the struggle to convert congregants as well as emperors to their views of Christian orthodoxy. While scholars of late antiquity have long scoured early Greek and Latin sources for information about this fourth-century religious and political struggle, Ephrem’s Syriac texts, which also provide significant insight into the controversy, have not yet been part of the major academic discussions concerning it.1 Nestled within Ephrem’s po1 . There are, of course, some notable exceptions, most recently Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). See also the foundational earlier work of Sidney Griffith: “Ephraem, the Deacon of Edessa , and the Church of the Empire,” in Diakonia: Studies in Honor of Robert T. Meyer, eds. Thomas Halton and Joseph Williman (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 22–52; “The Marks of the ‘True Church’ according to Ephraem’s Hymns against Heresies,” in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J. W. Drijvers, eds. G. J. Reinink and A. C. Klugkist, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 89 (Louvain : Peeters, 1999), 125–40; “Setting Right the Church of Syria: Saint Ephraem’s Hymns against Heresies,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus, eds. William Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 97–114. See also Edmund Beck, Die Theologie des heilige Ephraem in seinen Hymnen über den Glauben (Rome: Pontifical Institute, 1949), 62–80; Edmund Beck, Ephraems Reden über den Glauben (Rome: Orbis Catholicus, 1953), 111–18; Peter Bruns, “Arius hellenizans?—Ephräm der Syrer und die neoarianischen Kontroversen seiner Zeit,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 101 (1990): 21–57; Paul Russell, St. Ephraem the Syrian and St. Gregory the Theologian Confront the Arians (Kerala, India: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute, 1994); Paul Russell, “An AntiNeo -Arian Interpolation in Ephraem of Nisibis’ Hymn 46 On Faith,” in Studia Patristica XXXIII, ed. Elizabeth Livingstone (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 568–72; Sebastian Brock, From Ephrem to Romanos : Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Press, 1999). While these works note Ephrem’s participation in imperial Christian controversy, however , they do not focus on his anti-Jewish rhetoric and its role in this struggle. 22 Defending Nicaea against Jews & Judaizers etry is a persistent interest in establishing Nicene Christianity as the religious orthodoxy of the Roman Empire.2 In that effort, anti-Jewish language plays a critical role in Ephrem’s writings, against both Judaizing Christians and “Arian ” Christians, in helping him establish the boundaries of (Nicene) Christianity that his liturgical texts try to enforce. Although not Ephrem’s only target, Jews and Judaizers were certainly one significant object of Ephrem’s sharp anti-Jewish rhetoric. Christian Anti-Jewish Language Despite the preponderance of vitriolic anti-Judaism within Ephrem’s writings , few scholars note its presence, let alone discuss its implications.3 Scholars have traditionally read Ephrem’s anti-Jewish language as describing only contemporary Jews and Judaism, and as detailing hostile interactions between Jews and Ephrem’s Christian audience.4 This monotone reading of 2. See particularly Sidney Griffith’s observations (“Deacon,” 22–52). 3. See Darling, “Church”; Kazan (1962, 1963); Kathleen McVey, “The Anti-Judaic Polemic of Ephrem Syrus’ Hymns on the Nativity,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins, eds. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin (New York: University Press of America, 1990), 229–40; Andy P. Hayman, “The Image of the Jew in the Syriac Anti-Jewish Polemical Literature,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, eds. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 423–41; Dominique Cerbelaud, “L’antijudaïsme dans les hymnes de Pascha d’Éphrem le Syrien,” PdO 20 (1995): 201–7; Benin, “Commandments,” 135–56; P. J. Botha, “The Poetic Face of Rhetoric: Ephrem’s polemics against the Jews and heretics in Contra Haereses xxv,” Acta Patristica et Byzantina 2 (1991): 16–36; H. Botha, “A Poetic Analysis of Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymn de Azymis XIII,” Acta Patristica et Byzantina 14 (2003): 21–38; Karl Kuhlmann, “The Harp out of Tune: The Anti-Judaism/Anti-Semitism of St. Ephrem,” The Harp...

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