Bride of Blood, Bride of Light: Biblical Women as Images of Church in Jacob of Serug 9781463216764

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Bride of Blood, Bride of Light: Biblical Women as Images of Church in Jacob of Serug

Analecta Gorgiana

123 Series Editor George Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Bride of Blood, Bride of Light: Biblical Women as Images of Church in Jacob of Serug

Susan Harvey



 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

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 ISBN 978-1-60724-050-1 ISSN 1935-6854

This extract originally appeared in George A. Kiraz, ed., Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, Gorgias Press, 2008, pages 177–204.

Printed in the United States of America

BRIDE OF BLOOD, BRIDE OF LIGHT: BIBLICAL WOMEN AS IMAGES OF CHURCH IN JACOB OF SERUG SUSAN ASHBROOK HARVEY Sebastian Brock has enriched the study of Syriac for many years now with a series of articles devoted to different images that enliven and mark as distinctive the poetic writings of Syriac theologians, both known and anonymous. Among the most beloved of ancient Syriac images, and one on which Sebastian Brock has written on numerous occasions, is the cluster of bridal imagery frequently invoked by Syriac writers: Christ as Heavenly Bridegroom, the individual believer or the Church as Bride, and the place into which they enter to celebrate their wedding feast, the Bridal Chamber of the Heart, the Bridal Chamber of Light, the Bridal Chamber of Joy.1 Yet Dr. Brock has also written on a less well-known articulation of the divine-human marriage theme: that of “the wedding feast of blood on Golgotha.”2 Here, Syriac writers explored the resonances of John 19:34, the piercing of Christ’s side with the lance, to arrive at this jarringly discordant image. The piercing harkened back to Genesis 2:21–22 and the birth of Eve, the Mother of All Life, from the side of Adam; and to the sealing of Eden by the cherub with the lance upon the expulsion of Adam and Eve The imagery is famously treated in Brock’s foundational study, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992), at pp. 115–30. See also idem, “The Bridal Chamber of Light: A Distinctive Feature of the Syriac Liturgical Tradition,” The Harp 18 (2005): 179–91; “An Anonymous Hymn for Epiphany,” Parole de l’Orient 15 (1988–9): 169–96. Also crucial for this imagery is Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004), 131–58, 254– 62, 272. 2 S. P. Brock,“‘The Wedding Feast of Blood on Golgotha,’ an unusual aspect of John 19:34 in Syriac tradition,” The Harp 6 (1993): 121–34. 1

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after the Fall (Gen. 3:24). The piercing also pointed forward, for the water and blood that issued from the side of Christ, the Second Adam, prefigured the birth of the Church (the Mother of All Life) with the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, removing the lance that had barred humanity’s return to Paradise.3 “The wedding feast of blood” presents an unnerving paradox of images to the modern eye: of nuptial joy intermixed with the specter of death. Nonetheless, as Sebastian Brock has shown, Syriac writers here drew upon rich typological traditions of biblical exegesis at the same time that they echoed very ancient Mediterranean notions of marriage as a meeting of life and death.4 Dr. Brock’s article on the wedding feast of blood samples a wide array of Syriac texts to explore the image, perhaps most notably the extensive treatment of the theme in Jacob of Serug’s homily on the Veil of Moses.5 However, one significant occurrence, also by Jacob of Serug, was not included: that of Jephthah’s Daughter as the Bride of Blood, a depiction central to Jacob’s homily on Judges 11.6 In this instance, however, it would appear that Jacob’s inspiration came from a different set of biblical passages, related to John 3:16 and the notions of sacrifice, devotion, martyrdom and virginity that attended the ascetic ideal in late antique Syriac Christianity. In this study I would like to take up Jacob’s arresting image of Jephthah’s Daughter as a contribution towards a fuller understanding of ancient Syriac Christological thought and the significance of its bridal imagery. The topic may seem an odd choice for a volume honoring our beloved teacher! But the discussion will also allow me to consider aspects of 3 See also Brock, “The Mysteries Hidden in the Side of Christ,” Sobornost 7 (1978): 462–72; Robert Murray, “The Lance which re-opened Paradise: a Mysterious reading in the early Syriac Fathers,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 39 (1973): 224–34, 491. 4 Margaret Alexiou and Peter Dronke, “The lament of Jephtha’s daughter: themes, traditions, originality,” Studi medievali 12 (1971): 819–63. 5 The text is edited as Homily 79 in Paul Bedjan, Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug/ Homiliae Selectae Mar Jacobi Sarugensis (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006) 3: 283– 305. It was translated by Sebastian Brock, “Jacob of Serugh on the Veil of Moses,” Sobornost 3 (1981): 70–85. The wedding imagery appears at lines 85–164. 6 Jacob of Serug, Homily 159, “On Jephthah’s Daughter,” ed. Bedjan, Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, 5: 306–30. I am preparing a translation of this homily with Ophir Muenz-Manor, to be published in the new bilingual edition of Jacob’s homilies now being edited by Sebastian Brock for Gorgias Press. Quotations are from this forthcoming translation, with references to page and line numbers in Bedjan’s edition.

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Jacob’s poetic style that merit attention in their own right. And attention to Syriac poetics brings us close to the heart of Sebastian Brock’s legacy for the field of Syriac studies: an appreciation for the depth of interaction between cultures that Syriac allowed, as well as the distinctive qualities that granted Syriac Christianity its particular luminosity in late antiquity.

1. JACOB OF SERUG: THE HOMILETIC POET IN LITURGICAL CONTEXT A large number of the surviving mimre (verse homilies) by Jacob of Serug are devoted to presenting and interpreting biblical texts by re-telling their stories in the form of dramatic narratives. Often these mimre display Jacob’s artistry at its finest. In metered couplets of 7 + 7 or 12 + 12, Jacob would luxuriously reiterate a biblical account, punctuating the presentation with exquisite prayers addressed to God or Christ. Less exuberant as a poet than Ephrem, Jacob was nonetheless an artist of rare and delicate skill. With gracefully crafted lines, he drew deeply on earlier Syriac exegetical traditions while often rendering them in more fully fashioned form than previously found. In Syriac, exegetical literature appears in various genres: prose commentaries, hymns, homilies, even hagiography.7 There is a deep intertextuality to this literature, and Jacob’s homilies are a place where one can see the interweaving of the various exegetical and hermeneutical trajectories that preceded him. Jacob’s artistry lay in his ability to transmit tradition(s) with a lyricism of striking elegance. His portraits of biblical women are notably powerful; they perhaps show Jacob at his most original. In the well-loved fashion of Syriac liturgical poets, Jacob frequently employed imagined speech for biblical characters.8 Such speech was one means by which to present a biblical person as strong or authoritative. Jacob presented biblical characters in dialogue with one another, or in 7 E.g., Lucas Van Rompay, “The Christian Syriac Tradition of Interpretation,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: the History of its Interpretation Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), Part 1: Antiquity ed. Magne Saebo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996), 612–41. 8 See especially the forthcoming study by Sebastian Brock, “Dramatic Narrative Poems on Biblical Topics in Syriac,” Studia Patristica (2009). Cf. also S. A. Harvey, “Spoken Words, Voiced Silence: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 105–31; eadem, “On Mary’s Voice: Gendered Words in Syriac Marian Tradition,” in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography, ed. Dale Martin and Paatricia Cox Miller (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 63–86.

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imagined interior monologues; speaking hypothetically (“if X had spoken, he would have said something like this:”) or following the model of the biblical text. In the case of biblical women, this meant granting their speech a greater prominence than the biblical accounts had done. However, the formal aspects of the mimra as a liturgical homily provided specific ritual and rhetorical constraints for such elaboration of the sacred text. The biblical pericope in question would be known to the congregation through its lectionary version, read as part of a sequence of scripture that would in and of itself provide guidance for the hearer’s understanding of each passage. The mimra would be presented to explicate the readings, whether in the first portion of a eucharistic liturgy (the Liturgy of the Word) or at a vigil service which would involve again a variety of readings, both scriptural and homiletic.9 Even when focusing his homily on one particular biblical episode, the homilist was lifting that episode out of the whole slate of readings given for that service. The story’s scriptural context was not that of

9 For the development of the Syriac liturgy and the daily offices in the context of eastern Christianity see, e.g., Juan Mateos, Lelya-Sapra: Essai d’interpretation des matines chaldeennes, OCA 156 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1959); idem, La célébration de la parole dans la liturgie Byzantine, OCA 191 (Rome, Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum 1971); Paul Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 72–110; Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: the Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986), esp. 225–48. Useful bibliography in general may be found in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold, and P. Bradshaw, The Study of Liturgy, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press/ London: SPCK, 1992), 219–29 (P. Cobb, “The Liturgy of the Word in the Early Church”), 230–44 (E. J. Yarnold, “The Liturgy of the Faithful in the Fourth and Early Fifth Century”); and see now Daniel Sheerin, “Eucharistic Liturgy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. S. A. Harvey and D. G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 711–43. The custom of reading homilies by great preachers at vigil services was well in place before Jacob of Serug’s time, and Jacob’s homilies were among those utilized far beyond their author’s lifetime. The practice continues: cf. Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls: A History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, trans. Matti Moosa, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003), 77. For interesting related work on Greek homiletics and the reception by congregations, see Mary Cunningham and Pauline Allen, Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

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the biblical book from which it was taken, but rather the lectionary grouping of passages and pericopes across a variety of biblical literature.10 Further, Jacob’s homilies included extensive narrative portions to frame the sections given to speech. He not only elaborated the biblical account at hand, adorning and embellishing the biblical text, but further would add explicit comments to the congregation (sometimes presented as if addressed to the biblical figures themselves) that allowed him to set the tone or quality of the character’s spoken words. In the case of biblical women, Jacob sometimes granted them speech of unusual boldness or authority in comparison with the expected social norms for late antique society. Yet the impact on the hearer, or the reception by the congregation, would have been strongly mediated. Intoned by the (male) homilist, embedded in the mimra’s poetically rendered narrative and expository framework, and contextualized within the larger liturgical structure of the service, such speech was not free standing. It is important when considering Jacob’s homilies to keep this performative context in view. The cluster of biblical passages with which the given story would have been associated through lectionary readings was one crucial component of the story’s impact. The ritual context of the liturgy itself was another; so, too, the point in the liturgical calendar of the year. A master of his craft, Jacob worked knowingly with these elements as he wove his homilies. Jacob’s mimre (not differently from other homilies of the time) were designed as vehicles for biblical instruction. Their purpose was to teach biblical content as well as right interpretation. In an age when few could or would have owned a Bible, the liturgy was the location where the majority of people gained their biblical knowledge. Biblical readings, the imagery of hymnography, the iconographic decoration of the church building, the structure of liturgical ritual, and the explication of the homilist all served to instill that knowledge. Rarely, then, was the biblical text itself the object of study or even scrutiny for most Christians. Instead, a homilist like Jacob cultivated a sense of “biblical memory,” by which people learned their Bible as the Christian story of salvation, within clearly defined ritual boundaries. For the Syriac lectionary, see F. C. Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” Proceedings of the British Academy 10 (1923): 301–39; and the important study by Sebastian Brock, “The Use of the Syriac Versions in the Liturgy,” in The Peshitta: Its Use in Literature and Liturgy: Papers read at the Third Peshitta Symposium, ed. Bas ter Haar Romeny (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 3–25. 10

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Jacob’s dramatic narratives were highly stylized presentations. The biblical characters were often represented through stereotypes, as caricatures or stock figures; or they might function as personifications of roles or positions. The pure virgin, the seductive sinner, the righteous wife, the resourceful widow, the penitent harlot: all were familiar narrative types Jacob used to represent the persons of biblical stories.11 This did not preclude powerful artistry on his part. Tragic elements of fear, dread, horror, recognition, and catharsis could be employed; humor, cunning, playfulness, could attend dialogic exchange. But the liturgical context was one that ensured the presentation of biblical persons as symbols, as ‘conventional types’ or ‘mythical figures’ whose citation provided a means of exegesis through which biblical instruction took place. In what follows, I suggest that Jacob employed biblical women as images of the Church, thereby serving basic ecclesiastical purposes. His homily on Jephthah’s Daughter provides an entry to the issues. Moreover, it opens connections with other homilies by him, notably those on Tamar the daughter-in-law of Judah and the Sinful Woman who washed Christ’s feet with her tears and anointed him with fine ointment. Brief consideration of these links will enable me to point out aspects of Jacob’s poetic technique, as well as to consider the role of biblical women in his exegetical method.

2. JACOB ON JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER The biblical story of Jephthah’s daughter has distressed and dismayed its readers, both Jewish and Christian, from their earliest commentaries down to the present time.12 Recounted in Judges 11, it is a short, shocking tale. Jephthah was one of the Judges who led the Hebrews in the era before the kings. Bastard son of a prostitute, he is depicted as a brash but mighty warrior, summoned by the Israelites despite his lowly origin to lead their charge against the Ammonites. In preparation for battle, Jephthah barters with God: if the Lord will grant him victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah Compare the parallel development of hagiography of holy women in eastern Christianity: Lynda Coon, Sacred Fictions: holy women and hagiography in late antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Stavroula Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances: reading the body in Byzantine passions and lives of holy women (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2005). 12 The bibliography on Jephthah’s Daughter, whether the biblical text itself or its subsequent history, is vast. In what follows I cite only examples of especially important or recent scholarship. I am grateful to Ophir Meunz-Manor for his help with references and also for discussion of the problems. 11

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will sacrifice the first person to come forth from his house upon his return as a burnt offering. Tragedy strikes when that person proves to be his young daughter, his only child, who had come out to greet him with timbrels and dance in celebration of his victory. Jephthah rends his garments with grief, but the daughter insists he uphold his vow, asking only that he grant her two months to mourn her virginity in the mountains with her companions. Following her mountain sojourn, the unnamed daughter willingly returns to her father, “who did with her according to his vow which he had made.” (Jud. 11:39 RSV) This story outraged ancient readers no less than it has inflamed modern feminists.13 It was frequently compared to the account of Abraham and the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, with the glaring difference that Isaac was spared when the Lord provided a ram for sacrifice in his stead.14 Both patristic and rabbinic authors saw the problem of the story in the figure of Jephthah himself. His vow was almost invariably distained as brash, foolish, and even an insult to God. The fact that the story seemed to indicate the Lord’s acceptance of his sacrifice was by no means a sign that God countenanced human sacrifice. Rather, ancient commentators presumed God’s acceptance of the daughter’s death as tantamount to punishment of Jephthah for making such an ignoble vow in the first place.15 By contrast, 13 Perhaps most influential among feminist scholarship have been: Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress 1984), Ch. 4, “the Daughter of Jephthah: an Inhuman Sacrifice,” pp. 93– 116; Meike Bal, Anti-Covenant. Counter Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Almond, 1989), “Between Altar and Wandering Rock: Toward a Feminist Philology,” pp. 211–31; and Esther Fuchs, “Marginalization, Ambiguity, Silencing: the Story of Jephthah’s Daughter,” in A Feminist Companion to Judges, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1993), 116–30. 14 E.g., Tal Ilan, “Gender Difference and the Rabbis: Bat Yiftah as Human Sacrifice,” in Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Karen Finsterbusch, Armin Lange, K. F. Diethard Römheld, and Lance Lazar (Leiden: Brill 2007), 175– 89; Guy Stroumsa, “Christ’s Laughter: Docetic Origins Reconsidered,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004): 267–88. 15 As in Christian sources such as Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron 10.3; Jerome, Against Jovinian, 1.23; Augustine, Questions on Judges 49.1, 2–4, 6–7, Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John 6.276–8; Ambrose, Duties of the Clergy 1.50.264, 3.12.78, 81; John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues 14.7. These are conveniently collected in Thomas Oden, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament, vol. 4: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, ed. John R. Franke (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 136–40.

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the daughter was universally admired for her steadfastness in remaining faithful to what was vowed to God.16 Although rabbinic commentators, in particular, granted her a tradition of lively and eloquent protest (a line medieval and early modern Christian writers would also pursue),17 yet her perfection of faith remained the constant point of contrast to a common condemnation of Jephthah’s boorish and violent character.18 Pseudo-Philo went so far as to provide her a name, Seilah, in an attempt to treat her with appropriate respect.19 Jacob of Serug inherited earlier Syriac traditions on Jephthah and his daughter. Both Aphrahat and Ephrem had commented on the story, if not extensively. Aphrahat had cited the episode in his Demonstration 21, On Persecution, where he presented Jephthah as a type for Christ, as one persecuted by his own household who yet arose to become leader of his

16 Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity ARCA 16 (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1985), 181–9. 17 E.g., Elisheva Baumgarten, “‘Remember that glorious girl:’ Jephthah’s Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 97 (2007): 180– 209; Cornelis Houtman, “Rewriting a Dramatic Old Testament Story: the Story of Jephthah and his Daughter in some Examples of Christian Devotional Literature,” Biblical Interpretation 13 (2005): 167–90; Joshua Berman, “Medieval Monasticism and the Evolution of Jewish Interpretation to the Story of Jephthah’s Daughter,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005): 228–56; Deborah W. Rooke, “Sex and Death, or, the Death of Sex: Three Versions of Jephthah’s Daughter (Judges 11:29–40),” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in honour of Michael A. Knibb, ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith M. Lieu (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 249–71. 18 Michaela Bauks, “The Theological Implications of Child Sacrifice: in and beyond the Biblical Context in Relation to Genesis 22 and Judges 11,” in Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Karen Finsterbusch, Armin Lange, K. F. Diethard Römheld, and Lance Lazar (Leiden: Brill 2007), 65–86. For a fresh perspective on how Jewish and Christian traditions may have interacted, see Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Narratives in Dialogue: a Folk Literary Perspective on Interreligious Contacts in the Holy Land in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” in Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First—Fifteenth Centuries CE (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi 1998), 109–29. 19 Pieter W. Van der Horst, “Deborah and Seila in Ps-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum,” in Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, ed. I. Gruenwald, S. Shaked, and G. G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992), 111–7. For the larger Rabbinic context, see Tal Ilan, “Biblical Women’s Names in the Apocryphal Tradition,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 11 (1993): 3–67.

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people.20 More importantly, Aphrahat implied, Jephthah’s typological link to Christ was to be seen in the bloodshed of sacrifice, for “Jephthah vowed a vow and offered up his first-born daughter as a sacrifice, and Jesus went up [=was offered] as a sacrifice to his father in behalf of all the peoples.”21 Ephrem, by contrast, turned to Jephthah and his daughter in various works. In his Commentary on the Diatessaron, he cited the story as an admonitory event God had allowed so as to instruct against human sacrifice.22 In his Hymns on Virginity, he holds up the Daughter as exemplary for consecrated virgins, since she died willingly with the “pearl” of her virginity intact as consolation.23 Urging consecrated virgins to keep their vows to the Lord just as Jephthah had done, Ephrem follows Aphrahat in suggesting a typology by which Jephthah is likened to Christ, as one who shed his own blood (his daughter) out of love for his people. This Christological suggestion Ephrem pursued further in his Hymns on Nisibis 70.7–12. Here Ephrem speaks of Jephthah as praiseworthy for his sacrifice because he successfully suppressed his human love when offering his daughter to the Lord, while yet remaining sane (!). In Ephrem’s view, Jephthah was sustained by his faith (¿šÍæã؅). Referring to the Daughter as the “dove” who “gave [Jephthah] courage through her voice,” Ephrem presents the startling image of Jephthah as the type (¾éñÍÒ=typos) of the divine Christ: an upright priest (¾åÌÜ) who sacrificed with his own blood (his daughter) just as Christ would be both sacrificer and sacrificed.24 This brief but striking passage sets up the interpretation that Jacob of Serug will

20 Aphrahat, Demonstration 21.12. Trans. Jacob Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: the Christian-Jewish Argument in Fourth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 97–112, at p. 105. 21 Trans. Neusner, p. 105. 22 Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron, 10.3. Trans. Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the University of Manchester, 1993), at p. 166. 23 Ephrem, Hymns on Virginity 2.10–11; trans. Kathleen McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), at pp. 268–9. Ephrem here conveniently omits the biblical story’s emphasis on the Daughter’s two months of mourning precisely because of her virginity, on the mountains with her companions, prior to her death! 24 Hymns on Nisibis 70. 7–12, ed. Edmund Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Carmina Nisibena II, CSCO 240/ Scr. Syr. 10 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO 1963), p. 114.

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later consider at length, working out its fuller implications with harrowing clarity. Jacob’s point of departure in his homily on Jepthah’s Daughter is the typological imagery immediately suggested by the Peshitta text of Judges 11, where Jephthah’s Daughter is called a Single One, ¿ÿØÊÙÐØ. This term is otherwise used in the Peshitta for Isaac in Genesis 22 (Isaac is the ¾ØÊÙÐØ of Abraham) and of Jesus as the ‘single one,’ the ¾ØÊÙÐØ, of God in John 3:16.25 The use of this term, ¿ÿØÊÙÐØ, in the Peshitta was in and of itself sufficient for Syriac biblical tradition to present Jephthah’s Daughter as a type of Christ, a tradition consistently represented in commentators from Aphrahat and Ephrem through Dionysius bar Salibi. Jacob of Serug strengthens this typological association with other strongly suggestive vocabulary. For example, Jacob refers repeatedly in his homily to the knife by which Jephthah would slay his daughter, a detail not mentioned in Judges 11. He uses the term ¾æÙÝè, the word used in the Peshitta of Genesis 22 for the knife Abraham took up to sacrifice Isaac.26 Furthermore, Jacob uses the phrase “she stretched out her neck beneath the knife” ( ÿÓýñ J …˜†– ) (307:12)—a phrase not used by either Aphrahat or Ephrem. This phrase is not found in the Peshitta of Judges 11 or of Genesis 22, but was commonly used in the binding of Isaac in rabbinic traditions and in certain Syriac presentations of that episode.27 25 The Septuagint would connect the three passages through the use of agapetos, “most beloved.” See the excellent discussion in Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Women as types of Christ: Susanna and Jephthah’s Daughter,” Gregorianum 85 (2004): 278– 311; with interesting application in eadem, “‘Here Am I, Lord’—Preaching Jephthah’s Daughter as a Type of Christ,” Downside Review 434 (2006): 21–32. I am grateful to Prof. Stephen Ryan for discussing the connection with me, and alerting me to Prof. Tkacz’s work. 26 Interestingly, Ephrem does not use the word ¾æÙÝè in Hymns on Nisibis 70, but rather the word ¾òÙè, sword. Aphrahat, following Judges 11, uses neither, since the biblical text does not specify how the Daughter was killed. 27 E.g., Anonymous Memra 2:35, where the same wording is used; ed. and trans. in Sebastian Brock, “Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac,” Le Muséon 99 (1986): 61–129. For the intersections between Syriac and Jewish traditions, see esp. Sebastian P. Brock, “Genesis 22 in Syriac Tradition,” in Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy: études bibliques offertes a l’occasion de son 60e anniversaire, ed. P. Casetti, O. Keel, and A. Schenker, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 38 (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires/ Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1981), 2–20. For a broader overview see, e.g., Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Gedaliahu

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Thus through his specific vocabulary choices, without ever mentioning the binding of Isaac directly, Jacob establishes Jephthah’s Daughter as the perfect Christological type—and more so than Isaac (the preferred Christological type throughout Christian history), since unlike Isaac, she was in fact sacrificed by her father. In Jacob’s treatment, the implications of this typology will bear not only on how we are to understand Jephthah and his Daughter, but further, on how we are to understand God’s own self in the event of Jesus’ crucifixion. From the first line of his homily, Jacob juxtaposes the images of sacrificial slaughter, singleness, and parent-child bond. His opening invocation lays out the typology at hand: “O Lord of the slain, whose own slaughter is life for his servants” (306:1). Indeed, Jacob intones, Christ is, K )” “the Single One (¾ØÊÙÐØ), to whom were offered Single Ones (¾ØÊÙÐØ (306:3), an allusion inclusive of both Genesis 22 and Judges 11. But soon Jacob states his point in the plainest of terms. Addressing Christ directly, he proclaims, “Your symbol (‡˜~) is the sacrifice of the only child by the hand of the father.” (307:5). His use here of the term ¿‡˜~ for “symbol,” leads off a lengthy discussion of typology and the history of sacrifice, in which the terms ¿‡˜~, ¾Ćãߖ, ¿šÍâƒ, ¾éñÍÒ, ¿ÿÙæàÒ, and their related verbs, are used repeatedly and interchangeably to relate biblical images of blood sacrifice, virginity (“singleness”), Jephthah’s Daughter, and the death of Christ. In fact, the passage strongly parallels what Jacob has said elsewhere in a homily devoted to Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac (as we might expect from the vocabulary choices noted above).28 By a cascade of typological associations, we are prepared for its culmination: Jephthah is likened to God, as a father whose love for his child burns fervently, yet who offers up that same child in love for the sake of all people (307:9–10, 308:18–9). In fact, Jacob’s most distinctive contribution to the interpretive traditions for Judges 11 will come not in his presentation of the Daughter, but rather in his depiction of Jephthah. Ephrem had sketched this route in his Hymns on Nisibis 70, by naming Jephthah a priest (¾åÌÜ) whose act of Stroumsa, “Herméneutique Biblique et Identité: l’exemple d’Isaac,” Revue Biblique 99 (1992): 529–43. 28 See the splendid analysis of this terminology in Richard McCarron, “An Epiphany of Mystical Symbols: Jacob of Sarug’s Memra 109 on Abraham and his types,” Hugoye 1.1 (1998), http://www.bethmardutho. org/ hugoye. See also Johns Abraham Konat, “Typological Terminology of Jacob of Serug,” The Harp 18 (2005): 289–96.

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sacrifice was sustained by faith (¿šÍæãØÌÁ). This imagery is also found in a late antique mosaic at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai, and again later at the Monastery of St. Anthony on the Red Sea in Egypt.29 Jacob expands and extends this image to become the framing motif of his entire homily. In his presentation, Jephthah is from the start a paragon of faith, one whose every action is undertaken rightly and with courage because he acts always and solely in faith. Deleted from this account is any reference to Jephthah’s own unseemly background (bastard child of a prostitute), or any hint of him as a reckless, brash, and impudent warrior, such as the biblical text portrayed. Instead, Jephthah in Jacob’s depiction is a “great laborer of faith” (309:7), “an athlete who wrestled with himself/ conquering” his [human] love for the sake of his love of God (309:15–16). In a term rich with meaning in Syriac ascetical literature, Jacob titles Jephthah “the discerning one” (¾ü†ûñ) (310:15), one who knew with clarity and wisdom that which the Lord desired. In fact, Jacob would claim that the entire war between the Hebrews and the Ammonites took place in order to provide a cause for Jephthah’s vow and sacrifice. (310:5) God had sought a means by which to prefigure perfectly in human history and experience the crucifixion of Jesus that would come as the world’s salvation. In Jephthah’s beloved only Daughter, sacrificed for the sake of the Hebrew peoples so that Jephthah could lead them to victory over the Ammonites, that perfect paradigm was found. Within this frame, Jacob presents the pivotal event of Jephthah’s vow—that same narrative moment almost invariably condemned by ancient biblical commentators, Jewish or Christian. In Jacob’s homily, Jephthah’s vow is an act of true faith, and the designation of his Daughter as the vow’s fulfillment a measure of her own surpassing worthiness in God’s eyes. Jephthah addresses a lengthy plea to the Lord, begging for victory and promising in return to offer to the Lord whomsoever the Lord himself should choose for his own. This vow Jephthah makes in terms that place entire responsibility on God:

Kurt Weitzmann, “The Jephthah Panel in the Bema of the Church of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964): 341–52; Paul Van Moorsel, “Jephthah? Or, an Iconographical Discussion Continued,” Mélanges offerts à Jean Vercoutter, ed. Francis Geus and Florence Thill (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1985), 273–8. 29

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I do not know whom you love, that he might be offered to you. Choose for yourself a sacrifice, and I will not spare even if the one is beloved. Set apart for yourself whomever is fitting and beautiful and choice and beloved. Whomever you set apart I will sacrifice without restraint, Whomever you choose from all that is mine I give to you. … … Let [the vow] be prepared according to your will. (311:6–17)

Enhancing the pathos of the situation, Jacob plays on the melodrama of Jephthah’s innocence, rendering the scene into one worthy of Greek tragedy. This is not the vow of a brash and arrogant warrior, but rather the fervent supplication of a faithful devotee. Jephthah seeks victory not for his own reputation as hero, but rather for the sake of the Hebrew people. By this very vow, Jacob claims, Jephthah rendered his bargain with God into an exchange of cosmic consequence: “The nation lived because she died on behalf of the whole nation/ as did the Son who for the sake of the world ascended the cross” (313:15). This is a stunning equation, and Jacob dwells on its power. Only now, with the die fatefully cast, does Jacob introduce the Daughter as an active agent rather than a token reference or image. When the Daughter emerges with timbrels and dance, leading her companions in victorious celebration, Jacob turns the outpouring into an unwitting sacrificial procession: “The sacrifice yearned for the priest who would offer her… the sacrificial calf walked to the priest on her own.” (314:11, 17).30 From her “concealed” place in the women’s quarters, the Daughter is “revealed” as she dances forth to greet her father: she is now the “bride of

30 It was important in the sacrificial systems of the ancient Mediterranean that the sacrificial animal be not only “pure” (unblemished), but also willing—a disposition ritually enabled, e.g., by sprinkling drops of water or a few grains on the forehead, causing the animal to nod its head up and down. Cf. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 55–7. See esp. Stanley Stowers, “On the Comparison of Blood in Greek and Israelite Ritual,” in Hesed Ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, ed. Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 179–94. The “willingness” was hence crucial to Christian sacrificial interpretation of the death of Jesus, as well as for both Rabbinic and Jewish traditions that presented an older Isaac, fully cognizant and willing to accept Abraham’s fulfillment of God’s command. For examples of texts, see Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac.

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blood” (¾Ć⃃ ¿ÿàÜ), “betrothed” by her father “to the crucifixion” (¿šÍòÙøÎß š†… «šûÝâš~) (315:7, 312:14). As with the imagery discussed by Sebastian Brock in his article on “The Wedding Feast of Blood,” Jacob joins the language of betrothal with that of the wedding feast (¾ĆßÍàÏ, ¿š†ÿýâ). The imagery of feast and celebration is attached to the language of sacrifice in a strict sense, as an act of bloodshed in which the Daughter will die. The wedding feast is a sacrificial banquet. The Daughter is titled “betrothed to sufferings,” “the virgin of sufferings” (312:14, 315:12). Vowed to God, her death by sacrifice replaces marriage to any other husband. Her death is the price (ÚãÙÒ) of her betrothal (313:1), a price Jephthah now owes and must repay. Returning his gaze to Jephthah, Jacob imagines him realizing the horror of the situation, wracked by unendurable grief. Jacob explains (echoing Ephrem’s Hymns on Nisibis 70) that only the divine Father could offer his single child for the sake of redemption without suffering; no human father could. Yet the Daughter is God’s chosen one, and Jacob depicts her as vividly worthy of that choice. In a remarkable pair of couplets, Jacob presents her with a stream of adjectives, the first couplet evoking the vocabulary of biblical sacrificial law (¾òü, ÔÙýñ, äÙâš, äÙϘ, ¿½ñ, áßÎâ, ¿½Ø ûÙùØ, þØÊø, ÞÙæÜ); and the second the vocabulary of ascetic virtues (by Jacob’s day, technical terms) (Ž†ÿÁ, ˜ÿÙâ, ÞÙÝâ, ¾Ćàü, ûÙòü, ¾Üƒ, ÑÙÂü, ¿…‡, ÌÙâš, áàÝâ). She is thus presented as the fulfillment of both the ideals of the biblical past and of the ecclesial present.

ä؅˜† äÙ⚠ÔÙýñ† ¾òüƒ ¾ÐÁÊß ¿†… ‹ÌØÎÏ ÞÙæ܆ þØÊø ûÙù؆ ¿½Ø áß÷↠¿½ñ ÿÁ÷↠¾ĆàÒ ¾Ćàü† ÞÙÝ⠘ÿÙ↠Ž†ÿÁ áàÝ↠ÌÙ⚠¿…‡† ÑÙÂü† ¾Üƒ† ûÙòü [Jephthah] saw her as a sacrifice pure and innocent, guileless and beloved, Fair and comely, unsullied and precious, holy and honorable, Virgin and excellent, humble and quiet, young and adorned, Fair and pure, praiseworthy and splendid, wondrous and perfect. (316:5–8)

Jacob presents Jephthah’s response to this revelation quite literally as an interior battle as savage as the exterior one he has just survived in war. Before the Daughter has so much as spoken, or any words have been exchanged, a fierce debate takes place within Jephthah. Jacob negotiates Jephthah’s competing loyalties as a contest between Justice (¿šÍå½Ü) and

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Nature (¾æÙÜ). Justice is implacable: “The battle outside was God’s, this one (inside) is yours/ He conquered the hosts [of the Ammonites], now you [must] conquer the suffering and fulfill your vow.” (316:19) Jephthah’s anguish is poignant and palpable, as Jacob renders his speech to his daughter in short, jagged exclamations of pain. Torn between two truths— love of God, and love of child—he is the divided heart in extremis, raging in his devastation because he can see no alternative to the eloquence of Justice’s claim and he is unable to bear the loss. At no point does Jacob see this interior battle as indicating lack of faith, or lack of love—whether for God, or for the depth of human relation. Instead, he sees the conflict as one that allows Jephthah to be at once a devoted father and a devoted believer. “He repaid what belongs to fathers, he who wept for his daughter lovingly/ and he fulfilled what belongs to the priest, and accomplished his sacrifice honorably. …For the love of the Lord he killed a virgin and fulfilled his vow/ and for this beloved [daughter] he wept in pain as was fitting.” (318:9–10, 13–14). It is tempting to view this presentation with overtones from the Christological controversy raging in Jacob’s day, because of the vocabulary he employs. Only after this great drama of Jephthah’s heart does the Daughter finally speak, in the last third of the homily. As in the biblical account in Judges 11, she herself is a minor character in Jacob’s retelling of the story. But her place and purpose are central. At once she urges Jephthah to remain true to his vow. She is as serene in her acceptance of God’s will as he is agitated with surging conflict. “[God] gave me to you, and you should not be sad that he takes me again.” (320:5)31 More importantly, she states, Jephthah’s action in fulfilling his vow now changes irrevocably who they are for one another, and what their relationship is. She pronounces his new identity with assurance: I am your daughter. Because of me you are a father. [Now] I will be a sacrifice, and because of me you will be a priest. Until now you were named only a father, From this time forth you will be shown to be a father and a priest. (320:7–10, 321:1–2).

The Daughter thus reveals the truth of Jephthah’s identity: he is not the slayer of his child, but a true priest. She urges her father forward, expressing thanks that she is spared captivity as a war prisoner, and further 31

The line is reminiscent of Job 1:21.

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that she is spared the transitory sorrows of the temporal world. She does not question the vow, or the revelation that she is its victim. She asks only to mourn her lost inheritance as Jephthath’s only child and her unborn children, the request she made in Judges 11. The scene of mourning in the mountains is interesting in its own right. The Daughter mourns the life she will not have, of marriage, partnership, and children, yet Jacob also presents her as taking up her betrothal to her heavenly bridegroom, just as the consecrated virgins of his own day. On the one hand he depicts her lamentation with pathos and melodrama: she weeps for the children she will never have, conceiving them in her thoughts and naming them with the names they will never bear. On the other, she chooses her course just as the holy women of Jacob’s time choose theirs: disdaining the ephemeral and illusory life of those married to mortality, trampling on the desire for what is merely human in order to seize desire for that which is divine and true. Against the backdrop of ascetic vocation as an active element in Jacob’s communities, the scene rings with contemporary significance for his congregations. Also intriguing is his depiction of the Hebrew maidens who accompany the Daughter, first in celebration, later in mourning, and finally in their own lamentation over her death.32 These he depicts in intertwined images of choirs and birds: they are a “brood of doves,” “moaning piteously/ for the beloved nestling” (324:11–12), “beautiful partridges” crying out “with their harps” (324:15–16). The imagery is strongly reminiscent of that Jacob uses elsewhere to depict the women’s choirs of consecrated virgins who, according to Jacob, had been founded by St. Ephrem to wage battle in song against the assaults of the heretics.33 Although he does not dwell long on this presentation, it rings hauntingly of that conjoining of biblical past and ecclesial present evoked by the ascetic imagery accompanying the Daughter at her first appearance, revealed as the perfect sacrifice. There is a vivid if subtle immediacy to the interface Cp. Norman H. Snaith, “The Song of Songs: The Dances of the Virgins,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 50 (1934): 129–42. 33 Joseph P. Amar, “A Metrical Homily on Holy Mar Ephrem by Mar Jacob of Serug.” PO 47 (1995): 5–76. On these choirs see S. A. Harvey, “Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity,” Hugoye 8.2 (2005), http://www.bethmardutho.org/hugoye; and now Kathleen McVey, “Ephrem the kitharode and proponent of women: Jacob of Serug’s portrait of a fourth-century churchman for the sixth-century viewer and its significance for the twenty-first century ecumenist” (forthcoming). 32

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between the world of his narrative and that of his listeners. It is an interface Jacob deliberately cultivates. As Jacob turns to the final scene of sacrifice, he pauses to marvel at the story: its complexity, depth, and even the suffering borne by the listeners who hear it, further enhanced by the narrative detail that Jephthah waited another sixty days to perform his (un)holy sacrifice. Citing Hebrews 11:32, where Jephthah’s name is mentioned with no accompanying discussion, Jacob remarks on the brevity of the apostolic passage despite the enormity of Jephthah’s accomplishment. In this way, even as he lengthens the suspense of the pending slaughter, he claims to take the apostolic letter’s reticence as model for his own discourse! We are in the hands of a consummate storyteller, a master craftsman at his best. In the final scene, ironically, Jacob returns his characters to their more familiar biblical personalities. The Daughter is now silent, suddenly very young, frightened, and passive. Jepthath himself has become again the mighty warrior, this time triumphant in the battle for his own divided heart. “Waves of affection beat upon him in order that his hand be stopped/ but he lifted oars of love against the waves and despised them.” (328:13–4 ) The battle is ended: “love and love wrestled over which would conquer/ but that of the Lord conquered that of daughters, and undertook slaughter.” (328:21–2 ) With savage simplicity—and a graphic plainness wholly unlike the biblical account—Jacob depicts the death as piteous to all who see it, except for Jephthah himself. Having prevailed over his human nature, Jephthah stands bespattered and dripping with blood. He has become the image of a divine being, unmoved, unperturbed, and passionless. At this image—perhaps the most shocking of all in this disturbing biblical tale— Jacob’s homily storms to a sudden, stark end. There is perhaps a surprising boldness in Jacob’s rendering of the story of Jephthah and his Daughter. He has refused his congregation the standard response of dismay and critique. Yet, neither are they allowed unthinking acceptance of the notion of redemption through a sacrifice understood to be that of God’s own self, in the person of his only Son. It is this most haunting dimension of Jacob’s homily that remains in its aftermath: in the final achievement of sacrifice, the human Jephthah becomes the image of his divine Lord. But in turn, Jephthah’s Lord has been shown to be imaged in the crippling grief of a human father. At the center of this implied exchange of qualities stands the enigmatic (and nameless) figure of Jephthah’s Daughter: the only biblical character, at least by Jacob’s reckoning, who truly portrayed the image of Christ. The power of Jacob’s depiction is not untinged with horror.

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3. POETRY AND LECTIONARY READING The account of Jephthah’s Daughter was part of the Syriac lectionary system long before Jacob of Serug wrote.34 If the early lectionary preserved in British Museum Add. 14528 may be taken as in any way representative, Judges 11:29–40 was included in the readings for the commemoration of martyrs, in a group of fifteen lections (!) that also included Genesis 22:1–19, the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac.35 Both the location in the liturgical calendar, at the commemoration of martyrs, and the grouping with Genesis 22 would lend a strong emphasis to the sacrificial significance of the episode and its focus on the integrity of the blood offering as prefiguring Christ’s crucifixion. Such a liturgical setting would have framed Jacob’s presentation in terms rendering the story as glorious despite its horror. This larger lectionary context also served to remove the story from the realm of historical time, lifting it apart into the clearly (ritually) designated space of sacred or ‘mythical’ time, the biblical past. Joined to commemoration of the martyrs, the realm of biblical time segued into history as God’s salvific and providential plan. The worshipper, anchored in a mundane life beyond the church doors, could move through these ‘other’ times, awed, instructed, and ritually prepared to hear a story—even one so shocking as that of Jephthah and his Daughter—according to a logic different from that of the daily world outside. Moreover, church decoration might have reinforced Jacob’s narrative: the surviving mosaics of Jephthah as priest are located directly facing scenes of Abraham at the sacrifice of Isaac, flanking entry to the altar on which the eucharist would be set.36 The passage seems also to have been among the readings for Monday in the

Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” dates British Museum Add. 14528 to late in the fifth century, Jacob’s own lifetime. The argument has been made to push it a century earlier, to the late fourth, in Merja Merras, “The Date of the Earliest Syriac Lectionary Br. M. Add. 14528,” in Symposium Syriacum VII, ed. René Lavenant, OCA 256 (Rome: Pontificum Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1998), 575–85. 35 Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” 312, 326. Konrad Jenner has raised the important question of whether or not we can or should presume British Museum Add. 14528 to be representative of general Syriac practice, or whether it should be understood instead as one (local) collection of readings among a variety of possibilities. See K. Jenner, “The Development of Syriac Lectionary Systems,” The Harp 10 (1997): 9–24. 36 See above, n. 29. 34

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Week of Rest, the week immediately following Easter, where it was triumphantly enthroned in the celebration of the Resurrection.37 These locational, performative aspects of Jacob’s recounting of the biblical tale contributed significantly to the interpretation of the story. They were a large part of what would make such a story culturally acceptable. The dismay of the biblical commentators took place in an entirely different context, in the confrontation with the narrative as text, with none of the surrounding frame of liturgical celebration. I would argue that Jacob offered his congregation a further aid in hearing such a story. This was the aid of his poetic craft. Much of the power of Jacob’s dramatic narratives depended on the dynamic, ever-shifting force of his typological presentations.38 His mimre abound with sheeting cascades of types, linking biblical figures, symbols and events, across the two Testaments, threading in and out of the liturgy, through the ecclesial life of the Church and deeply imprinted across both the history and the daily practices of the believing congregation. But a second form of typological association was at work through his poetry as a designated literary structure. The metered couplets of the mimra required discipline of practice and dexterity of rhetorical skills: deployment of metrical units, thematic patterns, and favored imagistic habits. The skilled metrical homilist was one who could command a vast store of familiar word patterns in precisely the necessary metrical units: not exactly as would an epic singer such as in Homeric tradition, but with an analogously practiced mode of presentation.39 Thus one often finds recurring patterns in different homilies by Jacob. Sometimes these clearly represent his habitually favored 37 Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” 310, 326. It is perhaps worth noting that the story of Jephthah’s Daughter appears to have remained indelibly part of the Syriac lectionary tradition. As two random examples, see Arthur Vööbus, A Syriac Lectionary from the Church of the 40 Martyrs in Mardin, Tur Abdin, Mesopotamia, CSCO 485/ Sub. 76 (Louvain: Peeters, 1986), p. xxvi and fo. 111b115a, a sixteenth century manuscript listing Jud. 11:30–39 among five Old Testament readings and one New Testament (but not including Gen. 22 among them); and, for post-Vatican II practice, P. Vermeulen, “Péricopes bibliques des églises de langue syriaque,” L’Orient Syrien 12 (1967): 211–40, 371–88, 525–48, at p. 374 for Monday of Passion Week, where Jud. 11 occurs during the second Vigil, and then again at Safro together with Gen. 22. 38 See the excellent discussion in McCarron, “Abraham and his Types.” 39 Manolis Papoutsakis, “Formulaic Language in the Metrical Homilies of Jacob of Serugh,” Symposium Syriacum VII, ed. René Lavenant, OCA 256 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1998), 445–51.

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words or themes. Sometimes they may happen by sheer practical necessity. But at times, I would suggest, Jacob utilized certain word units, associations, or themes, because he wanted his congregation to make connections between particular biblical stories. More subtle than articulating the relationships by naming the figures or episodes as types one of the other, the reuse of metrical units or key words allowed Jacob the possibility of nuanced suggestion without reifying the association into a concrete identification. Such poetically suggested intersections may be seen, I think, in his homilies on Jephthah’s Daughter, Tamar, and the Sinful Woman. I sketch these here only briefly, as suggestions for further exploration. Jacob wrote about Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah in a homily devoted to her story from Genesis 38.40 The topic was a challenging one for both Jewish and Christian commentators.41 In the Genesis account, the young widow Tamar is denied her rightful remarriage to her dead husband’s brother by her father-in-law Judah, leaving her husband without heir. Disguised as a prostitute, Tamar tricks Judah into sleeping with her unaware of her identity, and into leaving his ring, scarf, and staff as tokens of payment. Some months later when the pregnancy becomes apparent, Tamar is accused of harlotry and the scandalized Judah calls for her (lawful) death. Producing the tokens she has saved, Tamar announces that they belong to her child’s father. Shamed into admitting his injustice as well as his indiscretion, Judah proclaims Tamar’s righteousness and she is saved. From this unholy yet just encounter, the twins Perez and Zerah are born and the messianic line continued. Ephrem had addressed this tale of “holy impudence” in his Hymns on the Nativity, in the context of reflection on the genealogy of Matthew 1:1– 16.42 This genealogy, differently from that in Luke 3:23–38, includes the

Ed. and trans. Sebastian P. Brock, “Jacob of Serugh’s Verse Homily on Tamar (Gen. 38),” Le Muséon 115 (2002): 279–315. Citations are to the line numbers of this edition, and the page numbers of Brock’s translation. 41 Tryggve Kronholm, “Holy Adultery: the Interpretation of the Story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38) in the Genuine Hymns of Ephraem Syrus (ca. 306–373),” Orientalia Suecana 40 (1991): 149–63. See also Joan Goodnick Westenholz, “Tamar, Qdesa, Qadistu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,” Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989): 245–66. 42 See especially Ephrem, Hymns on Nativity 1, 9, and 16. Compare Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis, sec. 24; trans. Joseph Amar and Edward Mathews, Jr., St. 40

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names of four Old Testament women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—whose sexual exploits appeared shamelessly transgressive of biblical law (as well as Roman), yet whose actions made possible the continuation of the messianic lineage. By itself, Genesis 38 appears in no known Syriac lectionary, and thus Jacob’s homily on the story seems a puzzling choice.43 But since he also includes treatment of several of Ephrem’s themes on the topic, it would seem likely that the homily might have been preached at some point during the Nativity season, perhaps during the period of preparation for the feast, when the association with Matthew’s genealogy would have been familiar. As in his homily on Jephthah’s Daughter, Jacob begins his homily on Tamar with a powerful invocation of prayer that is also a summons to his audience. In both, he speaks of the narrative he is about to recount as a symbol or image of Christ among many revealed along the “road” (¾Ï˜†~) of salvation history. In the homily on Jephthah’s Daughter, Jacob admonishes that Christ’s symbol appeared repeatedly in the myriads of generations of blood sacrifice that marked this road with “miles of blood.” (308:3) In the mimra on Tamar, Jacob extols this same road as “exalted…and full of blessings,” marked out by “miles of peace.”44 The inversion is striking, and the more so for the bridal imagery Jacob grants to each of these women: the Daughter he names Bride of Blood, while Tamar he will term Bride of Light. In his homily on Tamar, Jacob extends the image of holy desire beyond the handful of women named in Matthew’s genealogy to include the contentious behavior of other biblical women whose offspring contributed to the divine lineage, “travel[ling] down all the generations/ transmitted mysteriously…so that God Himself might be mingled amongst humanity.”45 Indeed he notes that throughout the Old Testament “in various places women were yearning for the choice seed.” This holy thirst included the “straightforward women of integrity,” Leah and Rachel, sisters who competed to bear Jacob sons in Genesis 30. Inflamed with the fire of Ephrem the Syrian: Selected Prose Works, FC 91 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), at pp.182–4. 43 Brock, “Jacob of Serugh’s Verse Homily on Tamar,” at pp. 304–5. 44 Lines 37–8; trans. Brock 294. The term for miles/milestones is the same in both homilies, mile. The image of the road as soteriological recurs repeatedly in Jacob’s homilies; see the discussion in Brock, ibid., pp. 308–9. 45 Lines 51–3; Brock p. 294. Ephrem had, of course, done the same thing in his Hymns on the Nativity, notably in Hymns 8, 10, 13, and 20.

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divine love, these two had acted shamefully, impudently (ÿؽòØ÷Ï), in ways “most hateful to chaste women,” as if they loved lust when in fact it was for the “divine seed” that they longed. So, too, Jacob recalled, had Ruth appeared to act “in the outward guise of wanton women” when she crawled under Boaz’s cloak. “She was not ashamed, chaste woman that she was, to seize hold of his legs,” Jacob insists, because it was really for the Son of God that she yearned. “It was not harlotry in the case of these sincere women, but love for the blessed seed that incited them.” Despite their carnal acts, Jacob intoned, these women “remained chaste,” since it was they who ensured that God’s plan was fulfilled in human history.46 Turning to Tamar, Jacob admits that the story defies every moral code: she acted as a prostitute, and with her own father-in-law! Yet, Jacob exhorts, the faithful will find another meaning in the text if only they will approach it with the right disposition. The following passage, in which Jacob offers profound advice on the reading of scripture, could well have prefaced his homily on Jephthah’s Daughter: In the case of all the mystery filled narratives of the Only-Begotten It is right to listen with great love, O discerning (reader), For if love does not open the gate of your ear, Then there is no passage to your hearing for the words. In the case of the story of Tamar, unless a mind that has faith Listens to it, the discerning woman will seem worthy of reproach, Whereas if an intellect that loves to listen to the mysteries Should hear this tale, it will render back in return for it praise. All the words that the Spirit of God has placed in Scripture Are filled with riches, like treasures, hidden in the (different) books. Moses the scribe set the story of Tamar Like a jewel in his Book so that its beauty might shine out amongst its lections. … Her action was (indeed) ugly, but her faith made it beautiful. And it was resplendent and dear because of the Mystery that was performed in her.47

By this narrative strategy, Jacob will go on to present Tamar as the image of the Church, whom he terms the Bride of Light, betrothed to 46 47

Lines 73–124; Brock, pp. 295–6. Lines 137–57; Trans. Brock, 296.

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Christ her heavenly Bridegroom. In the process of this explication, he depicts Tamar, her shocking plan for conception, and her shrewd escape from the death penalty through images and vocabulary that evoke a striking series of biblical types: the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and Christ’s passion (“She was treated unjustly, humiliated and put to shame,/ she was pained, broken and afflicted”);48 the Virgin Mary, unjustly doubted by Joseph and maligned by the townspeople for sexual promiscuity;49 and the Septuagint’s righteous Susanna, wrongly condemned to stoning for adultery, only to be rescued just as the crowd descends.50 (Susanna, like Jephthah’s Daughter, was treated by patristic writers as a type in the image of Christ.)51 Just as Tamar guarded the three tokens that proved her “innocence,” so too, Jacob exhorts, must the Church guard the three tokens her Lord left for her protection: faith, baptism, and the Cross of Light. By these, the “Bride of Light” (l.404) will arrive safely at Judgment Day. Jacob states plainly in the homily on Tamar that her character should be understood as an image of the Church, the true Bride of Light. The connections to Jephthah’s Daughter are not by any explicit statement or even parallel, but rather by the understated antitheses of the two opposing images, “miles of blood” and “miles of peace,” “Bride of Blood” and “Bride of Light.” Jacob’s emphasis in both homilies on the difficulty of accepting the biblical narratives, though for entirely different reasons, also serves as a motif to highlight an understated link between these two sacred Lines 204–5; trans. Brock 297–8. Isaiah 53:1–12 was among the lectionary readings for Friday of Passion Week; Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” 309, 329. 49 Mt. 1:18–25; Protevangelion of James 13–6. The slandering of Mary by the Hebrew Women is a theme in Ephrem’s Hymns on the Nativity, esp. Hymns 12, 14, 16, and 17. 50 The story of Susanna, part of the Septuagint version of Daniel, is included in the group of Syriac texts titled “The Book of Women,” extant already in a sixth century Syriac manuscript. The Book of Women contains accounts of Ruth, Esther, Susanna, Judith, and Thecla. For a description of the manuscripts containing the Book of Women, see Catherine Burrus and Lucas Van Rompay, “Thecla in Syriac Christianity: Preliminary Observations,” Hugoye 5.2 (2002), http://www.bethmardutho.org/hugoye. 51 See Tkacz, “Women as types of Christ: Susanna and Jephthah’s Daughter.” Tkacz concentrates on Greek and Latin patristic texts, although she cites the learned Dionysius bar Salibi, a veritable repository of earlier Syriac tradition. But for example, Ephrem, Hymns on Virginity 2: 10–12, treats Jephthah’s Daughter together with Susanna. 48

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but troubling stories. Certainly in both the audience is presented with an “ugly” action made “beautiful” by faith. What connection should the listeners make, and why? The homily on Tamar also presents suggestive resonances by other means with Jacob’s homily on the Sinful Woman. The Sinful Woman was a biblical character especially loved in Syriac tradition. Liturgically, the early lectionaries had the account from John read on the eve of Palm Sunday, that from Matthew read on Tuesday of Holy Week, while the version from Luke was read for the consecration of holy oil.52 A good number of Syriac homilies and hymns survive on her story, which in Syriac gained a fulsome narrative stretching considerably beyond the biblical accounts.53 Jacob’s homily is notable for its combination of all four canonical gospel accounts and little if any influence from the very popular Syriac extracanonical elaborations of her tale.54 Two passages from the homily are relevant to us here. The first is reminiscent of Jacob’s homily on Tamar, which had stressed the idea of “holy impudence,” the seemingly shameless carnality of the desire that compelled Tamar—and the other biblical women, whether righteous or scandalous, of Jesus’ lineage—to pursue the divine seed that would bring the incarnation into full humanity as God’s Son. It is clear from Jacob’s homily (as it had been in Ephrem’s Nativity hymns) that the very carnality of this desire was the shocking element in the story: the physical longing, the contrived deceits to bring conception, and the blessed birthing that enacted the single-minded and single-hearted focus of Tamar and the other women of the messianic genealogy. Desire, albeit holy, caused Burkitt, “The Early Syriac Lectionary System,” 332, 333, 334. For an overview of the extant texts, see S. A. Harvey, “Why the Perfume Mattered: The Sinful Woman in Syriac Exegetical Tradition,” in In Dominico Eloquio/ In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Wilken, ed. P. Blowers, A. R. Christman, D. Hunter, and R. D. Young (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 69–89. The source of the Syriac extracanonical traditions was a homily wrongly attributed to Ephrem, edited as Sermon 4, ed. Edmund Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers, Sermones II, CSCO 311/ Scr. Syr. 134 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1970), 78–91; German trans. idem, CSCO 312/ Scr. Syr. 135, 99–109; English trans. by John Gwynn, NPNF 13, 336–41. 54 Mt. 26:6–13, Mk. 14:3–9, Lk. 7:36–50, Jn. 12:1–11. See the discussion in Scott Johnson, “The Sinful Woman: A Memra by Jacob of Serugh,” Sobornost 24 (2002): 56–88, which includes an English translation of Jacob’s homily. The text is edited as Homily 51 in Bedjan, Select Homilies, 2: 402–28. Translations here are my own, cited by Bedjan’s page and line number. 52 53

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Tamar (and the others) to play the part of a prostitute (¿ÿÙå‡). Just such holy impudence characterizes Jacob’s depiction of another prostitute, whom he also designates with the term ¿ÿÙå‡: the Sinful Woman who came to Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee. As the Woman poured out her fragrant oil on his head and feet, Jacob intoned: He gave Himself to the one full of blemishes that she might offer [them] to Him, And while she supplicated she embraced Him with discernment. She seized His head, but He did not restrain the polluted one, She caught hold of His feet and He allowed her to do as she wished. She sprinkled Him with her tears, and He did not turn from the wretched one. She kissed Him in suffering, she who was a prostitute, but He did not drive her away. All the while she beseeched, she approached [Him] impudently (ÿؽòØ÷Ï), And because she trembled with love to approach, she was not hindered [by Him]. (414:8–15)

Like Tamar, the Sinful Woman was driven by a desire so intense that it compelled her to seek her Lord impudently and physically, no matter the scandal. Yet, as for Tamar, in Jacob’s telling the bodily expression of her desire demonstrated a love so perfect that its very physicality was rendered holy. “If she had been ashamed,” Jacob notes, “she would have gone forth without forgiveness.” (414:19) Body as well as soul were required for perfect devotion; anything less was incomplete and thereby ineffectual. If the carnality of the Woman’s love echoed the seeming scandal of Tamar’s bold demand for the divine seed, the ritual components of her approach to Christ render the occasion explicitly sacrificial. For Jacob, the entire encounter between the Woman and Christ was patterned upon liturgy. From the first moment of her entry into Simon’s house, the Woman’s actions had transformed the space of Simon’s banquet from the mundane to the sacred. The fragrance of her fine ointment had mingled with the fervor of her love to become an aroma that billowed forth as incense: “With the fire of her love she kindled her tears like ointment/ and the fragrance of her repentance was increasingly sweet.”(411:20–1) Just so, Jacob intoned, to the scent of ointment rendered holy by the very feet it would anoint, did the Woman add the sacrificial odors of a love that burned so fiercely she herself was transformed into the dual role of sacrificer and sacrificed.

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HARVEY Weeping was for her a pure censer, and she brought it with her, And with groans she kindled it to smoke in the Holy of Holies ( ÿÙÁ ¾ÙèÍÏ). She was for herself a priest (¾åÌÜ) who made petition for forgiveness, And willingly with contrition she made sacrifice for reconciliation. (410:12–15)

For Jacob, the Woman’s tears as she washed Christ’s feet became the baptismal waters consecrated by the chrism of her ointment. As she herself washed and anointed his holy feet, she entered into the “second womb of the Holy of Holies.” (415:7) Baptized there in the sea of Christ’s love, she found herself cleansed, purified, and born anew. Baptism and sacrifice converged as the Woman offered herself wholly on the altar of divine love: “Before the great flood of holiness she offered herself/ And He poured upon her waves of His love that she would be absolved by Him./ She offered her soul clothed in the body to the Living Fire;/ It kindled in the [sinful] thicket of her soul, and [the thicket] was wholly consumed.” (415:10–14) Jacob’s evocation of sacramental ritual lifted the Woman’s approach to Christ out of its narrative situation within the gospel story, and into the living liturgy of his congregation. The Woman in her actions imaged the spectrum of practices that defined the congregation as Christ’s own: she herself was priest and suppliant, offering and altar. Rendered such by Jacob’s chanted cadence, the Woman became yet another image of Christ: one who died to her old life and rose anew; the willing victim, as Jepthath’s daughter, betrothed wholly (and physically) to her heavenly Bridegroom. Impudent prostitute and supplicating priest; desire, bride, and bridegroom: these terms resonate across these homilies of the Sinful Woman, Tamar, and Jephthah’s Daughter. So, too, do the ritual, sacramental elements of each narrative. These same ritual elements return the homilist’s story to the ecclesial present of his congregation, the very church in which they stood to hear his poetic discourse. In each homily, a separate narrative was offered. Yet in each, echoes or memories of the others (and more still) were evoked, linking biblical stories and biblical characters across textual locations into patterned suggestions of shared imagery, shared types, and ever unfolding revelation.

4. CONCLUSION What, then, was the congregation to hear in the convergence of imagery that Jacob wove in and out of the figures of Jephthah’s Daughter, Tamar,

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and the Sinful Woman? These were biblical women of starkly different narratives, poetically connected through craft, technical prowess, theological acumen, and ritual context. Yet surely Jacob presents all three as images of the Church who is the Bride, as he plainly states in the homily on Tamar. In these stories, love of the Bridegroom requires the whole of oneself, body no less than soul. The body might be slain in the martyr’s death. It might, instead, be wholly given to the Heavenly Bridegroom by the consecrated virgin’s vow of renunciation, or equally by the penitent harlot’s all consuming self-offering. The physicality of love for the Bridegroom was demonstrated in the physical transmission of the messianic lineage and the scandal suffered by its women, no less than by the physical suffering of the martyr’s death. In each case—the Daughter, Tamar, the Woman—the offering was freely given by the biblical woman herself, offered up bodily, in sacramental gesture and form. It has not been my intention in this essay to foreground the issue of gender in this constellation of images, although such consideration is clearly warranted. Jephthah’s Daughter appears almost stereotypically obedient and deferential at first glance. So, too, do Tamar and the Sinful Woman present conventional models of women whose sexual exploits appear scandalous, but whose motives and intentions reveal them to be nothing less than exemplary. In fact, all three homilies could be read—and no doubt, should be read—as ecclesiastical justifications for women’s monasticism, a location for women’s devotion that removed them safely from the general concerns of the public social domain or the public affairs of the ecclesiastical institution. Yet such would be a simplistic reading, whether of Jacob’s narrative poetry or the congregational context in which these homilies were received. That context may have been monastic, or it may have been civic: in the case of these particular homilies, we have no way of knowing. Certainly, in these homilies the Church is understood to offer its individual members a particular model of behavior: that of utter self-giving to the divine, in physical terms no less than spiritual. It was a model that served the entire congregation, male or female. Its paradigm was offered with particular force through the image of the female-gendered body: the pure virgin, obediently dedicated to her (divine) Spouse; the righteous widow, wholly obedient to her divine calling; the penitent harlot, whose love is finally turned aright to burn brilliantly—and obediently—for her (divine) Bridegroom. As models, these female figures match well the social norms of late antique eastern Mediterranean culture.

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Nonetheless, historical and political circumstances could easily destabilize the normative impact of such narratives. Late antique Syriac hagiography and social history both provide suggestive instances of women whose devotional choices were not easily received in their own day, yet whose justifications could be found through just such holy models as these biblical women might be seen to provide.55 Adequate treatment of the gendered force of Jacob’s narrative poems on biblical women lies outside the primary concerns of this essay. One would need to give further attention to the dynamics of gender, space, authority, and participation. Jacob’s homilies must be considered in their liturgical context, in a setting inclusive of women’s choirs, of men and women both lay and religious, with exclusively male clergy and inclusively male and female instantiations of spiritual authority alongside it. I hope the present study makes clear how rich such inquiry would be. In Jacob’s renditions of Jephthah’s Daughter, Tamar, and the Sinful Woman, the Bride becomes one who stands in perfect witness to her Bridegroom: afflicted but unflinching, suffering tragedy yet remaining steadfast; wholly given, body and soul, to the One whose love redeems every suffering she must bear, turning every sorrow to new life. In the turbulent ecclesiastical and political upheaval of his times, himself champion for a theological cause that would bring sore tribulation upon his congregations,56 Jacob of Serug offered his narratives of biblical women. Their familiar stories allowed him time and again to cast fresh light on the place, the people, and the ritualized occasions at which they gathered. As images of Church, Jacob’s biblical women taught his listeners to rethink notions of bride and bridegroom, betrothal, priesthood and sacrifice: to learn anew the human-divine relationship and how they should live it. They were difficult portraits for difficult times, and they served him well.

Consider the accounts in S. P. Brock and S. A. Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); or the suggestions in Harvey, “Spoken Words, Voiced Silence.” 56 Jacob’s role as a leading Miaphysite voice in the increasingly volatile protests over the Christological decisions of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 is well-known, despite his own dislike of theological controversy. For an assessment of this larger context of upheaval and change, see Lucas Van Rompay, “Society and Community in the Christian East,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 239–66. 55

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