Syriac Patrology, Volume 3: The Book of Steps

...most gnostic ideas, is nothing but an intermediate link in that evolution of the doctrine of the Encratites, which degenerated from the hyper-asceticism of the Apotactites and Hieracites to the libertine tenets of the Messallians. When I had come to Paris, having described the Syriac manuscript 201 of the National Library, which, with the exception of a few lines, contains the entire work, I saw the probability of the exposed suspicion so much more openly, that I thought the age of the Book of Steps should be set in the final years of the long period of the persecution of Christians, begun by Diocletian and ended by the death of Licinius. I candidly confess, however, that this supposition does not exceed the value of a hypothesis. For the whole work scarcely alludes a few times to such historical events from which the age of the author can be concluded with certainty. Of greatest importance is the repeated mention of some persecution, during which Christians are said to have been burned and thrown to the beasts.

The fact that it frequently alludes to this persecution calls to mind the times of Licinius, for the inhumanity of Julian against Christians and of Valens against Catholics never descended to such cruelties as the Book of Steps describes. Furthermore, there is a lack of mention of Arianism; in which respect the author would scarcely have failed to express his mind if he had witnessed the enormous disturbance of spirits stirred up by dogmatic disputes between the Catholics and the followers of Arius. But another possibility also seems to exist. For it must be rightly asked whether that persecution is the one which Sapor II stirred up against Christians in Persia? However, the whole work betrays no knowledge of Persian affairs, while on the other hand it brings forward various things which argue that the author was subject to the Roman Empire. These things are indeed explained more accurately at the end of the Preface; it is sufficient to admit that the matter is not entirely certain, which, moreover, in an anonymous work lacking open historical indices, no one will wonder at. Let the scholars see, who will examine the work edited by me more accurately! It is immodest to say that after the introduction which I prefix to the work, there is no place for inquiry, although I am persuaded that the outcome of any discussion will not notably differ from my opinion.

The arrangement of the whole edited work is this:
I prefix a "Preface" containing six "chapters" to the text.
1. The first chapter contains an index of the manuscripts that could be found.
2. The second chapter, the argument of the Book of Steps.
3. The third chapter exhibits the doctrine of the work.
4. In the fourth chapter, the doctrine of the Messallians and the relationship of the Book of Steps to it are examined.
5. In the fifth chapter, I have collected historical indices from which the age of the book can be determined in some way.
6. In the sixth chapter, the question about the sources of the Book of Steps is treated.

Someone will perhaps fault me for having lingered long in enumerating the argument of the book and for having fallen into some idle repetitions. Nevertheless, I preface that the end of Chapter II was intended to make the use of the text easier, so that the

material arranged in the Book of Steps could be more easily found. The argument of the "discourses" itself is not something that can be explained exactly in one word; the author proposes his ideas in a rhapsodic way and deals with such diverse matters in one and the same discourse that the argument of the work can by no means be explained without an accurate partition of the discourses. If, therefore, I wished to explain the argument of the Book of Steps, I could scarcely have completed the task undertaken more briefly, otherwise I would have simply deleted the second chapter. The same is also true of the third chapter, the sentiments of which often recur in the fourth chapter, where the doctrine of the work is examined; however, the benevolent reader will immediately see that in examining the doctrine itself, I could not have looked at the individual doctrinal elements enumerated in the third chapter, but had to investigate the entire theological system of the author by reason of the mutual connection of his doctrines. The third chapter then exhibits the whole doctrine of the work arranged schematically; the fourth chapter does not look at all the dogmatic elements of the work, but considers those which are reduced to certain principles of the author's theological speculation in their harmonic connection and compares them with the older and more recent documents of the patristic age.

The second part of the work includes the XXX Discourses of which the whole work consists. I took the Syriac text from the Parisian manuscript, where other older ones were lacking; but if I had older ones available, I followed the readings of the oldest manuscript primarily, unless evident reasons and the consensus of the other manuscripts showed that the readings of the oldest manuscript were false and therefore to be rejected. I prepared the translation as faithfully as I could, but avoided the method of those who, imitating ancient Latin versions of the Scriptures, attempted to express all the particles and constructions of the Syriac text, which in my opinion is superfluous, since the same can also be achieved by observing the grammatical rules of the Latin language.

Given at Pozsony in Hungary, 29 January 1903.

I may add certain things to what I wrote in 1903: indeed, since the greater part of the work preserved in the single Parisian manuscript did not seem a secure foundation for editing the text, the sight of a multitude of fragments preserved in other manuscripts gave me hope that an older text of the work, and perhaps even a more accurate one, might be found than the Parisian manuscript. Events proved this hope, for in 1908, through the author His Beatitude Ignatius Ephraem Rahmani, I learned that a very old manuscript of the Book of Steps exists in the East. But before I had obtained a full copy of it, the final times were reached.

As these things are so, with the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Renato Graffin overseeing with invincible patience and watching with the greatest solicitude, the printing of the Syriac text turned out so successfully that it is, at least as far as the consonants are concerned, entirely devoid of errors: nevertheless, some vowels were lost under the press or changed. The list of addenda and corrigenda which is found at the end of the work exhibits all those errors, even the slightest ones, as well as some corrections by which we had to chastise the translation. Therefore, I earnestly ask benevolent readers who will have this volume III of the Patrologia Syriaca in hand that they always look at this list.

Given in the village of Pusztazámor in Hungary, Fehér county, on the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 15 July A.D. 1926.