TO THE READER.

S

Bar-Hebraeus Gregory Bar-Hebraeus (1226–1286) was a prominent scholar and bishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church known for his vast encyclopedic works. and Ebedjesu, Bishop of Soba Also known as Abdisho bar Berika (d. 1318), a writer and bishop of the Church of the East who compiled a famous catalog of Syriac authors., whose testimonies we shall provide below, along with those much older than them, such as Philoxenus of Hierapolis and the Syriac Clergy of the churches of Osrhoene who were present at the tenth session of the Council of Chalcedon—all of these, I say, even the more recent ones, approved that opinion of the ancients. They did not view it as rash or thoughtlessly presumed, but rather as certain, beyond doubt, and accepted through the most prudent judgment. Therefore, without any hesitation, they produced those manuscripts as certain witnesses of Ephrem’s doctrine, with their adversaries accepting the testimony as sacred under Ephrem’s name without exception. Indeed, when Catholics, and even the Monophysite heretics Monophysites (now often called Miaphysites) held that Christ had one composite nature, as opposed to the two natures defined at the Council of Chalcedon., opposed the Nestorians with that famous passage of Ephrem taken from the Hymns on the Nativity of the Lord, the tenth hymn: Praiseworthy is the wise one, who joined divinity with humanity; he mixed the natures—one from the highest, the other from the lowly—like a medicine, and the God-Man became a person. original: "Laudabilis sapiens, qui divinitatem cum humanitate conjunxit; naturas, unam de summis, alteram ex unis miscuit, quasi Pharmacum, et factus est persona Deus-Homo." Or when the Syriac Catholics presented testimonies of their Doctor collected from these books to the Monophysites themselves at the Council of Chalcedon, how very gladly and opportunely would they have accused the allegation of being false, since no objection could have been more powerful or more readily available to them than such an exception. These matters are surely so certain, transparent, and clear that the eye which does not see them seems either to be darkened by envy or dimmed by dullness. Furthermore, as for those so affected, it is neither my wish nor is there any hope that they can be swayed by reason. As Euripides beautifully wrote in Hippolytus: There is no fool who can teach wisdom, nor one who has learned or discovered this art, though mortals have devised many things.

Thus, since Saint Ephrem’s possession of his own labors has been confirmed: it should be noted that in these commentaries, the Syriac interpreter follows the Syriac version of the Scriptures, which is the most ancient of all among the Syrians. Indeed, the Syrians utilize two versions. One they call the "Simple" This refers to the Peshitta, the standard Syriac Bible version, "simple" because it was not translated from the Greek Septuagint but was closer to the Hebrew text., because it presents a simple and pure text of the Hebrew truth, unchanged in any way by any other interpretation; for this reason, the Greeks might have called the Greek version of the seventy elders [the Septuagint] "simple." The other version is expressed from the Greek text, though it is not entirely certain whether that version existed in Ephrem's age. Nor is its antiquity sufficiently proven by the fact that the Holy Doctor quotes the Greek text in places, since he was equally learned in Hebrew and Greek, and frequently either explained the words of both texts or represented them exactly as they appeared in the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts.

The style which he uses in the Commentaries, since

I have not seen the Syriac text of the Ascetic Works The editor notes he is working from translations of Ephrem's writings on the monastic and self-denying life, rather than the original Syriac manuscripts., is not humble or unpolished—as it appears in the translation of the Ascetic Works—but is sublime, refined, and sufficiently ornate for the genre of writing; for in instructional works, even negligence itself is sometimes praised. In the Metrical Works, however, as the nature of poetry demands, he proceeds in a much more ornate and polished fashion. In both types of writing, he freely uses a vibrant and sharp style of speech, woven into his own rhythms. One must truly be a stranger to the art of speaking not to praise such variety, or to try to use it as an argument to strip Ephrem of the Ascetic Works, which all Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic manuscripts of all times and nations attribute to Ephrem; or to deny him the Commentaries on the Divine Scriptures and the Hymns, which all the Churches of the Syriac name have awarded to him by a prescription of fourteen centuries.

Saint Ephrem follows the method which the schools of the Patriarchate of Antioch held in his time, and which Theodore (known as "the Interpreter"), Saint John Chrysostom, and Theodoret followed. The same Chrysostom indicates this, writing: For thus the Fathers taught: that not everything should be twisted into history, nor should one dwell only on the Jewish letter [the literal sense]. original: "Sic enim Patres docuerunt: non esse ad historiam cuncta torquenda, neque in Judaica solum litera commorandum." Whereas, on the contrary, the students of the Alexandrian school, following the discipline of Philo and Origen, mostly turn toward allegorical senses and occupy themselves most diligently in explaining them. This is obvious to anyone reading Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentaries on Divine Scripture.

Finally, lest I say nothing of my own translation, which was my duty according to the task I undertook: I have diligently seen to it, as far as was in my power, not to omit any Syriac word that could be expressed in Latin. However, much greater consideration was given to this: that in the sacred text itself, which I rendered word-for-word original: "κατὰ λέξιν" (kata lexin), meaning a literal, verbatim translation style., I retained the words of the Vulgate edition almost everywhere, except where the variant readings of the Syriac version forced me to abandon it. In other matters, I did not count out the words for the reader but weighed them for their meaning. For what does it matter whether one receives a sum of money in gold or in another metal, provided it represents the whole amount to you? Or to one wishing to enter a house, whether one offers a key of gold or iron, if both equally facilitate a convenient entry? Indeed, I am not unaware that the judgments of great men vary on this point; some prefer a "barbarous" translation provided it is sincere and complete, while others feel that one should indulge more delicate ears, for they say there is no reward for labor if the laws of Latin speech