The Complete Works of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 2

...deprived them of the faculty for discerning flavors, surely he could not be deceived who prefigured the benefit he conferred upon Saint EPHREM through a vision of most beautiful appearance; for he showed him in a dream a vine of exceptional height and breadth, crowned with clusters hanging from every side. By this symbol—as an Angel interpreted it—the immense number and wonderful sweetness of Ephrem’s labors were foreshadowed.

Yet such is the condition of our times, and the impudence of men, that it is rightly to be feared lest the same things the Author suffered among the people of Caesarea in Cappadocia An ancient region in what is now central Turkey, a major center of early Christian thought. might be suffered by his writings among our own people. When Saint EPHREM had come to Caesarea to visit the great Bishop Basil Saint Basil the Great (c. 330–379), one of the "Cappadocian Fathers" who defined early Christian orthodoxy. and had entered the church, the clerics, seeing an old man dressed in foreign clothing, wasted away by paleness and thinness, and stiff in his manner, shuddered at him as if he were a monster or a grim specter. However, Basil soon corrected this error; having been divinely informed of the dignity and arrival of so great a man, he immediately sent his Archdeacon and ordered the guest to be led into the Sanctuary, received him honorably, and embraced him most affectionately.

Indeed, I fear that while EPHREM will have many admirers—and has had them until now—there will not be lacking those who, measuring the value of a thing by its external appearance, might despise his books and wonder at his admirers. They may claim that his works are not as they are praised to be, but that—just like the script and the language—everything about them is bar-

-barous; so that if they happen to contain anything that should not be displeasing, it still cannot please a man of refined and delicate taste. Truly, this is a vice of every age (if not of men themselves), which Saint Jerome The 4th-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate). lamented had clung to him as a youth from the schools of the Pagans original: Ethnicorum.. For having departed from there, when he applied his mind as a young man to reading the Divine Scriptures—being accustomed to the delights of Gentile orators and poets—he shuddered at the strange appearance of the Sacred Scriptures, interpreting their gravity as barbarism. Almost all the books of the Old Testament were written in a foreign tongue; and those which the New Testament later brought forth, though they were composed in the Greek language, were written by foreign authors. Therefore, whatever judgment Saint Augustine passed regarding the Sacred Writers, let everyone consider that the same should be passed regarding the writings of Saint Ephrem:

Where, he says, I understand them, not only does nothing seem wiser to me, but nothing can even seem more eloquent; and I dare to say that all who speak correctly understand at the same time that they [the sacred authors] ought not to have spoken otherwise. For just as there is a certain eloquence that better suits youth, and another that suits old age—and it should not be called eloquence if it does not fit the persona of the speaker—so there is a certain eloquence that suits men most worthy of the highest authority and who are clearly divine. With this eloquence they have spoken; nor does another style suit them, nor does this style suit others. For it is fitting for them; yet the humbler it appears to others, the more it transcends them—not by "windiness" [vanity], but by solidity. And below: These things do not delight me more than can be said in that eloquence which belongs to these...