The Complete Works of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 2

pertinent, and those things which the Greeks call anapodota original: ἀνανόδοτα; a grammatical construction where a main clause is missing, and anacolutha original: ἀνακόλουθα; a sentence that lacks grammatical sequence. While these things often adorn an oration, they very frequently also obscure it greatly. When Cicero once attempted to translate Greek writers into the Latin tongue—having translated some of the speeches of the more famous rhetoricians and Plato’s Timaeus—he withdrew his hand, weary of such an unpleasant and illiberal task.

But indeed, although these and similar difficulties are greatly (and certainly not undeservedly) exaggerated by those who translate from Greek, in my judgment none can be said to equal that difficulty which we said arises from the omission of vocalic letters in Syriac. Indeed, if those are removed, how shall a voice be made? Unless one imagines elements speaking without a voice, just as poets have imagined wild beasts reasoning without a mind. Though it is no wonder that the Chaldeans Here referring generally to the early practitioners of Semitic writing systems, the first inventors of letters, erred in this; for art imitates nature, and both strive toward perfection gradually and through small increments. Yet there is cause for us to wonder—and rightly so—that the Chaldeans and Syrians, who use the same alphabet and language, made so little effort to perfect the art of writing (either invented by them or, if you prefer, received from the Phoenicians) during that long empire of theirs, than which none was more lasting, but instead rested content with ambiguous and doubtful marks.

Furthermore, if anything were to be said regarding Syriac Song (for the final part of this Volume is entirely metrical), the illustrious Assemani Joseph Simon Assemani (1687–1768), a famous Lebanese Maronite scholar and librarian of the Vatican has explained this quite learnedly and eruditely in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis under the entries for Ephrem and Balæus; I shall therefore detain you here with only a few words. Syriac poetry differs very little from Hebrew in its vocabulary, and minimally in its meter. Both are most ancient and have always been held in great honor as the interpreter of sacred things, the guardian of religion, and the messenger of divinity. It is likely, however, that the Syriac (or Chaldaic) is older than the Hebrew, since the Hebrews drew their origin from the Chaldeans. Neither defines a verse by the quantity The length of vowels (long/short), as in Latin and Greek verse of syllables, but by their number. A verse does not exceed seven syllables, nor does it fall short of four. Saint EPHREM mostly used the heptasyllable a seven-syllable line; Saint Jacob of Sarug used a tetrasyllable thrice repeated lines of 4+4+4 syllables, in which both also transcribed their own names; Balæus used the pentasyllable a five-syllable line.

Furthermore, while the Greeks eventually reduced sacred hymnody to eight tones The Octoechos, or eight-mode system of Byzantine chant and even today contain themselves within these limits, the Syrians wander through two hundred and seventy-five tones. These are found scattered throughout the ecclesiastical books, with the specific tones inscribed at the head of individual hymns. Indeed, our codices prove that the Syrians recognized no other rule of singing than those Hirmi original: Hirmi; model strophes that provide the melody and meter for other stanzas which are read at the beginning of individual songs, as

the Greeks call them. From these, the sequence and series of the troparia short hymns or stanzas or strophes to be sung in that Ode must be derived. Stephen, the Patriarch of the Syrian Maronites, in a short work on the Tones of the Syrians, endeavors to reduce them to six classes. The first, he says, consists of bimetric verses, the second of trimetrics, the third of tetrametrics, the fourth of pentametrics, the fifth of hexametrics, and the sixth varies, being composed of simple and composite members. Then he reduces the entire sacred poetry of the Syrians to certain titles as species of songs, which the illustrious Assemani touched upon in part in the place cited above, and our Patriarch reviewed them all from the ancient codices presented to him. There are thirteen in all, and they all agree in following some law of meter, but they differ in modulation and some even in subject matter. This fact is common to the Hebrews and Syrians, as it is established for the Greeks and Latins. Regarding orthography: if a little star appears added above the verses in the meters, know that if it has a dot placed below it, the end of a strophe is indicated; if it lacks that dot, consider it to have been added solely for the distinction of the verses.

But you, honest reader—for I shall not detain you further—should approach this nighttime study in such a way as to understand that I have tried, according to my meager ability, to fulfill both parts of an excellent interpretation: namely, the greatest fidelity in explaining the meanings, and care in expressing the words. However, since it is aptly said that all virtue lies in the middle ground, a translator is most foolishly criticized who, even if he matches meaning to meaning most religiously, does not always count out word for word to the reader. Therefore, those censors are to be rejected as troublesome and unkind who would deny a private scholar in his version that liberty which the Church, by a most fair judgment, has granted to its own translator in rendering the Divine Scriptures. It would be easy to bring forward many passages here from the Vulgate version of the Bible if the space allowed or if they were not already before your eyes, in which the translator departs from the Hebrew, Chaldaic, or Greek phrasing. There are others, on the contrary, in which, while he chases after the words, he obscures the sense to a surprising degree! For who, indeed, would understand those words of Psalm 91: They shall be well-suffering, that they may announce original: "Bene patientes erunt, ut annuntient", expressed word-for-word from the Greek? And those: You have received gifts in men original: "Accepisti dona in hominibus" in Psalm 67, which the Apostle, much more wisely, translated with the same meaning but with changed words. And Saint Matthew, citing Hebrew texts, inverts the words lest he pervert the sense. For this reason, when Zinus and Vossius Previous Latin translators of Ephrem’s works were making the works of Blessed EPHREM Latin, they preferred to follow Saint Jerome’s method in translating the Divine Scriptures and rendering the studies of Origen, rather than