| The difference between the Syriac original of the works of St. Isaac and their Greek translation concerns too the content up and order of the Homilies. First of all, as Archbishop Philaret (Gumilevsky) justly noted, ‘in the Greek translation less than half of the works of St. Isaac are made know ‘, since the second and the third volumes of his works were not translated into Greek at all. And yet, from the original eighty two Homilies of the first volume, fourteen Homilies were not translated into Greek . On the other hand, the Greek translation has Homilies which do not belong to the pen of St. Isaac; these are Homilies 43, 2, 7 and 29, corresponding to Homilies 8, 68, 9 and 20 of the Russian translation of On Ascetical Life. In the Syriac corpus of the works of St. Isaac the Syrian these Homilies do not exist. Yet they are to be found in the corpus of works of another Syrian mystical writer living in the eight century – John of Dalyatha; moreover, the manuscript tradition attributes them precisely to this author . The 9th Homily of the Russian translation of On Ascetical Life of St. Isaac the Syrian is none other than the 18th Epistle of John of Dalyatha . The remaining three Homilies belong to the collection of Discourses of John of Dalyatha, the text of which has not yet been published . Moreover, the Greek translation of the works of St. Isaac contains the Epistle to St. Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain who lived in the sixth century. On the basis of this epistle some of our pre-revolutionary authors, as well as Archbishop Sergei (Spassky) have claimed that St. Isaac lived not in the seventh but in the sixth century. However, this Epistle (Homily 55 in the Russian translation) does not bear the signature of Isaac the Syrian in a single Syriac manuscript. In all the Syriac manuscripts, as well as in the Arabic and Ethiopian versions, the Epistle bears the signature of Philoxenes of Mabbug. The epistle has survived in two versions – a full one and an abbreviated one. The majority of extant manuscripts contain the full version in which the work is called the Epistle to Patricius of Edessa. The authorship of Philoxenes is confirmed by the entire manuscript tradition and all modern scholars working in the field of Syriac studies . |
| Isaac did not stay long in his episcopal see. An eloquent story on the abdication of his episcopacy has survived in Arabic. When Isaac, on the first day after his episcopal consecration, was in his residence he was visited by two men, one of whom, a wealthy man, demanded that his friend return his debt: ‘If this man refuses to return to me what belongs to me I will be forced to take him to court’. Isaac said to him: ‘Since Scripture teaches us not to take away from a debtor, you ought to give this man at least a day so that he can repay you’. But the wealthy man replied: ‘Do not bother me with the Gospel!’ Isaac then said: ‘If the Gospel is not to be reckoned with here, then why have I come here?’ Seeing that episcopal ministry was in conflict with his tendency toward the hermit’s life, ‘the saint abdicated his episcopacy and withdrew to the holy monastery of Sketes’ . The last detail of the story contradicts the Book of Chastity which states that Isaac withdrew to the mountains surrounding Khuzestan , and not to the Egyptian monastery of Sketes. Moreover, it is difficult to believe that Isaac’s abdication of his episcopacy was caused by a single trifling incident. It is essential to remember that at the time of Isaac Nineveh was a centre of activity for ‘Monophysite’ Jacobites with whom Isaac as a ‘dyophysite’ bishop was to fight . It is possible that, as he was a not a man inclined towards arguments on dogmatic topics, Isaac preferred to withdraw from Nineveh, which had become an arena of conflict between contending parties. The remaining years of his life Isaac spent in the monastery of Rabban Shabura on Mount Shushtar . The exact date of Isaac’s death is unknown, as the date too of his birth is unknown. It is probably that Isaac was venerated as a saint during his lifetime. After Isaac’s death his fame spread at the same time as his writings. Joseph of Hazzayah, living in the eighth century, called him ‘famous among the saints’ . By the eleventh century Isaac, thanks to the Greek translation of his works, became widely known in the Greek-speaking East: in the famous anthology of ascetical texts called Euergetinos, excepts from the writings of ‘abba Isaac the Syrian’ take their place alongside selections from the classics of early Byzantine ascetical literature. |
| Conclusion The present conference, which has brought together the leading world specialists in the field of Syriac patristics, is a show of the scholarly resources that have already made a significant contribution to the cause of the study of the legacy of St. Isaac the Syrian. Each of the conference speakers will share the results of his research and speak of the scholarly discoveries which he has made in reading the works of the Syrian church father. The conference will examine both various problems connected to the existence of the works of Isaac in the manuscript tradition, in published editions and translations, and the various aspects of his theological, moral, ascetical and mystical teaching. I would like to hope, however, that this conference will be new step in the cause of studying the legacy of Isaac the Syrian, that it will inspire young scholars, including students represented here, to new research. Patrology is a boundless sea in which experienced divers find newer and newer pearls. The most significant of these pearls at the end of the twentieth century was the discovery of the second volume of the works of Isaac the Syrian, while the beginning of the twenty-first century heralded the advent of scholarly work upon a new find – the third volume of his works. Yet even those works which are well known have been far from studied and many remain unpublished and untranslated into modern languages. The works of Isaac the Syrian, upon which more than one generation of monks of both East and West have been brought up, are a vast field for new research. And the more we know about St. Isaac, the more important and attractive his image becomes for us. I would like to express the hope that after the First Patristics Conference of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Theological Institute of Post-Graduate Studies there will follow other conferences devoted to the works of the church fathers – Greek, Latin and Oriental. The cause of mastering the patristic legacy in our homeland demands a qualitative breakthrough, and I would like to believe that scholarly forums such as ours will be become a good tradition, will enable the education of a new generation of scholars for whom the search for the spiritual pearl in the sea of patristic writings has become their life’s work. |
| We owe a debt to Sebastian Brock for the publication and bringing to the attention of the scholarly world the second volume of the works of St. Isaac the Syrian, thanks to which our knowledge of the author has been broadened greatly. It is possible that it is no coincidence that St. Isaac the Syrian, in spite of his significance for the monastic tradition for the Churches of the East and West, until the twentieth century was not considered worthy of a single complete scholarly work on him (if we do not take into account the small book by Abbot Chabot published in Latin in 1892 ). Before the discovery of the second and then right after it the third volumes of the works of Isaac, this research would appeared to have been before its time. It was the introduction of the newly discovered texts of St. Isaac into the scholarly world that became the impulse for a renewed interest in him and has allowed us to interpret his theological and ascetical system in its entirety. St. Isaac the Syrian As A Spiritual Writer Of The Church Of The East There is one fact which obliges us to speak of Isaac the Syrian as a ‘special case’ in the history of patristic writings. In as far as we can judge by the historical testimonies that have survived and by his own works, he belonged to the Church of the East which recognized (and to this day recognizes) only two Ecumenical Councils – in Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 – and is therefore labeled ‘Nestorian’, even though it has no direct link with Nestorius. In Isaac’s times the canonical boundaries of this Church approximately coincided with the borders of the former Sasanian (Neo-Persian) Empire (present-day Iraq and Iran). The history of the Church of the East goes back to apostolic times. According to tradition, the apostles Thomas and Thaddeus preached in Persia, where Christianity was spread initially among the Jews and then among the Persians, followers of the Zoroastrian religion. In the third and fourth centuries the Christians of Persia suffered from cruel persecutions, especially at the hands of Bahram II (276 – 292) and Shapura II (310 – 379). |
| On the second volume of the works of Isaac the Syrian Sebastian Brock writes: ‘The entire manuscript tradition, including the various manuscripts from the three Churches (the Church of the East, the Byzantine Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox Churches) is unanimous in attributing the second volume to St. Isaac… The contents of both volumes testify to the fact that they have a single author: in both volumes there are common characteristic terms, as well as numerous coincidences in phraseology… All this testifies to the fact that the burden of proving who is right lies not on those who believe that the author of the first volume is also the author of the second, but on those who are convinced of the opposite ‘. Thus, the second volume belongs to the one who wrote the first. And yet as there were Russian writers in the 1990s who expressed doubt regarding the authenticity of this volume, we shall show the basic evidence in favour of its authenticity. First of all, it ought to be said that the Discourses from the second volume are fully or partially to be found in general totality in the nine manuscripts known to scholars today, and all of them here have the name of Isaac written upon them. If we bear in mind that the works of some fathers (not to mention the works of many authors of antiquity) have come down to us in one or two manuscripts, then in itself the number of manuscripts containing writings from the second volume and unanimously attributed to Isaac are weighty evidence in favour of the writings precisely being his. We must too mention that the Syriac manuscripts containing the corpus of the Homilies on the Ascetical Lifethat we known about are concluded with the following remark: ‘Here ends, with the help of God, the first part of the teaching of Mar Isaac the monk’ . The manuscripts containing the second volume, by contrast, begin with the words: ‘We are copying the second volume of Mar Isaac, bishop of Nineveh’. In this way in the Syrian manuscript tradition the second volume is thought of as a continuation of the first. |
| Since the fact that Isaac the Syrian belonged to the Church of the East had already been established by scholars at the time of Florovsky, throughout the twentieth century this fact has never been disputed by either Russian or Western scholars. And yet he poses a problem for Orthodox scholars: how could a great saint who is venerated throughout the Orthodox Church be a Nestorian? There have been various attempts to answer this question. Florovsky preferred not to enter into discussion of the problem, limiting himself to a remark that St. Isaac ‘stood out’ in the Nestorian milieu. Some have seen a solution to the problem by saying that Isaac only ‘formally’ belonged to the Nestorian Church. This opinion was adhered to by the well-known Russian patrologist Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein): ‘In as far as we can judge by the historical data that has come down to us, St. Isaac was for a short period bishop of the city of Nineveh which came under the jurisdiction of the Church in the Persian Empire, as though his whole life’s activity was carried out within the confines of this Church. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church has since times of old venerated him as a saint and esteems highly his spiritual works, which of course do not contain any “Nestorianism” whatsoever. And I if course shall never dare to take away his title of ‘saint’, even though the fact of his belonging (albeit formally) to the Nestorian Church challenges the Orthodox theological consciousness with serious problems on the nature of the Church and of the possibility of a life of grace and sanctity beyond its visible boundaries’ . The thesis of the ‘formal’ belonging of St. Isaac to the Nestorian Church has been repeated in our days by Alexei Sidorov: ‘Isaac the Syrian, in belonging formally to the Nestorian Church and even being, (albeit for a short time) a Nestorian bishop, revealed in his works the depths of the Orthodox contemplation of God… The translation of the works of St. Isaac into Greek and their recognition in Byzantium and Old Russia as works of a holy man and ultimately his canonization by the Orthodox Church, we believe, show that the Holy Spirit permeates and sees all things and that he knows no formal confines and boundaries of crude matter’. |
| And finally, the style, grammar, syntax of both volumes incontrovertibly testify to the fact that they were written by one and the same author. Those who wish to verify this should turn to the Syriac texts of both volumes and compare them. It is impossible to make such a comparison by using only the Russian translations. What has been said above regarding the authenticity of the second volume in full measure relates to the third volume of the works of Isaac the Syrian that have known only become the object of scholarship. It is true that this volume is known only from a single later manuscript . However, this manuscript, dated approximately at 1900, is a copy of a far earlier manuscript. It contains 133 pages, of which the first eleven contain the works of Isaac the Syrian – 17 Homilies which in content, language, style and syntax are close to those that form part of the first and second volumes. At the same time, Homilies 14 and 15 from the third volume correspond to Homilies 22 and 40 from the first volume, while Homily 17 corresponds to Discourse 25 from the second volume . Discourses 1 and 2 and 4 to 44 from the second volumes of the works of Isaac the Syrian have been translated into Russian. This translation, done by me in 1998, has in the intervening years undergone seven editions . Moreover, there have been translated some parts of the Chapters on Knowledge (Discourse 3 from the second volume) . Regarding the third volume, it remains untranslated with the exception of Homily 17 (translated as part of the second volume as Discourse 25). There is no evidence of the existence in the Syriac manuscript tradition of a fourth volume of Isaac’s works. However, a number of manuscripts mentioned in the catalogues of the libraries of the Christian East contain a small collection of Homilies from the ‘fifth volume of the divine man Isaac, a saint and hermit, bishop of Nineveh’. The texts of these manuscripts have been insufficiently studied and scholarly opinion differs on whether they can be attributed to Isaac . Bearing in mind, however, that a number of Syriac sources speak of five volumes of Isaac’s works , then we may expect that in this little studied collection genuine works of the saint may be found. |
| It is possible that Isaac became a monk not in his homeland but elsewhere. We may infer this from his own story beginning with the words: ‘At another time I went to see an old, venerable and virtuous elder…’. In this story the saint gives the reply of the elder to his question which contains these words: ‘Nobody knows you in this land, they do not know of your life…’ . And yet the anonymous Western Syriac source says how Isaac ‘was a monk and teacher in his own region’, i.e. in Qatar, and it is from there that Catholicos Givargis took him to Bet Aramaye . Of the life of St. Isaac before he became a bishop nothing more is known. As regards his episcopal consecration, then the information on this event contained in the Book of Chastity with great clarity outlines the time and geography of his life, as well as his place in the diptychs in the Nineveh diocese of the Church of the East. The Catholicos Givargis (George), who ordained Isaac, administered the Church of the East from 660 to 680 , and the text mentions too Catholicos Henanisho from 685 to 700. The years that Givargis was Catholicos coincide with the rule of Muawiyah I, the first Caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty, who chose Damascus as the capital of the Arab Caliphate . It fell to Givargis to unite the bishops of Qatar, from where Isaac originated, with the Church of the East . It is possible that while reuniting the bishops Givergis decided to ordain Isaac, a native of Qatar renowned for his ascetic life, as bishop of Nineveh . If this presupposition is true, then Isaac became a bishop in 676 or later, but no later than 680 when Catholicos Givargis died. The anonymous Western Syriac source adds several insignificant brush strokes to his portrait. In particular, this source says how when Isaac became blind, his disciples wrote down his teachings for him. ‘He was called the second Didymus , for he was calm, kind and humble, and his speech was always mild. He ate a piece of bread with vegetables three times a week… He compiled five volumes, known to this day, replete with most sweet teachings…’. |
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