the place of the presence of god - aphrahat of persia's portrait of the christian holy man

8/2/2019 The Place of the Presence of God - Aphrahat of Persia's Portrait of the Christian Holy Man

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Place of the Presence of God

//www.marquette.edu/maqom/aimilianos.html[28/03/2011 13:09:24]

Alexander Golitzin

The Place of the Presence of God: Aphrahat of Persia's Portrait of the Christian Holy Man. An Essay in HArchimandrite Aimilianos of the Monastery of Simonos Petras, Mount Athos

. Introduction

[The Elder] lives as a normal man, just as any other

ving man, but he is as well the one whom God has

aken and set apart, and who in consequence no longer

ves quite the life of the present world. While indeed

e walks the earth, he senses in some sense that his

ead is in the sky; that he sees heaven; that he sees God...

He is] the spiritual father who makes God tangible,

owerful, living, intense, and true."

The quotation above comes from an interview with Archimandrite Aimilianos recorded for a program German television just over twenty years ago [1]. The writer of the passage I wish to explore in this e

ver fifteen hundred years before that interview, and a thousand miles to the southeast of Mount Athoame was Aphrahat, Farhad in modern Persian [2]. He wrote in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, and thero nothing in his writings to suggest that he had much of any contact at all with either the earlier writi

Greek Church Fathers, or with the lexicon and concerns of Greek philosophy. His own diction, like thanguage he uses, is almost entirely Semitic, closer in fact to the rabbis of the huge Jewish diaspora oentury Mesopotamia who were his neighbors, and with whom he quarreled, than to such contempora

Church Fathers as St. Athanasius of Alexandria or, later on in the fourth century, the Cappadocians [3

pite of a vast distance at once physical, historical, linguistic and cultural, he offers us a portrait of tholy man which is stunningly like the one which Father Aimilianos gives above, and which the latter mbodied for those of us who have had the intestimable privilege of knowing him. I shall return to themarkable resemblance, and its importance, at the conclusion of my essay.

or now, however, a few more words of introduction to Aphrahat the Persian Sage are in order. He is mysterious figure, though not because any wish on his part to cloak himself with obscurity. To the conwrites to his correspondents as someone who is well known to them. He appears, in fact, to have been

rominent in the Christian Church of the Persian Empire during the first half of the fourth century [4]mystery is rather that we know and hear nothing about this Church prior to the writings of Aphrahat hHis is the first Christian voice from East of the Tigris that we can be certain of placing and dating sechanks entirely to the fact that Aphrahat himself is kind enough to supply us with the exact dates of hhree discourses or, as he calls them, Demonstrations(tahwyata): the first ten in A.D. 337, the next twelvend the twenty-third in 345 [5]. Yet the Church which his Demonstrationsassume is clearly numerous,

widespread in Mesopotamia and at least in Western Iran, and possessed moreover of long-standing inAn entire, hitherto-unglimpsed Christian universe appears thus for the first time in these writings, evehis is obviously a world which has been around for a long time -- perhaps even for centuries -- beforppear [6].

There are many things of great interest about this "third world" which can and do shed light on the muetter-known "worlds" of Greek and Latin Christianity. Its Semitic character at once betrays a numberraits unique to itself and, more importantly for my purposes here, reveals with perhaps especial clarito its relative freedom from the technical vocabulary of Hellenistic philosophy, the great pool of Jewi


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raditions out of which Christianity itself originally coalesced, and from which it continued to draw --n Syriac, Greek, or Latin -- throughout its early centuries [7]. All the materials, so-to-speak, for theoundational doctrines of the Church derive from this source, which is finally nothing more nor less thingle revelation of God to Israel as lived in the centuries prior to Christ and, in the fullness of time, haped by the inherent demands of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth crucified, risen and enthroned at tand of the Father [8]. Since this is clearly a huge topic, and since my space is limited, I shall focus oarticular subject of the transfigured holy man, whom we shall find complete in our Mesopotamian auwenty years before -- and a thousand miles removed from -- St. Athanasius' portrait of the "father ofn the famousVita Antonii[9].

Aphrahat, too, was writing to and about Christian ascetics. One of the institutions that we find fully-fhe Persian Church of his day, indeed so much an assumed part of that Church's life, and already so oequire renewal, is that of the "sons" and "daughters of the convenant",bnai/bat qyama, who are consecrasingle ones",ihidaye, or "celibates" -- though the theological resonances of bothqyamaand ihidayaare muicher and more subtle than simply these handy definitions [10] Unlike Egyptian monasticism, which rocess of taking on its mature forms even as Aphrahat was writing, these native, Syro-Mesopotamian

were not physically separated off from the larger Church in discrete communities and living outside thnd villages under their own leaders, as in the nascent monastaries of St. Pachomius, or in the villaget Scete, but were rather attached to their local churches under the supervision of the bishops and livinmall groups within the town or city [11] Later on, to be sure, during the latter days of St. Ephrem of

+373), the Egyptian form of organized monasticism began to appear in Syriac-speaking churches andventually predominate.

This was not the case when Aphrahat wrote, however. By this fact alone, he offers proof that organizeChristian asceticism was both older and more widespread than the monastic explosion of fourth-centund his "proto-monks" have as a result been the focus of a modest scholarly industry for the past cent

with the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, has it begun to become apparent just how old sceticism is, and how rooted in Jewish traditions of the era immediately before Christ. Here again, Ahidaye-- and the very phrase, "sons of the covenant" -- are extraordinarily revealing. Affinities betwend the Jewish covenanters have been noted in scholarly literature since the Scrolls first began to apprint during the later 1950's [12]. More recently, Antoine Guillaumont provided a rationale for the Quelibacy based in great part on an analysis of Aphrahat, and the rationale still stands in scholarly circlrief, the Persian Sage argues for celibacy on the basis of the levitical holiness code for priestly minis

Tabernacle or, later, in the Temple [14]. Similar concerns appear to have moved the Jewish convenantundred years before, with the difference that, for our Christian writer, the continuous temple service equiring thus continuous abstention even from the sanctified sexual activity of marriage -- is that of

ministry of prayer within the temple of the body and so, as we shall see momentarily, before the presGod in the heavenly temple. Obviously, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the "hatred of the bodupposedly characterizing early Christian asceticism and allegedly resulting from pagan, chiefly Platonfluences.

. The Text:Demonstration XIV.35, columns 660:23-665:9

The notion of the temple, in particular the Christian as temple, may be said to be a key to understandiAphrahat, and this is very much the case in the passage I have singled out for analysis here, which is 5 of his fourteenth Demonstration[15]. The latter takes the form of a long, general epistle addressed to ntire Church of the Persian Empire. It is concerned to address problems in that Church, notably greeolitics, and strife among believers, and all against the background of the persecutions just inaugurate

Emperor Chosroes II [16]. A little over halfway through his catalogue of human failings, Aphrahat bris diatribe for several paragraphs, in order to consider, first, the example of Christ's Cross and dyingpecial emphasis on Phil 2:6-11 [17]. He then moves to the scriptural theme of God's exaltation of therom there, immediately preceding our text, to the divine inscrutability and the wonders of creation [1aragraph 35, he arrives at his description of the glorified sage,hakkima. The column and line numbers refarisot's edition of the Demonstrationsfor volume I of thePatrologia Syriaca; and the translation is my own


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olumn line text

60 23 Who has perceived the placeof knowledge?

4 Who has attained to the roots of wisdom? And who

5 has insight into the placeof understanding? The latter ishidden

6 from the thoughts of every fleshly being,

61 1 nor can the obstinate purchase it with gold. Itstreasure

isopenand permitted to those who ask [for it]. Itslight

is greater than the sun, and itsradiance is more comely and beautiful

than the moon. Theinnermost chambersof theintellect may touch it,

and the perceptions of thought may attain to it, and fulness of mind may

inherit it. Whoever hasopened the door of hisheart

finds it, and whoever unfolds the wings of hisintellect

possesses it. Itdwellsin the man who is diligent,

and isimplanted in theheart of the sage,

0 whose nerves are set firmly in their sources, and [so]

1 in it [i.e., the heart] he possesses ahidden treasure. His thought flies

2 to all theheights, and his pondering

3 descends to all the depths. She [i.e., Wisdom]depicts

4 wonderous things in his heart, and theeyes of his perceptions

5 take in the bounds of the seas. All things created

6 areenclosed within histhought , and he

7becomes vast so as to receive still more. He becomes

8 thegreat templeof hisCreator . Indeed,the Kingof the Heights

9entersand dwellsin him, andliftshis intellect up to the heights,

0 and causes histhought to flyto His Holy House,

1 and He shows him thetreasure of color within [it].

2 Hismind is absorbed in thevisions, and hisheart

3 israpt in all its perceptions. He [the King]shows

4 him a thing that he never knew. Hegazeson that place

64 1 and contemplates it, and hismind is stupefied by everything 2 that itsees: all thewatchers hasteningto hisministry,

the seraphimchanting the thrice-holy[lit. "sanctifying"] to hisglory,

flying swiftlywith their wings, and theirvestments

white and shining, their faces are covered at


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hisradiance, their coursesswifter than the wind ;

there is thethroneof the kingdom established;

the Judge makes ready the place of judgement ;

the chairs for the righteous are set out in order for them to judge the wicked

0 on the Day of Judgement. When thesage sees

1 in his mind the placeof manytreasures,

2 his thought is thenceforth elevated, and hisheart

3conceives and engendersevery good thing, and he meditates

4 oneverything he had sought . While his form

5 andappearanceare on theearth, the senses of [his]intellect are at once 16above and below. He thought is swifter than the sun,

7 and its rays fly quicker than the wind ,

8swift as wing[s] in every direction.

9 Thesagegrows strong in his thought. Though hisappearanceis small,

0 and [he makes himself]smaller yet, he is stillinfused and filled with amighty treasure.

1 The darkness at night is made light, and he sends

2 his thoughts out in all directions. Hisintellect touches

3 all the foundations and brings him atreasure of knowledge.

4 He hasseen what his "ears have not heard", and he has perceived

5what his "eyes have not seen". His interests traverse the seas,

6 though he bothers not with their mighty

65 1 billows, and hisintellect is without a ship

or a sailor, yet his commerce is great and exceptional.

Whenhe gives from what is his, he isno whit the less, and the poor

are made wealthyfrom treasure. There isno limit

to his mind, which isgathered upand lodged in hisinner being.

The place where the King dwellsand is ministered to, who

who could calculateits treasurefor you? Many

are its affairs and expenses, as for a king for whom

nothing lacks. [19]

. The Earlier Analyses of Juana Raasch and Robert Murray: Links with Apocalyptic Literature and JewiMysticism

ust over thirty years ago, in the course of a series of articles forStudia Monasticaon "Purity of Heart", theister Juana Raasch briefly noted a number of parallels between this passage and the oldest of the apo

which feature a heavenly journey, I or Ethiopic Enoch, chapters 1-36 (esp. chp. 14 ff.), or "The Book of thWatchers" [20]. In the latter, the biblical patriarch "travels to the ends of the earth as well as through


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eavens". In heaven, he is shown the throne of God, "the Great Glory", initiated into the secrets of crnd allowed to see the "court of heaven, angels and the thrones of the Judge and of the just" [21]. Raaoo quick, however, to turn Aphrahat's version of this scenario into a mental or spiritual exercise, a ki

meditation rather than a revelatory and/or mystical experience [22]. Twenty years later, Robert Murrayiscovered echoes in Dem.XIV.35 not only of apocalyptic literature, but even more so of the Jewish myexts roughly contemporary with Aphrahat, the "hekalot hymns", and specifically withSefer Hekalot , 3 orHebrew Enoch[23]. He cites in particular3 Enoch28 where Metatron, the Angel of the Presence par excellenwho is serving as R. Ishmael's heavenly tour-guide, tells the latter of the four supreme "Princes of the

resence", the "Watchers" ('irin) and "Holy Ones who face the throne of God and reflect it", who "are with the praise of theekinah", and without whom "The Holy One, blessed be He, does nothing in His wwithout first taking [their] counsel" [24]. Murray then points to a very curious feature in Aphrahat's ahe sage's ascent to the Throne in 664:2-6: the masculine singular, third-person pronomial suffixes attministry" (temeta), "glory" (iqara), and "radiance" ( ziwa) all have as their nearest "natural antecedent

God, but the wise man, such that it is the latter whose glory the "Watchers",'irin, serve, to whom the thricoly is chanted, and from whose radiance the angelic priests, the Seraphim, veil their faces. Aphrahatuggests, is going "farther" -- than, I assume, R. Ishmael, who ascends to heaven in the opening of 3 Enoch-nd implying "that even a human being can be raised to the status of a Watcher and receive such honohe angelic Watchers" [25]. This passage overall, he continues, interrupts the flow of argument in Demonstr

XIV in order to describe "an experience like those which we may suppose are reflected in the Jewish exts of the Merkabahtradition", that of being "rapt to the [heavenly]hekal". "The same words", Murray

oncludes, pointing to the verbs and adjectives touching on the speed and flight of the angels in our pare used to describe their winged flight and then his [the sage's] mental experience" [26].

Both Raasch and Murray have contributed to what I shall have to say, the former by noting the tie-in econd Temple-era literature of visionary ascent, and by stressing the interiorized interpretation Aphrives to it, and the latter with regard to several points, including, first, the recollection of Rabbinic-erheka

mysticism, particularly3 Enoch; second, the surprising -- not to say shocking -- picture of the sage as thf angelic ministry; and, third, the attention to Aphrahat's specific use of certain common words in orstablish the linkage between the angels' service and the sage's thought, and so pointing both to the laffective identity with the "Watchers" and to his mystical experience. A little further analysis will brinertain points that were missed or elided in the brief space, only a matter of a couple of pages in eachhat Raasch and Murray could afford the passage.

While surely correct about Aphrahat's intent to interiorize apocalyptic ascent, Raasch was too quick tohe claim to genuine mystical experience that he was lodging. Murray, on the other hand, was not shyspect at all, but I think he slightly missed the mark, first of all with regard to the very text which he ut with such perspicacity as one of Aphrahat's possible sources,3 Enoch. The key, I submit, to understandhe Persian sage's interest in this text, or in some earlier version of it, is neither R. Ishmael, nor the fo'irin

Murray cites in3 Enoch28, but rather the figure of Metatron himself, the transformed Enoch, who is thero of Sefer Hekalot , at least of its first fifteen chapters, and whom I take Aphrahat to be recasting intoonsonant with Christian doctrine and spiritual practice [27]. An essential feature of that recasting is trocess of interiorization which Raasch rightly underlined. Secondly, the lexical keys Murray put his re certainly present, but in far greater numbers than suggested in his brief remarks. Picking out and fhe links they establish will allow us to site Aphrahat's portrait of the sage in the larger context of hisnderstanding of the place of humanity in the divine plan, beginning with the creation of Adam and inhe revelation of God to Moses on Sinai, but culminating in the meaning of Jesus Christ. It is Christ w

Aphrahat's own real hero. The Lord Jesus is the Wisdom and Glory of God, the Eucharistic Presence Himself the true tabernacle of worship [28]. In and through Him, the consecrated celibate and sage di

is life and vocation, and experiences the eschatological recovery of Paradise. In short, as we shall seAphrahat's sage is, in Christ, an illustration of what Greek-speaking Christians were callingtheosis, deifica29].

. Chiasm and Terms of Special Interest: "Place", "Treasure", Verbs of "Seeing", "Glory", "Presence", anRadiance/Splendor"


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This brings me to the terms I have highlighted in the passage, the most important of which is the wortra. The latter is repeated five times: twice in the opening lines, "the place of knowledge" and "of nderstanding" (660:23 and 25); twice in the climactic central section, "that place" and "the place of mreasures" (661:24 and 664:11); and once at the end, "the place where the King dwells" (665:6). The puilt on this repetition, together with that of a pair of words,gaza and simta, both of which I have translatetreasure", and which appear a total of eight times: twice at or toward the beginning, thus: the "treasugaza) of the "place" (661:1) and the "treasure" (simta) "hidden" or "buried" in the "heart", lebba (661:11wice in the central section: the "treasure" (gaza) within the heavenly sanctuary (661:21), and the "place

i.e., the "mind's",rey'ana] many treasures [simata]"(664:11); and no less than four times in the concludeventeen lines: the "mighty treasure" (gaza) filling the sage (664:20), the "treasure (gaza) of knowledge" has at his disposal (664:23), the "treasure" (gaza) with which he enriches the poor (665:3-4), and finallyncalculable "treasures" (gaze) of "the place where the King dwells" (665:7).

The passage functions chiastically. We begin, A, with an echo of the questions in Job 28:12 ff.: "who haserceived the place of knowledge" which is "hidden" from earthly thoughts, and who is "fit" for undernd so has accessed the "treasures"of wisdom? In Job 28, especially verses 23-27, the answer to theses God. With regard to the "treasure", however, a second scriptural passage, Mt 6:19-21, is of effectivmportance for Aphrahat here. One's treasures,simatain the Peshitta, are to be in heaven, "for where youeart is, there will your treasures be" (Mt 6:21) [30]. Thus the answer to the opening, the A' of the chiasm,

God, at least not directly, but the sage in whose "inner being" ('ubba, lit. "womb" or "bosom") we are diro find "the place where the King dwells" and all its "treasures". In between, we have learned the wonthat place", haw atra, wonders which include the heavenly temple, complete with angelic lower clergywatchers" ('irin), hurrying to accomplish their liturgy (lit., "ministry",temeta), and the seraphic priestslothed in "white and shining vestments", chanting the celestialtrisagionfrom Isa 6:3 (lit., "sanctifying",

mqadin) before the enthroned Glory (iqara), and veiling their faces from the divine radiance ( ziwa). "Thereoo, "in that place", is the throne (tranaws) of judgement and the heavenly assize -- in brief, "all the comeaven", together with an anticipation, in the shape of the throne and seats of judgement, of the escha

As Raasch observed, these images are standard fare in apocalyptic literature: the heavenly court, its miturgy, the angelic priests serving before the "Great Glory" (to cite I Enoch14) and the place of judgemen

The heavenly temple, thehekal, and its angelic priesthood is also the especial interest of the rabbinic-erahek

exts, whose history begins probably sometime shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple in Awhose origins, according to the recent theory of Rachel Elior, are very likely connected with that losswo terms,iqara (glory) and ziwa(radiance), are also familiar from related literature. The former serves yriac Bible, thePeshitta, as the regular rendering of the Hebrewkavod , the theophanic term par excellencei

he Priestly strand of the Penteteuch, in Ezekiel, and in the Psalms most notably, though it is certainlylsewhere in the Old Testament [33]. Iqara also appears regularly in the Palestinian Targumim, the Aramaraphrases of the Hebrew Bible read in the synagogues of late antiquity [34]. In addition, not in the bove but on three other occasions, Aphrahat deploys a related Aramaic term,ekinta, which is the precisequivalent of the Hebrew word,ekinah, used by the rabbis to mean the radiant appearance of the divineresence, just as does Aphrahat withekinta[35]. The brilliance of the divine presence is denoted by theiwa, which again we find in the Rabbinic phrase, ziv haekinah, the blessed light of divinity on which thelessed "feed" in the age to come, and on which thehekalot mystics hope to "gaze" even in this life [36].

Given that hope of the beatific vision in rabbinical literature, we should take special note of the verbsn our passage. The sage "gazes" (h'r ) on "that place" (661:24); his mind is "stupefied" -- mystical wondcstasy -- by what it "sees" (hz' ) (664:2). He "has seen" (hz' ) the "place of treasures" (664:11); and again een" (hz' ) "what ears have not heard" (664:2-4). We are surely in the realm here of mystical experienhe least, of its vocabulary, a lexicon that Aphrahat largely shares with his Jewish contemporaries, as

with his Christian readers. That the latter were familiar with it, too, coupled with the fact that they wescetics, members of thebnai qyama[37], suggests to me that they -- or at least some of them -- were alnterested in obtaining the same sort of visionary experience as the one being sought by contemporarydescenders to the Chariot": to ascend to the heavenly temple in order to "gaze" on the light of the en


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Glory -- and, indeed, we do have texts from earlier in the history of Christian Syria-Mesopotamia whiscents to heaven, as well as similar accounts -- in both a positive and a negative key -- in monastic Eourth and fifth centuries [38]. Given this desire on the part of his contemporaries, together with a hopterature effectively shared with neighboring Jews, we would have one of Aphrahat's primary reasons

writing. I submit that, while he sympathizes with this desire to know and see the "place" of the heavemysteries and light of God, he also wishes to recast it in accordance with a consistent Christian teachihall see him doing precisely that with regard to his portrait of the perfected Christian, the sage orhakkima,he "place" of the Presence.

Place", atra, is aterminus technicuswith a history at least long as long as any of the words touched on aGiven that it is also the principle term in our pericope, providing both the "ends" and the "pivot" of thhiasm, and further given that, by my rough count, it occurs at least thirty times in the Demonstrationsin a lr similar context [39], it is clearly worth a little attention. The Aramaicatra, like the Greektopos, renders t

word, maqom, of the Hebrew Bible. The first and primary -- verging on technical -- meaning of maqomis theocus of divine manifestation, such as, for example, Bethel in Genesis 28:11 and 16-19, or the burnin

Exodus 3:5, or verses such as Deuteronomy 12:5, 11, etc., which speak of the "chosenmaqom" where God wmake His Name to dwell [40]. With the latter we arrive at the association of "the place" with Zion, thTemple in Jerusalem, a linkage which is especially frequent in the Psalms (e.g., Ps 24:3), and exceedinrequent in Jeremiah, where the expressionhammaqom hazzeh, "this place", occurs over thirty times [41] aor example, Jer 17:12: "the place [maqom] of our sanctuary [miqdaenu]", where one modern English

ranslation of the Bible rendersmaqomas, simply, "shrine" [42]. If anything, this identification of "placehe Temple is accentuated in the Septuagint's use of the equivalent Greek word,topos[43]. Thus, in Exodu4:10, we find the insertion of the phrase, "the place where stood", into the Hebrew, "they saw the Gosrael". In the Septuagint version, the elders thus "saw the place", withtoposserving as, effectively, a stanor God himself. While it may have been intended originally to soften the stark anthropomorphism of

Hebrew, this Septuagint variation would have a very important history in Greek ascetico-mystical literspecially in the late fourth-century Desert Father, Evagrius Ponticus, whom I shall cite in this contexnd continuing thereafter in such writers as, for example, Dionysius Areopagites [44].

Maqomin the Old Testament also occasionally refers to God's heavenly dwelling, the celestial counterekalon earth, most notably in the song of the cherubim in Ezekiel 3:12: "Blessed is the Glory of YHWis place [mimmaqomo]". In this verse, according to one modern scholar, we have an important momentevelopment which flows seamlessly into the apocalyptic writings of the period immediately before a

Christ, and beyond [45]. By the time of Rabbinic literature generally, and of thehekalot texts in particular (o of the era of Aphrahat as well),maqomhas an established set of meanings reflecting its Old Testamen

Not surprisingly, it occurs roughly 125 times in Peter Schfer'sSynopsisof thehekalot literature, with arounwo dozen of those instances being citations or paraphrases of Ezk 3:12 [46]. Reflecting the latter, wehe meaning of maqomin the hekalot texts as including, simply, "heaven" [47], or, more specifically, as tplace of the throne of Glory" [48], as the "place" unapproachable for created beings by virtue of the ire around it [49], as the original or archetype of the earthly temple [50], as a substitute expression foivine throne itself [51], as the heavenly equivalent of the Ark as footstool, "the place of the feet of thekin52], or, more broadly, as the divine "abode" [53]. Finally, and recalling the Septuagint deployment oftoposind of stand-in for God in Ex 24:10, we find throughout both thehekalot texts and other Rabbinic literatuhe use of maqomas a divine name, for which3 Enochalone supplies over a half-dozen instances [54]. InRabbinic parlance therefore,haMaqomdesignates God in much the same way as dohaKavod (the Glory),hathe Name) , haekinah(the Presence),haQado (the Holy One), etc. [55]. I maintain that all of these asso- the heavenly temple, the throne within it, the radiance, and God himself, together (and this last notehe fore in the Jewish literature, at least so far as I know) with God's eschatological manifestation -- l

Aphrahat's use of the phrase in 661:24: "that place".

. Indwelling Presence, Microcosm and Mystical Expansion

But there is a difference, and a very important one, between our Persian sage and the sources I cite abrings me back to Juana Raasch's stress on interiorization, as well as to Aphrahat's own deliberate ech


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Mt 6:19-21. For him, "that place" is within the sage. While it is true, as Murray pointed out briefly anave endeavored to flesh out above (nor am I finished), that we find more or less complete the vocabuscent characteristic of both the ancient apocalypses and rabbinic-erahekalot texts, including the use of therb "rapt" (b' ) -- thus the sage's "heart is rapt in all its perceptions" (661:23) -- together with the veeeing and even of flying, as in the prh of 661:20, it is also the case that all the rapturing and flying in qus accomplished by the sage's "thoughts",mehabata. It is he, the perfected Christian, who is the "great tehaikla rabba) of the "King of the heights", Who "enters [''l] and dwells [r' ]" in him (661:17-19). It is to tndwelling presence that the sage's thoughts "fly", to it that he "ascends" in order to discover "there", imself, the whole company of heaven. The "place" is thus effectively equated with the sage's heart (lebba),

mind (rey'ana), or intellect (tar'ita), or simply "innermost being" ('ubba), all of which seem to function heoughly as synonyms [56]. The allusion to I Cor 2:9, "what eye had not seen, nor has ear heard", in 6lso adds an eschatological reminiscence. The sage as the heavenly "place" enjoys in consequence annticipation within himself of the age to come. Finally, he represents God -- an aspect that I shall comresently. For now, however, allow me to conclude this paragraph by citing another Christian ascetic a

who writes two generations later in Greek from the other side of the Eastern Christian world, Evagriuatter several times deploys Exodus 24:10 and the latter'stoposto precisely the same effect as Aphrahat. Fxample, in his 39th Epistle he writes:

f by the grace of God the intellect both turns away from [the passions] and puts off the old

man, then it will also see its own constitution at the time of prayer, like a sapphire or the

olor of heaven, which recalls as well what the scripture calls the "place of God" seen by

he elders on Mount Sinai. For another heaven is imprinted on a pure heart, because within

are beheld so many [things]: the meaning of beings and the holy angels who sojourn with

he worthy.[57]

Here, too, we find the inner presence of the heavenly host and the place of theophany.

A third aspect of Aphrahat's sage is that he is twice called, precisely, "sage",hakkima(661:9 and 664:10).William Schoedel has remarked on the "living tradition" of biblical Wisdom literature in early Christincluding early monastic -- Egypt, and of a "coalescence" of the Jewish sage with other forms [58]. Tbservations have been made specifically about, again, Evagrius of Pontus, and especially about the lpparent invention of the genre of short sayings, the "centuries" or "kephalaia", to convey his teaching [5

Likewise, those familiar with Evagrius will doubtless recall that the second stage of his return of the iGod, after the achievement (and gift) of victory over the passions inapatheia, is the physik theria, theontemplation of nature, which leads the initiate into the reasons or purposes of Christ at work in creaudging the world, thelogoi pronoias kai krises[60]. Less Evagrius' particular metaphysics, this is very ndeed to what we find in our pericope from Aphrahat. The wisdom passage from Job 28 reverberateshroughout the opening and closing sections of DemonstrationXIV.35, while the sage's ascent to the Presend Throne, toward "that place", is through the knowledge of creation. His thought expands to enclosreated things", heights and depths and "the bounds of the seas". Here we might recall the notion of th

microcosm, also important for Evagrius, since in Aphrahat, too, the universe is somehow included in ntellect of the wise man. He has taken in the world. Nor is this the end of his expansion. His capacitynclination, yatzra, to take in, his receptivity, does not stop with the created world, but becomes still morwih]" (661:17) [61]. He expands to become "the great temple of his Creator", "large" enough, as it wor God.

. Three Themes from Jewish and Jewish-Christian Mystical Literature

. Background: the Lore of the Chariot (Ma'aseh Merkavah)and of the Beginning (Ma'aseh Bereit)

This matter of size, of growth or expansion to the dimensions of the cosmos and beyond, is a familiar


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ewish mystical literature. We thus arrive at a fourth point about Aphrahat's portrait of the sage: I readeliberately playing off of at least three, interrelated themes in Jewish and Jewish-Christian traditionsn both the lore of the chariot-throne,ma'aseh merkavah, that is, the ascent to the divine throne and comm

with heaven, and the mystical (in a very broad sense) meditation on Genesis 1-3,ma'aseh bereit [62], whichpawned the very considerable literature of Adamic speculation preserved in the Old Testamentseudepigrapha, and which further contributed fundamentally to religious movements like Gnosticism

Manicheanism, and Mandaeism, all three of which were incidentally active in Aphrahat's neighborhoooncerning which he makes occasional, condemnatory references [63]. These were then part of the Peage's ambient, and that of his readers as well, together with the rabbinic criticisms of Christian practi

which he is also replying [64]. Ma'aseh merkavahand ma'aseh bereit are important elements in this backgrWhether in their Jewish or Gnostic forms, they also posed an element of temptation for those to whomAphrahat was writing. It is therefore not accidental that they feature in the background of his portrait lorified sage.

. The Glory (Kavod), the Image (Tselem), the Likeness (Demut) and thei'ur Qomah

The three specific themes I have in mind are, first, the literature of thei'ur qomah; second, the expansion mystical adept in certain esoteric texts; and, third, speculation about theimago deithat features in a numbehe traditions around Adam, particularly concerning the protoplast's size and splendor. All three are, anterrelated, and the point of their connection to each other is, perhaps more than anything else, the bi

radition of the Glory of God, thekevod YHWH . The most striking and arguably most influential expressihis tradition is the humanoform shape that Ezekiel the prophet saw atop the chariot-throne in Ezekiel8: thedemut kmar'eh adam, "in likeness as the appearance of a man", though anthropomorphism relateheophany is widespread in the Old Testament as, for example, in God's appearance to the elders in E4:10, cited above, or to Moses in Exodus 33-34. There is also room to argue, as James Barr did fortynd as many others have done since [65], that the prophet's vision of the human likeness atop themerkavahiinked to the Priestly source's understanding of God's image,tselem, and likeness,demut , in Genesis 1:26-2

The tselem/demut is, in short, the Glory itself, that "according to which" (Hebrewb, Greekkata) the first huwas formed. This tradition, the Glory/ kavod as the divine archetype of the human form, has a long, com

ot to say bewildering and much-debated history in the literature of Israel subsequent to Ezekiel and riestly source, and later on in Early Christian sources [66]. Suffice it to say here that, by Aphrahat's

hree themes I have singled out were particular instances of this history and development. They were hink, very much in the air of his locale. They featured in the thought of every one of the heretical gristed above [67], together with the rabbis and, indeed (though I cannot prove it), Aphrahat's own fellhidaye.

i'ur qomahmeans literally "measure of the stature", that is, of the divine body of thekavod . In certain Jewmystical texts, it is connected with, broadly, thevisio gloriaeand, specifically, with the ascent to the heaveemple to see the enthroned divinity. There is good reason to believe that this tradition is very old [68xample, the phrase,metron ts hlikias(that is, "of the fulness of Christ"), in Ephesians 4:13 is the exacquivalent of the Hebrewshi'ur qomah, while another Pauline phrase, "body of his glory" (sma ts doxsutou) in Philippians 3:21, to which the Christian is to become "conformed", is possibly in the same c69], a notion which is supported by the perhaps contemporary, Jewish apocalypse of 2 or Slavonic Enoch, w

he "extent" of God's body -- or "Face" -- is also strikingly to the fore [70]. In later Jewish texts the ds unimaginably huge. Millions of parasangs (Persian units of two-three miles) are accorded each of teatures and limbs, with the inches making up these heavenly parasangs each equal to 90.000 times thf the earth [71]. One might indeed, as one scholar suggested recently, do better to speak of parsecs,

measurements in light years. Two biblical texts are of especial importance for this literature: Isaiah 66eavens are my throne and the earth is my footstool", and the ecstatic description of the body of theridegroom in Song of Songs 5:10-17. The two strands, the enormous body of the Glory and the beloong of Songs, appear to have fused sometime in the third century A.D. [72]. Aphrahat was certainly

he reverberations of Isaiah 66:1, since he elsewhere deliberately plays off of them, and so off of thei'ur qomraditions as well, in order to portray Christian holiness [73]. Arguably he knows of both strands, thoueferences to the divine Bridegroom are more clearly dependent on Matthew 25:1-15 than on the Son


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hen again, it may be that the First Gospel's use of the imagery of virgins and bridegroom is itself alluart to the Old Testament love poem.

. Mystical Expansion

) From I Kings through the Qumran Sectarians to theHymn of the Pearl

f the notion of theshi'ur qomahlies in the more remote background of Dem. XIV.35, my second theme, thxpansion of the mystical adept, is front and center. This, too, is quite old. As early as I Kings 5:9, So

eart (leb) is "enlarged" by the gift of wisdom sufficiently to take in the sands of the sea, and, in lightrominence so far in this essay of temple themes, it is surely of significance that the first thing the kineported to have done with his gift was to embark on the construction of the Temple. The idea of expappears in the Qumran Hodayot , where we hear of the the stature,qmh, of the poor man being "exalted tolouds" [74]. Elsewhere the speaker in the hymn is "among the divinities" with "incomparable glory"n another place his soul is "enlarged [rhb] and joined with the angels "in the tents of glory" ('hly kbd ) [76].he extraordinary conclusion to theSimilitudes of Enoch( I Enoch71), the patriarch assumes the throne of s the supra-angelic Son of Man, while, in the throne vision of 2 Enoch22, he is transformed into an angeleturns to earth to deliver the divine message to his sons, and finally ends by ascending again to assumtation among the angels of the Presence [77]. These likely first-century apocalypses are perhaps echerses I cited above from Ephesians and Phillipians, and, certainly, the body of Christ, in Col 1:15-20nclude all of creation [78]. In an early second-century, Christian apocalypse,The Martyrdom and Ascensiosaiah, the prophet undergoes a progressive transformation as he makes his way up through the seven o the throne [79]. A more strikingly explicit instance of mystical expansion, however, occurrs in the

Gospel of Phillip, which writes of the Transfiguration that:

When he [Christ] appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount, he was not small. He

ecame great [i.e., large], but he made his disciples great, that they might be able to see

im in his greatness.[80]

More proximate to Aphrahat's own time and place, and certainly in circulation among both Christian Manichaean ascetics of his day and region, there is the mid-third century Acts of Thomas. Incorporated intoatter we find a poem, the Hymn of the Pearl, long thought to be Gnostic in origin and Iranian in inspirati

more recently recognized as essentially Jewish-Christian in nature [81]. The poem, which the Actsplace in tmouth of the Apostle Thomas, describes the quest of the soul for its lost heavenly inheritance. This ins in fact theimago dei, which is described as a garment, the heavenly robe of light which also featuresrominently elsewhere in both Jewish and Christian literature [82]. The climax of the story arrives wipeaker's recovery of the robe through Christ's mediation. Placed in Thomas' mouth by the author(s) o

Acts, this moment also functions as the description of a mystical experience. The speaker encounters thsuddenly", discovers his true self reflected within it, together with the precious stones of Paradise cond the "image of the King [tsalmeh d-malka] depicted [syr ] all over it", and the color of "the sapphire stouffusing it [83]. The robe-image speaks to the Apostle and tells him of its own growth by virtue of thMy stature [Syriacqawmta; Greek hlikia] was growing [rby' ] according to his labors" [84]. Thomas thenn the heavenly robe in order to ascent to heaven, to greet Christ, the "radiance [ ziwa] of the Father", tomingle with the angels, and finally to approach the divine throne. Quoting from J. A. Robinson's Englendering of the Syriac:

My toga of brilliant colors [gawne] I cast around me, in its whole breadth

.and ascended to the gate [tar'a] of salutation and homage.

bowed my head and did homage to the Majesty [literally, "radiance", ziwa] of the Father

who had sent it to me,


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or I had done his commandments, and he had done what he promised.

And at the gate of his princes I mingled with his nobles...

And he promised that also to the gate of the King of kings I should speed with him,

nd, bringing my gift [literally, "offering",qurbana], I should appear with him before our King.[85]

everal points demand our attention here regarding comparison with Aphrahat's portrait of the sage inDemonstrationXIV.35 (as well as with other, related passages in his oeuvre). First, there are the lexicalotional correspondences. These include:) the verb,tswr ("depict"), used here for theimagoon the robe and in Aphrahat for the "wondrous thingrawn in the heart in the sage (661:13-14);

) ziwa("radiance"), here a Christological title [cf. Heb. 1:3] and in DemonstrationXIV.35 shining forth frothat place" within the sage (664:3);

) the verb,rby ("grow large"), for the robe's stature (qawmta, the Syriac equivalent of the Hebrewqomah),which I take in parallel with the sage's capacity to receive becoming "vast" (rwih);

) The "King of kings" and "our King" in the poem, and "the King of the heights" and "King" of 661:65:6 in Aphrahat; and) the wonderful colors (gawne) of the robe in parallel with the "treasure of color" which

he King reveals to the sage in 661:21-- where we might also note the emphasis on the sapphire hue she garment, and then compare both Evagrius' deployment of the same color in dependence on Exoduited above, and Aphrahat's use of the same term in reference to his

wn mystical experience in Demonstration10.8, cited below (Section 10);

) the note of ascension or going up (slq) in the poem, and the flight or lifting up of the sage's intellect in61:19-20.

econd, the whole setting and message of the poem is directly relevant to our discussion. It is concernecovery of theimagoand paradise, with increase in size or stature, with heavenly ascent, with Christ aadiance, with fellowship -- literally, "mingling" (hlt ) -- with the angels (the "nobles" and "great ones"),

with the approach to the throne of God the Father. Third and last, this essentially eschatological pictuhe Acts of Thomaswithin a context of mystical experience. It happens, in other words, not just then, at schaton, but is as well a present possibility. So is Aphrahat's sage.

) Later Rabbinical Literature:3 Enochand Metatron

rom Jewish literature perhaps exactly contemporary with the Persian sage, we turn to the text single

Murray, 3 Enochor Sefer Hekalot . The parallels lie thick on the ground here, though, as I noted earlier, nuite precisely in the way that Murray saw them. The hero of this composition is, again, the biblical fEnoch, who functions, as Moshe Idel has pointed out, as the archetype of the mystical visionary [86].

y way of his ascent to heaven and transformation into Metatron, the supreme "Angel" or "Prince of tresence" (lit., "of the Face",Sar haPanim) [87]. To be sure, the themes of ascent and transformation areld, going back, as we saw, into apocalyptic literature [88], and one can even find the notion of exaltaquality with the highest heavenly beings, the "angels of the Face", in the sectarian literature of the Qcrolls [89], but, in3 Enoch, Enoch-Metatron not only becomes the highest angel, but is in fact crownedhapter 12 as a kind of double for God Himself, and receives in consequence the title of "the lesser YYHWH haQaton) [90]. The process begins earlier, in chapter 7 of Phillip Alexander's English translatio

Enoch's flight to the "palaces" of Arabot , the highest heaven, "on the wings of theekinah" to "serve the thr


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f glory" with the fiery company of the highest angels [91]. Together with this ministry come "wisdompon wisdom, understanding upon understanding...more than all the denizens of the heights" [92]. Thrrive at the point under consideration here, Enoch's declaration that "I was enlarged and increased inmeasure", i'ur ] till I matched the world in length and breadth" [93]. More notes follow that resonate

what we find in Aphrahat's portrait of the sage. Enoch-Metatron receives "a throne like the throne of 94]. He is appointed "ruler over all the denizens of the heights" and given charge over "all the treasukenizai]" in them [95]. God reveals to him "all the mysteries of wisdom, all the depths of perfect Torahhe thoughts of men's hearts" [96], such that Enoch declares: "there is nothing in heaven above or [theeneath concealed from me" [97]. Metatron, for so we can call him now, is then robed with a cloak ofrowned with "a crown bearing the letters of the divine Name", thus the "lesser YHWH" [98]. So enlaifted with all knowledge, robed, named and crowned, "all the princes of the kingdoms who are in the

Arabot , and all the legions of every kingdom...trembled and shrank when they saw me" [99], and "all frostrate when they saw me and could not look at me" [100]. In short, the angels worship him, and noor he has become the likeness of the Glory itself, changed entirely into divine fire, the "substance of lit., "body of my stature",gf qmty] to blazing fire" [101].

The likeness of the divine Glory will take us in a moment to my third theme. Right now I should like nderline the points in common between3 Enochon Metatron and Aphrahat on the sage. These include: flight" to heaven; 2) acquisition of the wisdom underlying creation, knowing the heights and the depncrease in size; 4) the presence of the throne within; 5) the ministry of the angels, watchers, and (in A

he seraphim, or (here) "the princes", before the transfigured man; 6) the language of royalty, "the Kin) the presence, though elsewhere in Aphrahat's oeuvre, of the motifs of the robe of glory, and of croogether with the language of the glory within [102]. If our Persian sage did not have the present text 3 Enefore him, which is admittedly debateable [103], then he surely had something like it in mind. I think

Murray was altogether justified in deploying this late example of Jewishhekalot literature for his comparisoince I know of no texts other than this one or Aphrahat's DemonstrationXIV.35 in Jewish or Christianiterature which are quite so bold in their application to a human being, however transformed, of the lnd imagery normally associated with the divine Presence. The one exception in Christian writers wouerson of Jesus Christ Himself. As we shall see, this "exception" is of central importance for Aphrahat underlies his treatment of the transfigured sage.

. Adam and the Recovery of theImago

My third theme bearing on the "vastness" of the sage is the Adamic speculation of both Jewish and Citerature, a current which runs from the late Second Temple era far into Late Antiquity. The Adamic tre-supposed in various pseudepigrapha present Adam as very much thedivineimage, indeed as a heaveneing [104]. In some Jewish sources, the angels mistake the first man for God himself [105], thanks tize -- of cosmic dimensions, like Enoch-Metatron above -- and the brilliant light of his body: "The a

Adam's heel outshone the globe of the sun, how much more so the brightness of his face!" [106] -- anecall the terrifying aspect of the transformed Enoch, or the angels ministering to Aphrahat's sage witaces. In Adam's case, the angels' error is understandable: they mistake the man for the heavenly origivine "body of Glory" and source of theshi'ur qomahtradition. Hence the Rabbinic warning against the

worship of the first man as demiurge, and their caution about the angels' worship [107]. That worship

irst man tendered him by the angelic hosts, however, fits neatly into what we find in3 Enochand in AphrahDemonstration14.35. Both Enoch and the sage have recovered theimagowhich Adam lost, the likeness,demuGod's Glory and Majesty.

. "Becoming Small": The Likeness to Christ and the Importance of Aphrahat's Witness

Yet in Aphrahat, all of this -- ascent to "that place", the expansion of the adept into the image of the dody of glory, and so the recovery of the Adamic likeness -- comes with a difference perhaps best sumy a Syro-Mesopotamian Christian author writing a couple of generations later. "With Christ", said thnonymous author of the Macarian Homilies, "everything is within [endon]" [108]. This is, again, Juana

Raasch's point, though,contraRaasch, I think that Aphrahat means everything the older Christian and J


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iterature meant with its -- to us -- wild and bizarre imagery: a real vision and a genuine transformatioxperience "with all perception and assurance", to quote another controversial (though very influentiarom the Macarian Homilist [109]. Undoubtedly, he also wants to reduce or eliminate the physical elehe older transformational imagery I have been sketching. Hence we find, in physical terms,the effective revf the motif of expansion. The sage's "appearance",hezwa, remains, precisely, "small", his form or likenessearthly" (664:14-15 and 19). Indeed, he not only remains "small" in his physical aspect, but is "humb

well (664:20). For Aphrahat, an essential facet of the recovery of theimagois humility and, still morepecifically, the imitation of the humility of Christ who, "though he was in the form of God, emptied 110]. In short, I read him as playing here on Phil 2:6 ff., which in fact he has cited four paragraphs e

Demonstration14.31 (column 653), and which we should then understand as a constant background botage in 14.35, and indeed to Aphrahat's thinking throughout the Demonstrations. The Syriac equivalent of aulinekeno , issrq, meaning "to strip", and it is virtually aterminus technicusfor ascetic labors in anotheyrian Christian work roughly contemporary to Aphrahat, theLiber Graduum, while a nominative form ofadical, msraqquta, becomes a genuinely technical expression denoting ascesis in Syrian literature not lfterwards [111].

While it is only suggested in the sage's portrait, the phrase "become small" carries thus a very considereight of meaning, including a powerful Christological resonance which itself is also tied into traditio

Body of the divine Glory. It amounts in fact to a long-established image in Syriac-speaking Christianict itself of the Incarnation, as in, for example, the following statement from the very early, first or se

entury A.D.Odes of Solomon: "In his kindness, he has made his greatness [rabbuta] small", whererabbutanswers to the cosmic size of the Glory, Christ, and is, indeed, a synonym for the Latter [112]. Likewssociated with Christ is another brief but telling phrase towards the end of our pericope: "When he [tives from what is his, he is no whit the less" [lit., "not diminished",la h~sar ], and the poor are made wealrom his treasure [gazeh]" (665:3-4). That treasure, Aphrahat goes on to say, has "no limit" because it ilace where the King dwells and is ministered to", and so "its treasures [gaze]" cannot be calculated (665:

God ("the King") and the heavenly liturgy ("is ministered to") are all included within "the place", whiurn is found in the "inner being ['ubba] of the wise man, who is thus "as a king" -- likethe King, in fact --who lacks nothing" (665:8-9). His resources, meaning here his abilityto give-- thus the comparison to a rourt's expenses in 665:8 -- are therefore infinite, "without limit". Put another way, the sageis the presence

God for those who come to him. His gifts, his experience of the Presence, and his wisdom are to a puhat pupose is to make God present, manifest, visible. Not to mince words, the sage is a theophany.

Here, then, we meet the holy man in a way very similar -- or, indeed, beneath a somewhat different anrchaic vocabulary, essentially identical -- to the way we meet him in Aphrahat's own, relatively exacontemporaries in Egypt, such as SS Anthony, Pachomius, and Macarius of Scete. To take but one, litxample, in the section of the alphabetical Aphophthegmata Paterondevoted to Macarius, the saint is referrt one point as a "god on earth",theos epigeios, because he "covered the sins of the brethren" [113]. So,

with Aphrahat's sage: like God, "he makes the poor wealthy". In another Demonstration, Aphrahat referrs tanctified ascetics as a "place of repentance", and of forgiveness, for sinners who come to them [114]

multiply parallels, but these suffice to underline something quite remarkable and significant. There canuestion of any influence moving from Roman Egypt to Persian Mesopotamia, nor vice-versa. Aphrahontemporary Egyptian monks are independent and simultaneous witnesses to common traditions thathem both. These traditions, I submit, extend back to the earliest Christian times and, in fact, ultimatematrix of Christianity in biblical and post-biblical Israel. Thanks to a lexicon and diction that are in cepects more obviously archaic than his Coptic (and, moreso, than his Greek-speaking) contemporarie

Aphrahat emerges thus as a possible "canon" or "control" for, as it were, "measuring" the portraits of oly men as we find the latter emerging from the monastic movement of the fourth century. Placing heside theirs, I think that we are enabled to "triangulate" back to his -- and to their -- ultimate sourcespocalyptic seer of the Second Temple era, to Enoch of the Book of the Watchers(especially I Enoch14 ff.), oimilitudes of Enoch(particularly I Enoch70-71), and2 Enoch(notably the transformation of chapter 22), tewish sectarians of Qumran, and to such early Christian works as the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, th

Gospel of Thomas, and, as cited above, theOdes of Solomon[115], and, of course, most importantly of all, eaching and example of Christ Jesus as the Latter is portrayed in the New Testament. Aphrahat's sage


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oly "old men",gerontes, of early monastic Egypt are all mediators of the divine presence, instances ofecovery of the Adamic image -- thus, for example, St. Anthony emerging "wholly natural" (en ti kata phyrom his fortress cell [116] -- but they are such only because their personal transformation has occurrinmagine Christi. They have become "christs" in Christ, the "place" of His presence.

. Some Reason's for Aphrahat's Portrait of the Sage: A "Paulinized" Metatron?

Like the transformed Enoch-Metatron of 3 Enoch, the Christian sage in DemonstrationXIV.35 is the likenehe kevod YHWH , ministered to by the angelic priesthood in the heavenly temple, radiant with the divin

plendor, possessor of a throne, endowed with the secrets of creation and the treasury of heaven, knoweginnings and reflecting the end, gazing on the heights and deeps, like the "lesser YWHW" -- in shood in the image of God. So far the similarities, and so far as well, I think, the attractions which a tex

mystical ascent along the lines of 3 Enoch, or of any one of the earlier and only slightly less spectacular vf the earlier Enochic and related texts, may have exercised for Aphrahat's own localihidaye. We can pointhe definitive case of such an attraction in Mani, only three generations or so earlier than Aphrahat anollowers were active in the same general neighborhood (as well as in Egypt!). TheCologne Mani Codex, fromust after the turn of the fourth century and thus only a generation removed from the Persian sage, is rhese echoes: the body of glory, heavenly ascent, transformation, and remarkable revelations [117]. Th

Mandaeans, too, appear to have constructed their mythos out of similar materials, and they were also irea, as were Valentinian Gnostics. Nor need we look exclusively to these fiercely dualistic movemen

Christian encratite texts such as the Apocryphal Actsand the Gospel of Thomas, had similar interests and paimilar pictures of ascent and/or transformation, as we saw above in the Hymn of the Pearl[118]. Likewise,eavenly ascents abound in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha preserved by Christians, as do Adamicpeculations and a general fascination withma'aseh bereit . Some of these materials were surely circulatin

Aphrahat's vicinity. We know that they were in Egypt at the time. Witness Abba Ammonas' explicit aphe Ascension of Isaiah, together with his remark that "there are some men who even now have attained

measure", that is, to the ascent to heaven, or St. Athanasius' simultaneous denunciation of the sameseudepigraphon, and of the Enochic literature as well, because they were a source of "boasting" for s

Meletian ascetics [119]. Then, and at a level of intensity equalled nowhere else in the Christian worlderiod, there were the contacts between Jews and Christians in Aphrahat's Mesopotamia, contacts whithink, the possibility of some influence from Rabbinic-erahekalot mysticism more likely there than anywlse, with the possible exception a century earlier of Origen's Caesarea, where we know there was somxchange [120]. Finally, we find a consistent response on the part of Christian writers in Syria-Mesophe attractions of ascent to themerkavahin the two or even three centuries after Aphrahat, as in the Macari

Homiliesa generation or two later, or in the long homily on Ezekiel'smarkabtaby Jacob of Serug or, as Ielieve, in theCorpus Dionysiacum, both at the turn of the sixth century, together with a telling detail in

Ananisho's Syriac rendering of Palladius' Lausiac Historyover a century later still [121]. Altogether, whatisted here stikes me as amounting to signs of a real attraction, and thus a real tempatation, for Aphrahproto-monks". Thus we find the similarities with Enoch-Metatron noted at the head of this paragraphhose similarities depended the attractive force of the Persian sage's argument.

On the other hand, the parallels with Metatron are not simply a rhetorical device intended purely to lueaders into Aphrahat's view of things. They are not a mere ploy. He, too, is talking about what he rec

e realities, and these include -- as he states expressly, and in the first person singular, about himself onclusion of his tenth Demonstration-- the possibility of genuine mystical experience. He, too, believesransformation and a true commerce with the things of heaven possible even in the present life,b-han alma(his age"), as the contemporary Liber Graduumputs it, orapo tou nyn, as the Macarian Homilist is fond ofepeating [122]. In DemonstrationVIII.24, however, Aphrahat warns against certain "evil doctrines". He ot specify what these are, but they appear in context to be connected with heavenly ascent and escapeath, since he cites against them John 3:12-13: the only one who has gone up to heaven is the Son oas come down from heaven [123]. That Christ must be the Christian's true hero, model and mode of ommunion with God is in any case Aphrahat's basic concern, as we have seen. He is likewise consisauline (as well as Johannine) in his insistence on the primacy of faith, hope, love, prayer, and humilire the deliberate focus of his first ten Demonstrations[124]. If St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 acknowle


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isionary experience in terms of heavenly ascent, and elsewhere insists on his own "revelations" of thesus, his overall emphasis is on the presence of Christ within the believer, as in the vision within thethe glory of God in the face of Christ" in 2 Cor. 4:6. He, too, as a number of scholars have recently s

was at once moving within and struggling against Jewish visionary traditions -- and claimants -- of thwe find in the ancient apocalypses as well as in the laterhekalot literature [125]. As the various Christian a

ara-Christian (especially Manichaean and Gnostic) texts that I referred to above testify, these same trontinued in Christian -- and especially ascetically inclined Christian -- circles right up to Aphrahat's

well beyond it. They were part of his ambient.

Hence the differences or adjustments we find him making to the portrait of Enoch-Metatron, to take -ave been doing in following Murray's suggestion --3 Enochas our comparative text. These adjustments airst and foremost Christological. Enoch-Metatron expands to cosmic size. Robed, crowned, changed ire and bearing the Name, he fully recovers the image of the Glory that Adam had lost. Now, Christ f

Aphrahat, following St. Paul,is the Glory (iqara) and divineimago, "the heavenly man", the "Greatness"rabbuta) of the Father, the latter's brilliance ( ziwa), and indeed -- as appears in earlier Syrian literature ather's "face" and "place". He "makes Himself small" -- thus the importance of Phil 2:6-11, the examumility -- historically in the Incarnation, and, personally and subjectively, by His entry into the belieeart. Clothed with the heavenly man at Baptism [126], possessing the "Son of the King" within throu

Eucharist [127], the Christian, and pre-eminently theihidaya, is to manifiest the Lord's likeness, to beconformed" -- citing again from Paul -- "to the body of His Glory" (Phil 3:21), and to grow into "the

f the stature of His fulness" (Eph 4:13). If the latter two scriptural passages do not feature prominenAphrahat, they most decidedly do in the Macarian Homilist [128], and I would submit that in this regaMacarius is fully in harmony with the Persian sage's intention, especially as that intention is fleshed oDemonstrationXIV's portrait of the sage. The latter has no need of ascent to heaven, for he carries the ealm within himself. In Christ, he is the "place" of the divine presence and the company of heaven, tecovery of Paradise, and the anticipation or foretaste of the world to come. In Christ, he is also the

manifestation and salvific presence of God for others, the revelation of the Glory. All things that wereMetatron's are, in Aphrahat's reworking, the Christian sage's as well, but this has not come about as th

f mystical technique, nor of special privilege, nor from desire for inquiry into the mysteries of heaveove of Christ and from the resulting imitation of His example, together with baptismal grace and regueeding on His body and blood in the Eucharist. Aphrahat's sage is, in short, a thoroughly christianizenteriorized -- we might as well say "paulinized" -- and ecclesial recasting of the apocalyptic seer reprhe transformed forefather of 3 Enoch.

. A Shared Tradition: Witness to the Gospel of Christ as Transfiguration

As I have already noted, the sage is also remarkably similar to the portraits of the ascetic holy men ofwe find them emerging in the early literature of monasticism. I have cited Evagrius and Macarius of Shere are many other images in this literature that draw on the same background of transformation, reche imago, heavenly ascent, of the supernal temple and throne, the company of the angels, or likeness ngels, or converse with them. The Historia monachorum in Aegypto, written at the end of the fourth centurull of this imagery: ascents, transformations, angelic converse and ministry [129], as are the PachomViterhaps especially the Coptic versions [130]. In the Apophthegmata Patrum, we find a primary emphasis wh

uite analogous to Aphrahat's own: a stress on the virtues of work, sobriety, humility, not judging, anWe also find a marked caution toward visionary experience, as we do in several of the other works citncluding at least one veiled warning against visions of themerkabahtype [131], but we definitely donot findejection of the visionary or transformative element. Even in the Apophthegmatathere are instances of thehemes I noted just above. Perhaps the most admirably compact and dense of these stories, and the onllustrative of what I have been discussing in Aphrahat's sage, is the following on Abba Pambo:

hey used to say that, just as Moses received the image of the glory of Adam

when his countenance was glorified [cf. Ex 34:29-35], so too with Abba Pambo,

hat his face shone like lightening, and he was as a king seated upon his throne.


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And the same thing applied as well to Abba Silvanus and Abba Sisoes. [132]

Here we have Adam, Moses on Sinai, the face transformed with heavenly brilliance, the King, and theThe only things missing are the angels and, as in Dem14.35, the express mention of Christ. But the LatteAphrahat, is surely assumed, while the angels make their appearances elsewhere in the Apophthegmata[133]

ust as the sage in DemonstrationXIV.35, and in other passages from the Demonstrations, "makes others richat is, serves as a manifestation -- and likewise a salvific one -- of Christ for those who come to himhe "old men" of the Egyptian desert. Pachomius is the living heart around which hiskoinobiaturn and from

which his monks draw their example. Similarly, Anthony is depicted by Athanasius as teacher, magnetphysician of Egypt" [134], while the saint himself in his letters writes to his "beloved Israelite childrage and father [135]. We have already seen Macarius the Great "covering the sins of the brethren", aoo, was a father to many of those who came to Scete lured by his example and fame. Evagrius himselearly such a figure for people like Palladius or St. John Cassian who came to sit at his feet at the Ce

The pattern would continue in the Christian West at least into the Middle Ages, and in the Christian Eived on to the present day.

Allow me then to repeat that the sage or holy man as we see him emerging simultaneously in contemwho were unknown to each other and living nearly a thousand miles apart, and who were further divianguage, culture, and two empires, is a product of common sources: first, the literature of late Second

ra Judaism, especially the Wisdom tradition and, particularly, the apocalypses, with their visionary mf heavenly secrets; second, these traditions have been filtered through and given specific shape by thTestament portrait of Christ. To use the language of contemporary cosmologists, the Christian Gospelhese currents like a kind of theological "singularity", a center of overwhelming gravitional force that ttract to itself the several themes I have mentioned in this essay -- together, certainly, with many othhe Old Testament that I have not mentioned -- and to bend them into a new configuration around the he Risen Christ. If the Latter is the "place" of God par excellence, Himself transfigured and acting toransfigure humanity (cf. 2 Cor. 3:7-4:6), theophany in short, and Giver of saving life and knowledgehose who come after Him clothed in His likeness are likewise theophanic, temples of God and "placeivine revelation and salus. We see this already emerging in the New Testament itself, in St. Paul's letortraits of the Apostles given in Acts, in Stephen the first martyr, or in the seer of Patmos. The line wontinue in the second and third centuries, in the Apocryphal ActsI referred to earlier, and very notably in

Christian theology of martyrdom. St. Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Romans, and the Letter of the Smyrescribing St. Polycarp of Smyrna's martyrdom, both speak of the martyr as, in sum, thetopos theou, sanctnd salvific, the extension to the world of the Eucharistic Presence [137]. The line goes on through Tehe soldier-martyr of whose De Corona, like Moses at the "holy place" of the burning bush, removes hisnce his martyrdom becomes a certainty [138]. The visionary dreams of Perpetua and her companion

Roman Numidia are full of imagery taken straight from apocalyptic literature, including heavenly ascransformation [139]. At the same time, in philosophically sophisticated Alexandria, Clement and Origimply, though with genius and singular fidelity, working with and "translating" traditional images anrom biblical and post-biblical Israel into the diction of Hellenistic philosophy [140]. But it was thoseypes which were the original heritage of Christianity, its womb, and they, too, continued to be transmead, copied, and valued by generations of Christians, many if not most of whom in later centuries we

The very possibility of modern collections of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha derives from this conChristian and perhaps especially monastic interest [141]. The holy man is the apocalyptic seer brokeneformed by the tidal forces of the Christian Gospel, and the presentation of that ancient but reformuls arguably the central thrust of Aphrahat's Demonstrations.

0. The Sage in the Context of Demonstration XIV and of Aphrahat's own Experience of God

The model Christian as "temple" of God can therefore justly be considered the greatleitmotif of Aphrahat'sfforts, from the opening sections of his first Demonstrationto the conclusion of his twenty-third and last.

word "temple" (haikla), in fact, and related terms, such as the "place" to which I devoted so much attenbove, suffuse his language throughout [142], to the degree that I am reminded of certain of Robert M


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ther articles, together with the thesis of Margaret Barker, which argue for the origins of Christianity emple traditions. [143]. This suggestion, particularly given the general consensus that Aphrahat's chueflects a degree of continuity with its -- admittedly conjectured -- Palestinian Jewish founders unequhe emerging imperial church of the West, strikes me as most intriguing, especially when set beside thhesis of Rachel Elior, which reads thehekalot texts as originating in priestly circles seeking to compensahe loss of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 through, in effect, the projection of priestly traditions into tnchanging realm of heaven [144]. In a way, then, the relationship between Aphrahat's perfectedihidayaandexts like3 Enochis perfectly natural, at least in so far as they derive from a common ancestry and havhough certainly not precisely identical concerns. The Rabbinic-erahekalot adepts and the Syrianihidayearoth descendents of the apocalyptic seer, theological cousins, we might say. They both share strands owere, a common spiritual DNA.

The sage's appearance in the latter part of DemonstrationXIV is thus not so odd as it has appeared to somnserted as it is into the catalogue of woes, sin, strife, and condemnation which both precedes and follassions and vices which Aphrahat is fighting and denouncing in this Demonstration-- usury (column 577),njustice (581-4), pride (592), false priests (616-25), avarice and delight in titles and honors (632-41)nherited office and even of inherited salvation (641-5), disobedience to divine commands (672-7), hauarrels (697-704) -- and the virtues he is counterposing and urging -- innocence and holiness (588), ), love (601-8), long-suffering and intercession (608-9), humility (613), simplicity of life (632), forg1), true pastorship (677-85), repentance (685-93), and peace (709-16) -- are qualities that, respectiv

mplicitly condemned and explicitly affirmed in prior Demonstrations, notably in the first ten, which are quwithout any note of controversy and written directly to instruct theihidayein the essentials of their callingaith, hope, love, prayer ( DemonstrationsI-IV), fidelity in persecution (V), theihidayaas "temple" (VI, esp.f.), repentance and pastorship (VII), the hope of the world to come (VIII), humility (IX), and again trastorship (X), where we also find him summing up his case and concluding with an appeal to his ow

mystical experience of Christ. Not accidently, he does so in terms which recall his portrait of the sageDemonstrationXIV.35:

olumn line text

60 1 The Master of the House [lit., "Steward",rab baita] brought me to the treasury [beit gaza]

of the King and showed [hwy] me there many good things,

and when I saw [hzyt ] them, my understanding was rapt ['tby]

by the great treasure [gaza rabba]. And when I gazed [hrt ] on it, it dazzled

my eyes

and enraptured [b' ] my thoughts [mahabata] and bewildered them with

many colors [gawne]. Whoever takes from it becomes rich and makes others rich.

To all who seek it [or Him], it [He] is opened up [ ptyh] and permitted [byh].

And when many [people] take away from it [Him],

it [He] is no whit the less, and when they give from

0 what they have taken, that which they have is multiplied.

After two columns devoted to different images for the the gift which cannot be diminished in giving, nclude the image of an illumined lamp passing its fire on to other lamps [145], he arrives at the identihe Steward and of the treasure itself. They are One and the Same:

olumn line text

64 5 ...the treasure [gaza] does not diminish, since it is the Wisdom


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of God, and the Steward is our Lord Jesus Christ,

as He testified, when He said: "Everything

is handed over to Me from My Father" [Mt 11:27]. Indeed, He

Who is the Steward is also the Wisdom, as the Apostle

0 said: "Christ is the Power

1 of God and His Wisdom" [I Cor. 1:24]. This is the Wisdom

2 which is distributed among many, yet is no whit the less.

Thus, turning back to DemonstrationXIV, we find that the portrait of the sage is prefaced by a rehearsalChrist's saving acts: His death, descent to hell, defeat of death and His trampling down the devil. Onlyabors of His voluntary self-emptying, Aphrahat emphasizes, does our Lord receive again the "Name ames" and the glorious throne, citing here Phil. 2:9-11 (columns 652-3). Building on this, and on themage of the healing, suffering, and risen Lord, he goes on to extoll the actions thus of God, Who ovevery worldly expectation and standard -- exalting the humble, preferring the younger over the older,dvancing women over men to prophecy (656-7) -- and whose works of creation surpass human unde657-60).

Having prepared his readers with an effective catalogue of sins and of their opposing virtues, with a rChrist, and of the unsearchable God of salvation history and of creation, the Persian sage moves to hi

f the sage. The latter is therefore not an interruption in the flow of the Demonstration, but the core and pivts argument. Neither, as Robert Murray suggested, is the sage here simply an instance of cosmologicapposite the chaos of the world's violence and the local church's sins and quarrels [146]. He is rather tistillate of everything Aphrahat is commending, and the opposite of all that he is condemning. Wherenowledge of the unsearchable God and of His mysterious works? Here! says Aphrahat. Where is trund a lasting throne, indeed the throne of the King and Judge, as opposed to the Persian throne that diactions are fighting to please, or to the episcopal thrones others are lusting to obtain, or to the throneishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon who is seeking to exalt himself over his fellows? Here, in the holy manersian sage. Where is there splendor and uncreated glory, as opposed to the fading glory of men? Heaint. And how does the latter arrive at these things? By "making himself small", and by giving withonvy, since his treasury can never grow "one whit the less" -- which is all to say, by means of all thos

which Aphrahat has been at such pains to urge. Here, then, is also the "peace" of the Church, of "the God", which he concludes DemonstrationXIV by commending to its readers (709-16 and 721-5), themanifestation of the true sons of Christ as opposed to the children of Cain (725). Christ, in short, is thwealth, honor, splendor, treasure, and wisdom. He is the life of the Church and the Christian, Who ha

ut the Spirit on all flesh (716-17), and Whom the "wise virgins" will enjoy in the heavenly bridechamThe sage, clearly a type or ideal figure recognizable by Aphrahat's readers, is the present, living imagife and hope of glory. Scarcely peripheral to the argument, he is rather its very substance and proof.

1. One Kindled Lamp Lights Many Others: A Last Word, of Acknowledgement and of Purpose

o far in this essay I have labored -- generally -- to maintain something of a scholarly tone, to writewissenschaftlicherweise, as it were. For a university professor, this is a difficult habit to break. By way oword, however, I should like to step out of that pose in order to acknowledge my debts and reveal myAphrahat lived far away and long ago. He wrote in a language that is obscure, too little studied, and n

ead, and for a community whose descendents are disappearing and likely to vanish entirely in the necattered like embers by the winds of contemporary geopolitics blowing through suffering Iraq. Yet, f

Orthodox, Aphrahat's relevance is or should be immediate. I recognize him and his sage as contempors I hope that my readers will also recognize them as such. That recognition owes entirely to the fact nown Father Aimilianos, whose words began this essay, who also "walks on the earth like any man"head is in the sky", "who sees heaven...who sees God", in whose person heaven and earth are joined


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whom I believed -- and still believe -- that I met the Presence of the King, theekinah. Once one has met onmediator of Christ, one illumined lamp, the recognition of another is no great feat, since to know the olesh is to recognize the other beneath the ancient words. Such is my debt to my Elder, in this and in a

works. However detached and cool the tone the latter may adopt, they are all informed by that memouided by it. Father Aimilianos is the lense through whom I read the old words, and, not surprisingly,as proven to be wonderfully illumining. It has never failed to reveal connections, ties, continuities thhroughout the history of "the Israel of God" (Gal 6:16). This is not surprising because, first of all, thf thesisis at the very core of the Gospel as Orthodoxy has always understood the latter, and, secondhose have read his writings or who have received his instructions should recall, the Elder's own prefeiction has always been that of the scriptures. To be sure, one can find him from time to time using --o with perfect ease and familiarity -- the technical, theological vocabulary of the great councils and dut always he comes back to the lexicon and imagery of God's Israel, which is the same, of course, ashe liturgy and the great saints of the desert, and in whose service all the dizzying abstractions of thatocabulary were confected in the first place. In both his person and his teaching, which in fact amouname thing, Father Aimilianos has provided his children with the key to reading -- and, one hopes, to - the one and unique Revelation.

My motives in writing derive from the same source. Within the Orthodox world, particularly within thf its scholars and teachers, I hope to contribute to the "neo-patristic synthesis", the phrase for the reche Fathers coined some decades ago by Fr. Georges Florovsky, and embodied by his own works and

or example, Vladimir Lossky, Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, Fr. John Romanides and many others. What waacking in these earlier scholars, greatful as we must be to them all, was any significant engagement wave been at pains to stress in this essay, the patrimony of Israel. Biblical and extra-biblical sources ce generally neglected in Orthodox academies, perhaps because of the daunting impression that Westcripture studies, on which Eastern Christian students continue to depend, have little or no room for thnd motifs that dominate the Church's dogmas, liturgy, and spirituality. Here, though, what an Aphraho long ago, what an Aimilianos embodies today, thanks to some very promising trends in the scholarmmediately pre- and post-Christian Israel, appear more and more as of a direct and even stunning rel

More inquiry into those earlier sources, including primarily the scriptural record, can only serve to illrovided merely that we begin with confidence in the interpretive key that our saints afford us. In shohat the Orthodox may be stirred to look into, and participate much more actively in, the study of our srael. As our Lord informed the Samaritan woman, "Salvation is of the Jews." The holy Fathers havenown this, and the careful examination of, especially, our liturgical and spiritual inheritance will confruth.

A second motive is directed outwards, at once apologetic and ecumenical. Beginning in the 19th centontinuing today in the 21st, Orthodoxy is often portrayed as a curious deviation from the original tea

Christ and even of St. Paul. Here, of course, one thinks of the determined ghost of Adolph von Harnaevoutly opposed by defenders of the Fathers such as those Orthodox listed above, and by advocates 930's through 50's of Roman Catholicism'sthologie nouvelle(e.g., the Cardinals Jean Danilou and Hen

Lubac), but Harnack was merely one among very many, and the reactions he and his fellows drew hadimits of being, precisely, reactive. I think it time that we get over our defensiveness, which itself is thf a sort of "inferiority complex", and that we proceed positively, without polemics, to the elucidationcriptures and of the unbroken lines of continuity in the Tradition.Thesis, as it appears in Aphrahat and gain, embodied ingeronteslike Father Aimilianos, is manifestly not an invention derived from Greekhilosophy, but a fruit of the Revelation to Israel fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and likewise the Christolog

Ecumenical Councils, while certainly making use of the philosophical lexicon, is itself rooted in the dayers of the Hebrew scriptures. To make this clear to our brothers and sisters in Christianity outside oanonical bounds of Orthodoxy strikes me thus as a sacred duty for us, and as a restoral to them of thrue inheritance in Christ. The wonder is, that we may do so increasingly on the basis of, and using thlaborated by, their own scholarly work over the past several centuries. We may both, in other words,ontribute to the recovery of our common patrimony, and indeed that process has already begun. It is evout hope that I may make some small contribution to that effort, by the prayers of my father in Go


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Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin)

Marquette University

anuary 28, 2003

east of SS Ephrem and Isaac,

he Syrians

OTES

A Thousand Years Are as a Day, produced by Sudwest Funk, Baden Baden, in 1981. The English translation above is from A. Golitzin,The Living Witness of the Holyouth Canaan PA:1996) 167.

For such few biographical details of Aphrahat as exist, see M.-J. Pierre's "Introduction" to her translation, Aphraate le sage persan: Les Exposs, in Source Chrtiennearis:1988), esp. 33-40. For the original Syriac the Demonstrations, together with a facing Latin translation, see D. I. Parisot, ed.,Patrologia Syriaca, volume I (Paris: 18

ntire volume for DemonstrationsI-XXII, and volume II (Paris: 1894), columns 1-150, for DemonstrationXXIII. All citations from Aphrahat below will be taken from Pdition.

On Aphrahat's diction as a "hybrid" of Semitic and Hellentistic tropes, see Pierre, "Introduction", 65-69, and 79-93, 98-106 and 112-131 on Jewish traditions ritings, together with R. Murray, "Some Rhetorical Patterns in Early Syriac Literature", in A Tribute to Arthur Vbus, ed. R. H. Fischer (Chicago:1977) 109-31, esppecifically with regard to debates with neighboring rabbis, see N. Koltun-Fromm, "A Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-Century Iran", JJS 47 (1996) 45-63; anadem, "Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah's Righteousness in Light of

the place of the presence of god - aphrahat of persia's portrait of the christian holy man

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