Aphrahat, the Persian Sage

We know very little. Benedict XVI calls him one of the "most enigmatic" figures of fourth century Syriac Christianity. What is sure comes from his own book.

His name. For centuries his book circulated with no clear author. Later writers knew him only as "the Persian Sage". George, Bishop of the Arabs, writing in 714, did not know his name, home or rank, but gathered from the work that he was a monk of high standing. The name Aphrahat, the Syriac form of the Persian Frahat (modern Farhad), appears only in later writers. A manuscript note of the year 510 calls him Jacob, perhaps a name taken at Baptism. So he was long confused with St Jacob of Nisibis. The Armenian translation of nineteen of his homilies went out under Jacob's name. Scholars now rule this out. Aphrahat lived under Persia, and Nisibis was still Roman. Jacob died in 338, and Aphrahat was still writing in 345.

His background. Later tradition says that he came from a Zoroastrian family and became a Christian. It may be guesswork. Some have thought of Jewish roots. Nothing is certain.

His way of life. He was celibate and ascetic. He writes to and for the "sons and daughters of the covenant", single Christians who gave themselves to God while staying within the local church (Demonstration 6). He is almost certainly one of them. The form of life came before monasteries as we know them, and it did not grow out of Egyptian monasticism, as Benedict XVI notes.

Bishop? A synod's letter of 344 to the churches of Ctesiphon and Seleucia is his Demonstration 14, and scholars such as William Wright hold that a writer so chosen must have been a bishop. A 14th-century note in a manuscript calls him "bishop of Mar Mattai", the monastery near Mosul, but that monastery probably did not yet exist. Benedict XVI says only: "according to some sources he was the head of a monastery and later consecrated a Bishop". Scholars remain divided.

His book. He wrote in three stages. Demonstrations 1 to 10 in 336 to 337, while there was peace. Numbers 11 to 22 in 344, when Persian Christians were being killed. Number 23 in about 345. After that we hear no more. His death is usually put about 345, but that is only the date of his last work.

Beyond the empire. He lived outside the Roman Empire, under the Sasanian kings of Persia, whose religion was Zoroastrian. Christians there spoke Syriac, and many were descended from captives or converts. He is the earliest major writer we have of that Church, and he shows us a Christianity that grew beyond the eastern borders of Rome.

Before Greek influence. Benedict XVI stresses this. These Churches represent "the Semitic world from which the Bible itself has come". Their language is close to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus. They had not yet taken up the Greek terms of Nicaea. Aphrahat seems untouched by the Arian quarrel going on at the same time to the west. He does not use its vocabulary at all.

Persecution. When Constantine made Rome friendly to Christians, the Persian king began to suspect them. Tension with Rome grew in the 330s. King Shapur II turned on the Christians in the early 340s, and many were martyred. Aphrahat's Demonstration on Wars (5) hopes that Rome will not fall. His Demonstration on Persecution (21) tries to comfort his people.

Jewish neighbours. There was a large and learned Jewish community in Mesopotamia, and Christians lived close to it. Some Christians were drawn to Jewish observance. Benedict XVI describes his community as one "situated on the frontier between Judaism and Christianity" that "maintained a close relationship with the Jewish world and its Sacred Books".

• Faith is the foundation. On faith rests the house of the Christian life, and Christ himself dwells there. He sums up the faith of the Church: belief in God the Lord of all, maker of heaven and earth, who gave the Law, sent his Spirit on the prophets and his Christ into the world, with belief in the resurrection and in Baptism (Demonstration 1, 19).
• Jesus is God and Son of God. He answers those who ask how Christians can call a man who was crucified God. "Jesus our Lord is God, the Son of God", he says, using Old Testament language for God's own (Demonstration 17, 2). He has no Greek terms, but he confesses Christ's divinity in the words of Scripture.
• Christ the physician. Sin is a wound. "A man who has been wounded in battle is not ashamed to place himself in the hands of a wise doctor" (Demonstration 7, 3, as quoted by Benedict XVI). So the wounded should not be ashamed to ask for "the medicine of penance".
• Prayer and charity. We pray in secret to the hidden Father (Demonstration 4, 10). But prayer is also this: "Give relief to those in distress, visit the ailing, help the poor" (Demonstration 4, 14 to 16). Prayer is heard "when it includes forgiveness of affronts".
• Humility. "The humble man is humble, but his heart rises to lofty heights" (Demonstration 9, 2).
• A broad idea of fasting. Fasting from food, yes, but also from angry words, from possessions, and from sleep for prayer (Demonstration 3).
• Baptism and the Spirit. In Baptism, when the priests call on the Spirit, "the heavens open", and the baptised are clothed with the Spirit of Christ (Demonstration 6, 14).
• The body is good. Benedict XVI calls his vision of the human person "very positive". The Resurrection of the body has a whole Demonstration (8).
• Pastors. A shepherd feeds the flock and is a disciple of the Good Shepherd (Demonstration 10).

The Jewish questions

Several Demonstrations (among them 11 to 13, 15 to 19) discuss circumcision, Passover, the Sabbath, food, and the call of the Gentiles. He writes because some of his people were being drawn to Jewish observance and were being challenged in argument. The Office of Readings of the Latin Church takes a passage from Demonstration 11 on "circumcision of the heart". He knows the Old Testament deeply and values it. But he also writes as a controversialist of his time, and in places he uses hard language. Readers should not take that language as Christian teaching today. The Second Vatican Council taught in Nostra Aetate 4 that what happened in Christ's Passion cannot be charged against all Jews, then or now, and it asks for mutual respect.

Where the Church teaches otherwise

He was never condemned, but in some points he is an early voice. Writing before such questions were settled, he teaches that the dead sleep without knowledge until the Judgment (Demonstration 8, 20; 22). "As yet no one has received his reward", he says (8, 22). The Church teaches that each person receives judgment and reward at death, as the Catechism states at paragraph 1022, citing Pope Benedict XII in 1336. He also wrote outside the Greek language of the Councils. His words on Christ should be read as a Scripture-based witness to Christ's godhead, and not as a measured statement of later doctrine.

He calls himself a "disciple of the Sacred Scripture" (Demonstration 22, 26), and Scripture is nearly all he quotes. His Gospel quotations seem to come from the Diatessaron, the single woven Gospel used in the Syriac Church of his day.

He writes as a friend answering a friend. Often he says "my beloved". The first Demonstrations answer a letter from someone who asked him to explain the faith. Benedict XVI notes his "simple style with short sentences and sometimes with contrasting parallelisms", and the way he builds well ordered arguments all the same. He loves lists of examples, running through the people of the Bible: in Demonstration 21, one by one, the righteous who suffered, each compared with Jesus.

He plans his work with care. The first twenty two Demonstrations each begin with a letter of the Syriac alphabet, in order, from first to last. He lays them out from faith onwards as a whole course. The scholar Burkitt called them "a full and ordered exposition of the Christian faith".

He is also humble. "Whatsoever is written in these chapters was not written according to the thought of one man", he says, "but according to the thought of all the Church" (Demonstration 22, 26, translated by Gwynn).

The twenty three Demonstrations (in Syriac each is a taḥwita; also called Expositions or homilies) are his only known work. All survive in Syriac, in old manuscripts, one with a note of the year 510. An ancient Armenian version holds nineteen of them, under the name of Jacob of Nisibis. Versions also exist in Georgian and Ge'ez. A few appear in Arabic, wrongly under the name of St Ephrem.

Titles vary among translators. Full English translation: Adam Lehto, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage (Gorgias Press, 2010). Eight are in the older translation by John Gwynn, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 13.

"Prayer is accepted when it gives relief to one's neighbour." Demonstration 4, 14 to 16, as quoted by Benedict XVI, 21 November 2007.

"If man's roots are planted in the earth, his fruits ascend before the Lord of majesty." Demonstration 9, 14, in the same audience.

Benedict XVI used him on 21 November 2007 to open up a "little-known part" of the world of the Fathers, the Churches of Semitic language. He calls him "one of the most important and at the same time most enigmatic" figures of the Syriac Christianity of his century. The Pope stresses his love of Scripture, his Christ the physician, his teaching on prayer and humility, and his broad understanding of fasting. He closes on prayer: Aphrahat "invites us to a prayer that becomes Christian life".

The Pope also says that Aphrahat's community traditionally chose its bishops from the "family" of James, the Lord's brother.

In the Church's prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours of the Latin Church has a reading from him in Lent, under the heading "From a demonstration by Aphraates, bishop", on the circumcision of the heart.

In the Syriac Churches. His is one of the earliest voices of the tradition. The Syriac Churches have kept and copied him for many centuries. Mar Mattai near Mosul has a tradition linked to him, though historians doubt its age.

The Church is wider than Rome and Greece. Here is a Father who never wrote in Greek or Latin and lived outside the empire. He reminds us that the Church breathes with more than one lung. For those in Kerala who pray in the East Syriac tradition, which grew in his Persian world, he is close kin.

A Bible-soaked faith. He has few technical terms but a full faith, which he draws from the Scriptures. Ordinary believers can follow him.

Prayer that gets up and goes. His test of prayer is simple: does it relieve someone? That is a hard and hopeful teaching for all of us.

Christians under pressure. He wrote while his people were being killed for their faith. Christians in the very lands he knew, around Mosul, have suffered again in our own time. His writings are still a comfort.