Ephrem The Syrian S Hymns On The Unleavened Bread

"The fourth-century Syriac author Ephrem the Syrian left behind a large corpus of "hymns" on various topics that provide key insights into a unique Syriac expression of Christianity along the volatile border of the Roman and Persian Empires. The set of hymns presented here provides a fascinating study of Syriac Christianity because Ephrem invites the reader into a world of symbolic interpretation filled with imagination brimming beneath the surface of word-plays, alliteration, and typological comparisons. These hymns also thrust the reader into the middle of a fourth-century context in which Christians and Jews maintain competing practices of a Passover service to the extent that Ephrem feels the need to distinguish between the symbol and the reality"--P. [4] of cover.

In this volume is a translation of a collection of hymns of Christ, composed by Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373), the most famous and prolific of the Fathers of the Syriac-speaking Church.

A critical reading of Ephrem's numerous poetic writings demonstrates that his sharp anti-Jewish and anti-Judaizing language helped to solidify a pro-Nicene definition of Christian orthodoxy, cutting off from that community in the very act of defining it his so-called Judaizing and Arian Christian opponents, both of whom he accused of being more like Jews than Christians. Through carefully crafted rhetoric, Ephrem constructed for his audience new social and theological parameters that reshaped the religious landscape of his community.

Fairacres Publications 149 St Ephrem the Syrian (306-376), a visionary poet and spiritual teacher of the early Christian centuries, is known chiefly as the author of numerous hymns. These examples of his ‘Table Blessings’, recalling the events of salvation history, combine lyrical delight in the good and beautiful things of creation with an outpouring of praise and thanksgiving to their Creator.

Ephrem is known for a theology that relies heavily on symbol and for a keen awareness of Jewish exegetical traditions. Yet he is also our earliest source for the reception of Nicaea among Syriac-speaking Christians. It is in his eighty-seven Hymns on Faith - the longest extant piece of early Syriac literature - that he develops his arguments against subordinationist christologies most fully. These hymns, most likely delivered orally and compiled after the author's death, were composed in Nisibis and Edessa between the 350s ans 373. They reveal an author conversant with Christological debates further to the west, but responding in a uniquely Syriac idiom. As such, they form an essential source for reconstructing the development of pro-Nicene thought in the eastern Mediterranean.

Spanning two millennia, with particular attention to the post-Reformation period, and including key thinkers, both Catholic and non-Catholic, Eucharistic Doctors argues that the Eucharist "makes" the Church. The thirty "Eucharistic doctors" included in this volume are not doctors in the formal sense of the term, but in the broad Christian tradition of eucharistic thought. Ranging from the patristic age to contemporary time, and embracing both the Eastern and Western Churches, they include Ignatius of Antioch, Hippolytus, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Aquinas, Wyclif, Luther, Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, George Herbert, Bellarmine, Jeremy Taylor, Schleiermacher, Newman, and many more. Although they represent different geographical locations, time periods, languages, and traditions, they all have this in common: a recognition of the Eucharist as central to the Christian faith. Book jacket.

This volume is about the most mind-boggling sacrament of the Christian faith, also referred to as the Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist: in its Roman Catholic interpretation, the conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ for Holy Communion. The challenge of providing a rational interpretation of this doctrine of faith proved to be one of the most contentious issues in the Western history of ideas, apparently going against self-evident metaphysical principles (requiring accidents existing without a substance, and a body in several places at the same time, etc.), and dividing schools of thought, indeed, eventually, warring religious factions. The volume addresses both the metaphysical, theoretical issues involved in this challenge and the historical, theological developments of how meeting this challenge played out first in the schools and even later in religious schisms, leading to the paradigmatic shift from medieval to modern forms of thought. The essays of the volume derive from the lectures of an eponymous international conference held in Budapest, Hungary, which was also the occasion of founding the Society for the History of European Ideas (SEHI); accordingly, the book is the first volume of the annual Proceedings of the SEHI. This book is aimed just as much at laymen and religious scholars seeking a better understanding of their faith as at anyone seeking this understanding with a non-religious attitude.