Out of Books, A World: The Scriptural Poetics of Ephrem the Syrian's Hymns on Faith

This dissertation charts the intersection of exegesis, rhetoric, and performance in Ephrem's Hymns on Faith, arguing for a two-pronged interpretation of these poetics: first, Ephrem presents Scripture as a collection of metaphors which God has arranged for the sake of a particular audience; second, his hymns rearrange and rewrite these metaphors, in the context of liturgical performance, for his own particular, fourth-century audience. This argument is pursued in chapters two through five. Chapter two analyzes Ephrem's understanding of Scripture's poetics (how Scripture itself works, and how it has come to be) and then chapters three through five trace three metaphors which Ephrem uses Scripture to refashion: metaphors of the self (chapter three), of others (chapter four), and of Christ (chapter five). Through the course of these chapters, I argue for a process of mimesis between Scripture and Ephrem's hymns: his hymns rewrite Scripture's parables and metaphors, but in an imitation of the process by which Scripture came into being.

The Hymns on Faith, probably written between the 350s and late 370s CE, represent Ephrem's longest hymn cycle, containing materials that Ephrem (and, potentially, anonymous hymnists following soon after him) composed in response to the fourth-century controversies that followed in the wake of Arius and Nicaea. The dissertation thus begins with a discussion of the compositional make-up of the Hymns on Faith, and establishes its place within these fourth-century controversies (chapter one).