| Honorific Prefix: | Saint |
| Isaac the Syrian | |
| Birth Date: | c. 613 |
| Death Date: | c. 700 (age c. 87) |
| Feast Day: | January 28 |
| Venerated In: | Church of the East, Catholic Church,[1] Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church |
| Birth Place: | Beth Qatraye, |
| Death Place: | Nineveh, Umayyad Caliphate |
| Titles: | Bishop, Hieromonk |
| Attributes: | Turban, cape, scrolls, writing tools |
| Major Shrine: | Rabban Hormizd Monastery |
Isaac the Syrian (; Arabic: إسحاق النينوي Ishaq an-Naynuwī; Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἰσαὰκ Σῦρος; c. 613 – c. 700), also remembered as Saint Isaac the Syrian,[2] [3] Isaac of Nineveh, Abba Isaac, Isaac Syrus and Isaac of Qatar,[4] was a 7th-century Syriac Christian bishop and theologian best remembered for his written works on Christian asceticism. He is regarded as a saint in the Church of the East and in the Catholic,[1] Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox traditions.[5] [6] His feast day falls, together with 4th-century theologian and hymnographer St. Ephrem the Syrian, on January 28.
He was born in the region of Beth Qatraye in Eastern Arabia, a mixed Syriac and Arabic speaking region encompassing the south east of Mesopotamia and the north eastern Arabian Peninsula.[7] [8] [9] When the Catholicos Giwargis I (661–680) visited Beth Qatraye in 676 to attend a synod, he ordained Isaac bishop of Nineveh far to the north in Assyria.[10]
The administrative duties did not suit his retiring and ascetic bent: he requested to abdicate after only five months, and went south to the wilderness of Mount Matout, a refuge for anchorites. There he lived in solitude for many years, eating only three loaves a week with some uncooked vegetables, a detail that never failed to astonish his hagiographers. Eventually blindness and old age forced him to retire to the Assyrian monastery of Rabban Shabur in Mesopotamia, where he died and was buried. At the time of his death he was nearly blind, a fact that some attribute to his devotion to study.
Isaac is remembered for his spiritual homilies on the inner life, which have a human breadth and theological depth that transcends the Christianity of the Church of the East,[1] the Church to which he belonged. They survive in Syriac manuscripts and in later Greek, Arabic, and Georgian translations.[11] From Greek they were translated into Slavonic.[12]
Isaac stands in the tradition of the eastern mystical saints and placed a considerable emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit.
His melancholic style as well as his affinity towards the sick and dying exerted considerable influence on Eastern Orthodoxy.[1] His writings were continuously studied by monastery circles outside his church during the 8th and 9th century. Moreover, Isaac's conviction that the notion of God punishing men endlessly through the mystery of Gehenna (the lake of fire, or hell) is not compatible with his all encompassing love can likely be seen as the central thematic conflict in his second treatise of mystical teachings.[13]
Isaac's writings, strongly influenced by those of Evagrius Ponticus and other earlier Christian writers,[14] offer a rare example of a large corpus of ascetical texts written by an experienced hermit and is thus an important writer when it comes to understanding early Christian asceticism.[15]
Isaac the Syrian's main influences include Evagrius Ponticus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John the Solitary, Ephrem the Syrian, Narsai, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. In turn, Isaac has influenced later Syriac writers such as John of Dalyatha and Joseph Hazzaya.[16]
Currently, the known collections of Isaac the Syrian's writings are classified into the First Part, Second Part, Third Part, and more recently a Fifth Part. Many of the texts have been translated into Italian by, and into English by Sebastian P. Brock, Mary T. Hansbury, the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, and others. Up until 1983, only the First Part was widely known and disseminated. All of the other parts were unknown to scholars outside the Aramaic-speaking world until they were recently re-discovered by Syriacists in various archives.
The First Part is the most widely known part. (1923) translated the text into English and published it as Mystic Treatises.[17] A critical edition containing an English translation, The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian, was published by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in 1983,[18] while a revised second edition was published in 2011 (with a third printing in 2020).[19] According to Brock (2006), Part 1 has 82 homilies, although the number and order of homilies can vary greatly depending on the manuscript or edition.[20]
The Second Part contains 41 chapters, of which Chapter 3 is by far the longest. Chapter 3, also known as the Kephalaia Gnostica (or "Chapters/Headings on Spiritual Knowledge"), contains 400 sections organized into 4 centuries (groups of 100 sections). Recently, parts of the Kephalaia Gnostica (i.e., Chapter 3 of the Second Part) have been identified in Sogdian fragments from Turfan.[21] [22]
The Second Part was discovered in April 1983 at the Bodleian Library by Sebastian Brock, who found that MS syr. e. 7, originally donated by the Assyrian priest Yaroo Michael Neesan (1853–1937) to the Bodleian Library on 29 June 1898, in fact contained writings of Isaac the Syrian that were hitherto unknown to Western scholars, even though they were regularly read by Syriac readers. Bodleian MS syr. e. 7 is a parchment manuscript written in small East Syrian Estrangela script and is 195-200 mm long by 145-150 mm wide with 190 folios. There are about 26 lines per page, with about 23 lines near the beginning. It was copied during the 10th or 11th century in the Monastery of Mar ‘Abdisho‘ of Kom by the scribe Marqos for Rabban Isho‘ of the village of Beth B‘DY.[23]
After 1983, incomplete manuscripts of Part 2 have been discovered in Cambridge MS Or. 1144, which is a part of Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS syr. 298 (c. 11th-13th century).[24] Chapters 1–3 have been translated into English by Brock (2022)[25] (with Chapters 1–2 previously published in Brock (1997) as well[26]), while an English translation of chapters 4–41, along with the original Syriac text, can be found in Brock (1995).[27] A complete French translation was published by André Louf (2003),[28] and a partial Greek translation was published by Kavvadas (2006).[29] Selections from Part 2 have been translated into Italian by Bettiolo (1985)[30] and into Catalan by Nin (2005).[31]
List of manuscripts containing the Second Part:[27]
The Third Part has been translated into English by Mary T. Hansbury (2016),[32] into French by André Louf (2009),[33] and into Italian by Sabino Chialà (2004, 2011).[34] [35] [36] It is based on Issayi MS 5, held in Tehran, Iran. The manuscript is a 1903 copy of a 14th-century original manuscript that has now been lost. It was discovered by Monsignor Yuhannan Samaan Issayi, the Chaldean archbishop of Tehran, at an antiquarian Jewish bookshop and was kept in his private library. After his death in 1999, Belgian scholar Michel van Esbroek found the manuscript in Issayi's library in Tehran and announced its discovery to the international scholars.[37] Issayi MS 5 has 133 folios, with 111 folios containing 17 homilies that can be attributed to Isaac. There are 14 homilies not found in other texts that are numbered as 1–13 and 16 within Part 3. The other three texts in Issayi MS 5 can also be found in extant Part 1 and Part 2 manuscripts.[32]
Portions of the Fifth Part[38] have been discovered in MS Rahmani 80 (in Sharfet), MS Dawra sir. 694 and MS Dawra sir. 938 (both held in Baghdad), and Vatican MS sir. 592. Hansbury (2016) contains English translations of two discourses from the Fifth Part.[32] Other discourses from Part 5 can be found in Hansbury (2015).[39]
Some scholars[40] have noted that Brock's translation of the Second Part of Isaac's writings (discovered 1983) appears to confirm claims of earlier universalist historians such as John Wesley Hanson (1899) that Isaac was an advocate of universal reconciliation.[41] In chapter 39 of the Second Part, Isaac writes, "It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them, and whom nonetheless He created."[42] Likewise, in the Third Part, chapter 5, Isaac explains, "This is the mystery: that all creation by means of One, has been brought near to God in a mystery; then it is transmitted to all; thus all is united to Him...This action was performed for all of creation; there will, indeed, be a time when no part will fall short of the whole."[43] However the evidence for this could be interpreted as spurious given conflicting exerts from his "Directions on Spiritual Training" where he states, "Do not say that God can grant us purification of soul through grace, even without our keeping the commandments. This is for the Lord to judge and the Church does not direct that we should ask for such a thing."[44] This passage seems to indicate a similar view on salvation which the Orthodox church holds today that this is a mystery of which men cannot know the ultimate answer.
Even in the First Part (Isaac's well-known Ascetical Homilies), however, there are arguably quite a few hints of universalism. For example, see the following quotes and excerpts: "God will not abandon anyone."[45] "There was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist."[46] "As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God; as a fountain that flows abundantly is not dammed by a handful of earth, so the compassion of the Creator is not overcome by the wickedness of the creatures... If He is compassionate here, we believe that there will be no change in Him; far be it from us that we should wickedly think that God could not possibly be compassionate; God’s properties are not liable to variations as those of mortals... What is hell as compared with the grace of resurrection? Come and let us wonder at the grace of our Creator."[47] Many other relevant passages throughout the corpus of Isaac's writings could be cited in demonstration of his belief in eventual universal salvation.[48]