Jacob of Edessa
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Jacob of Edessa (c. 640 - 5 June 708) was one of the most distinguished of Syriac writers.
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[edit] Life
Jacob of Edessa was born in the province of Antioch, around 640. He studied at the famous monastery of Ken-neshre (on the left bank of the Euphrates, opposite Jergbis) and later at Alexandria.
On his return from Alexandria he was appointed bishop of Edessa by his friend Athanasius II, Patriarch of Antioch. He held this office for three or four years, as the clergy opposed his strict enforcement of the Church canons and he was not supported by Julian, the successor of Athanasius. Publicly burning a copy of the canons in front of Julian's residence, Jacob retired to the monastery of Kaisum near Samosata, and from there to the monastery of Eusebhong where, for eleven years, he taught the Psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in Greek. Towards the close of this period Jacob again encountered opposition, this time from monks who despised the Greeks.
Jacob left Eusebhong and proceeded to the great convent of Tell Add or Teleda (? modern Tellgdi, northwest of Aleppo), where he spent nine years in revising and amending the Peshitta version of the Old Testament with the aid of the various Greek versions.
He was finally recalled to the bishopric of Edessa in 708, but died four months later. www.indianchristianity.org
[edit] Writings
In doctrine, Jacob was undoubtedly Monophysite. Of the very large number of his works, which are mostly in prose, not many have been published, but much information may be gathered from Assemani's Bibliotheca Orientalis and W. Wright's Catalogue of Syriac MSS in the British Museum.
From the Peshitta, Jacob produced what Wright calls a curious eclectic or patchwork text, of which five volumes survive in Europe (Wright, Catalogue 38). It was the last attempt at a revision of the Old Testament in the Monophysite Church. Jacob was also the chief founder of the Syriac Massorah among the Monophysites, which produced such manuscripts as the one (Vat. cliii.) described by Wiseman in Ilorae syriacae, part iii.
Jacob was the author both of commentaries and of scholia of the sacred books; of these specimens are given by Assemani and Wright. They were largely quoted by later commentators, who often refer to Jacob as the interpreter of the Scriptures. With the commentaries may be mentioned his Hexahemeron, or treatise on the six days of creation, manuscripts of which exist at Leiden and at Lyon. It was his last work, and being left incomplete was finished by his friend George the bishop of the Arabs. Among apocrypha, the History of the Rechabites composed by Zosimus was translated from Greek into Syriac by Jacob (Wright, Catalogue 1128, and Nau in Revue simitique vi. 263, vii. 54, 136).
Mention has been made above of Jacob's zeal on behalf of ecclesiastical canons. In his letter to the priest Addai we possess a collection of canons from his pen, given in the form of answers to Addai's questions. These were edited by Lagarde in Reliquiae juris eccl. syriace, pp. 117 sqq. and Jean Baptiste Lamy in Dissert. pp. 98 sqq. Additional canons were given in Wright's Notulae syriacae. The whole have been translated and expounded by Kayser, Die Canones Jacobs von Edessa (Leipzig, 1886).
Jacob made many contributions to Syriac liturgy, both original and translated (Wright, Short History, p. 145 seq.).
To philosophical literature hischief original contribution was his Enchiridion, a tract on philosophical terms (Wright, Catalogue 984). The translations of works of Aristotle which have been attributed to him are probably by other hands (Wright, Short History p. 149; Duval, Littirature syriaque, pp. 255, 258). The treatise De cause omnium causarum, which was the work of a bishop of Edessa, was formerly attributed to Jacob; but the publication of the whole by Kayser has made it clear that the treatise is of much later date.
An important historical work by Jacoba Chronicle in continuation of that of Eusebius has unfortunately perished all except a few leaves. Of these a full account is given in Wright, Catalogue 1062.
Jacob's fame among his countrymen rests most of all on his labors as a grammarian. In his letter to George, bishop of Shrugh, on Syriac orthography (published by Phillips in London 1869, and by Martin in Paris the same year) he sets forth the importance of fidelity by scribes in the copying of minutiae of spelling. In his grammar 6 (of which only some fragments remain), while expressing 2 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahr says 677; but Athanasius was patriarch only 684-687.
According to Merx (op. cit. p. 43) this may be the celebrated convent of Eusebius near Apamea.
Assemani tried hard to prove him orthodox (B.O. i. 470 sqq.) but changed his opinion on reading his biography by Barhebraeus (ib. ii. 3~7). See especially Lamy, Dissert. de Syrorumfide, pp.206 sqq. i Text at Leipzig 1889 (Des Buch der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit oder der Ursache alter Ursachen): translation (posthumously) at Strassburg 1893.
His sense of the disadvantage under which Syriac labors through an alphabet that contains only consonants, he declined to introduce a general system of vowel-signs, lest the change should contribute to the neglect and loss of the older books written without vowels. At the same time he invented, by adaptation of the Greek vowels, such a system of signs as might serve for purposes of grammatical exposition, and elaborated the rules by which certain consonants serve to indicate vowels. He also systematized and extended the use of diacritical points. It is still a moot question how far Jacob is to be regarded as the author of the five vowel-signs derived from Greek which soon after came into use among the Jacobites. In any case he made the most important contribution to Syriac grammar down to the time of Barhebraeus.
As a translator Jacob's greatest achievement was his Syriac version of the Homiliae cathedrales of Severus, the monophysite patriarch of Antioch. This important collection is now in part known to us by E. W. Brooks's edition and translation of the 6th book of selected epistles of Severus, according to another Syriac version made by Athanasius of Nisibis in 669. (Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahr says 677; but Athanasius was patriarch only 684-687.)
A large number of letters by Jacob to various correspondents have been found in various MSS. Besides those on the canon law to Addai, and on grammar to George of Srugh referred to above, there are others dealing with doctrine, liturgy, and so forth. A few are in verse.
[edit] External links and references
- Dirk Kruisheer. "A Bibliographical Clavis to the Works of Jacob of Edessa". Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 1 1 (1998).
- J.M. Sauget. "Jacob of Edessa", Encyclopedia of the Early Church 1 (1992) 428-429.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
