The next figure I would like to focus on is who Mar Narsai was and his significance in the early Church of the East history. After my recent blog post about Saint Ephrem, it is only right that Narsai is next to talk about, being that he is the result of two great Saints in our Church, of both Saint Ephrem, and Saint Theodore of Mopsuestia, where he harmonized both the spiritual aspect of poetry, hymns, and literature of Ephrem, and the exegetical and theological skills of Theodore. When you take these two saints and combine them, you have the product of Narsai.
Who is Mar Narsai?
Narsai (c. 399–502) holds the title “Harp of The Spirit” along with Saint Ephrem due to their profound writings of hymns in the form of poetry, or as how we would say in Syriac “memre” which I explained a bit what they are in my recent blog post on Saint Ephrem. We would call them Harps of The Spirit because when they speak through their hymns, the beauty in it would be so rich, as if it is music being played through a harp, and conveying the messages of the Holy Spirit which is an active force that guides us in our daily lives.
According to Fr. Andrew Younan, in his book titled “Narsai: Selected Sermons” the introduction attributes Narsai as growing up in the Persian territory of Northern Iraq, and later moved and spent some decades studying in the Roman Empire controlled city of Edessa at the School Of Edessa, which we previously also talked about in regards to Saint Ephrem and the schools establishment. This school later was shut down during Narsai’s time there under Emperor Zeno, after the theological controversies of the mid 5th century, on accusations of teaching Dyophysitism which the emperor saw as being heterodox. This forced Narsai to retreat back to Nisibis and was a major area that was controlled under the Sassanians in the Persian Empire. Him and along with the bishop of Nisibis at the time, then founded the school of Nisibis where Narsai flourished as the head exegete of the School, and became the new most prominent Christian School of Mesopotamia. He served here until his death in 503 and most of his works that we have surviving today were compiled in Edessa and Nisibis in our traditional Syriac tongue.
The Scholarly Reception of Narsai
According to Mar Abdisho Of Nisibis in a book titled “The Catalogue of Books of Abdisho Bar Brikha“, the works that are attributed to Narsai are as follows:
Out of all of the works of Narsai that we have today, all his prose works on biblical commentary are unfortunately lost, and of the 360 homilies or “Memre” that he composed, only 82 survive to this day, which are listed in the footnote:
Scholars such as Sebastian Brock and Aaron Butts, along with Assemani and Dom R.H. Connolly are some of the scholars who worked in history to preserve the manuscripts that we have of his works and translating them to english. The screenshots of Abdisho’s Catalogue of Books come from Assemani’s collection of Church of The East manuscripts under the title “Bibliotheca” of his first volume. Alphonse Mingana, another well known Syriac scholar compiled a two volume work of Narsai’s homilies which is briefly mentioned in a book by Frederick G. McLeod titled “Narsai’s Metrical Homilies” which you can read a few of his works in english, namely 5 memre according to about 17 different manuscripts. For homilies 1-79 that we have of Narsai available, the scholarly reception of them is mentioned in another book titled “Clavis to the Metrical Homilies of Narsai” by Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron M. Butts, and Kristian S. Heal where they also include the first screenshot of Abdisho citing Narsai’s works. This book however does not include the english translations of the works, rather only the manuscripts that they can be found in where you can read the Syriac for yourself. And finally, if you wish to read his liturgical memre, there is a book called “Liturgical Homilies of Narsai” where you can read 4 homilies in english in which he comments on the liturgy, priesthood, baptism, and the sacraments. This now concludes the scholarly reception portion of the blog post and we will now move on to examine some of these hymns and Narsai’s style of writing.
The Memre of Narsai
The way that Narsai structures his memre is similar to the style of Saint Ephrem, which we can see how strong he takes after of him, as they mostly are composed of 12-syllable metre’s, and a few in 7-syllable metre’s, which was the style that Saint Ephrem took on. So for Narsai, he essentially was influenced by the poetic style of Ephrem which we can see as being due to a factor that they both studied at the School of Edessa, and took on that same style and employed his own touch to it, which he then reciprocates at the School of Nisibis later on. If you remember the last blog post we did on Saint Ephrem and the hymn I shared of his, I will share another one of Saint Narsai, that is actually recited literally right after that one for Sunday Morning Prayers. See the screenshots down below:
And again as always for those who do not read Syriac, I have the english translation as well:
For those who do read Syriac though, if you can quite literally count the syllables of that hymn, you will see that they are structured in a specific way where they all match the same syllabic structure. These hymns by Narsai focus mainly on exegetical interpretations of the Bible, expressions of Theology, and of course a liturgical aspect of the Divine Liturgy that is performed. We can see this in the example above, which is titled as the “Praise of Narsai” where he references biblical passages such as the Parable of The Lost Sheep (Matthew 18 and Luke 15), the heir of the Son being a reference to Hebrews 1:2, and the washing way of iniquity in Psalm 51. These are just a few references to biblical passages in that one hymn where we see Narsai employ these topics in a poetic manner.
Narsai‘s Christology
Earlier in the post we talked about how Narsai harmonized the theology and exegetical prowess of Saint Theodore of Mopsuestia, along with the poetic genius-ness of Saint Ephrem. Since we have now established that Narsai takes after Ephrem, and expresses the faith similarly to him, let us now then see the incorporation of Theodore in his writings.
According to McLeod in the “Metrical Homilies of Narsai”, which covers the major Christological homilies, he gives a reader insight to the works of Theodore, by acting as sort of a lens that we can see through to get an understanding of how these Christological doctrines were received into the Church and overall upheld as being a continuation of the faith. His homilies are centered under an apologetical framework, being that he was a Saint who lived through some of the major first early church controversies, such as Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451, and the robber synod of Ephesus 449. So with that, it is right to say that his works are a reflection of these disputes, which can also relate to Ephrem who was writing in a time where he was arguing against many early heretics such as in the followers of Arius, Bardaisan, Mani, and Marcion.
What differs with Narsai however, is his Christological framework is alot stricter and is seen as more defined compared to Ephrem, and that is partly due to these schisms that occurred. Because you now had factions in the Churches that were claiming that Christ was either in two natures (Chalcedonians), or of two natures (Miaphysites) and in one composite nature, Narsai had to make it very clear what it was he was trying to express on behalf of the Church of The East faith. Ephrem on the other hand was dealing with a completely different form of heresies that he had to deal with which is why his expression of Christology is more loosely seen and ambiguous. What Ephrem was dealing with was more so on the Gnosticism of Bardaisan, and Mani, and the Di-Theism of Marcion. Since Narsai was dealing with the formulation of Christology, it would only logically follow that he too would give his framework, being that he and the rest of the Church of The East confess, that Christ is One Person (Parsopa) in 2 Natures (Kyaneh) and 2 Qnome. You can see the screenshot below in reference to the Liturgical Homilies book I mentioned earlier where he says this explicitly:
Narsai and Theodore
This then leads us into Narsai and the influence of Theodore in his writings, which when reading the top screenshot, you can actually see him give credit to whom we know as the Three Greek Doctors (Malphaneh Yawnayeh) of the Church of The East, one of them of course being Theodore.
Based on my personal readings, it is almost a universally accepted fact amongst scholastics that Theodore was the main authority of Narsai which is why he is seen as such a huge influence to him. We can see this in the emphasis that Narsai draws in regards to the human nature of Christ, which was something very typical on behalf of the antiochian school and its followers, that emphasized more on the humanity of Christ. This was due to the fact that their main opponents were Appolinaris and his followers, who believed that Christ was simply just God the Word “enfleshed” and that humanity was more so an empty garment, and thus not a real rational humanity. For example, in Fr. Andrew Younan’s book on Narsai, he references the Memra on the forming of Adam and Even where Narsai says “The Creator wanted to instruct rational beings through his image, Adam.”
Fr. Andrew Younan also notes this in his book as referring to Memra 81 as being a Memra dedicated to refuting those who deny the rationality of the humanity in Christ. The central core of Narsai’s Christology would be none other than the verse John 1:14 from the Bible which states “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. For Narsai, the question of how exactly the Word becoming flesh, is where he gets his Christology from. He rejects that it becomes flesh naturally, which mean a two nature formula becoming one is automatically ruled out, and the only logical solution for Narsai is to maintain a proper distinction between the natures and their qnome, to fully preserve the integrity of each. This is where his two nature and two qnome Christology come from along with the Greek Doctors who believed the same.
This now concludes the article on Narsai, and one day God willing we will do a deep dive into the exact Theology/Christology of Narsai. God Bless.
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