The Matriarch as Model: Sarah, the Cult of the Saints, and Social Control in a Syriac Homily of Pseudo-Ephrem

David L. Eastman

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer 2013, pp. 241-259 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/earl.2013.0012

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The Matriarch as Model: Sarah, the Cult of the Saints, and Social Control in a Syriac Homily of Pseudo-Ephrem
DAVID L. EASTMAN
The creative re-telling of biblical stories represents an important element of reception history, for texts take on new meanings in these generative contexts. This article explores the presentation of Sarah in an account of the Aqedah found in a fth-century Syriac verse homily. The pseudonymous author features Sarah prominently, in particular her longing to commemorate Isaac after his apparent death. Here Sarahs desires are specically couched in the language of the cult of the saints, making her a model of late antique female piety. However, her activities are also restricted by the voice of Abraham, and she willingly concedes. I argue that the author of this homily presents Sarah as a model of female piety but also female subservience, in order to reinforce patriarchal control over female itinerancy and cultic practice.

In the biblical account of the Aqedah (Binding of Issac), Sarah is strangely absent. The entire story in Gen 22.114, from Gods call to Abraham through the events on the mountain, takes place without even a reference to Isaacs mother. Later commentators on the Aqedah, both Jewish and Christian, often made it a point to ll in this gap in the narrative. Some assumed that Sarah is absent because Abraham never spoke to her of
I would like to thank those colleagues who have offered research suggestions or helpful feedback on versions of this article, including Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Joshua Ezra Burns, Siam Bhayro, the members of the Greater Michigan Ancient Christianity Society, and the two anonymous reviewers for JECS. Earlier versions of portions of this essay were presented at the Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts group of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Religious History Colloquium of Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 21:2, 241259 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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his plans. Others provide accounts of conversations between Sarah and Abraham, or at least conversations that would have occurred if Sarah had known what Abraham was intending to do with Isaac.1 Sebastian Brock has argued that the tendency to bring Sarah more to the center of the narrative was particularly marked within the Syriac tradition. One text that has drawn attention in his work is a verse homily on the Aqedah that is ascribed erroneously to the fourth-century c.e. author Ephrem the S yrian. Brock has convincingly dated this homily (which he labels Memra II) to the fth century and credited it to an anonymous pseudo-Ephrem,2 so I will follow his dating and nomenclature here. In this homily the pseudonymous author features Sarah prominently as a model of female piety yet does so not as a means of empowering the female audience members, but as a means of social control. A brief synopsis of the text goes as follows: Isaac is born, and at some later time God gives Abraham the command to sacrice his son. As Abraham and Isaac prepare to leave, Sarah questions Abraham as to why he is sharpening his knife. He attempts to put her off, but she discerns her husbands true intentions and asks to be allowed to witness the death of her son. Abraham forbids this, so Sarah instructs Isaac to be brave and obedient to his father. Abraham and Isaac travel for three days into the mountains, where Isaac is delivered from death at the last instant. As the two arrive at home, Abraham instructs Isaac to hide, because he wants to see how Sarah will respond to him. Sarah receives Abraham with honor and asks her husband to tell her how Isaac died and if he died well. She is somewhat comforted to learn that Isaac thought of her as he was about to die, but she bemoans the fact that she could not see the place where he was killed. At this point Isaac appears. There is a happy reunion, and Sarah proclaims the glory of God for giving her Isaac a second time. In this homily Sarah is particularly important, leading Brock to suggest that she actually surpasses Abraham and becomes the heroine of the story
1. Sebastian Brock, Sarah and the Aqedah, Mus 87 (1974): 6777; Sebastian Brock, Reading Between the Lines: Sarah and the Sacrice of Isaac (Genesis, Chapter 22), in Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night, ed. Lonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler, and Maria Wyke (Hampshire, UK: Macmillan, 1994), 16980. The artistic tradition of the Aqedah also includes depictions of Sarah, despite her absence in the biblical narrative. On the relevant images at Dura Europos and El Bagawat, for example, see Jo Milgrom, The Binding of Isaac: The Akedah, a Primary Symbol of Jewish Thought and Art (Berkeley, CA: BIBAL Press, 1988), 18792. 2. Sebastian Brock, Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac, Mus 99 (1986): 11722. I will return near the end of the article to the issue of authorship, including Brocks suggestion that this author could be female.

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for enduring two trialsallowing Isaac to go in the rst place and then receiving Abraham well afterward.3 One of the methods through which the author of this homily emphasizes Sarahs prominence is imagined speech, placing dialogue in the mouths of characters that are silent in the biblical accounts. Susan Ashbrook Harvey has demonstrated that this technique was especially common in presenting biblical women in Syriac, thus increasing their roles by increasing their voice: Even where the biblical text gave a woman no words, the Syriac writer would provide rst-person speeches, sometimes as interior monologues but more often as external dialogues with other, usually male, biblical characters.4 Memra II certainly ts the pattern, giving to Sarah 27 lines of dialogue before Abraham and Isaac depart, and over 30 lines after they return. Of the 141 lines in the homily, Sarah speaks over one-third of them, including the nal lines of the homily, where she pronounces the homilys theological conclusion about the faithfulness of God. Sarahs prominence in Memra II is evident, but I want to push the interpretation further by asking some more pointed questions about her function for the author of this homily. I will structure my analysis around two questions: First, how does this Sarah relate to the social context in which this text was produced, which Brock convincingly sets in the fth century?5 And second, what is this homily attempting to teach those listening to it? Homilies were meant to be didactic, so what is being taught here? I will take up the rst question by focusing on the speech of Sarah after Abrahams return from the mountain. Here Sarah bemoans at length the fact that she was not able to be present at the place of her sons death:
I was wishing that I were an eagle, or had the swiftness of a turtledove, so that I might go and see that place where my only child, my beloved, was sacriced; so that I might see the place of his ashes, and see the place of his binding; so that I might bring back a little of his blood and be comforted

3. Brock, Reading Between the Lines, 179. Phyllis Trible has also argued that Sarahs role in the biblical story is at least equal to that of Abraham, although she does not refer to the Syriac traditions honoring Sarah. See Genesis 22: The Sacrice of Sarah, in Not in Heaven: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative, ed. J. Rosenblatt and J. Sitterson, Jr. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 18291. 4. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Spoken Words, Voiced Silence: Biblical Women in the Syriac Tradition, JECS 9:1 (2001): 108. On the ascription of imagined speech to Sarah in the Greek poetry of the sixth-century author Romanus, see also Brock, Sarah and the Aqedah, 7074; Burton L. Visotsky, Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 8385. 5. Brock, Two Syriac Verse Homilies, 8182.

244 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES by its smell. If only I had some of his hair, to place somewhere inside my clothes, so that I could put it over my eyes when grief overcame me. If only I had some of his clothes, so that I might [ which I will leave untranslated for the moment] and put him before my eyes, and when sorrow would overcome me I might gain relief through gazing upon him. I was wishing that I could see his pyre and the place where his bones were burned, and could bring back a little of his ashes and gaze on them always and be comforted. (11322)

Note the principal verbs in Sarahs mournful monologue: go, see, bring back, place, , gaze. In this scene the matriarch is reecting the context of the pseudonymous authors time, the fth century, by referring to practices associated with the late antique Christian cult of the saints. This is apparent from a closer look at the practices to which Sarah makes reference in this passage: pilgrimage, relic veneration, olfactory experience, and icon production. Pilgrimage. Sarah regrets not being able to go and see that place where my only child, my beloved, was sacriced, to see the place of his ashes, and see the place of his binding, and to see his pyre and the place where his bones were burned. These are clear allusions to pilgrimage, a practice common to many saints cults that placed a heavy emphasis on seeing as part of the pilgrims experience.6 In fact, late antique Christians often travelled to locations associated with particular saints, especially traditional sites of birth, death, or some famous deed of spiritual power. Women are among the best known Christian pilgrims in the fourth and fth centuries. Eusebius records that Constantines mother, Helena, traveled from Rome to Palestine in order that we may worship at the place where his [Jesus] feet stood.7 According to Egerias Itinerary, her journey from Spain (or perhaps Gaul) to the East included visits to numerous sites from the Hebrew Bible: Jerusalem, Mt. Horeb, Mt. Sinai, the site of the burning bush, etc. She also made stops at cultic sites associated with the apostle Thomas at Edessa and the virgin-martyr Thecla (Pauls apocryphal traveling companion) at Seleucia. To these examples we may add Melania the Elder, the empress Eudocia, Jeromes companions Paula and Marcella, the holy sisters Mary and Euphemia, and many others. Indeed, the scholarship of the last two decades has fruitfully explored the voy6. Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 10414. Frank emphasizes the eye of faith that signals a vivid perception of a past biblical event that is triggered by seeing the physical holy place (on 106). Such perception is clearly what Sarah is seeking in this homily. 7. Eusebius of Caesarea, V.C. 3.42.2 (GCS Eusebius 1.1[2]:101).

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ages of female gures in this period and demonstrated the importance of religious travel for many women.8 The practice of pilgrimage was of course not limited to women. A few years after his move from Antioch to Constantinople, John Chrysostom spoke of his desire to make a trip to the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome to see the relics of the apostle: If only now it were permitted to me to embrace the body of Paul, to be riveted to his tomb, and to see the ashes of that body that lled up what was lacking from Christ, that bore the marks, that sowed the proclamation everywhere, the ashes of that body in which he ran about everywhere, the ashes of that body through which Christ spoke clearly.9 While some sought lengthy pilgrimages, others visited shrines closer to home. When Jerome was studying in Rome in the midfourth century, he and some friends had a habit of visiting the tombs and shrines of saints just outside the city. Some were located in subterranean burial chambers, which added an element of trepidation to the experience: Many times we entered the crypts, which were dug into the bowels of the earth. . . . Rarely some light entered from above and tempered our dread of the shadows. . . . We advanced one step at a time, surrounded by the gloomy night.10 The Sarah of Memra II, like Egeria and Jerome, desired to visit a site that she considered sacred; and, like Chrysostom, she wanted to make a pilgrimage to see the place associated with the physical remains of the object of her commemoration. Relic veneration. Sarah also wishes that she could have brought back a little of his blood, some of his hair, some of his clothes, and a little of his ashes. The collection of relics from holy sites was another widespread practice in late antiquity, for the possession of even a fragment of a saints relics was believed to be equivalent to possessing the power of the entire body. As Paulinus of Nola wrote, Wherever part of

8. Among the many contributions in the eld are Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, trans. Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 12433; Julie Ann Smith, Sacred Journeying: Womens Correspondence and Pilgrimage in the Fourth and Eighth Centuries, in Pilgrimage Explored, ed. J. Stopford (Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press, 1999), 4156; Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Womens Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4880, 11348; Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 10754; Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 7185. 9. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Rom. 32.3 (PG 60:67879). 10. Jerome, Ezech. 40.5 (PL 25:375).

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the body is lying, in that place the grace of those buried there is alive.11 Gregory of Nazianzus similarly argued concerning the remains of martyrs, Even drops of their blood and small tokens of their passion [i.e. relics] are as powerful as their bodies.12 Examples of the search for body parts or blood are numerous in this period. In the letters of Gregory the Great, for example, we learn that the empress Constantina had written to Rome seeking relics of Paul to bring to Constantinople. Gregory records that the empress had asked from me that I should send over to you in answer to your commands the head of Saint Paul the apostle or something else from the saints body.13 This something else, Gregory species, included the apostles sudarium, or shroud. Literary accounts of Pauls death from the fourth and sixth centuries includes stories of a shroud that Paul borrowed from a pious woman to cover his eyes at the time of execution. The woman is identied as Plautilla in the fourth-century Latin Passion of Saint Paul the Apostle and Perpetua in the sixth-century Greek Acts of Peter and Paul. In both cases Paul miraculously appears to the woman after his death to return the shroud.14 Constantina may have thought she would be getting this shroud, which had been soaked in Pauls blood at the time of his death. Or perhaps the sudarium she sought was believed to be one of the cloths mentioned in Acts 19.12, which had come into contact with Paul and were then used to heal the sick and cast out demons. In this case Gregory denied Constantinas request,15 but there is ample evidence of relic distribution and collection at many Christian cult sites, particularly in the Christian East.16 The collection of relics (or at least would-be relics) did not always include much discernment, as we learn in several sources. Gregory tells us that some Greek monks had been digging up bodies buried outside
11. Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 27.44344 (CCSL 30:282). 12. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 4.69 (PG 35:589). 13. Gregory I, Ep. 4.30 (MGH Epp. 1 [Berlin, 1891), 264). Translation from The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R. C. Martyn, 3 vols., MST 40 (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004), 1:310. 14. David L. Eastman, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West, Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series 4 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 5759. I note there the parallels to the legend of Veronicas Veil. 15. Although Gregory denied Constantinas request, he nonetheless made provision in the Basilica of St. Paul for the creation of secondary (or contact) relics, which were sanctied by contact with the apostles tomb (Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 61). 16. See e.g. Gillian Clark, Translating Relics: Victricius of Rouen and FourthCentury Debate, Early Medieval Europe 10:2 (2001): 16176; Cyril Mango, Constantines Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics, ByzZ 83:1 (1990): 5162.

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the Basilica of Paul: For some Greek monks came here two years ago, and in the silence of the night, near the church of Saint Paul they dug up the bodies of the dead lying in the open eld. Then they hid their bones, preserving them for themselves until they returned home. And when they had been held and had been carefully examined as to why they were doing this, they confessed that they were about to carry those bones to Greece, as if the relics of saints.17 The identity of the dead was unknown, but they would have been received in the East as holy people. The Egyptian monk Shenoute had to address a similar problem in his region in the fth century. In his discourse against Those Who Work Evil, he rails against those who were creating new martyr cults and trying to pass off normal dead bodies as the relics of martyrs.18 The obsession with relics took a rather m acabre turn in some cases. Even before the martyr Vincent of Saragossa had died from his wounds, his disciples were collecting his remains: That one c overs the twin furrows of the claws with kisses. This one rejoices to lick the bloody gore of the body. Many dip a linen cloth in the dripping blood, so that they may keep a holy safeguard at home for their descendants.19 In Memra II Sarah expresses a longing to possess any physical remains of her son, and her reference to Isaacs hair includes an additional detail of note. She states that she would like to have some of his hair, to place somewhere inside my clothes, so that I could put it over my eyes when grief overcame me. The wearing of relics is attested as yet another element of female piety. In the early fourth century, bishop Caecilian rebuked a rich widow in Carthage named Lucilla for wearing a questionable relic around her neck and kissing it before taking the Eucharist.20 Likewise, Gregory of Nyssa tells us that after the death of his sister Macrina, they discovered that she had always worn around her neck a ring that contained a fragment of the True Cross.21 In this version of the Aqedah story produced in Ephrems name by a pseudonymous author, Sarah similarly desires to keep relics of Isaac close to her, his hair in particular. For the female audience of our homily, Isaacs hair may have provoked associations with their own

17. Gregory I, Ep. 4.30 (MGH Epp. 1 [Berlin, 1891], 265; Martyn, Letters of Gregory the Great, 1:311). 18. Shenoute, Disc. 8 (Oeuvres de Schenoudi: texte copte et traduction franaise, ed. milie Amelineau, 2 vols. [Paris: Leroux, 1907], 1:21220; see also CSCO 600:670 for a description of an unpublished text in White Monastery manuscript HD, 23946). 19. Prudentius, Peri. 5.33744 (LCL Prudentius 2:188). 20. Optatus of Milev, Adv. Donat. 1.16.1 (SC 412:208). 21. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Macr. 25 (PG 46:990).

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experiences with having and perhaps wearing relics. Relics were a central component of the late antique cult of the saints, and Sarah reects this in her longing to bring back and keep physical remains of her son. Olfactory experience. Sarah wishes that she had brought back a little of his blood to be comforted by its smell. Susan Ashbrook Harveys Scenting Salvation 22 has made an important contribution to our understanding of saints cults as full-blown sensory experiences, including the olfactory sense. As early as the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the link between scent and veneration of a martyr is highlighted. When ames surround the aged bishop, the smell is not like burning esh but like baking bread. . . . We even perceived a very pleasant odor, like the smell of incense or some other precious spice.23 The emphasis on smell continued throughout Christian antiquity, for cultic practices were surrounded by fragrances: incense, holy oil, owers, and perfumes. These smells were in some sense external to the saint herself or himself, yet they were an integral part of the overall experience. As Harvey has shown, the real Ephrem considered scent not just a sensory experience but also a critical element in epistemology. While Ephrem acknowledged that the senses are inadequate for gaining a full knowledge of God, he nonetheless insists that sense perception is the foundational experience of the human-divine encounter both in the present and in the life to come.24 In addition to these smells that accompanied the liturgy, saints bodies also sometimes emitted odors directly. In the Syriac Life of Simeon Stylites (the Elder), the holy mans death is prefaced by strong smells:
A cool, refreshing, and very fragrant wind blew as though a heavenly dew were falling on the saint and were sending forth a fragrant scent from him such as has not been spoken of in the world. There was not just one smell exuding from it, but wave upon wave kept coming. There were multiple scents, each different from the other. To those billowing fragrances none of the sweet spices or excellent and pleasurable herbs of this world can be compared, for they were dispensed by the providence of God.25

22. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006). 23. M. Polyc. 15.2 (Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007], 322). 24. Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 238. 25. Simeon bar Apollon and Bar Chatar, V. Sim. styl. 116 (Acta sanctorum martyrum orientalium et occidentalium in duas partes distributa. Adcedvnt Acta S. Simeonis Stylitae, ed. Stephen Evodius Assemani, 2 vols. [Rome: J. Collini, 1748], 2:392). Translation from The Lives of Simeon Stylites, trans. Robert Doran (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1992), 18586.

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In the case of other holy people, streams of myrrh or scented oil came from their bodies. John Climacus reports that the cofn of a monk named Menas was opened three days after his death, and all of us present saw owing from his venerable feet what seemed like twin streams of myrrh.26 The smells of paradise surrounded and exuded from the bodies of saints. Not all smells were so pleasant, however, especially among living holy people who practiced extreme asceticism. While Simeons body may have given off sweet smells at his death, during his lifetime it was a different story. He was once kicked out of a monastery, because he had fastened a belt so tightly around his waist that it caused his esh to become raw, smelly, and infested with worms: On account of his stench no one could be near him.27 During his time living atop the pillar outside Aleppo, he suffered a severe infection in one of his legs. His biographer describes Simeons leg as putrid and worm-infested, a literal image of decaying mortality.28 Even some among the Christian community would give off foul odors as a result of fasting or other ascetical practices, yet by the fth century authors started to reinterpret such smells. The motif of sanctity known through stench began to appear in Christian literature, replacing the classical (and, perhaps to us, logical) assumption that bad smells warned of disease and decay.29 Pungent odors emanating from dead or living holy people could be presented in a positive light, thus reinforcing the prominence of the olfactory sense in cultic and liturgical experience. What, then, can we say of Sarah and her desire to be comforted by the smell of Isaacs blood? As we know, blood does have a scent,30 and I would argue that the author highlights Sarahs desire to collect some of Isaacs blood because smells were a standard element of a visitors experience at cult shrines in late antiquity. Full participation in Isaacs cult, therefore, necessarily involved the olfactory sense.

26. John Climacus, Scal. 4 (PG 88:697). 27. Antonius, V. Sim. 5 (Hans Lietzmann, Das Leben des heiligen Symeon Stylites, TU 32:4 [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908], 24). 28. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Olfactory Knowing: Signs of Smell in the Vitae of Simeon Stylites, in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J.W. Drijvers, ed. G.J. Reinink and A.C. Klugkist (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 29. 29. Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 2016; quotation at 205. 30. The smell of blood is a result of its iron content, and it will continue to give off this scent until the iron completely breaks down over the course of several weeks. Dietmar Glindemann et al., The Two Odors of Iron when Touched or Pickled: (Skin) Carbonyl Compounds and Organophosphines, Angewandte Chemie International Edition 45:42 (2006): 70069.

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Icon production. Sarah wishes that she had some of his clothes so that I might him. In Brocks edition of this text, he translates this verb imagine, using one of the possible meanings of the Pael imperfect of . However, I think the more correct reading in this context is the Peal imperfect, which would have the same form in Syriac but would mean not imagine but paint or draw.31 The visual representation of saints was another major component of their cults, and these images were produced on different kinds of objects. Three-dimensional objects such as terra cotta asks with images of saints were commonly made available as pilgrim tokens at holy shrines, such as images of Thecla and Menas at Abu Mina in Egypt, tokens from the shrine of Simeon Stylites, and the Bobbio ampullae now in the collection at Monza.32 Two-dimensional images of saints were stamped in gold on hundreds of glass pieces found in Rome.33 Colored wall paintings at early Christian sites such as Dura Europos, El Bagawat, the Rotunda (Agios Georgios) in Thessaloniki, and the catacombs of Rome provide evidence of the importance of visual art for liturgical, catechetical, and cultic use in communal settings. Martyrs and other holy people are often prominently displayed in these settings.34 What the author is more likely referring to here, given the intimate connection between Sarah and her son, is the production of portable icons with the images of saints for personal use. Thomas Mathews has demonstrated that private icons are attested quite early in Christian history.35
31. The Pael form could also potentially mean paint. On the use of as paint in Syriac hagiography, see G.W. Bowersock, The Syriac Life of Rabbula and Syrian Hellenism, in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Tomas Hgg and Philip Rousseau (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 25759. 32. Davis, Cult of Saint Thecla, 11425; Gary Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), 1340. 33. Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 7981; Hermann Vopel, Die altchristlichen Goldglser: Ein Beitrag zur altchristlichen Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte (Freiburg: Mohr, 1899). 34. Dura Europos: Michael Peppard, New Testament Imagery in the Earliest Christian Baptistery, in Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity, ed. Lisa R. Brody and Gail L. Hoffman (Boston, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, 2011), 10321. El Bagawat: Davis, Cult of Saint Thecla, 15057. Thessaloniki: Slobodan Cu : rci = c, ; Christianization of Thessalonike: \ The Making of Christian Urban Iconography, in From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonike: \ Studies in Religion and Archaeology, ed. Laura Nasrallah, Charalambos Bakirtzis, and Steven J. Friesen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Theological Studies, 2011), 21344. Rome: Fabrizio Bisconti and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, trans. Cristina Carlo Stella and Lori-Ann Touchette, 2nd ed. (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2002). 35. Thomas Mathews, The Emperor and the Icon, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia n.s. 1 (2001): 16668.

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Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the second century, criticized a woman in Rome named Marcellina for possessing and venerating icons of Christ, because she honored these images alongside icons of Greek philosophers just like the Gentiles do.36 In the age before church buildings, Christian worship happened in private houses, so Marcellinas home must have been the setting for this practice. The third-century Acts of John includes the story of an Ephesian ofcial named Lykomedes, who commissions an icon of John after the apostle heals his wife. Lykomedes keeps and venerates the image in his bedroom. When John discovers the image, he admits that the likeness is a good one. However, he attempts to redirect Lykomedes away from an emphasis on the physical image of a person toward an emphasis on the metaphorical and spiritual image created within a person by Christ.37 In the early fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea asserts that icons were prohibited in churches all over the world and that he had once conscated icons of Paul and Christ owned by an unnamed woman.38 All three of these references to icons place their use within a private setting. In two of the cases the owners are explicitly identied as women, and in the Lykomedes story his wife probably also would have venerated the image of the one who had healed her. As Mathews comments, The fact that the legends commonly gave women the lead role in early icon cults can only mean that the public of that day found such a version of events both plausible and appealing.39 The veneration of icons for personal use, particularly by women, had a long history within Christianity by the time this homily was produced in the fth century, even if it met with some resistance. Sarahs desire to commemorate Isaac in a picture, therefore, would have been recognizable as a normal element of cultic piety among women. The image would serve as a mimetic aid for Sarah to remember Isaac in the very clothes he had been wearing when he died. At any time she could put him before my eyes and gain relief through gazing upon him, and the female members of the audience of this homily would have felt a sense of experiential connection with the grieving mother. The strong emphasis on visuality in Syriac homilies, including in the

36. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.25.6 (SC 264:34244). 37. A. Jo. 2629 (CCA 1:17781). 38. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ep. Constant. (PG 20:1548). Eusebius elsewhere claims that he had also seen paintings of Peter, Paul, and Christ, which he ascribes to the ignorance of Gentile converts to Christianity who did not know any better (H.E. 7.18.4 [SC 41:192]). 39. Mathews, Emperor and the Icon, 166.

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writings of the true Ephrem, further supports the reading of as paint or draw. Edmund Beck has argued that the visual sense was central to Ephrems epistemology, and Sidney Grifth built upon this work to demonstrate that Ephrem conceived of his own literary work as creating images.40 As Grifth shows, Ephrem projected this language of imagemaking onto biblical characters, including Jesus and God. In one of his sermons, Ephrem comments on Jesus confrontation with the Pharisees in Matthew 9.18, where Matthew states that the Pharisees were harboring animosity against Jesus after he had forgiven a mans sins: In secret they pondered in their heart, but our Lord openly exposed it. Our Lord painted a picture ( )of their hidden thoughts before them, so that they might learn that his knowledge is a mirror, exposing their secrets. While they would not see his manifest signs, they could see him painting a picture ( )of their own hidden thoughts.41 Twice here Ephrem employs the same verb that we nd our homily by pseudo-Ephrem ( )to describe Jesus as a painter who had taken what was unseen and made it seen. Elsewhere Ephrem uses similar imagery to describe Gods activity in giving the Scriptures: He painted ( )his Word with many beauties, so that each one of the pupils might consider whatever he likes.42 Grifth concludes, Ephraem [sic] does not simply compare gural art work to eloquence in terms of its communicative potential, as Greek Christian writers tended to do, nor does he liken biblical types to icons, as some Greek Christian writers did. Rather, in Ephraems hymns and homilies the gural representation is the primary analogate, and eloquence, even in the Scriptures, is described in terms which belong to the Wortfeld of the image makers craft, and not vice versa.43 Visuality, then, often took rst place over the literary craft in the work of Ephrem, and, at a key point in Memra II, pseudoEphrem follows suit in highlighting the visual elements of Sarahs piety.44
40. Edmund Beck, Ephrms des Syrers Psychologie und Erkenntnislehre (Leuven: Secretariat du CorpusSCO, 1980); Sidney H. Grifth, The Image of the Image Maker in the Poetry of St. Ephraem the Syrian, SP 25 (1993): 25869. 41. Ephrem, Serm. Dom. nost. 21 (CSCO 270:18). Translation from Grifth, Image of the Image Maker, 263. 42. Ephrem, Diatess. 1.18 (Commentaire de lvangile concordat: texte syriaque [Manuscrit Chester Beatty 709], folios additionels, ed. Louis Leloir [Leuven: Peeters, 1990], 16). Translation from Grifth, Image of the Image Maker, 268. 43. Grifth, Image of the Image Maker, 26768. 44. This representation of Sarah as artist is intriguing in its potential implications for the art historical context of late antiquity. Scholars have been bringing to light womens voices in the literature of antiquity, e.g. Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Ellen Greene (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005); Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian

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As I have shown, the speech of Sarah reects a desire to engage in practices that were part of the Christian cult of the saints during the fth century c.e., when this homily was produced. They reect the ideals of this pseudo-Ephrems time, not those of the biblical gure.45 The author attempts to draw the female audience members into the Aqedah story by imagining a model with whom they can identify. You, oh listeners, are like Sarah, in that you share the desire to engage in the same cultic practices that she wished to perform. In this way Sarah is designed as an empowering gure for late antique women, for they can see themselves in the matriarch. At this point, however, we need to turn our attention to the second question that I posed earlier: What is this homily teaching? To address this, we need to go back to the scene prior to the departure of Abraham and Isaac. Most ancient commentators and homilists speculated that Sarah did not know the plans that Abraham had for their son. Either God had not instructed Abraham to tell Sarah (or had specically instructed Abraham not to tell her), or Abraham feared that Sarah would raise too much of a fuss or would have demanded to accompany them.46 Ephrem himself writes, But he did not reveal the matter to Sarah, because he was not commanded to reveal it. In addition, she would have persuaded him that she should go and take part in his sacrice, just as she had taken part in the promise of his birth.47 In Memra II, Sarah does not initially realize what is about to happen. She asks Abraham why he is sharpening his knife and what he is intending to kill. He responds curtly, This secret today women can not be aware of (18). Sarah immediately discerns the affair and wants to accompany Abraham, as Ephrem suggests she would have done. Despite her insight into what Abraham is hiding, she as a woman
Women (New York: Paulist, 2001). What might we be able to say, however, about the possibility of female artists? When we see images from the catacombs of Mary nursing Jesus, or of female gures in the orant position, do we imagine the artists behind them as male or female? Is the Sarah of Memra II revealing that in fth-century Syria women were producing Christian images? Gregory of Tours tells us that the wife of the bishop of Clermont supervised the painting of the images inside a church based on pictures in a book that she owned (Hist. 2.17). In this case she was the patron, not the artist, so this example from Gaul is not denitive evidence for the question at hand. Nonetheless, in my opinion the possibility of female artists clearly warrants further scholarly consideration. 45. In speaking about late antique Syriac texts on women, Brock and Harvey have noted, To be meaningful to the society for which they were written, the stories had to share the values and assumptions of that society (Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 3). This observation applies equally to homilies such as Memra II. 46. Brock, Reading Between the Lines, 17072. 47. Ephrem, Comm. in Gen. 20.1.2 (CSCO 152:83).

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is forbidden from participatingand in particular, she is forbidden from traveling to the mountain by the voice of Abraham, the voice of patriarchy. Behind this prohibition in the story lies a tension in late antiquity over female itinerancy. As we saw earlier, women are prominent among early Christian travelers,48 but those examples do not mitigate the fact that female mobility also provoked signicant anxiety. As early as the third century, the Didascalia Apostolorum addresses the mobility of Christian widows in Syria, bluntly stating that widows should always stay at home.49 Stephen Daviss study of the cult of Thecla, herself a famous voyager, draws out one aspect of this anxiety, namely the fear that traveling women would be sexually violated. Those who traveled alone or wandered away from shrines could be vulnerable. As Davis observes, By appearing alone in public, such women were thought by men in antiquity to pose the danger of sexual temptation, and often faced the threat of sexual assault themselves.50 The Miracles of St.Thecla contains the story of one such unfortunate virgin visiting Theclas shrine in Seleucia. Two men from Eirenopolis come to the shrine not to honor the martyr, but in search of a good timeand, based on the complaints from a number of bishops, there were apparently plenty of good times to be had at overnight vigils for the saints. After having too much to drink, these men come upon a virgin wandering about () outside the sacred enclosure and attempt to seduce her. When this is unsuccessful, they try to overcome her by force, but Thecla appears and intervenes. The martyrs grave threats convince the men to depart, and soon after they both die near Theclas cult center as punishment for profaning the sanctuary.51 This virgin had placed herself at risk simply by emulating the itinerant behavior of Thecla herself, and only the supernatural intervention of the martyr saves her. The Miracles of St.Menas includes the story of another endangered, female devotee of Thecla. This woman, named Sophia in the Greek version, sneaks away from her husband and travels through the desert to a shrine of Menas and Thecla in the Mareotis, south of Alexandria. Soldiers had been posted
48. See the section on pilgrimage above. To these examples we may add the New Testament gures of Phoebe (Rom 16.12) and Lydia (Acts 16.14). See also Margaret Y. Macdonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7879. 49. Michael Penn, Bold and Having No Shame: Ambiguous Widows, Controlling Clergy, and Early Syrian Communities, Hugoye 4:2 (2001): 1114. 50. Davis, Cult of Saint Thecla, 72. 51. Basil of Seleucia, V. Thecl. 34 (Vie et miracles de Sainte Thcle, ed. Gilbert Dagron, SH 62 [Brussels: Socit des Bollandistes, 1978], 38084).

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along the route to protect pilgrims, and, while Sophia is wandering around () outside the shrine, she nds herself being attacked by one of the very soldiers who is supposed to be protecting her. In this case it is Menas, not Thecla, who intercedes to save Sophia from being violated.52 The concern may be real enough. Female travelers could in some circumstances be placed in danger, even near or on their way to Christian shrines. We should not miss, however, the function of such cautionary tales in potentially provoking fear among other women who may be considering an itinerant lifestyle. The warning in the Didascalia Apostolorum and the stories of women being assaulted near Thecla shrines could serve to push women toward some behaviors, such as staying in their monasteries or at home, and away from others, like traveling at all.53 Another source of the anxiety over itinerancy was concern for its negative spiritual consequences. In the fourth and fth centuries, this concern was particularly marked among those dedicated to a life of renunciation. Evagrius Ponticus writes against the activities of a female ascetic named Severa, who was planning to leave Jerusalem to visit various monastic gures in Egypt, including Evagrius himself. Evagrius tells Runus of Aquileia and Melania the Elder, I praise her intentions but I do not approve of her undertaking. I do not see what she will gain from such a long walk over such a laborious route; whereas, with the help of the Lord, I could easily demonstrate the damage she and those with her will suffer. . . . I wonder how, traveling over those distances, they can avoid drinking the waters of Gihon, either in their thoughts or in their deeds. Such behavior is misguided for those who live in chastity. Drinking the waters of Gihon was a metaphor for being tainted by worldliness,54 so while
52. Mirac. Men. 3 (Ivan Pomialovskii, Zhitie prepodobnago Paisiia Velikago i Timofeia patriarkha aleksandriiskago poviestvovanie o chudesakh Sv. velikomuchenika Miny [St. Petersburg: Tip. Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1900], 6870). A fragmentary version of the story also exists in Coptic as Miraculum 4: Apa Mna: A Collection of Coptic Texts Relating to St. Menas, ed. James Drescher (Cairo: Socit darchologie copte, 1946), 22. Drescher argues that the Coptic text pre-dates the surviving Greek version, although he admits not having access to the Pomialovskii edition (1045). 53. Men were not immune from the same dangers, as Jerome recounts in his Vit. Malch. As a young man, Malchus had ignored the advice of an older monk and had decided to leave a monastery near Antioch to return home to Mesopotamia. During the trip his caravan was attacked. Malchus was sold into slavery and escaped his servitude only years later. His misery began with his ill-advised departure from the monastery (PL 23:5360). 54. Evagrius, Ep. 7 (Abh Gtt. Philologisch-historische 13.2:572). The translation and interpretation of the waters of Gihon are from Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 27779.

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Evagrius recognizes that Severa may be acting out of pure motives, in his mind the dangers of corruption by the world are simply too great. Gregory of Nyssa likewise argues that even religious travel would inevitably lead to delement of one sort or another:
It is impracticable for a woman to travel on such a path unless she has a guardian. Because of her physical weakness, she must be lifted up onto her mount and likewise lifted off it and must be kept from falling off over rough terrain. And whatever we may suppose, whether she has an old familiar friend taking care or a hired hand offering his service, in each case the act does not escape reproach, for it is not by laying down next to a stranger or even next to a familiar friend that she preserves the law of chastity! And since the inns and lodgings and the cities of the eastern regions are so fearless and indifferent to evil, how will she be able to keep her eyes from stinging as she passes through the smoke? Whenever the ears are deled, wont her eyes be deled, wont her heart be deled, receiving the sights and the sounds of the unseemly? How can she remain passionless when she travels through the impassioned places?55

Even if a woman were to travel with a male companion and remain sexually pure, the sights and sounds of the unseemly would still stain her. Gregory advises women to avoid these risks of long-distance voyages and to choose the safety of home, for they will be safer, and, moreover, Our places are much holier than those abroad.56 Male leaders were not alone in voicing their spiritual concerns about itinerant women. The Alexandrian desert mother Syncletica also warns fellow monastics about the harm of moving from place to place: Do you dwell in a monastery? Do not go to another place, for that will harm you greatly. Just as a bird deserting its eggs leaves them to be watery and sterile, so does a virgin or monk cool and destroy her faith when moving from place to place.57 Here Syncletica admonishes women in a monas55. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.67 (SC 363:114). Translation from Christianity in Late Antiquity 300450 C.E.: A Reader, ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs, trans. Andrew S. Jacobs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 34849. It should be noted that this letter has been the source of scholarly debate concerning its authenticity and interpretation. See Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred, 3032. 56. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.15 (SC 363:120). Cf. Athanasiuss Ep. virg. 2.3, where he similarly tells female ascetics that the presence of Christ does not dwell uniquely in the holy places where he had walked on earth (J. Lebon, Athanasiana Syriaca II: Une lettre attribue saint Athanase dAlexandrie, Mus 41 [1928]: 172). Georgia Frank (Memory of the Eyes, 10811) has argued that in this letter Athanasius subtly shifts attention away from sacred topography to visual piety, thereby decentralizing the signicance of particular sites as locations of holiness. 57. V. Syncl. 94 (PG 28:1545).

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tic context that they should remain in one place. The potential benets of even religious travel did not outweigh the risks, for it was a frivolous distraction that would cool or even destroy ones faith. Travel was also frowned upon because it could take women away from a context of worship under the control of the priest or bishop. In his homily On the Memorial of the Departed, Jacob of Serugh chastises the women of his congregation for visiting the tombs of their dearly departed instead of praying for them in church: They have left the church and its service and offerings58 and have gone among the tombs, weeping for their loved ones. Oh Christian woman, seek your loved one in the holy temple in the presence of God, in whose hands all spirits are placed. Do not call to the dead in the tomb. He does not hear you. He is not there. Seek him here in the house of atonement.59 Ramsay MacMullen has argued that a signicant portion of early Christian worship, even in the post-Constantinian period, took place not in basilicas but at the tombs of holy people and relatives.60 This continuation of the Roman cult of the dead, to which women were important contributors,61 was a source of tension for bishops throughout the Christian world.62 Women that traveled to the tombs, as Jacob contends, placed themselves outside the bounds of normal ecclesiastical control. At best, their prayers and tears were worthless. At worst, they put themselves in danger. Travelling women were presented as women at risk, whether physically or spiritually. In the context of late antique Christianity, itinerancy was one manifestation of female piety, but it was a manifestation that some church leaders attempted to suppress, either by direct at or through the perpetuation of harrowing stories. Looking back at Memra II, we see that Sarah was subjected to a similar restriction. Abraham forbids her from the outset from accompanying them: This secret today women can not be aware of. Sarah nonetheless asks Abrahams permission to come to the sacrice and even offers to help bury Isaac, yet she ultimately concedes, If I cannot go up to see my only child being sacriced, then I will remain at the foot of
58. This is probably a reference to the bread for the Eucharist. 59. Jacob of Serugh, Mem. dec. 4 (Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis, ed. Paul Bedjan, 5 vols. [Paris: Harrassowitz, 1905], 1:540). 60. Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200400, Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series 1 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill, 2009). 61. Kathleen E. Corley, Maranatha: Womens Funerary Rituals and Christian Origins (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010), 2363. 62. Ambroses famous restrictions on Augustines mother, Monica, stemmed from similar concerns about her participation in commemorative meals at the tombs of the saints around Milan (Augustine, Conf. 6.2).

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the mountain until you have sacriced him and come back (2930). Even this desire, however, is not realized, for Sarah does not go to the foot of the mountain. She does not go anywhere, in fact, but hands Isaac over to Abraham and waits at home for Abraham to come back. After Abraham returns, the restriction on Sarahs travel is reiterated. Beginning in line 113, Sarah gives the list of practices that I have discussed aboveseeing the place, bringing back blood and clothing, etc.yet this list is introduced by a qualier, I was wishing that I were. . . () . Similar qualifying expressions are stated again in lines 117, 119, and 121.63 Thus, Sarah was wishing she could go with Abraham to honor her son through these various practices, but she was not able to travel to the site of his death or even to leave home, because her husband had forbidden it. We come back, then, to our second question: What is this homily teaching? I would argue that the author is asserting that womens piety must remain under patriarchal control and, in the case of itinerancy, patriarchal restriction. By retelling the biblical narrative from Genesis 22 and placing in Sarahs mouth this extended list of cultic practices, the author is attempting to connect with womens experiences within saints cults. You, oh listeners, are like Sarah, in that you share the desire to do all the things mentioned by the matriarch. At the same time, the author seeks to control those same experiences through Sarahs exemplary response to Abraham. And you, oh listeners, should therefore follow Sarahs example by surrendering your pious urges to the control of the authoritative male voices in your own contexts. From this perspective it seems difcult to consider Sarah the strongest gure in this homily, as Brock has labeled her, because her primary action is submitting to Abraham. We should not leave our study of this homily without considering who would have produced such a text in the name of Ephrem. The practice of pseudepigraphy was widespread in early Christianity, beginning with writings ascribed to the apostles (and even Jesus himself) and carrying into the homiletic traditions of late antiquity. Because Ephrem was one of the most authoritative ecclesiastical writers in the Syriac tradition, it is not surprising that numerous texts were produced in his name.64 But what
63. In Brocks translation, he inserts several full stops and fails to include the qualifying expressions at the beginning of each new sentence. His rendering, therefore, obscures the rhetorical parallels and does not adequately represent the ow and force of Sarahs words. 64. The list of texts produced by various pseudo-Ephrems is extensive. See, for example, Francis J. Thomson, The True Origin of Two Homilies Ascribed to Ephraem Syrus Allegedly Preserved in Slavonic, in : Hulde aan Dr. Maurits Geerard bij de voltooiing van de Clavis Patrum Graecorum (Wetteren: Cultura, 1984), 1326;

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does our analysis of Memra II tell us about this case of pseudepigraphy? In his publication of the homily, Brock suggests that the author could be a woman, based on the unusual interest in, and the prominent roles accorded to, Sarah.65 We cannot categorically deny this possibility, but Brocks suggestion of female authorship rests primarily on his empowering view of a prominent Sarah as the hero, a view against which I have argued here. Rather, given the emphasis in the homily on restriction of female activities by means of patriarchal at, I would argue that the author is more likely a male bishop or priest claiming the voice of Ephrem in his attempts to keep the women in his congregation or community under his authority. Even in bringing the voice of Sarah to a more prominent place in the narrative, he ultimately controls and manipulates the biblical character for his own ends. The author of Memra II, therefore, re-tells the story of the Aqedah as a means of exerting social control over female cultic practices and itinerancy. To do so, the author creates a gure of Sarah that is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, she is presented as an example of female piety that would have resonated with fth-century Syrian women. On the other hand, she is portrayed as an example of female subservience, giving up her own desires to participate in and commemorate the death of her only son, in order to obey the patriarchal voice of Abraham. Behind this representation of Sarah stands the anonymous author, seeking to work out the tensions within his own ecclesiastical context and to control the activities of women by employing the matriarch as model. David L. Eastman is Assistant Professor of Religion at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio

Sebastian Brock, An Excerpt from a Letter to the People of Homs, Wrongly Attributed to Ephrem, OrChr 86 (2002): 112; David Bundy, The Pseudo- Ephremian Commentary on Third Corinthians: A Study in Exegesis and Anti-Bardaisanite Polemic, in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J.W. Drijvers, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Alex C. Klugkist, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 89 (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 5163. 65. Brock, Two Syriac Verse Homilies, 9899. Brock notes that a possible reading of a participle in line 2 would allow for a female author, but this grammatical point could be argued either way and is ultimately inconclusive.