Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XIII/Ephraim the Syrian and Aphrahat/Introductory Dissertation/Ephraim the Syrian/Section VII

VII.&#8212;Chronology of the Life of Ephraim.

Thus the fixed points for determining the chronology of Ephraim&#8217;s life are:

1.&#160; The death of his patron, St. Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis, in 338, after the first siege of that city.

2.&#160; The third siege, in which he was among the defenders of the city, in 350.

3.&#160; The surrender of Nisibis by Jovian, and its abandonment by its Christian inhabitants, 363; followed by Ephraim&#8217;s removal to Edessa.

4.&#160; The consecration of Basil to the see of C&#230;sarea, late in 370, followed by Ephraim&#8217;s visit to him there.

5.&#160; The deliverance of the Edessenes from the persecution of Valens (370&#8211;372), celebrated by Ephraim in a hymn.

6.&#160; Ephraim&#8217;s death, 373.

To this list it would be right to prefix the meeting of the Council of Nic&#230;a in 325, if the evidence of Ephraim&#8217;s presence at it, along with St. Jacob, were sufficient.&#160; But it has no early attestation; and no writer prior to Theodoret (Hist. Eccles. II. 30) associates the name of Jacob with any incident in Ephraim&#8217;s life.

The date of Ephraim&#8217;s birth is nowhere directly stated, but it is usually assumed to have been early in the reign of Constantine (306&#8211;337), on the authority of the Vatican Life, which says, &#8220;In the days of the victorious Constantine, true believer, was born the holy man Ephraim.&#8221;&#160; But the statement of the Parisian Life is less explicit, and is capable of a different meaning:&#8212;&#8220;He was in the days of the victorious Constantine.&#8221;&#160; This merely implies that Ephraim (if the pronoun represent him) lived in the reign of that emperor.&#160; But it rather appears that Ephraim&#8217;s father is meant, inasmuch as he is the subject of the immediately preceding sentence which describes him as a heathen priest; and the purport of the passage is, that the saint was the son of a man who not merely had been one of an idolatrous priesthood, but continued to be so after Constantine had acknowledged the Christian religion.

The earlier authorities give no express statement on this point; but a late tenth-century Greek menologium, that of the Emperor Basil (Porphyrogenitus), says that he &#8220;continued from the reign of Constantine to that of Valens,&#8221; &#8212;implying as it seems that he was born, as the Vatican Life represents, after Constantine&#8217;s accession in 306.

Considering, however, that the Life in both its forms affirms that Ephraim was brought by St. Jacob to the Council of Nic&#230;a in 325&#8212;in which it is borne out by Gregory Barhebr&#230;us in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle (who though a very late writer (1226&#8211;1286) had access to early authorities and judgment in using them)&#8212;it is hard to reconcile the chronology, for the improbability of the admission of a lad of nineteen, in any capacity, to that venerable assembly, is very great.&#160; If we accept it as a fact that he was chosen by Jacob to accompany him, and was permitted to be present among the Fathers at Nic&#230;a, it seems almost necessary to place his birth before Constantine became emperor.

Farther:&#160; the menologium above cited adds that he died &#8220;in extreme old age;&#8221; and the tone and tenor of his testament go far to confirm the truth of these words.&#160; But as he died in 373, he cannot have been more than 67 years old in that year if he was born in 306.&#160; No doubt 67 is a ripe age, but hardly sufficient to warrant the strong expression of the menologium.&#160; Without pressing its language unduly, we may surely take it as implying that he had passed the &#8220;threescore years and ten&#8221; of the Psalmist at the time of his death&#8212;in other words that he was born not later than the first or second year of the fourth century.

Thus by rectifying the text and rendering of the opening sentences of the Life, we relieve ourselves of the supposed necessity of placing his birth in or after 306.&#160; And his presence in the Council of 325, and his extreme old age in 373, concur in pointing to the beginning of the fourth century&#8212;if not to the later years of the third&#8212;as the probable time of that event.

However this may be, whether he was born in 306 or earlier, it is certain that by far the greater part of the long life of the &#8220;Deacon of Edessa&#8221;&#8212;all of it save its last ten or eleven years (363&#8211;373) was passed in his native Nisibis; and that he did not even attain the diaconate till he was considerably over sixty years of age, and within three years of his end.