A remarkable example of Christian poetry expressing St Ephrem's awareness of the sacramental character of the created world, and of the potential of everything in the created world to act as witness to the Creator. With a translation from Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis.
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A remarkable example of Christian poetry expressing St Ephrem's awareness of the sacramental character of the created world, and of the potential of everything in the created world to act as witness to the Creator. With a translation from Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis.
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A recent theological study, Brock & Parker's Saving Paradise, notes the emphasis on the recovery of paradise in the first millennium of Christian doctrine. St. Ephrem's Hymns here cited is a 4th C. development of the idea: Eden is lost through the Fall but restored as Paradise in the Resurrection. Further, it is an image of the redeemed individual, church, nation & cosmos: thus it is a model for harmonious & familial relations between the Divine, Humanity & Nature. Ephrem's hymns are a linked suite of poems, lyric & contemplative at once, expanding the theme in lucid & sensual language. The translation, by quite another Brock, is a little pedestrian, perhaps sacrificing freshness for clarity. The Hymns themselves are presently an unfamiliar form, & demand a good knowledge of Scripture & patient concentration if they are to yield their riches - but they are well worth the effort. It is centuries past time the church in the West recovered this doctrine, presently so pertinent.
