Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East: A Comparative Approach more

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East A Comparative Approach Ophir Münz-Manor (The Open University of Israel) e article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. ese relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. e signi cant connections of content between the di erent genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. us the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time. e characteristics held in common by the corpora of Jewish and Christian liturgical poetry, respectively, which were created in the eastern Byzantine Empire during the late antique period, have not received the scholarly attention that they deserve. e fact that the poetic corpora of these two cultures were both composed in relatively closely related Semitic languages, within an integrated geo-cultural space and within similar performative contexts raises questions concerning a possible relationship between the di erent literatures, and it is to the investigation of this relationship that my article is devoted. I wish to demonstrate that a literary analysis of poems that were composed by Jewish and Christian (and to some extent also Samaritan) poets beginning 1 is article is a revised version of an article originally published in Hebrew in Pe’amim 119 (2009): 131–72. e study has been written as part of an extensive comparative project in which I examine Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan poetry in the late antique period. It is based on an analysis of many dozens of poems from the three traditions. In the present context, the term Late Antiquity refers approximately to the time between the fourth and the seventh centuries, i. e., from the time that Christianity became the o cial religion of the Roman Empire up to the capture of its eastern portions by the Muslims. e translation of the Hebrew original was made by Dr. Michael Rand, to whom I am grateful. For the liturgical performative context of poetry during this period, see S. A. Harvey, “Praying Bodies, Bodies at Prayer: Ritual Relations in Early Syriac Christianity,” in Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church, vol. 4: e Spiritual Life (ed. P. Allen, L. Cross and W. Mayer; Sydney: St. Paul’s Publications, 2006), 149–67; G. Frank, “Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century,” in A People’s History of Christianity, vol. 3 (ed. D. Krueger; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 59–80; D. Krueger, “Christian Piety and Practice in the Sixth Century,” in e Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (ed. M. Maas; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 291–315; S. Elizur, “ e Congregation in the Synagogue and the Ancient Qedushta,” in Knesset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue, Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer (ed. S. Elizur, et al.; Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1994), 171–90 [Hebrew]. 2 Journal of Ancient Judaism, . Jg., – , ISSN © Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East with the fourth century indicates that they share a great number of similarities – formal, stylistic, and even thematic. is fact must be seen in light of the active cultural-religious dialogue that took place during this period, and in particular in light of the variegated connections between Syriac Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, since the overwhelming majority of the poems that I will be discussing belong to these two cultures. Taken together, this cultural 3 Fourth-century compositions include the poems of Ephrem, the Syrian Church Father, as well as those of Marqa, the pivotal Samaritan sage. For an overview of their work, see A. RodriguesPereira, Studies in Aramaic Poetry (c. 100 B. C. E.–c. 600 C. E.): Selected Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan Poems (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1997), 110–271. e rst Jewish poet known to us by name is Yose ben Yose, who was active during the h century and composed in Hebrew. e scholarly consensus, however, is that his compositions bring to a close the rst developmental stage of Hebrew liturgical poetry (piyyut), which dates to the fourth century. See E. Fleischer, “Piyyut,” in e Literature of the Sages, Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature (CRINT 3b; ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Fortress Press, 2006), 363–74. A great number of studies written over the course of the last three decades have laid bare this reciprocal activity, and the literature on this subject is quite extensive. I will limit myself to indicating three studies that have recently appeared, and which contain up-to-date bibliography: G. Bowersock, Mosaics as History: e Near East From Late Antiquity to Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); D. Boyarin, Border Lines: e Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and G. HasanRokem, Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). For the historical background of Jewish-Christian relations in Syria, see H. J. W. Drijvers, “Syrian Christianity and Judaism,” in e Jews Among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (ed. J. Lieu et al.; London: Routledge, 1992), 124–46; H. J. W. Drijvers, “Jews and Christians at Edessa,” JJS 36 (1985): 88–102. For the historical background in Palestine, see G. Stemberger, “Christians and Jews in Byzantine Palestine,” in Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms (ed. O. Limor and G. Stroumsa; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 293–319; H. Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). It is important to note that in many cases researchers have identied links between Syriac authors who belonged to the Eastern Church (e. g., Aphrahat) and Babylonian Judaism, since the two operated within the same geo-cultural framework, that of the Sassanian Empire. e present work concentrates primarily on Western Syriac Christianity, the branch that ourished in the Byzantine Empire. Literary data indicate that the distinction between east and west within the Syrian Church is of minor importance with regard to matters pertaining to poetic style. is matter, however, requires independent research and is not my concern at present. One of the classic studies in this eld is Jacob Neusner’s book on the Syrian Church Father Aphrahat and Babylonian Rabbinic Judaism. e study was rst published in 1971 and was re-issued in 1999 together with a new introduction; see J. Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: e Christian-Jewish Argument in Fourth-Century Iran (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999). For an up-to-date discussion of Aphrahat and the Jews, see A. Becker, “Anti-Judaism and Care for the Poor in Aphrahat’s Demonstration 20,” JECS 10 (2002): 305–27. Other studies have illuminated additional aspects of this subject; see, for example S. Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” JJS 30 (1979): 212–32; idem, “Some Syriac Legends Concerning Moses,” JJS 33 (1982): 237–55; idem, “A Palestinian Targum Feature in Syriac,” JJS 46 (1995): 271–82; B. L. Visotzky, “ ree Syriac Cruxes,” JJS 42 (1991): 167–75; S. Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit of Lips’: A Phenomenological Study of Prayer according to Mishna Berakhot 4:3, 5:5,” Tarbitz 63 (1994): 196–205 [Hebrew]; G. Rouwhorst, “Jewish Liturgical Traditions in Early Syr- 4 5 6 Ophir Münz-Manor relationship and the historical background indicate that these poetic groupings re ect a speci c poetics that crosses religious and cultural boundaries, which began to ourish during this period. is style opened a new period in the history of poetry written in the Semitic languages and introduced a great number of poetic innovations in comparison with ancient Semitic, and in particular biblical, verse. is new poetic tradition, which began to ourish in the late antique period and persisted into the Middle Ages, underwent many changes in the course of the periods and places in which it persisted. In this article I will concentrate on the beginning of the period in question, principally on the fourth through the sixth centuries, during which the new poetics was formed. Unfortunately, we cannot say much about the historical – let alone social – contexts of this cultural exchange. Our knowledge of the circumstances in which these poems were composed and performed is scant: we do not possess any manual of poetry writing or other meta-poetic references, and in many cases the only contemporaneous evidence for the existence of this liturgical poetry is the poetry itself. is essay, in any case, is devoted to the exposure of the shared poetic foundation of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan liturgical poetry. We may hope that the kind of comparative research advocated here will, in the future, yield results that will enable us to reconstruct, to whatever extent possible, the reality beyond the poetic texts. Comparative Research to Date At the beginning of research into Jewish liturgical poetry in Wissenscha des Judentums circles, there was a widespread belief that it had ourished as a result of the in uence of other poetic traditions, in particular the Syriac or the Arabic. ese notions were based on the assumption that Jewish poetry had ourished around the ninth century, within the heart of Muslim culture; this assumption was entirely refuted with the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, which showed that the beginnings of Jewish poetry were to be sought in Byzantine Palestine. To the best of my knowledge, the rst scholar to bring the question of the relationship between Jewish liturgical poetry and Christian poetry to the attention of researchers was the musicologist Eric Werner, in an article that he published in . In this article Werner claimed, inter alia, iac Christianity,” VC 51 (1997): 72–93; G. Rouwhorst, “Liturgical Time and Space in Early Christianity in Light of eir Jewish Background,” in Sanctity of Time and Space (eds. A. Houtman et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 265–84. See the studies indicated in J. Schirmann, “Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian Hymnology,” JQR 44 (1953): 128, n. 7. Today it is clear that Hebrew liturgical poetry arose in Byzantine Palestine around the fourth century and reached the east only around the eighth-to-ninth century. See, for example Fleischer, Piyyut. E. Werner, “Hebrew and Oriental Christian Metrical Hymns: A Comparison,” HUCA 22 (1950): 397–432. 7 8 9 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East that there existed a relationship between Jewish poetry and Christian poetry, both Syriac and Greek. In his book, which came out in , Werner pursued this line of inquiry and investigated in detail the connection between the liturgical music of the synagogue and that of the church; the second volume of this work came out in . One might have expected for Werner’s research to have stimulated this line of inquiry. His discussions, however, which concentrated on the musicological aspects of the question, were marred by many mistakes and methodological di culties, with the result that their contribution to the advancement of comparative research was very limited. e second person to deal with the matter thoroughly was the scholar of Hebrew poetry Hayyim Schirmann, in a study that appeared about three years a er the article by Werner mentioned above. Schirmann opened his discussion with the assertion that “the resemblance between them [i. e., Jewish and Christian poetry] is so great that it can hardly be regarded as coincidental.” Immediately a erwards, however, he added a note of caution: “even though there are many analogies between Jewish and Christian poetry, with regard to rhymes, acrostics and composition, why must the one necessarily have in uenced the other? Can certain poetical forms not emerge simultaneously and independently among di erent peoples?” A erwards, Schirmann o ered his view that Christian poets learned the poetic art from their Jewish counterparts. is argument was based on his assumption – subsequently shown to be inexact – that Jewish poetry preceded church poetry, which in turn was framed by the methodological attitude current in those days, that the history of Christianity in general and Christian liturgy in particular was suffused with the borrowing of Jewish materials and their adjustment to the new faith. Having gotten that far, Schirmann devoted the bulk of the article to an overview of the history of piyyut, and then o ered a general sketch of Syriac and Greek poetry, underscoring points of similarity and di erence among the three groups. Schirmann did not reach unambiguous conclusions with regard to the possible relationship between Jewish and Christian poetry, leaving the question open. Nor did this article, like Werner’s before it, encourage other researchers to investigate the matter; it too was le an unturned stone. 10 11 12 13 14 15 E. Werner, e Sacred Bridge: e Interdependence of Liturgy and Music in Synagogue and Church During the First Millennium (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). E. Werner, e Sacred Bridge: Liturgical Parallels in Synagogue and Early Church (New York: Schocken Books, 1970). On the shortcomings of the book(s) see P. Je ery, “Werner’s e Sacred Bridge, vol. 2: A Review Essay,” JQR 77 (1987): 283–98. Schirmann, Hymnology; it should be noted that Schirmann does not mention Werner’s article at all. Schirmann, Hymnology, 126. Today it is clear that Jewish and Christian liturgy in the late antique period evolved parallel to one another while maintaining variegated points of contact. On this whole matter, see the articles in A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard, eds., Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into Its History and Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Ophir Münz-Manor Forty years later, Ezra Fleischer published a long article under the title “Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in its Cultural Setting (Comparative Experiments).” In this article Fleischer discussed in detail a number of literary and formal characteristics of Hebrew poetry, compared them to contemporary developments in Christian poetry, and determined that there was no place for considering any “foreign” in uence on early piyyut. Fleischer’s conclusion was primarily founded on the a priori assumption that the strained relations between Jews and Christians in the rst centuries of the Common Era precluded the possibility of in uence within the sphere of the synagogue. Fleischer furthermore concluded that as regards form, an enormous gap exists between Hebrew poetry on the one hand and Christian (as well as Samaritan) poetry on the other. Finally, he claimed that the few points of contact that could be found between the two corpora were explicable in terms of the “Zeitgeist, the mysterious spirit of the ages,” as well as “the common factor of the human soul, in which much is shared, while in and of itself it is not unlimited … and it is indeed impossible that those who are striving to reach the same goal, though from di erent directions and varying distances, will not meet, if only occasionally and only by chance, on the way.” Ten years later, in a lecture at the Fourteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Fleischer clung to the position that there is absolutely no relationship between piyyut and Christian poetry, though this time he grounded his claim in the complete literary dissimilarity that in his opinion characterizes the di erent corpora. 16 E. Fleischer, “Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in its Cultural Setting (Comparative Experiments),” in Moises Starosta Memorial Lectures (First Series; ed. J. Geiger; Jerusalem: e Hebrew University, 1993), 63–98 [Hebrew]. It should be noted that in an article from the end of the 1970s, Fleischer attempted to explain the meaning of the technical terms qiqlar and pizmon in late antique Hebrew poetry against the background of the terminology of Byzantine poetry; see E. Fleischer, “Inquiries Concerning the Origin and Etymology of Several Terms in Medieval Hebrew Poetry,” Tarbitz 47 (1978): 185–96 [Hebrew]. Fleischer even claimed that “the assumption that it [i. e., prayer, and together with it piyyut] was formed on the basis of some foreign model or other, or that it is the result of some interaction with an alien cultural reality has never occurred to anyone” (Fleischer, Comparative Experiments, 64). Fleischer, Comparative Experiments, 96–97. is notion had already been mooted by Schirmann (see above, n. 14). Fleischer concluded his article with an expression of bitterness on account of the fact that “in our time … research is given … to a comparative craze and an unceasing pursuit of inter-cultural interactions.” See, for example: “Now piyyut poetry was outside of this narrow circle [of religion], and was born into the lap of great poetic cultures. Would it not then be reasonable that we should nd it impressed, either a lot or a little, with the stamp of the in uence of its surroundings? It is surprising that the matter is not so. Piyyut poetry, during the rst ve hundred years of its existence, does not display, to our great astonishment, any true sign of ‘foreign in uence’. It is a self-contained unit among the poetic cultures of its time and place, and the few similarities between it and its counterparts (these being for the most part common to all poetic cultures in all places and at all times) do not at all dispel its wonderful isolation and uniqueness. All of its structural and prosodic characteristics are the opposite of that which is shown by its contemporaries among the poetic corpora of the world. Also the sort of beauty that is sought in it is entirely di erent from that which is sought in the poetic 17 18 19 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East In the same year that Fleischer’s lecture appeared in print, Eden Hacohen published an article in which he entertained, inter alia, the possibility that Syriac dialogue poems in uenced Hebrew poems for the feast of Purim. Hacohen’s conclusion, likewise, was that despite a certain similarity between the poems, there was no room (in this case, at least) for considering any intercultural exchange. As against this trend, a number of studies from the last few years speak explicitly of the possibility that an active relationship existed between Jewish and Christian poetry. e matter is discussed in a number of works by Joseph Yahalom, who has searched, for example, for lines of similarity between the Greek kontakion and the Hebrew qedushta; in the book of Alfons RodriguesPereira on Aramaic poetry; in several articles by Wout van Bekkum, who looked for traces of Jewish-Christian polemic in Hebrew poetry; in essays by Michael Swartz, who sought to uncover in Jewish as well as Christian pocultures of its surroundings.” E. Fleischer, “Ancient Hebrew Poetry in the Cairo Genizah: Height and Width Dimensions,” De’ot 25 (2006): 19–21 [Hebrew]. E. Hacohen, “Studies in the Dialogue-Format of Early Eretz-Israel Piyyutim and their Sources, in Light of Purim Expansion-Piyyutim,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 20 (2006): 97–172 [Hebrew]. See, for example, his conclusion: “ ere is accordingly no necessity in assuming that Hebrew poets eagerly ocked to the churches for the purpose of borrowing foreign compositional models, seeing as dialogic structures were found within their immediate eld of vision,” 161. J. Yahalom, Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameichad, 1999), 155–56, 199–200 [Hebrew]; J. Yahalom, “Paradox in Late Antique Jewish Poetry,” in Jewish Studies in a New Europe (ed. U. Haxen et al.; Copenhagen: A. Reitzel A/S International Publishers, 1998), 886–905; J. Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry,” in e Synagogue in Late Antiquity (ed. L. I. Levine; Philadelphia: American School of Oriental Research, 1987), 123–24. e edition of Jewish Aramaic poems that Yahalom published together with Michael Sokolo contains a discussion of a poem that quotes the words of Jesus on the cross, in which the editors saw an anti-Christian parody; see M. Sokolo and J. Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity: Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Jerusalem: e Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999), 29 [Hebrew]; on this poem see also Sivan, Palestine, 152–55. For a di erent interpretation of the poem, see O. Münz-Manor, “Carnivalesque Ambivalence and the Christian Other in Jewish Poems from Byzantine Palestine,” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (ed. R. Bon l and G. Stroumsa; Leiden: Brill, 2011) [forthcoming]. And see the doubts expressed by Kister about this di erent interpretation: M. Kister, “Jewish Aramaic Poems from Byzantine Palestine and their Setting,” Tarbitz 76 (2007): 161–62, n. 302 [Hebrew]. Rodrigues-Pereira, Studies. is work is devoted to a selection of Aramaic poems that were composed between the rst century B. C. E. and the seventh century C. E. in di erent geographic and cultural contexts. I accept entirely Rodrigues-Pereira’s general conclusion with regard to the literary proximity of the various poems, though many details in this work require correction. For a partial itemization of these, see Matthew Morgenstern’s review of the book in JJS 49 (1998): 368–71. W. van Bekkum, “Anti-Christian Polemics in Hebrew Liturgical Poetry (Piyyut),” in Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays (eds. J. den Boe and A. Hilhorst; Leiden: Brill, 1993), 297–308; W. van Bekkum, “Lights of Sion and Lights of Edom: Poetry Between Liturgy and Literature in Early Synagogue and Church,” Dutch Studies 3 (1997): 109–20. 20 21 22 23 Ophir Münz-Manor etry equivalencies in liturgical and cultic outlook; and in a recent essay by Laura Lieber on the gure of Noah. Historians and art historians, such as Lee Levine, Seth Schwartz, Oded Irshai, and Steven Fine have also investigated Hebrew poetry against the background of the historical context in which it ourished. e present paper is a part of this direction of research and seeks to consolidate and expand it on the basis of a detailed literary analysis. Similarity in Poetic Technique between Poems e relationship between Jewish and Christian liturgical poetry from the late antique period is grounded in a similarity in poetic technique that appears across a great number of poems, with no reference to the contents of the poems or their respective liturgical functions. I will therefore consider a number of 24 M. Swartz, “Ritual About Myth About Ritual: Towards an Understanding of the Avodah in the Rabbinic Period,” JJTP 6 (1997): 135–55; M. Swartz, “Sage, Priest, and Poet: Typologies of Religious Leadership in the Ancient Synagogues,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue (ed. S. Fine; London: Routledge, 1999), 101–17. See also Z. Malachi, “Christian and Jewish Liturgical Poetry: Mutual In uences in the First Four Centuries,” Augustinianum 28 (1988): 237–48; this article addresses the comparative question but is marred in many places, much like the works of Werner that were mentioned above. For a linguistic cross-cultural investigation of the poetic concept of bayit in Syriac, Greek, and Hebrew poetry, see C. Aslanov, “Bayt (House) as Strophe in Hebrew, Byzantine and Near Eastern Poetry,” Le Muséon 121 (2008): 297–310. L. Lieber, “Portraits of Righteousness: Noah in Early Christian and Jewish Hymnography,” ZRGG 61 (2009): 332–55. is article was published a er the publication of the original Hebrew version of the essay. Levine even surmised that “without the existence of Christian poetry it is doubtful whether Jewish piyyut would have arisen and developed at that time.” See L. I. Levine, “Between Rome and Byzantium in Jewish History: Documentation, Reality, and the Issue of Periodization,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (ed. L. I. Levine; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Press, 2004), 38 [Hebrew]. S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C. E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 263–74. O. Irshai, “ e Priesthood in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity,” in Continuity and Renewal, 87–99. S. Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 165–205. It is, at the same time, important to note that this basic similarity does not imply stylistic unity, typological homogeneity, or compositional stasis. On the contrary, there are not a few di erences between the di erent branches of that Eastern-Semitic poetry whose basic outlines I am seeking to sketch in this article. is poetic tradition developed along a temporal axis, and in the process of this development the individual characteristics of every respective branch were ampli ed. In the fourth and h centuries there existed a great proximity between Aramaic, Syriac, and Hebrew poetry, whereas in the sixth and seventh centuries the individual characteristics of each one of the branches developed at an accelerated pace. However, these distinctions cannot obscure the qualitative link between the di erent branches, rst and foremost on account of the fact that stylistic distinctions and formal heterogeneity may be found within any literary system as such, and even within 25 26 27 28 29 30 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East poems that represent the di erent traditions. It should be noted, moreover, that the poems were selected solely for their formal and stylistic similarities, and not on account of their respective contents; it would be easy to replace any e rst one of these poems by many dozens of others that are available to us. poem, dedicated to a description of the death of Moses, was written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. e following are the rst four lines of the poem: A cry went out / throughout the land / at the time of the death / of Moses the Prophet e River Nile / mourned for him / “ e man whom I raised / from his youth!” All Israel’s tribes / wailed and cried / like ocks in the steppe / with no shepherd Shedding tears / the House of Israel say, / “Who will give us / a man like Moses?” A number of fundamental characteristics, which I would like to describe, are clearly recognizable here. From the formal point of view, we should note the use of an alphabetic acrostic and the tetrastichic structure of the poetic lines. e style of the poem is narrative-descriptive: it describes an entire episodic unit in a consecutive manner, while considerably expanding upon its scriptural source. Alongside the voice of the narrator of the poem, which provides its main developmental outline, are inserted “direct quotes” from various personages, in the present case those of the Nile in the second line and Israel in the fourth. the works of one poet. is matter should be stressed since on occasion distinctions of this nature are taken as proof of the absence of a real link between the poems. For example, Hacohen compared a Hebrew dialogic poem to a Syriac one, stressing the distinctions between them: a distinction in the nature of the dramatic development of the two poems and a distinction in the apportioning of strophes to the two dramatis personae in the poem (Hacohen, Studies, 158–60). ese distinctions indeed exist, but it is not clear why they bear witness, as in Hacohen’s opinion, to the lack of a basic relationship between the poems. As to Hebrew poetry, the reference is to the vast majority of poems from the period that is referred to in the scholarly literature as the Period of Pre-Classical piyyut. For a description of this poetic stratum and a list of the poems that are included in it (about 200 in number), see O. Münz-Manor, Studies in Figurative Language of Pre-Classical Piyyut (PhD. diss., e Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007) [Hebrew]. e Jewish Aramaic poems have been gathered in the book by Sokolo and Yahalom, though some of them, to all appearances those that are rhymed, were composed later, around the sixth and seventh centuries. e Samaritan poetry that is relevant to this discussion was composed by the poets Amram Dara, Marqa and Nana (Marqa’s son), and was published in Z. Ben Hayyim, e Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans: e Recitation of Prayer and Hymns (vol. 3, part 2; Jerusalem: e Academy of Hebrew Language, 1967) [Hebrew]. From the corpus of Syriac poetry one might cite such examples as the poems of the sugita and memra genres that appear in S. Brock, Sughyotho mgabbyotho (Holland: Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese of Central Europe, 1982); Brock, Eight Syriac Mimre on Biblical emes (Nederland: Bar-Hebraeus Verlag, 1993); the collection of acrostic poems that was published by B. Kirschner, “Alfabetische Akrosticha in der syrischen Kirchenpoesie,” OrChr 6 (1906): 44–69 (some of which have been re-published in the above mentioned works by Brock); and nally selected poems by Ephrem; see E. Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Fide (Louvain: Peeters, 1955), 9–35, 52–56, 209–12; idem, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Virginitate (Louvain: Peeters 1962), 28–35, 137–42; idem, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Paradiso und Contra Julianum (Louvain: Peeters, 1957), 54–62, 67–70. e Aramaic text is found in Sokolo and Yahalom, Aramaic Poetry, 244–45. at is naturally lost in translation (here and in other poems cited). 31 32 33 Ophir Münz-Manor e following lines are taken from a poem written in Syriac, which is a Christian Aramaic dialect. e poem describes the encounter between Joseph and Benjamin (as narrated in Genesis – ): O brothers, have you never seen / two brothers seated / speaking one with another / one not knowing the other? I wonder at you, youth / how bitter is your soul / how straitened your heart / how free- owing your tears! I’ll con de in you, my lord the king, / the great sorrow that’s mine / that the light of Joseph’s eyes / burns within me without end. In the rst line the narrator of the poem addresses his audience in a kind of introduction, laying out before them the dramatic situation. From this point onwards, the poem describes, in alternating lines of direct speech, the dialogic exchange between the brothers. Only at the end of the poem, which is not given here, is the voice of the narrator heard once more. e narrative dimension is present here as in the Jewish Aramaic poem that I quoted above, together with the interweaving of the di erent voices. From a formal perspective, the Syriac poem too employs an alphabetic acrostic together with a tetrastichic line. In contrast with the case of the Jewish and Christian traditions, not many samples of Samaritan Aramaic poetry have survived. However, even the small amount that is still available proves the existence of a fundamental relationship between this corpus and the poetic tradition with which I am concerned. Below are the four opening lines of a poem composed by Marqa, the great Samaritan leader of the fourth century: Come let us praise / the Lord of the world / many are His praises / that we must proclaim With the mouth He created, / with speech He ordained / as man labors / so reaps he his wage He brought forth a good world / out of that which was not / and lit in it lamps / that never die out Awesome and praised, / performer of wonders / before whom all tremble / whom dust disobeys. e poem is built as a hymn in praise of God, the Creator of the world, and its continuation includes sections in which the speaker addresses the public with words of reproach, encouraging them to turn from their evil ways and accept 34 35 e Syriac text is found in Brock, Sughyotho, 15. From the time that it was published about forty years ago by Ben-Hayyim (see n. 31 above), the Samaritan poetry has been almost entirely neglected by researchers. A recent article by Moshe Florentin discusses several aspects of this poetic corpus; see M. Florentin, “Embedded Midrashim in Samaritan Piyyutim,” JQR 96 (2006): 527–41. In the following sections of the article my infrequent reference to Samaritan poetry re ects our lack of samples that would be appropriate to the subjects under discussion. However, from the data that are available to us it appears that Samaritan poetry too belonged, to a greater or lesser degree, to the poetic tradition that is my concern at present. e Samaritan text is found in Ben-Hayyim, Samaritan, 166–67. 36 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East the yoke of God’s kingship. Here too we note the alphabetic acrostic and the tetrastichic structure of the poetic lines. ese formal characteristics are likewise present in the following example from Hebrew poetry, taken from the beginning of one of the early Seder Avodah texts for Yom Kippur: You established / the world from the beginning You founded the earth / and formed creatures When You surveyed the world / of chaos and confusion You banished gloom / and put light in place You formed from the earth / a lump of soil in Your image and commanded him / concerning the tree of life He forsook Your word / and he was forsaken from Eden but you did not destroy him / for the sake of the work of your hands. Beyond the by-now familiar structural aspects that are attested in this poem, it is important to once again note the outstanding narrative dimension of the composition, which describes the history of the world from the time of its creation by means of a re-working of the scriptural story. From even so cursory an investigation of the most basic level of composition, together with general literary characteristics, we learn of the existence of a common poetic foundation that is revealed in a sizable number of poems in the di erent traditions. It is important to note that this style is a unifying feature of the poetry composed in Semitic languages in the eastern portion of the Byzantine Empire. Greek and Latin poetry, which was composed primarily in the western part of the Empire, displays its own characteristic style, as will be discussed later on. Poetic Disputes between the Body and the Soul40 e formal-stylistic element described in the previous section constitutes, in e ect, the locus of the poetic linkage of the di erent corpora. is fact by itself provides an opening for comparative research that will doubtless cast new 37 It is worth noting the similarity between this poem and the famous Hebrew piyyut that begins with / as well as to the prayer / that is known from the work entitled Ma’ase Merkavah. For these two poems, see M. Swartz, “‘Alay LeShabbeah: A Liturgical Prayer in ‘Ma’aseh Merkabah,’” JQR 77 (1986): 179–90. For a possible similarity between and the Latin Christian liturgical hymn Te Deum, see I. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006), 198–202. Much has been written about the Seder Avodah. For an up-to-date summary, see M. Swartz and J. Yahalom, Avodah: An Anthology of Ancient Poetry for Yom Kippur (University Park, Penn.: e Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 1–42. e Hebrew text and English translation are found Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 70–71. For a comprehensive treatment of the Jewish and Christian disputes between body and soul – including new texts – see O. Münz-Manor, “When the Body Met the Soul: Dispute Poems 38 39 40 Ophir Münz-Manor light on Christian and Jewish poetic corpora and on their respective histories. However, in a number of cases, beyond a common poetic basis, there exist between Jewish and Christian poems thematic, hermeneutic, and philosophicalreligious ties. A double importance is to be attached to a discussion of such ties, insofar as it bolsters the claim of the existence of a relationship among the various poetic corpora, while also illustrating the relevance and importance of liturgical poetry to the investigation of Jewish-Christian cultures in the late antique period in general. e rst examples illustrating such thematic ties will be taken from a number of poetic disputes between the body and the soul. e poetic dispute genre, whose roots go back to ancient Mesopotamian, particularly Sumerian and Akkadian, literature, is represented in the poetic tradition that I am discussing here by a sizeable number of poems. Indeed, it is di cult to reconstruct the literary stages connecting ancient poetic disputes to those composed in the late antique period. Nevertheless, researchers who have studied the question have concluded that the material stems from a continuous literary tradition. In any case, the most outstanding examples of this genre are the poetic disputes between the body and the soul, which represent a contest between two opponents, each of whom tries in turn to convict the other of refrom Late Antiquity from a Comparative Perspective,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore and Hebrew Literature (forthcoming) [Hebrew]. For the ancient background of such disputes, together with a discussion of the Syriac sources, see S. Brock, “Tales of Two Beloved Brothers: Syriac Dialogues Between Body and Soul,” in From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions Between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity (ed. S. Brock; Brook eld: Ashgate, 1999), 29–38. For Jewish examples, see J. Yahalom, “‘Syriac for Dirges, Hebrew for Speech’: Ancient Jewish Poetry in Aramaic and Hebrew,” in e Literature of the Sages, 375–91. Kister has recently devoted a lengthy discussion to Jewish Aramaic poetry, in the course of which he has made some very important observations with regard to the dispute between the body and the soul; see Kister, Jewish Aramaic, 119–20. H. Vanstiphout, “ e Mesopotamian Debate Poems: A General Presentation (Part I),” Acta Sumerologica 12 (1990): 271–318; Vanstiphout, “ e Mesopotamian Debate Poems: A General Presentation. Part II: e Subject,” Acta Sumerologica 14 (1992): 339–67. For an excellent introduction to this subject, which includes a discussion of disputes in the Jewish midrashic literature, see R. Murray, “Aramaic and Syriac Dispute-Poems and eir Connections,” in Studia Aramaica: New Sources and New Approaches, ed. J. Green eld, M. Geller, and M. Weitzman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157–87. e classic discussion of dispute poems within the context of Jewish poetry is by S. Spiegel, “ e Dispute of the Limbs,” in e Fathers of Piyyut: Texts and Studies Toward a History of the Piyyut in Eretz Yisrael (ed. S. Spiegel; New York: e Jewish eological Seminary of America, 1996), 387–426. For an up-to-date discussion of Hebrew dispute poems, see E. Hacohen, “Studies in Hebrew Dialogue: Piyyutim between Winter and Summer,” Piyyut in Tradition 4 (2008): 61–84. For the situation in Syriac poetry, see S. Brock, “Syriac Dialogue Poems: Marginalia to a Recent Edition,” Le Muséon 97 (1984): 29–58; Brock, “Syriac Dispute Poems: e Various Types,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East (eds. H. Vanstiphout and G. Reinink; Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 109–19. Murray, Connections, 160–65; S. Brock, “ e Dispute Poem: From Sumer to Syriac,” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 1 (2001): 3–10. 41 42 43 44 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East sponsibility for a person’s sins. I will illustrate the relationship of the poems by means of three poetic disputes between the body and the soul that represent the di erent traditions: the rst in Jewish Aramaic, the second in Syriac, and the third in Hebrew. e rst example is taken from a poetic dirge for a man, written, as indicated, in Jewish Aramaic, and characterized, as in the above cases, by an alphabetic acrostic and tetrastichic lines. It should be especially noted that the poem is not composed for a speci c person but rather contains universal words of rebuke, which the professional mourner proclaimed before those participating in the funeral procession in order to arouse in them the fear of sin and move them to repentance. e poem opens with general pronouncements on the death of a human being, on the soul’s leaving the body and on the judgment in store for the two of them. e seventh strophe of the poem contains the introduction leading up to the dispute: e King exalted / glorious and unequaled / He will judge / body and soul as one Soul and body / contend at law together / rendering an account / of every deed. A er a statement to the e ect that God is to judge the body and the soul together and a description of setting, we nd an account of the dispute itself. Below are two strophes in which the body and the soul accuse one another: e body cries out / woe, woe is me / you are the one that broke me / and sapped my strength My spirit when I rendered / my speech ed / neither talk nor beauty / have I not had enough? en begins the soul / to say to the body / you are the one that performed / every evil deed Beneath the dust / your corpse is held fast / locked up and placed / in the house of imprisonment. e dispute is organized, as is customary in this genre, in the form of direct speech quoted from the two contestants, each of whom speaks in turn. In the 45 Almost everyone who has studied these poems has noted the relationship between this subgenre and the poetic tradition of the Ancient Near East, as well as the fundamental relationship between the poems themselves; see S. Brock, “ e Dispute Between Soul and Body: An Example of a Long-Lived Mesopotamian Literary Genre,” ARAM 1:1 (1989): 53–64; Yahalom, Dirge, 384–86. Hacohen has claimed that the mere existence of a Mesopotamian model supplies an explanation for the similarity between the poetic corpora of the late antique period, thus obviating the argument for an actual relationship between them; see Hacohen, Studies, 160–61. As will become clear below, an examination of the ancient background of the dispute poems vis-à-vis the speci c innovations of the late antique poets strengthens the claim for the existence of actual links between the poems from the later period. In this poem, use is also made of rhyme, a poetic technique that characterizes Jewish poetry from around the beginning of the sixth century. It is therefore likely that this poem postdates slightly the central time-period on which I am concentrating here. It is clear, however, that from the point of view of the thematic link between the various poetic corpora this fact is of secondary signi cance. e Aramaic text is found in Sokolo and Yahalom, Aramaic Poetry, 302–05. 46 47 Ophir Münz-Manor sample quoted above the body addresses the soul, claiming that it is she who is to be held responsible, and submitting as evidence the fact that from the moment the soul le him, he lost the power of speech, which here represents life itself. e soul in turn accuses the body of performing all manner of forbidden acts, even claiming, quite cleverly, that his earthen grave is in fact a prison, and hinting thereby that he has in any case already been consigned to the place that is appropriate for one who has been convicted at law. A er an additional round of arguments comes the concluding strophe, which reports the verdict of the judge: e Mighty One sees / all the acts of mankind / and says to the body / and to the soul You both / will be judged / for every deed / on the day of reckoning. e poet thereby unambiguously proclaims that the body and the soul are one unit, indivisible, and that the two of them must bear the consequences of their joint activity. is conclusion agrees with the view that is well known from many places in rabbinic literature as well as the view accepted in Syriac Christianity. e following poem, composed in Syriac, was performed during Lent, a period in which there is a notable stress on the themes of judgment and repentance, similar to the Jewish Day of Atonement. e rst line of the poem contains words of introduction: Soul and Body / fell into dispute / and became engaged / in a great struggle Let us now listen / to what they are saying / in the great contest / in which they are engaged. Like the Jewish poet, who represents before his audience the dispute between the body and the soul, the Christian poet addresses the congregation in the church, announcing to them that they are about to hear the words of the contestants who are being brought to justice. From this point onwards in the poem comes the dispute itself, which continues over the course of many strophes. I will cite as an example the exchange recorded in the two lines that begin with the acrostic letter bet: It was in you, body, / that all the evil passions / sprang up / they did not touch me e lusts / issued from you / that is why it is you / who are to be chastised It was in you, soul, / that I was stirred up / I received / my sensation in you Had your emotions / not come down to me / passions would never / have harmed me. 48 49 For the broader philosophical context of the dispute, see Kister, Jewish Aramaic, 119–20. E. E. Urbach, e Sages: eir Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 214– 54; N. Rubin, “ e Sages’ Conception of the Body and Soul,” in Essays in the Social Scienti c Study of Judaism and Jewish Society (eds. S. Fishbane and J. Lightstone; Montreal: Concordia University, 1990), 47–103. H. J. W. Drijvers, “Body and Soul: A Perennial Problem,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues, 121–34. e Syriac text is found in Brock, Sughyotho, 88–92. e English translation is taken from Brock, Soul and Body, 58–63. 50 51 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East In the rst line the soul accuses the body of being the exclusive source of bad deeds, and in the second line the body accuses the soul of animating him to perform the forbidden deeds, claiming that without her he would have been incapable of sinning at all. Finally, I will quote a line from the section of the poem containing the verdict, in which, as in the Jewish Aramaic poem, it is determined that both the body and the soul are guilty. Both of you / now have acted together / and a single judgment / is reserved for you Join one another / and do not be separated / for there is no division / between you. Let me brie y underscore the points of similarity between the two poems. From the formal point of view, they are both composed in accordance with an alphabetic acrostic, and they are both organized into tetrastichic lines. Each represents before the listener a dramatic dialogue between the body and the soul, which in both cases is organized in accordance with a tripartite structure: an introduction, a debate and a verdict. e fact that both poems are composed in an Aramaic dialect is of paramount importance, not because this in itself is proof of the existence of a relationship between the poems, but rather as a rm basis for reciprocal inter-cultural in uence as well as the transfer of information between the di erent traditions. e following example, from a Hebrew poem for Yom Kippur is di erent in several respects from the two Aramaic poems, but ultimately it too is a part of the same literary-cultural trend. I will begin by quoting the strophe that introduces the debate, which is the second strophe of the poem: When You set forth judgment / You call to the heavens / to render the soul us also the earth / You call from below / to raise up the esh When they are examined / who sinned unto Me / You say and each other they reprove. From the point of view of content, what is found here is similar to the material given in the introductory units of the Jewish Aramaic and the Syriac poems, respectively. e poet introduces the two contestants, in the present case by means of an address to God, it being clear that the address is rhetorical and is intended for the worshippers in the synagogue. In the present case as well, use is made of an alphabetic acrostic, with every letter appearing three times. e tripartite form is expressed also in the division of the line into three stichs, a phenomenon that obviously departs from the widespread tetrastichic structure. As Yahalom has shown, this tripartite form is well suited to serve the ideational intent of the poem. An investigation of the debate strophes of the 52 In fact, the verdict sections in the two poems are so similar with regard to their verbal formulation as well their being reserved for the acrostic letter tav that it would have been possible, from a literary point of view, to switch them without disturbing the integrity of the respective poems. It seems that there can be no more forceful proof of the great proximity between the two poems. e Hebrew text is found in J. Yahalom, “ e World of Grief and Mourning in the Genizah,” Ginzei Qedem: Genizah Research Annual 1 (2005): 133–34 [Hebrew]. J. Yahalom, Dirge, 381–84. 53 54 Ophir Münz-Manor poem in question proves that the dramatic exchange between the body and the soul is quite close to the corresponding sections in the Aramaic songs that were discussed above: e esh declares / the soul led me / on a crooked road Fancies of the heart / visions of the eye / rousing of the appetite She was taken from me/ [leaving] no form and no speech / and no sin in me. And the soul says / you dare condemn me / that you may be justi ed When you were eager / with the gain of oppression / to ll your trunk And ever since I withdrew / I have tasted no food / here I am, confront me. e body, referred to here as “the esh,” accuses the soul, as expected in this genre, claiming that only because of her insinuations was he forced to act as accessory to sin, and cites as evidence the fact that without her he is not capable of acting at all. e soul claims the exact opposite: From the moment that I le the body, she says, I am no longer forced to engage in material matters; these, according to her, are the root of evil. e verdict is formulated by the poet as a parable about a lame man and a blind man who were commanded by a king to guard a garden rich in fruit: ey are likened to a pair / the lame and the blind / guardians of a king’s orchard e fruits were stolen / by the e orts of both / but they deceived in the admission e king hastened / to expose their deception in the court / so he combined and convicted them. is parable about the lame man and the blind man is well known from rabbinic literature, and it appears also in the writings of the fourth-century Church Father Epiphanius of Salamis, a fact that in itself is an indication of its multifaceted nature, which allows it to function within di erent cultural contexts. In any case, for my purposes it is important that the verdict of shared guilt meted out to the body and the soul is con rmed here as well. e three poems that I have quoted here treat one subject, representing it in the tripartite division of a dispute poem, as the latter is known from the poetic tradition of the Ancient Near East. e arguments are similarly formulated in all the poems, which employ an alphabetic acrostic and a four-part (in one case three-part) structural division that embraces the entire poem. All of these characteristics may be found in additional poetic disputes between the body and the soul that were composed within the chronological limits that de ne the basis of the present discussion. 55 For this matter, see Yahalom, Dirge, 123–25; W. Luitpold, “ e Colloquy of Marcus Aurelius with the Patriarch Judah I,” JQR 31 (1941): 259–86; Luitpold, “ e Parable of the Blind and the Lame: A Study in Comparative Literature,” JBL 62 (1943): 333–39; M. Bregman, “ e Parable of the Lame and the Blind: Epiphanius’ Quotation From an Apocryphon of Ezekiel,” JTS 42 (1991): 125–38; M. Kister, “Aggadoth and Midrashic Methods in the Literature of the Second Temple Period and in Rabbinic Literature,” in Higayon l’Yona: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash Aggadah and Piyyut in Honor of Professor Yona Fraenkel (eds. J. Levinson, J. Elbaum, and G. Hasan-Rokem; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2007), 254–59 [Hebrew]. See, for example, Yahalom, Dirge; Brock, Body and Soul. Poetic disputes between the body and the soul in Semitic languages and also in various European languages were written also 56 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East On the one hand, the poetic disputes between the body and the soul supply concrete evidence of the in uence of the Ancient Near Eastern heritage on the poetic tradition that ourished in the fourth century, while on the other hand they lay bare the great powers of innovation evidenced by the compositions stemming from the late antique period. First and foremost it must be noted that the late antique poets borrowed from the Ancient Near Eastern tradition only the basic format of the poetic dispute between two personi ed entities, but not the dispute between the body and the soul speci cally, as the latter is not attested in the ancient tradition. e combination of tradition and innovation is also in evidence in the use of acrostics. As is well known, the acrostic principle is attested already in Scripture, including the Syriac Version, whereas its use in the in the Middle Ages; see M.-A. Bossy, “Medieval Debates of Body and Soul,” Comparative Literature 28 (1976): 144–63. It is worth noting that judging by the texts that have survived, the Semitic poetry that was composed before the fourth century C. E. was written in most cases in accordance with biblical poetics. is is the case, for example, with the anksgiving Scroll from Qumran, written in Hebrew; see B. Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 321–56. For the similarities and di erences between Qumran poetry and piyyut, see W. van Bekkum, “Qumran Hymnology and Piyyut: Contrast and Comparison, ” RevQ 23 (2007): 341–56. For a general overview of Hebrew poetry during the Second Temple Period and at its end, see J. H. Charlesworth, “Jewish Hymns, Odes, and Prayers (ca. 167 B. C. E.-135 C. E.),” in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters (eds. R. A. Kra and G. W. E. Nickelsburg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 411–36. In Syriac poetry, this poetic tendency is represented by the Odes of Solomon. For the Syriac text, see J. H. Charlesworth, e Odes of Solomon: e Syriac Texts (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978). For an up-to-date overview of the matter, see M. Lattke, “Die Oden Salomos: Einleitungsfragen und Forschungsgeschichte,” ZNW 98 (2007): 277–307. Around the third century, the Manichean Psalms were composed in Syriac. ese, however, have been preserved in Coptic, and it is therefore di cult to judge their poetic characteristics; nevertheless, it appears that they also hewed close to biblical poetics. For this composition, see C. Allberry and H. Ibscher, A Manichaean Psalm-Book (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938); T. Säve-Söderbergh, Studies in the Coptic Manichaean Psalm-Book: Prosody and Mandaean Parallels (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktr, 1949); M. Krause, “Zum Au au des KoptischManichaeischen Psalmenbuches,” in Manichaica Selecta: Studies Presented to Professor Julien Ries on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed., A. Tongerloo and S. Giversen; Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 177–90; J. BeDuhn, “Manichaean Hymnody,” in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (ed. R. Valantasis; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 364–68. For the relationship between the Manichean Psalms and the Odes of Solomon, see H. J. W. Drijvers, “Odes of Solomon and Psalms of Mani: Christians and Manichaeans in ird Century Syria,” in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. G. Quispel et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 117–30. In principle, poetry written in Mandaic (an Aramaic dialect that was in use among Gnostic groups in Mesopotamia in the late antique period) is also relevant to my discussion, but serious problems of dating prevent its inclusion at this stage. For the moment, see E. Drower, e Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (Leiden: Brill, 1959). In the Hebrew Bible, the alphabetic acrostic is attested, for example, in Psalm 119, Proverbs 31, and Lamentations 1–4. In the Peshitta, i. e., the Syriac Version, the acrostic is retained only in Lamentations. In the Greek Septuagint only the fact that the Hebrew original contains an acrostic is indicated. For this whole matter, see D. Krueger, Writing and Holiness: e Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 169–74. 57 58 Ophir Münz-Manor Ancient Near East is rare. ere is no doubt that biblical acrostics served as a model for the late antique poets when they decided to employ this structural device. is, however, is not su cient to explain the renaissance experienced by acrostics in Christian, Jewish, and Samaritan poetry that was composed in Semitic languages starting with the fourth century CE. In other words, the existence of the ancient source in itself cannot explain how, a er hundreds of years during which it was almost entirely out of use, the alphabetic acrostic became an obligatory device in the poetic traditions of both Christian as well as Jewish poets. In light of all the evidence that has been brought forth up till now in this article, the most reasonable conclusion is that a common poetics guided the di erent poets. I have mentioned earlier that we do not possess handbooks on poetics that are contemporaneous with the compositions – whether because these have been lost, or were transmitted by oral tradition – hence it is very difcult to determine how precisely this poetics was formulated, and how it was di used among the poets. In itself, however, this does not su ce to obscure the fact that the poems being discussed here re ect well-formulated views on poetics that crossed religious boundaries. A similar picture emerges from an investigation of the structure of the poetic lines, together with their rhythmic organization. Here, too, there exists a fundamental principle that unites the di erent poetic corpora, a principle that re ects a true poetic revolution. In ancient Semitic poetry, and in this context it is biblical poetry that is of primary importance, there exists only one principle for the organization of the poetic line: parallelism. Every single line of biblical poetry is built symmetrically, but there is no regularity either in the number of stichs in every line or in the length of the lines. As opposed to Classical Greek poetry (and Latin Poetry in its wake), in which every poetic line is subject to a basic, uni ed metrical pattern, there is no such system either in biblical poetry or in other poetic corpora from the Ancient Near East. At the most, it is possible to identify some sort of regularity in them – in the number of stresses, syllables or other units – a regularity that is not obligatory, and in any case is not systematic. On the other hand, in the poems with which I 59 For a general overview of the use of acrostics in the Ancient Near East, see J. Brug, “Near Eastern Acrostics and Biblical Acrostics: Biblical Acrostics and eir Relationship to Other Ancient Near Eastern Acrostics,” Paper presented at the NEH Seminar: e Bible And Near Eastern Literature (New Haven: Yale, 1997) [http://www.wlsessays.net/ les/BrugAcrostics. pdf]. For this device in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, see R. Marcus, “Alphabetic Acrostics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,” JNES 6 (1947): 109–15. On a ninth century Syriac manual of poetics, see J. Watt, “Antony of Tagrit as a Student of Syriac Poetry,” Le Muséon 98 (1985): 261–79. As to biblical poetry, see in extenso J. Kugel, e Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). For Ugaritic poetry, see S. Segert, “Parallelism in Ugaritic Poetry,” JAOS 103 (1983): 295–306. e in uence of parallelism is discernible in the poetry with which I am concerned, since the tetrastich is grounded principally in a division of the line into two equal units of meaning. Parallelism, however, is not the primary factor in the structure of the poetic line. 60 61 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East am concerned here, one notes an insistence on a regular, primarily four-part, division of the poetic line in its entirety. e rise of this obligatory principle in the poetic corpora discussed here cannot be explained as an accident either, in particular on account of the fact that, as mentioned above, before us is a revolutionary innovation in the history of poetry composed in Semitic languages. e poets of the late antique period instituted another great innovation: the counting of units that are precisely de ned (to one degree or another), which are repeated in all of the lines of the poem and serve to organize them from beginning to end. In fact, in every one of the branches of the poetic tradition the poets counted di erent units. For example, the Syriac poets counted syllables, in most cases twelve or fourteen syllables in every line. In Jewish and Samaritan poetry from the fourth and h centuries the reigning principle was “the four-part rhythm” ( ), as it is termed in the scholarly literature. is “meter” counted accented words, according to a division of two main stresses in every one of the four stichs. e counting principle is also preserved in the “metrical” system known as “word meter,” ( ) which is known from a limited number of Hebrew poems (for an example, see below). e “word meter” stipulates a xed number of words in every line. From the point of view of rhythm, this is a loose “meter” indeed, since in it a very short and a very long word are reckoned as being equivalent for purposes of the word count. However, it is precisely this fact that underscores the principle underlying the system that is at work in the poetry of the late antique period: the speci cation of a basic number of units, which undergirds all of the lines of the poem. In this regard, therefore, by instituting a xed number of countable units in every line of a given poem, the eastern poets approached their colleagues composing in Greek and Latin, who continued to 62 is matter is obviously related to the four-part division discussed above, but we are nevertheless dealing with two di erent phenomena. Had they wanted to do so, the poets could have taken care to implement a four-part division of all of the poetic lines without taking care that all of these lines included an equal number of linguistic units. For meter in Syriac poetry, see S. Brock, St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 36–39. It should be pointed out that, because of the insistence on a four-part structure of the basic poetic unit, the metrical organization of the line frequently looks as follows: 7 + 7 / 7 + 7. From the strictly prosodic point of view, this is not a precise meter, but despite this, the poet did count a xed number of units in every line. In later stages, around the sixth and seventh centuries, Hebrew poetry switched to a freer stress meter, though care was taken to impose the pattern throughout the whole composition (or, occasionally, within every one of its parts). For meter in ancient Hebrew poetry, see B. Harshav, e History of Hebrew Versi cation from the Bible to Modernism (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2008), 41–55 [Hebrew]; E. Fleischer, “Remarks Concerning the Metric System of Ancient Hebrew Liturgical poetry,” Ha-Sifrut/Literature 7 (1977): 70–83 [Hebrew]. According to Fleischer, “With regard to this matter also [i. e., the metrical system] Hebrew liturgical poetry is clearly set apart from its surroundings. is is a phenomenon that serves as impressive evidence of the powers of independence inherent within early Hebrew composition, together with its consistent refusal to graze in foreign pastures” (80). Fleischer, “Remarks Concerning the Metric System,” 72–73. 63 64 65 Ophir Münz-Manor employ quantitative meters. It is interesting to note that evidence of a sort for the possibility that Syriac poetry adopted its meters from Greek poetry may be obtainable from a short notice by the h-century Christian historiographer Sozomen, though there are those who doubt the veracity of this tradition. Be that as it may, the fact that poetry composed in Semitic languages beginning from the late antique period adopted an innovative structural-rhythmic principle is additional proof of my contention with regard to the existence of a shared poetic tradition. Poems on the Sacrifice of Isaac67 Examples of thematic links between poems belonging to the corpora under discussion here may be found also in compositions devoted to a re-telling of scriptural stories. is is obviously a very extensive category, comprising a great number of Jewish and Christian poems. For the purposes of exemplifying thematic links I will concentrate here on poems devoted to a description of the events narrated in Genesis . As many researchers have shown, this chapter was very popular during the late antique period, in biblical hermeneutics, theological speculation, and the visual arts. Neither has the Binding of Isaac (or Akedah) been neglected in the corpora of liturgical poetry with which I am concerned at present. I will begin with a number of lines from a short Hebrew poem devoted to the subject: e steadfast one made you known before you were known by the world he revealed to all creatures the path which they should take 66 67 H. J. W. Drijvers, Bardaisan of Edessa (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp, 1966), 180–82; Brock, Paradise, 37. On the performative aspects of these poems, see O. Münz-Manor, “Narrating Salvation: Sacri cial Rituals in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry,” in Jews and Other Imperial Cultures in Late Antiquity (eds. A. Y. Reed and N. Dohrmann; University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming). e points of contact are especially apparent in poems devoted to stories from those portions of scripture that are common to Christians and Jews. Hacohen touched on this subject in the following: “I have speci cally chosen the sugita whose dramatic plot is rooted in the Old Testament, on the assumption that the development of mutual in uences between the two poetic cultures is likely to have been easier within the context of shared scriptural content”; Hacohen, Studies, 58–59, n. 88. e works dealing with this subject are very numerous, and I will refer only to a few relevant studies: E. Kessler, Bound By the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacri ce of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); W. van Bekkum, “ e Aqedah and Its Interpretation in Midrash and Piyyut,” in e Sacri ce of Isaac: e Aqedah (Genesis 22) and Its Interpretations (ed. E. Noort and E. J. C. Tigchelaar; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 86–95; S. Brock, “Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac,” Le Muséon 99 (1986): 61–129. I refer to those poems that are primarily devoted to the events of the Binding. Many other poems, Jewish as well as Christian, contain brief references to scenes from the events. 68 69 70 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East He was designated from among twenty generations and withstood every trial Lord, you put him to the test ten times You granted him o spring in his hundredth year Benign One, when you said to him “I desire your child as a fragrant o ering,” he rushed to ful ll the command he lost no time at all Quickly he split the wood took up the re and the knife loaded his favored one, Isaac, with the faggot for the burnt o ering. e poem tells the scriptural story anew in sparse and measured language, underlining the self-sacri ce and eagerness of Isaac, which is represented beautifully by the short poetic lines that are subject to an alphabetic acrostic and each one of which contains three words. Worthy of notice as well is the manner in which the poet has woven together his di erent sources into a unitary re-telling of the story of the Binding. is narrative tendency, which I have already mentioned, is of particular importance to my subject, since it too is a central characteristic of the Jewish and Christian liturgical poetry that is being discussed here. e poems that follow in my discussion serve to continue and expand the tendency that I have noted in the Hebrew poem. Let me cite as an example a number of lines from a Jewish Aramaic poem. In the following lines, Isaac addresses Abraham, and says to him: “How will you go and tell / my mother Sarah / how will you leave me / and go home?” And Isaac kissed / his father Abraham / and commanded him / told him this: “Sprinkle my blood / over the altar / assemble my ashes / and bring it to my mother 71 72 73 e Hebrew text is found in Bernard Septimus, “ : From Early Piyyut to the Babylonian Talmud,” Leshonenu 71 (2009): 88–93 [Hebrew]; English translation by T. Carmi, e Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 201–02. is poem employs the “word meter” mentioned above, see n. 65. See, for example S. A. Harvey, “Spoken Words, Voiced Silence: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition,” JECS 9 (2001): 105–31; O. Münz-Manor, “All About Sarah: Questions of Gender in Yannai’s Poems on Sarah’s (and Abraham’s) Barrenness,” Proo exts 26 (2006): 344–74. It is very important to note that in this matter poetry anticipated developments in late midrashic literature, which shows a great propensity for the retelling of scriptural stories, as opposed to the tendency to abbreviate such stories observable in early midrashim. On the tendency toward narrativization in the Tanhuma literature, with a stress on the story of the Binding, see Y. Elbaum, “From Sermon to Story: e Transformation of the Akedah,” Proo exts 6 (1986): 97–116. More generally see D. Stein, Maxims, Magic, Myth: A Folkloristic Perspective of Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), 1–8, 105–06 [Hebrew]; J. Levinson, e Twice Told Tale (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005), 246–50, 315–18 [Hebrew]. In Levinson’s words, “One has also to examine this development from the point of view of early piyyut and the narrativization of midrashim that we witness in the sidrei avoda and in the qedushta” (318). Ophir Münz-Manor My life and death / it’s all in His hands / I thank him that / he has chosen me Blessed are you, father, / they will say / I am the ram for the burnt o ering / of the living God, Let your anger be stronger / than your compassion, father / be the man who does not spare his son Like a merciless man / take up your knife / and slaughter me / lest I shall become unclean.” It is easy to see how the poet reworked the scriptural story, showing it in a new, and sometimes even surprising, light. e poem is uni ed in its treatment of Isaac as the center of focus, as opposed to the scriptural story, in which his persona is characterized by almost complete passivity. e poem contains, moreover, details that do not appear in scripture at all, such as the mention of Sarah, as well as Isaac’s anxiety that some ritual imperfection may cause his sacri ce to be rendered unacceptable, as though it were an actual cultic sacri ce. is Jewish Aramaic poem stands in direct relationship to the following excerpt, taken from a Syriac poem devoted to the Binding: Draw near, father, / and bind me, / tie tightly / for me my bonds, Lest my limbs / should shake / and there is a blemish / in your sacri ce Sarah was wanting / to see me / when I was bound / like a lamb, And she would have wept / beside me with laments / and by her tears / I would have received comfort; O my mother Sarah, / I wish / I could see you, / and then be sacri ced. e elaboration, creative and dramatic, of the scriptural story once again underscores the persona of Isaac, who is perfectly aware of the fact that he is about to be sacri ced and even encourages his father to perform the act. In this poem as well, Isaac expresses misgivings lest his sacri ce be rendered ritu74 75 e Aramaic text is found in Sokolo and Yahalom, Aramaic Poetry, 126–27. is poem shows fascinating links to unusual traditions dealing with Isaac. For these traditions, see for now S. Spiegel, e Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to O er Isaac As a Sacri ce (New York: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1969), 38–44. I intend to discuss this matter in extenso in a separate article. ere is no doubt that this poem engages in a lively literary dialogue with additional Jewish sources, such as the Aramaic Targumim (translations) of the Pentateuch and the midrashic literature. For example, the motif of the ritually un t sacri ce appears in the Jewish Aramaic Targumim to Gen 22:10. For this matter speci cally, as well as the Binding in the Targumim in general, see R. Hayword, “ e Present State of Research into the Targumic Account of the Sacri ce of Isaac,” JJS 32 (1981): 127–50. On the Binding of Isaac in the midrashic literature, see for example Elbaum, Sermon; Van Bekkum, Akedah; M. Nieho , “ e Return of Myth in Genesis Rabbah on the Akeda,” JJS 46 (1995): 69–87; Levinson, Twice Told, 246–50. Syriac text and English translation found in Brock, Verse Homilies, 119, 124. For a general overview of the place of the Binding in Syriac Christianity, see S. Brock, “Genesis 22 in Syriac Tradition,” Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy: Études bibliques o ertes à l’occasion de son 60e anniversaire (eds. P. Casseti et al.; OBO 38; Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1981), 2–30. 76 77 78 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East ally un t, this time on account of an involuntary movement on his part, and he also remembers his mother. e manner in which the scriptural story is reworked in these two poems points to a signi cant link between them. As opposed to contemporaneous midrashim, the two poems construct a narrative continuum that is almost entirely devoid of scriptural proo exts, and which in e ect is not based directly on a midrashic interpretation of the scriptural verses. is fact is particularly interesting in light of the fact that the same phenomenon is attested in the late midrashic literature. is matter, however, requires a separate discussion, which is not appropriate here. Also, I will note in passing that the two Aramaic poems show a four-part division of the line, whereas the Syriac poem does not make use of an alphabetic acrostic. Additional evidence for the existence of an Eastern Semitic poetic tradition comes from a source that would seem to have been unexpected: Greek poetry. In the late antique period, hundreds of poems were written in Greek, both in the region that is being discussed in this article as well as in other parts of the Byzantine Empire. In general, this poetry was composed in accordance with the stylistic rules of the Classical Greek tradition, with the exception of its contents, which were now primarily Christian. An exception is constituted by the poetry of Romanos, the famous Byzantine poet from the sixth century. Romanos was born in Syria, according to some to a Jewish family, and 79 For a discussion of the appearance of this motif, together with other “Jewish” motifs, in this poem, see Brock, Verse Homilies, 87–90. A number of scholars have claimed that this motif appears already in a Qumran scroll (4Q225), but Kugel has recently disproved this claim; see J. Kugel, “Exegetical Notes on 4Q225 ‘Pseudo-Jubilees,’” DSD 13 (2006): 73–98. Florentin discusses a Samaritan poem, apparently from the Middle Ages, which he believes hints at this tradition; see Florentin, Embedded Midrashim, 527–41. For the inclusion of Sarah in poems on the Binding in the Syriac tradition, see S. Brock, “Reading Between the Lines: Sarah and the Sacri ce of Isaac (Genesis, Chapter 22),” in Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night (eds. L. Archer et al.; New York: Routledge, 1994), 169–80; Harvey, Words, 111–16. See n. 73 above. I have already referred above to the heterogeneity that characterizes the di erent branches of the tradition that I am discussing, and this is an outstanding example thereof. At the same time, it is di cult to deny the relevance of this poem, or of any other poem, to the discussion solely on this account. A. Cameron, “Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: e Transformation From Early to Late Empire (eds. S. Swain and M. Edwards; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 327–54; J. McGuckin, “Poetry and Hymnography (2): e Greek World,” in e Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (eds. S. A. Harvey and D. Hunter; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 641–56. Romanos is not the only Greek poet representing this phenomenon. He is, however, its most outstanding representative, and I will therefore discuss only his writings here. We are in possession of a sizeable corpus of poems in Greek that are attributed to the great Syriac poet Ephrem. Despite the fact that most of them do not seem to have been composed by Ephrem, it is reasonable to suppose that they belong to the eastern poetic tradition. To our great disappointment, this corpus has not been studied at all. For a preliminary investigation, see E. Lash, “Metrical Texts of Greek Ephrem,” in Studia Patristica XXXV: Papers Presented at the irteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999: 80 81 82 83 84 Ophir Münz-Manor received a bilingual Greek-Syriac education. Later, Romanos lived in Beirut and reached the pinnacle of his poetic fame when he became the court poet to the Emperor in Constantinople. As many researchers have observed, the poetry of Romanos is to a large extent Syriac poetry written in Greek; this becomes clear from the formal characteristics of the kontakion, the literary genre identi ed with the writings of Romanos. Romanos made extensive use of acrostics and refrains, adopted innovative metrical systems that introduced into Greek poetry elements drawn from the metrical systems of Syriac poetry, and even structured the poem as a scriptural drama told anew. To these eastern characteristics were added clear Greek in uences, primarily in the sphere of rhetoric, and all these taken together placed Romanos’ poetry Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia (eds. M. Wiles and E. Yarnold; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 433–48. One might mention in passing that one of these poems is devoted to the Binding of Isaac; see E. Lash, “Sermon on Abraham and Isaac” [http://www.anastasis.org. uk/AbrIsaac.htm]. For the classic study on this subject, see J. Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos Le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977). For an up-to-date overview, see also R. Schork, Sacred Song from the Byzantine Pulpit: Romanos the Melodist (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1995), 3–39; Krueger, Writing, 166–74. S. Brock, “Syriac and Greek Hymnography: Problems of Origin,” in Studia Patristica XVI: Texte und Untersuchungen (ed. E. A. Livingstone; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1985), 77–81; W. Petersen, “ e Dependence of Romanos the Melodist Upon the Syriac Ephrem: Its Importance for the Origin of the Kontakion,” VC 39 (1985): 171–87; L. van Rompay, “Romanos Le Mélode: Un poète syrien à Constantinople,” in Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays (eds. J. den Boe and A. Hilhorst; Leiden: Brill, 1993), 283–96. For the kontakion as well as Romanos, see the studies identi ed in n. 85, above. It seems that the kontakion appeared in Byzantine Greek poetry before Romanos rose to fame; see E. Wellesz, “ e ‘Akathistos’: A Study in Byzantine Hymnography,” DOP 9 (1956): 141–74. For a possible relationship between the Hebrew qedushta and the Greek kontakion, see Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 199–200. Krueger, Writing, 169–74. In the poem that is quoted below, the beginnings of the strophes are signed ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΒΡΑΑΜ ΡΟΜΑΝΟΥ ΥΜΝΟΣ “a hymn on Abraham by Romanos.” e quoted strophes contain the letters omicron (Ο) and upsilon (Υ). It is worth noting that the presence of an acrostic signature of the poet’s name, together with other details, became obligatory also in Hebrew poetry beginning with the sixth century. It is attested in Syriac poetry, albeit rarely, already in the fourth century. H. Hunger, “Der Refrain in den Kontakia des Romanos Melodos Vielfalt in der Einheit,” in Lesarten: Festschri für Athanasios Kambylis zum 70. Geburtstag (eds. A. Kambylis et al.; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 15–42. A frequent use of refrains and more generally the inclusion of the congregation as well as a choir in the performance of the poems is an additional characteristic of the Eastern Semitic poetic tradition. See E. Fleischer, “ e In uence of Choral Elements on the Formation and Development of the Piyyut Genres,” Yuval 3 (1974): 18–48; S. A. Harvey, “Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity,” Hugoye 8 (2005) [http://syrcom.cua.edu/ Hugoye/Vol8No2/HV8N2Harvey.html]. C. Hannick, “Probleme der Rhythmik des byzantinischen Kirchengesang: Ein Rückblick auf die Forschungsgeschichte,” in Rhythm in Byzantine Chant: Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle in November 1986 (eds. C. Hannick and V. van Aalst; Hernen: A. A. Bredius Foundation, 1991), 1–19. For a more general review of the prosody of Greek poetry, see J. Raasted, “Rhythm in Byzantine Chant” in Rhythm in Byzantine Chant, 67–91. 85 86 87 88 89 90 Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East ese facts dovetail well with what was between two literary-cultural worlds. said above with regard to the di erences between Semitic, eastern poetry and Greek and Latin poetry, which is primarily western. For example, in Greek and Latin poetry the use of alphabetic acrostics is not at all frequent, and the meters employed therein continued to be based on the principles of the Classie thematic character of compositions in Greek and cal quantitative meter. Latin also di ers from that of the Semitic compositions; only a small portion of the poems written in Greek and Latin were devoted to a re-telling of scriptural stories, and many of the poems bear a didactic, theological or lyrical stamp. What I have said does not pretend to claim that there were no links between Semitic poetry and Greek and Latin poetry, but rather to point to two separate poetic traditions, drawing their respective inspiration from distinct ancient poetic traditions, the one from the poetic tradition of Scripture and the Ancient Near East and the other from the Classical tradition. 91 92 93 94 A. Cameron, “Disputations, Polemical Literature and the Formation of Opinion in the Early Byzantine Period,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues, 91–108. For poems that contain a poet’s acrostic signature or various epithets – though, as opposed to the poetic tradition being discussed here, this device almost never encompasses the whole poem – see E. Courtney, “Greek and Latin Acrostichs,” Philologus 134 (1990): 3–13. Cameron, Poetry, 327–32. Omitting a limited number of compositions in which biblical books are rewritten from beginning to end in accordance with the rules of Classical poetics; see M. Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity (Liverpool: Francis Cairns Publications, 1985); R. Green, Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); L. Sherry, “ e Paraphrase of St. John Attributed to Nonnus,” Byzantion 66 (1996): 409–30; M. Whitby, “ e Bible Hellenized: Nonnus’ Paraphrase of St. John’s Gospel and ‘Eudocia’s’ Homeric Centos,” in Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (ed. J. H. D. Scour eld; Oakville: Classical Press of Wales, 2007), 195–232. An outstanding example of these tendencies may be found in the poems of Gregory of Nazianzus, who composed in Greek, and Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who composed in Latin. Both belong to the fourth century. For Gregory and his oeuvre, see P. Gilbert, On God and Man: e eological Poetry of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001); C. Milovanovic-Barham, “Gregory of Nazianzus: Ars Poetica (in suos versus: Carmen 2.1.39),” JECS 5 (1997): 497–510; for Ambrose, see J. den Boe , “Cantatur ad Delectationem: Ambrose’s Lyric Poetry,” in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: e Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation (eds. W. Otten and K. Pollmann; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 425–40. For example, there exists an additional Greek poem from this period on the Binding of Isaac that exempli es the interrelationship between the two poetic traditions. e poem contains an alphabetic acrostic, which is an outstanding eastern characteristic, while being written in hexameter verse, which is a clear Classical characteristic. In this fascinating poem, which in the opinion of those who have studied it is Christian, one recognizes interesting links to the poems that I have discussed, e. g., the inclusion of Sarah in the story and the co-operation of Isaac. For this poem, see T. Hilhorst, “ e Bodmer Poem on the Sacri ce of Abraham,” in e Sacri ce of Isaac, 96–108; P. van der Horst, “A New Early Christian Poem on the Sacri ce of Isaac (Pap. Bodmer 30),” in Jews and Christians in eir Graeco-Roman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 190–205. For the persistence of composition according to Classical models in the late antique period, see M. Roberts, “Bringing Up the Rear: Continuity and Change in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity,” in Latinitas Perennis (eds. W. Verbaal et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 141–67. 95 96 97 Ophir Münz-Manor A ne example of Romanos’ relevance to the present discussion is constituted by his poem on the Binding of Isaac. I quote here from two strophes: O father, Was it against me that you sharpened the knife? As in a mirror I perceive the altar become a tomb, And you, O father, binding me and killing me Speak then, if what appears before my eyes is true, If you wish to nd in me a sacri ce welcome to God, Do not slay me, your child, against my will For only he is just, the savior of our souls. But then the faithful Abraham overlooked his son’s words And worked steadfastly for the sacri ce He tied both hands and feet of him to whom he had given life Saying to himself, “First I shall bind him and then kill him So that no motion of his may obstruct my thrust.” Holding in his hands the sword, he was held back, not by resistance of the child But by God calling and revealing to him what was to come For only he is good, the savior of our souls. ere is no doubt that the fact that this poem is composed in Greek sets it apart from the Aramaic and Hebrew poems, and its comparison to them is therefore more complex. At the same time, the structural characteristics of Romanos’ poetry that have been mentioned above, the great a ection he bears for the re-telling of the scriptural story, for the most part in dialogic form, and in the present case also the making of Isaac into the center of focus, the inclusion of Sarah in the story (in portions that are not given here), and the mention of the apprehension that Isaac’s sacri ce may be rendered un t on account of an involuntary movement all point in the direction of a link to the Eastern Semitic tradition. Conclusion At base in the poems that have been analyzed in this article lies a speci c poetics, which is expressed primarily in the poems’ structure and formulation. is shared poetics together with the thematic links between the poems on the one hand, and the clear di erences between this poetics and biblical poetry as well as contemporaneous Greek and Latin poetry on the other hand, together shed new light on the di erent poetic corpora that were in existence in the eastern portion of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique period, corpora that until 98 99 English translation is found in M. Moskhos, “Romanos’ Hymn on the Sacri ce of Abraham: A Discussion of the Sources and a Translation,” Byzantion 44 (1972): 325. ose who have studied this poem have obviously indicated its relationship to the Syriac poem that I quoted above. However, they did not mention the Jewish Aramaic poem that I discussed above, whose relevance to the matter is beyond all doubt. See, for example, Brock, Verse Homilies, 91–96. Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East now were considered by most researchers to have subsisted independently of e main contribution of my article lies in the expansion of one another. the range of the interrelationships between Jewish and Christian texts in the late antique period and in a call for the inclusion of the rich corpus of liturgical poetry within scholarly discourse regarding these exchanges. If, moreover, my suggestion as to the existence of a poetic tradition that crosses religioussocial boundaries is correct, then before us lies a precious witness to the fact that in the late antique period religious a liation was not the only category de ning the cultural boundaries of individuals or groups. is notion was already mooted about twenty years ago, with regard to Latin poetry in the late antique period. Michael Roberts stressed in this context that “aesthetic, and particularly stylistic, preferences do not follow religious a liation. It would be a mistake to speak without quali cation of, for instance, a Christian style, as distinct from a pagan style. Stylistic a nities cut across di erences of devotional status.” e present work supplies additional supporting evidence for the general claim made by Roberts by way of teaching us an important lesson on the liturgical poetry of the eastern portion of the Byzantine Empire and on the cultures that created it. It is to be hoped that the opening of new, comparative directions in research into Jewish and Christian poetry in the late antique period will contribute signi cantly to the e ort of reconstructing the colorful cultural mosaic of this important era. 100 101 e centrality of Aramaic poetry is worth noting, in particular during the beginning stages of the development of the poetic tradition under discussion. is fact is likely to have implications for research in contemporaneous Hebrew poetry, since a sizeable portion of scholarly discussions of piyyut pay almost no attention to Jewish Aramaic poetry. Indeed, the notion that Aramaic poetry re ects an early stage in the development of Hebrew piyyut was mooted years ago in the research literature; see J. Heinemann, “Remnants of Ancient Piyyutim in the Palestinian Targum Tradition,” Ha-Sifrut/Literature 4 (1973): 368–73 [Hebrew]. However, Heinemann’s words did not elicit the response that they deserved. is subject has of late been expressly dealt with by M. Rand, “Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition: e Case of the Kinot,” in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights Into Its History and Interaction (eds. A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127–44. Fleischer and Hacohen, on the other hand, have brie y raised this possibility; see Fleischer, Piyyut, 147–48; Hacohen, Studies, 147–48. M. Roberts, e Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 6.