When Nisibis was ceded to the Persians in 363, Ephrem the Syrian left his native town for Edessa, where he founded the celebrated School of the Persians.

He was the second bishop of Nisibis, spiritual father of the renowned Syriac writer Ephrem the Syrian, and celebrated ascetic.

" With regard to Boswell's central claim to have found evidence for the use of wedding crowns in the rite for making brothers, Ephrem notes that what the relevant text says, " somewhat literally translated ," is this: " It is inadmissible for a monk to receive is a standard Greek word for ' godparent ' children from holy baptism, or to hold marriage crowns or to make brother-makings.

By the time the legend had returned to Syria, the purported site of the miraculous image, it had been embroidered into a tissue of miraculous happenings: The story was retold in elaborated form by Ephrem the Syrian.

Ephrem asserts that Christ's unity of humanity and divinity represents peace, perfection and salvation ; in contrast, docetism and other heresies sought to divide or reduce Christ's nature, and in doing so would rend and devalue Christ's followers with their false teachings.

Ephrem was born around the year 306 in the city of Nisibis ( the modern Turkish town of Nusaybin, on the border with Syria, which had come into Roman hands only in 298 ).

During the first siege, Ephrem credits Bishop Jacob as defending the city with his prayers.

* June 9 – Ephrem the Syrian, Christian saint and hymn writer

* Ephrem the Syrian, Christian saint and hymn writer ( approximate date )

Jacob was the teacher and spiritual director of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, a great ascetic, teacher and hymn writer who combatted Arianism.

He and his Bardaisan movement were considered heretic by the Christians, and he was subjected to critical hymn, particularly by Ephrem:

As part of this doctoral work, Palackal brought out a CD, Qambel Maran, a collection of Syriac chants in the Chaldean tradition of the Syro-Malabar Church ; it includes the hymn Awun d ’ wasmayya, i. e., the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, arguably in the same words which were used by Jesus when he taught the Pater Noster, compositions by St. Ephrem the Syrian ( notably the acrostic hymn Iso maaran m ’ siha on the name Iso M ' siha, i. e., Jesus the Messiah ), and the Syriac translation Sabbah lesan of the Latin hymn Pange Lingua by St. Thomas Aquinas ; these chants had up to then been preserved in the main only in oral tradition ; among the singers is Fr.

Ephrem the Syrian wrote a commentary on it, the Syriac original of which was rediscovered only in 1957, when a manuscript acquired by Sir Chester Beatty in 1957 ( now Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709, Dublin ) turned out to contain the text of Ephrem's commentary.

Ephrem is popularly credited as the founder of the School of Nisibis, which in later centuries was the centre of learning of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Ephrem used these to warn his flock of the heresies which threatened to divide the early church.

The best known of these writings is the Prayer of Saint Ephrem which is recited at every service during Great Lent and other fasting periods in Eastern Christianity.

The one prayer that typifies the Lenten services is the Prayer of Saint Ephrem, which is said at each service on weekdays, accompanied by full prostrations.

Some Syriac writers such as Aphrahat, Ephrem and Narsai believed in the dormition, or " sleep ", of the soul, in which " souls of the dead are largely inert, having lapsed into a state of sleep, in which they can only dream of their future reward or punishments.

He also relied on John Chrysostomos, the Cappadocian fathers and on Ephrem the Syrian, which were also accepted in the West.

Bardaisan mixed his Babylonian pseudo-astronomy with Christian dogma and originated a Christian sect, which was vigorously combated by St. Ephrem.

Of his writings probably the most important are his exhaustive commentaries on the text of the Old and New Testaments, in which he skillfully interwove and summarized the interpretations of previous writers such as Ephrem, Chrysostom, Cyril, Moses Bar-Kepha and John of Dar, whom he mentions together in the preface to his commentary on St Matthew.

Jacob, the second bishop of Nisibis, was appointed in 308, and Ephrem grew up under his leadership of the community.

Newly excavated Church of Jacob of Nisibis | Saint Jacob in Nisibis, where Ephrem taught and ministered.

In 363, when Nisibis fell to the Persians, St. Ephrem accompanied by a number of teachers left the school.

In 363 Nisibis fell to the Persians, causing St. Ephrem, accompanied by a number of teachers, to leave the School of Nisibis.

This is confirmed by the implicit approval of St. Gregory the Great and by well attested facts ; in the East, for example, Hilarion, Ephrem, and other confessors were publicly honoured in the fourth century ; and, in the West, St. Martin of Tours, as is gathered plainly from the oldest Breviaries and the Mozarabic Missal, and St. Hilary of Poitiers, as can be shown from the very ancient Mass-book known as " Missale Francorum ", were objects of a like cultus in the same century.

Among the work's critics, Archimandrite Ephrem, writing in the Orthodox Christian journal Sourozh, has stated that the commentary " feels far too much like a piece of evangelical propaganda decked out in the trappings of Orthodoxy.

Basil's treatise on virginity ; thirty nine discourses of St. Ephrem the Syrian, and many other works of the Fathers and writers of the Greek Church.

Ephrem did not comment on all passages in the Diatessaron, and nor does he always quote commentated passages in full ; but for those phrases that he does quote, the commentary provides for the first time a dependable witness to Tatian's original ; and also confirms its content and their sequence.

Ephrem combines in his writing a threefold heritage: he draws on the models and methods of early Rabbinic Judaism, he engages skillfully with Greek science and philosophy, and he delights in the Mesopotamian / Persian tradition of mystery symbolism.

Ephrem is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church ( USA ) on June 10.

" — Ephrem the Syrian, " Hymns on Faith " 16: 5.

Hymns on paradise: St. Ephrem the Syrian.

" Hymns Against Heresies: Comments on St. Ephrem the Syrian ".

* Benedict XVI on St. Ephrem and his role in history

On the weekdays of this week, the first Lenten structural elements are introduced to the cycle of services on weekdays ( the chanting of " Alleluia ", the Prayer of Saint Ephrem, making prostrations, etc .).

The Prayer of Saint Ephrem is said for the last time at the end of the Presanctified Liturgy on Holy and Great Wednesday.

Icons of sainted deacons are often depicted on these doors ( particularly St. Stephen the Protomartyr and St. Ephrem the Syrian ).

* Memra on Ephrem —

Diatessaronic texts such as the Liege Dutch Harmony, the Pepysian Gospel Harmony, Codex Fuldensis, The Persian Harmony, The Arabic Diatessaron, and the Commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephrem the Syrian have provided recent insights into Aramaic origins.

In this theory God is seen as inhabiting a mythical holy mountain, a concept not unknown in ancient West Asian mythology ( see El ), and also evident in the Syriac Christian writings of Ephrem the Syrian, who places Eden on an inaccessible mountaintop.

Some of the Church Fathers also throw light upon the psychology of Mary, for instance, Saint Ambrose, when in his commentary on The Gospel of Luke he holds Mary up as the ideal of virginity, and Saint Ephrem, when he poetically sings of the coming of the Magi and the welcome accorded them by the humble mother.

He is sometimes also referred to as " the Babylonian " ( by Porphyrius ); and, on account of his later important activity in Armenia, " the Armenian ", ( by Hippolytus of Rome ), while Ephrem the Syrian calls him " philosopher of the Arameans " (, Filosofā d-Aramayē ).

They are referred to by St. Ephrem, and amongst them was a treatise on light and darkness.

Adolf Hilgenfeld in 1864 defended this view, based mainly on extracts from St. Ephrem, who devoted his life to combating Bardaisanism in Edessa.