This occurred to the extent that there is a huge corpus of Ephrem pseudepigraphy and legendary hagiography.

This is not to say that all texts ascribed to Ephrem in Greek are by others, but many are.

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 second legend attached to Ephrem is that he was a monk.

Some of the Syriac terms that Ephrem used to describe his community were later used to describe monastic communities, but the assertion that he was monk is anachronistic.

Ephrem is venerated as an example of monastic discipline in Eastern Christianity.

In the Eastern Orthodox scheme of hagiography, Ephrem is counted as a Venerable Father ( i. e., a sainted Monk ).

Ephrem is popularly believed to have taken legendary journeys.

This links the Syrian Ephrem with the Cappadocian Fathers, and is an important theological bridge between the spiritual view of the two, who held much in common.

Ephrem is also supposed to have visited Saint Pishoy in the monasteries of Scetes in Egypt.

The most popular title for Ephrem is Harp of the Spirit ( Syriac:, ).

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

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.

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

Among the more prominent deacons in history are Phoebe, the only person actually called " deacon " in Scripture ; Stephen, the first Christian martyr ( the " protomartyr "); Philip, whose baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch is recounted in ; Saint Lawrence, an early Roman martyr ; Saint Vincent of Saragossa, protomartyr of Spain ; Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the mendicant Franciscans ; Saint Ephrem the Syrian and Saint Romanos the Melodist, a prominent early hymnographer.

This is also the view held by Simeon bar Yochai, Clementine literature, Sextus Julius Africanus, Ephrem the Syrian, Augustine of Hippo, and John Chrysostom among many other early authorities.

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.

Jacob of Serugh (, ; his toponym is also spelled Serug or Sarug ; c. 451 – 29 November 521 ), also called Mar Jacob, was one of the foremost Syriac poet-theologians among the Syriac, perhaps only second in stature to Ephrem the Syrian and equal to Narsai.

Where his predecessor Ephrem is known as the ' Harp of the Spirit ', Jacob is the ' Flute of the Spirit '.

Ephrem is a given name that may also be spelled Efrem or Ephraem.

To name some of his work, he is credited for the melody of the song " እስከመቼም አልረሳው ያንቺን ፍቅር እኔ " sang by vocalist Ephrem Tamiru.

Ephrem, in his late fifties, applied himself to ministry in his new church, and seems to have continued his work as a teacher, perhaps in the School of Edessa.

* Ephrem the Syrian, ( c. 306 – 373 ), Syriac speaking deacon, hymnographer, theologian, director of the School of Edessa

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.

They went to the School of Edessa, where St. Ephrem took over the directorship of the school there.

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

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 ).

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.

Ephrem celebrated what he saw as the miraculous salvation of the city in a hymn which portrayed Nisibis as being like Noah's Ark, floating to safety on the flood.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

A later Syriac writer, Jacob of Serugh, wrote that Ephrem rehearsed all-female choirs to sing his hymns set to Syriac folk tunes in the forum of Edessa.

The tradition continued in the 4th century by Ephrem the Syrian and later by Saint Augustine in his Felix culpa, i. e. the happy fall from grace of Adam and Eve.

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 ).