Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts

Michael Philip Penn Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts Even among early Christians, a group renown for their downright cantankerousness, the ancient Syriac churches stood out in their ability not to get along. Particularly contentious were the Christological controversies that quickly divided Syriac Christianity into several competing factions. By the end of the seventh century, these ongoing debates over how to best express Christ’s humanity and Christ’s divinity resulted in no less than four separate Syriac churches: 1) the East Syrians who more strongly emphasized Christ’s dual nature and rejected the 431 CE Council of Ephesus that had anathematized the Greek theologian Nestorius (often called by their opponents Nestorians); 2) the Chalcedonians who supported the 451 CE decisions of the Council of Chalcedon and were thus theologically aligned with the imperial Byzantine church (often called Melkites from the Syriac word malkâ, that is king or emperor); 3) the Miaphysites who opposed the Council of Chalcedon and instead stressed Christ’s single nature (often called by their opponents monophysites or Jacobites); and 4) the Maronites who supported the Council of Chalcedon but in the late seventh century broke away from their fellow Chalcedonians over monothelitism, the belief that though Christ had two natures, he had a single will.¹ 1 The scholarly literature on the Christological controversies is unbelievably vast. A standard reference remains Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche (2 vols.; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1979–1990). For some more recent (and concise) discussions that focus on the controversies’ impact on Syriac Christianity especially, see Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, Die Apostolische Kirche des Ostens: Geschichte der sogenannten Nestorianer (Klagenfurt: Verlag Kitab, 2000), 25–34, translated in Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (New York: Routledge, 2003), 21–32; Sebastian P. Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer,” BJRL 78 (1996): 32–35; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkely: University of California Press, 1990), 21–27; Andrew Louth, “Why Did the Syrians Reject the Council of Chalcedon?” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700 (ed. Richard Price and Mary Whitby; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 107–16; Gerrit J. Reinink, “Tradition and the Formation of the ‘Nestorian’ Identity in Sixth- to Seventh-Century Iraq,” CHRC 89 (2009): 217–50; Lucas Van Rompay, “The East (3): Syria and Mesopotamia,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 376–78; Lucas Van Rompay, “Society and Community in the Christian East,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (ed. Michael Maas; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 239–66; Adam M. Schor, Theodoret’s People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria (Transformation of the Classical Heritage; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 3–5; Uriel I. Simonsohn, A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 2–3. For a brief 222 Michael Philip Penn Modern scholars have frequently examined how these divides affected theology, polity, social networks, and literary narratives. It may, however, be fruitful to examine these issues from a slightly different angle. Focusing on Syriac manuscript culture, I want to explore how the Christological controversies changed the ways early Christians wrote and read the manuscripts now held in the British Library, the world’s largest collection of ancient Syriac texts. Among Syriac Christians, such changes became particularly prevalent when having to deal with a phenomenon I call “know thy enemy.” Due to the Christological controversies, Syriac Christians were faced with a serious dilemma. In order to debate Christological opponents they needed to have accurate copies of their adversaries’ beliefs. But how could a Miaphysite preserve in good conscience writings from the Council of Chalcedon that he so adamantly opposed? How should a loyal East Syrian read the Council of Ephesus that condemned Nestorius? Extant manuscripts preserve a variety of strategies that Syriac Christians employed in such circumstances. Textualized tactics such as narrative framing, reading marks, and marginalia witness theological differences becoming material differences and suggest that surviving materials can help one better understand the social dynamics of early Christianity. Knowing thy enemy became particularly important for Syriac Christians because the Byzantine, Sassanian, and early Islamic empires in which they dwelled were empires of disputation. In each, imperial authorities often sponsored public, theological debates.² For example, the courts of Justinian (d. 565) and later Byzantine rulers would patronize and help adjudicate public disputations between competing groups of Christians. The Sassanians were even fonder of such disputes, and one hears of Persian rulers sponsoring contests between Miaphysite and East Syrian Christians. overview of recent research on the Christological controversies, see Averil Cameron, “Introduction,” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700 (ed. Richard Price and Mary Whitby; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 1–6 2 For a useful analysis of the various roles of public disputations in late antiquity before the sixth century, see Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). For a discussion of sixth- through eighth-century disputations in both the Roman and Sassanian Empires, see David Bertaina, Christian and Muslim Dialogues: The Religious Uses of a Literary Form in the Early Islamic Middle East (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011), 10, 37, 41, 236–37, 246; Averil Cameron, “Disputations, Polemical Literature and the Formation of Opinion in the Early Byzantine Period,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures (ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and H. L. J. Vanstiphout; Leuven: Peeters, 1991), 101–4; Jamsheed K. Choksy, Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 31; Joel Thomas Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 172–80. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 223 A surviving East Syrian document was even written as preparation for just such an occasion.³ Early Muslim rulers continued this tradition.⁴ Although only a small number of Syriac Christians would ever participate in an imperially sponsored contest, surviving Syriac manuscripts reflect this culture of disputation and are filled with texts defending each community’s Christological stance while attacking the positions of their opponents. Undoubtedly, most of these texts were meant more to reassure the faithful than to help persuade outsiders. But regardless of whether Syriac authors envisioned their mission as preparing readers for public debates, serving as a ready resource to help in the composition of future theological tractates, or simply assuring the sympathetic reader of the correctness of their community’s theology, all faced a similar problem. Each of these tasks required knowledge of what the opposition believed. That is, to write against the creed of the Council of Chalcedon or against the decisions of the Council of Ephesus or against Leo’s Tome you first had to discern what these documents said in the first place. To debate the opposition you first had to know thy enemy. As a result, Miaphysite manuscripts are filled with quotations from Chalcedonian theologians, East Syrian manuscripts are filled with quotations from Miaphysite theologians, and so forth. Ironically, one needed heterogeneous manuscripts and heterodox texts in order to defend a homogenous view of orthodoxy. The necessity of accurately preserving the texts of ones’ opponents did not mean this was a pleasant or unproblematic undertaking. Pity the poor scribes who had to slowly and painstakingly copy dozens of pages they found to be theologically abhorrent. Even more disturbing, could such activity be theologically suspect? Manuscript colophons often reflected the belief that the meticulous transcription of laudatory texts provided the careful scribe with theological benefits in the world to come. Might the converse be true? And even if a Syriac scribe was not concerned about the ramification upon his own soul, what about that of his orthodox readership? Might their reading of heretical texts adversely affect their spiritual welfare? Worse yet, what if 3 Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh, 174–80. 4 Maronite Chronicle (Ignazio Guidi and E. W. Brooks, Chronica minora [CSCO 3, Scriptores Syri 3; Paris: L. Durbecq 1904], 70). For Islamic sources on public theological debates, see Sidney H. Griffith, “Answering the Call of the Minaret: Christian Apologetics in the World of Islam,” in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam (ed. Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Jan J. Van Ginkel, and Theo M. Van Lint; OLA 134; Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 120–23; Sidney H. Griffith, “Answering the Call of the Minaret. The Topics and Strategies of Christian Apologetics in the World of Islam,” in Die Suryoye und ihre Umwelt (ed. Andreas Heinz Martin Tamcke; Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005), 36; Sidney H. Griffith, “The Monk in the Emir’s Majlis: Reflections on a Popular Genre of Christian Literary Apologetics in Arabic in the Early Islamic Period,” in The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam (ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh et al.; SALL 4; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 60–65. 224 Michael Philip Penn future readers did not realize that the excerpt they were reading was heterodox and an inattentive reader were swayed by its content? Narrative Framing One strategy Syriac writers used to guard against such scenarios was the use of narrative framing. When they included a passage from a text considered particularly heretical these writers might also include a brief prologue or epilogue indicating their disagreement with what they were copying. For example, consider the eighth-century manuscript British Library Additional 14,532 that is titled “a volume of demonstrations from the holy fathers against various heresies.”⁵ These heresies are so various that it takes the manuscript 433 pages and no less than 334 subsections to address them! The greatest concern is Christology and the author compiled hundreds of patristic excerpts to battle theological opponents ranging from Julian of Halicarnassus to John Grammaticus. As part of its opening section, a seventy-page defense of Miaphysite Christology, the manuscript follows the typical pattern of including excerpts from the opposition and thus presents several quotations from the Council of Chalcedon. These passages are fairly accurate in content. Nevertheless, the author was particularly careful in how he framed the Chalcedonian creed. In red ink he introduces this anti-Miaphysite creed as: “The definition [of faith] that was established by the Council of Chalcedon. Having already misled the simple, they made this definition …” (Fig. 19).⁶ With such an introduction there could be little doubt as to the author’s opinion about this council and how he wished his readership to view the creed as well. Even more involved were the efforts by the anonymous Miaphysite scribe of a most likely seventh-century collection of church canons now known as British Library Additional 14,526. To create this compendium of canons the author drew upon previous documents ranging from the fourth-century Constitution of the Holy Apostles to canons from the various ecumenical councils.⁷ Most of these he passed over without comment. But when this Miaphysite scribe (or his exemplar) reached the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon, it was too much. The extant manuscript presents an accu- 5 William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired Since the Year 1838, Volume 2 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1871), 955–67. 6 BL Add. 14,532, f. 22b. The same narrative frame appears in BL Add. 14,538, f. 93a which is dependent upon this section of the most likely tenth-century BL Add. 14,532 or upon a shared exemplar. 7 Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 1033–36. Wright dates the manuscript on paleographic grounds to the seventh century. He also notes that the manuscript includes a list of Byzantine emperors starting with Constantine the Great and ending with Constantine III. Wright suggests that since this list does not include Constantine III’s successor the manuscript was most likely written during the one year Constantine III reigned which is 641 CE. It, however, certainly remains possible that BL Add. 14,526 could have itself been written at a later date and simply included an earlier king list. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 225 Fig. 19: British Library Additional 14,532, ff. 22b–23a. This most likely eighth-century Miaphysite manuscript includes numerous quotations from pro-Chalcedonian sources. On these two pages the scribe had to include a number of citations from the Council of Chalcedon itself. Although he copied these accurately, he added an anti-Chalcedonian narrative before and after the conciliar decisions. So, too, the page includes a number of marginal reading marks to warn future readers that these quotations were to be considered heterodox. © The British Library Board, Add 14,532 rate transcription of the Chalcedonian creed but frames it with a particularly extensive set of comments. These begin with an incipit stating: Next, the creed or indeed the new definition [of faith] of the council that was gathered in Chalcedon on whose account there arose divisions and strife among [all] the churches under heaven. Its confession is like that of the iniquitous Nestorius and like that of Leo of Rome.⁸ The claim that the Christology of the council of Chalcedon and its supporter Pope Leo were essentially the same as the “arch-heretic” Nestorius’ is a common diatribe found among Miaphysite theological tractates. Now a Miaphysite scribe repurposed it as a topic heading for the council itself. 8 BL Add. 14,526, f. 36a. 226 Michael Philip Penn Once he finished copying the Chalcedonian creed, the scribe included a half page narrative recounting a supposed history behind the council. This backstory included statements such as The council was gathered in Chalcedon allegedly because of the doctrine of the wicked Eutyches … But as we said, in truth, it was gathered with the goal of establishing a definition [of faith] that would affirm and strengthen the teaching of the wicked Nestorius.⁹ As a result, the reader of British Library Additional 14,526 can still access an accurate copy of the Council’s decision but it is now framed on either side with a denunciation of the very words that the scribe had copied. There is little possibility of confusing the council’s viewpoints with those of the scribe or his anticipated audience. A very similar tact appears in British Library Additional 14,533 most likely written in the eight or ninth century. Its Miaphysite scribe faced the same dilemma as his predecessors. Like the scribes of British Library Additional 14,532 and British Library Additional 14,526 he had to copy down several pages worth of material from the Council of Chalcedon. And like his predecessors he, too, made sure to register his disagreement with the council by including an anti-Chalcedonian narrative frame that included statements such as: Those of Chalcedon condemn the incarnate word being a single nature. … Thus just like the goal and doctrine of the Nestorians, they rend Christ into two natures. They wrote with the [same] craftiness that Nestorius had used aiding him against [Saint] Cyril and tearing apart the orthodox doctrine of the single nature of God, the incarnate word.¹⁰ Although these manuscripts came from different hands all of these scribes confronted a similar problem: having to preserve decisions from a council they despised. And they all came up with similar solutions: framing their accurate depiction of the council’s decisions with brief comments and narratives sharing their discord with those very decisions. Undoubtedly, this served to help allay the scribe’s own conscience and likely, from his perspective, vouchsafed his spiritual well-being. But it also indicated for later readers how they too were to approach the preserved text. That is, these incipits and brief narratives warned future readers that what they were reading was not edifying but rather enemy territory. 9 BL Add. 14,526, f. 38b. 10 BL Add. 14,533, f. 13a. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 227 Reading Marks For many, however, the concern for how to affect a compatriot’s reading experience resulted in more extensive interventions than a simple narrative frame. Particularly popular were marginal markings to help orient the reader and reinforce whether a given quotation was considered as orthodox or heretical. This textual tactic became especially prevalent among catenae manuscripts. One of the most popular genre of early Syriac manuscripts were compilations of patristic quotations primarily focusing on issues of Christology. Sometimes, these catenae manuscripts included entire documents relevant to the topic. But often they were in the form of thousands of shorter patristic quotations compiled from hundreds of documents. As with other types of Syriac manuscripts, these collections frequently included excerpts that the compiler considered heretical so that he could present the opposition’s viewpoint only later to dispute it. As a result, a single manuscript page could include dozens of quotations from those authors considered orthodox intermingled with dozens from those authors considered heretical. Usually, scribes headed each quotation with a brief bibliographic citation, noting the excerpt’s origins. Few alert Miaphysite readers would be caught unaware by a passage labeled “from Nestorius” or East Syrians by one “from the Council of Ephesus.” But what about less well known figures? Or what about the many times these headings simply begin “from the same [author]”? Or, even more likely, what if after reading hundreds of such selections the reader was beginning to doze off? Wasn’t there the real danger that an inattentive reader might accidentally confuse orthodox and heretical passages? To help prevent this from happening, many Syriac manuscripts incorporated a series of marks to help even the most careless reader navigate the boundaries of orthodoxy. There never emerges a completely standardized system of such markings. They differ greatly in shape and frequency. Some appear original to the manuscript. Some may have been added later. Many show dependence upon exemplars. It seems likely that the origin of these various markings is connected with another, even more ubiquitous annotation in Syriac manuscripts. Hundreds of extant Syriac manuscripts include marginal notations, most often angle brackets, to distinguish when the text is directly quoting from scripture. These reading marks alerted future readers to give particular regard to these extracts. In some ways they were the ancient equivalents of a “red letter bible,” the practice begun in the late nineteenth century of using red print to emphasize words the gospels quote as being said by Jesus.¹¹ In Syriac manuscripts, marking a quotation as scriptural did not simply convey author- 11 Philip Sellew, “Red Letter Bible,” in The Oxford Guide to Ideas & Issues of the Bible (ed. Michael D. Coogan and Bruce M. Metzger; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 422. 228 Michael Philip Penn ity upon that particular citation but also upon the arguments the text’s author was supporting by that extract. Almost completely unknown in modern scholarship, however, is that Syriac scribes often used similar marks to distinguish which parts of the text they considered orthodox from which parts belonged to the enemy.¹² For example, reconsider the pages from British Library Additional 14,532 reproduced in Fig. 19. As previously noted, this eighth-century Miaphysite manuscript uses narrative framing in its presentation of the Council of Chalcedon. But in this case the scribe went one step further and throughout much of the manuscript used marginal marks to point out other passages that he also considered to be heretical. At first, the scribe used the symbol of a line, not to indicate edifying quotations from scripture, but rather “heretical” quotations such as those from Nestorius or those from the Council of Chalcedon. Often these interventions are quite extensive such as when the scribe quotes several folia worth of material from the Council of Chalcedon and marks every line of it. But this is not the only type of reading mark this scribe employed. Later in the manuscript one finds a slightly more involved set of notations. In a section concerning the Miaphysite adversary John Grammaticus the scribe not only continues to mark those passages the scribe thought were heretical. He also supplements this system with another set of reading marks, in this case an angle bracket, that he places next to those quotations coming from folks he considered orthodox, such as Basil, Athanasius, and Severus. He thus marked both the bad guys and the good guys. A similar practice of using different reading marks to distinguish orthodox quotations from heretical ones occurs in a number of other manuscripts such as the most likely eighth- or ninth-century British Library Additional 14,629.¹³ In many manuscripts, such reading marks became quite extensive. For example the most likely tenth-century British Library Additional 14,538 marks 169 passages as heretical; the most likely eighth- or ninth-century British Library Additional 14,532 marks 150; the most likely seventh-century British Library Additional 14,533 marks 89; the most likely seventh-century British Library Additional 14,603 marks 80. Some scribes, though, were much more modest such as that of the most likely eightor ninth-century British Library Additional 14,629 who only marked 7.¹⁴ The list of enemies was also often quite wide-ranging. For example, there are almost a dozen 12 The only examples I am familiar with of modern scholars who discuss these marks are a brief reference found in Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 549, which notes reading marks in BL Add. 17,210. Over a century later George Anton Kiraz, A Grammar of the Syriac Language: Volume 1: Orthography (Piscataway, N. J.: Gorgias Press, 2012), 118, plate 5 cites this remark and provides a color plate of a folio from BL Add. 17,210. 13 For manuscripts’ content and approximate date of composition see Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 955–67, 754–56. 14 For manuscripts’ content and approximate date of composition see Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 1003–8, 967–76, 286–87, 754–56. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 229 figures whom the scribe of British Library Additional 14,532 clearly disliked such as Nestorius, Leo, Theodoret, and Eunomius. These markings show other patterns as well. Given the number of quotations that appear in these catenae texts, it is not surprising that scribes occasionally missed a reference.¹⁵ But in other cases only specific works of an author would be targeted. For example, a scribe might mark passages from the Tome of Leo but leave some of Leo’s letters unmarked.¹⁶ Alternatively, sometimes a scribe would mark only part of a “heretical” passage; instead of marking an entire quote, only those sections he found most offensive. So too, there are several cases of where an author the scribe saw as orthodox had himself quoted someone both considered to be heretical. Here the scribe often only marked the quote within the quote for example, when Basil (considered by the scribe as orthodox) quotes Eunomius (considered by the scribe as heretical) or Peter of Anitioch quotes Damian of Alexandria.¹⁷ Not all manuscript copies of a given text were marked. For example, the most likely eighth-century British Library Additional 14,532 and the most likely eighth- or ninth-century British Library Additional 14,533 share much of the same text but in many of these cases only the British Library Additional 14,532 version contains reading marks.¹⁸ Often only a few of the documents in a given manuscript were marked up. Then, even in the same manuscript, other documents from the same suspect author or other documents quoting that author had no markings at all.¹⁹ So too various sections in extant manuscripts often contain different systems of annotation. In some cases they simply mark alleged heretics. In other cases they mark both the heretical and the orthodox. In still others they distinguish when an orthodox author is himself quoting from a heretical one or the other way around. At other points they may make no marking at all. In such cases it remains quite likely that some sections may have been compiled (either by that scribe or his predecessors) from exemplars that had different types and degrees of reading marks. In other words, just as Syriac scribes often felt certain manuscript elements such as scholia were important enough parts 15 For example, BL Add. 12,155 contains 46 quotations from Julian of Halicarnassus and marks 45 of them (it misses one on 75a). BL Add. 14,629 has a less impressive ratio when quoting Julian missing one out of eight (19a). Other examples of clear mistakes include BL Add. 14,532, ff. 64b, 65a which twice forgets to mark a quotation from the otherwise marked Julian and BL Add. 12,155, f. 38b that misses a passage from Probus. 16 BL Add. 12,155, ff. 37b, 50a, 52b–53a include marks next to Leo’s Tome but BL Add. 12,155, ff. 45a–45b cite Leo’s Letters but leave them unmarked. 17 BL Add. 14,532 121b; BL Add. 14,532, ff. 132a–132b. 18 E.g. compare the same documents that appear in BL Add. 14,532, ff. 36a–79a and BL Add. 14,533, ff. 52a–73a, as well as BL Add. 14,532, ff. 94b – 133b and BL Add. 14,533, ff. 73a–89a. In both cases BL Add. 14,532 has reading marks but BL Add. 14,533 does not. 19 E.g. consider BL Add. 12,154 or BL Add. 14,533 that even breaks off reading marks part way through a section when it marks up the first thirty-two folios of a section but not the final eighteen (BL Add. 14,533, ff. 1a–32a versus ff. 32a–50a). 230 Michael Philip Penn of an exemplar to be preserved verbatim, so too marginal markings distinguishing allegedly heretical passages from orthodox ones were frequently copied from one manuscript to another. Marginalia For some, such reader marks were insufficient and they instead employed a third strategy, composing more lengthy marginalia. Consider two manuscripts written in East Syrian script, British Library Oriental 2309 and British Library Oriental 4070. Each manuscript preserves the rulings of eleven church councils beginning with the fourth-century Council of Nicaea and ending with the fifteenth-century Council of Florence. The manuscripts themselves are fairly recent. On paleographic grounds British Library Oriental 2309 is dated to the seventeenth-century and the colophon of British Library Oriental 4070 securely dates it to 1823 CE.²⁰ Their virtually identically content, however, points to an earlier, most likely shared, exemplar but these two scribes had different reactions to what they were copying especially when they came to the controversial Council of Chalcedon. The scribe of British Library Oriental 4070 simply copied down the information he found about the Council of Chalcedon and moved on to the next council. But British Library Oriental 2309 included a material reaction to this report. When the scribe of British Library Oriental 2309 came to the Council of Chalcedon, his exemplar did not provide any narrative framing. So he added a marginal to personally register his complaint about the text he was copying and to warn his audience about its content (Fig. 20): “Reader, when you see this statement you should condemn it. Know that its explanation should be anathematized.”²¹ Almost a thousand years earlier, the Miaphysite scribe of the most likely eighth-century catenae text British Library Additional 12,155 copied numerous reading marks from previous exemplars to help distinguish what he considered orthodox passages from heretic ones.²² But he supplemented the textual strategy of his exemplar with some of his own interventions, in this case a series of additional marginalia directly arguing with the authors he was copying down in the body of the 20 For manuscripts’ content and date of composition see George Margoliouth, Descriptive List of Syriac and Karshuni MSS. of the British Museum Aquired Since 1873 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1899), 7, 22. 21 BL Or. 2309, f. 38a. 22 BL Add. 12,155 consists of 534 pages of patristic quotations divded into 50 sections that make up “a volume of demonstrations from the holy fathers against various heresies.” Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 921–55. Wright dates the manuscript on paleographic grounds to the eighth century. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 231 Fig. 19: British Library Additional 14,532, ff. 22b–23a. This most likely eighth-century Miaphysite manuscript includes numerous quotations from pro-Chalcedonian sources. On these two pages the scribe had to include a number of citations from the Council of Chalcedon itself. Although he copied these accurately, he added an anti-Chalcedonian narrative before and after the conciliar decisions. So, too, the page includes a number of marginal reading marks to warn future readers that these quotations were to be considered heterodox. © The British Library Board, Add 14,532 232 Michael Philip Penn manuscript. For example, on the very page on which he reproduces a quotation from the pro-Chalcedonian Pope Leo the Miaphysite scribes adds: “It is wickedness that Leo is putting here.”²³ The same scribe also had a tendency to discover quotations in the main text that were particularly amenable to his theological convictions and to repeat them, either verbatim or as a paraphrase, in the margins. He was particularly apt to do so when copying down conciliar decisions he did not like. For example, at one point this poor Miaphysite scribe had to copy an exemplar that contained several pages dominated with passages from the Council of Chalcedon. Fortunately for the scribe, these were interspersed with occasional pro-Miaphysite citations. This allowed him to radically shift the theological balance of the page. While he was stuck with a main text filled with objectionable text, he recopied key parts of the few pro-Miaphysite sections and repeated these in the margins. These brief slogans served as a running argument against the preponderance of the main text. As a result, whenever anyone reads these statements from the Council of Chalcedon in the main text, they also encounter the anti-Chalcedonian arguments twice–once in the main text and more prominently in the margins. These marginal glosses began with the statement that the earlier Council of Ephesus had decreed that “there will not be a definition of faith apart from that which was at the Council of Nicaea.” (As both the councils of Nicaea and Ephesus took place before the Council of Chalcedon the implication was that the Chalcedonian creed was too innovative to be considered valid). The marginalia continue by defending the pro-Miaphysite Dioscorus whom the Council of Chalcedon had deposed: “It was not because of faith that the holy Dioscorus was deposed” (Thus Dioscorus’s deposition was invalid). They conclude by highlighting that the Council of Chalcedon was presented with two possible creeds, one by Dioscorus and one “by the wicked Leo.”²⁴ (And, alas, they chose the “wrong one”). But it was not simply ancient scribes who expressed their displeasure at the texts they were accessing. A similar phenomenon occurred among later readers of these documents, especially when they thought the original scribe did not adequately mark a given passage as heretical. This tendency is particularly visible in a series of readerly interventions found in British Library Additional 14,528 (Fig. 21). The contents of this sixth-century Miaphysite manuscript are similar to many of the other manuscripts used to know thy enemy. Like these other manuscripts the original scribe preserved conciliar decisions, including those he didn’t like, as well as writings from opponents to Miaphysitism such as Pope Leo. As in other manuscripts, the scribe’s motive for copying oppositional texts was undoubtedly to provide the textual resources future Miaphysite readers needed to defend Miaphysite positions and attack Chalcedonian 23 BL Add. 12,155, f. 53a. 24 BL Add. 12,155, f. 51a. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 233 Fig. 21: British Library Additional 14,528, f. 119a. This collection of ecclesiastical documents was compiled by a Miaphysite scribe, most likely in the sixth century. The codex included a number of pro-Chalcedonian texts which the original scribe left unmodified. A later Miaphysite reader intervened making a number of changes. On this page, for example, he changed a reference to the Council of Chalcedon from “the holy Council” to “the despised Council.” So, too, he changed the reference to Pope Leo who helped convene the Council of Chalcedon from “The illustrious Leo of Rome” to “Leo the wicked Roman.” © The British Library Board, Add 14,528 234 Michael Philip Penn ones. Most likely this scribe was writing over a century before techniques such as narrative framing, reading marks, or marginalia became common practices. So he simply copied opposition literature without comment. For later Miaphysite readers, the original scribe’s textually neutral stance became increasingly problematic and forced one of them to make his own material interventions. The first modification occurs in the manuscript’s incipit. Through erasure and marginal gloss a later reader changed a phrase that originally had read “the holy Council of Chalcedon” into “the despised council.” As for Pope Leo who had helped convene this controversial council, the reader changed him from “the illustrious Leo” to “the wicked Leo”.²⁵ The reader’s ire was next expressed seventeen pages later, this time against the Byzantine emperor Marcian who originally assembled the Council of Chalcedon. In this case one can actually follow the reader’s various attempts to modify the text and then see him change his mind midway through.²⁶ Toward the bottom of a page, the reader encountered a positive reference to the zeal of the God-fearing Marcian. Disagreeing with this assessment of the Byzantine emperor, the reader produced a number of serial interventions: 1) He first erased the bottom line of the page that was initially pro-Marcian. 2) He then wanted to erase the first two words at the top of the next page, words that most likely characterized Marcian as a “fearer of God.” But, considering it unwise to erase the word “God” he simply erased the first word leaving the rather enigmatic “____ of God.” 3) He then returned to the bottom of the first page and tried writing a new anti-Marcian text, but in a hand that imitated that of the original scribe. The reader, however, only got as far as the first word “this” which he formed in the same script (Estrangela) as that used by the original scribe, but not in a manner that would be entirely convincing. 4) He then began but started to form the word second word, “emperor,” in the script he was more familiar with, Serto. 5) Most likely catching himself using the more contemporary script he stopped part way through the word “emperor” and crossed it out. 6) He then gave up trying to write over the erased lines in the style of the original scribe. He instead left the rest of the line blank and wrote a marginal note underneath in the Serto script he was most familiar with. Although no one would confuse this note with the hand of the original scribe, at least the later reader was now able to complete his emendation that changed an originally positive characterization of Marcian into the phrase “this faithless and Godless emperor.” Just a page later, the reader made yet another, albeit much simpler intervention, now changing the incipit of a letter written from Leo to Anatolius, the pro-Chalcedonian Bishop of Constantinople. With a quick erasure the reader slightly demoted Anatolius changing him from the “Head Bishop of Constantinople” to “a bishop of 25 BL Add. 14,528, f. 119a. 26 BL Add. 12,528, ff. 136b–137a. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 235 Constantinople.” Leo fared worse being transformed via erasure and marginal gloss from “Leo, the Chief Bishop of Rome” to “Leo, the Wicked Bishop of Rome.”²⁷ The reader’s final interventions occurred toward the end of the same letter. At this point Leo’s letter originally maligned Dioscorus, the Miaphysite Bishop of Alexandria. The later reader partially rejuvenated Dioscorus’s legacy by erasing a negative epithet the text originally put before his name. He then ended his series of interventions with a final note at the bottom of the page that reads: “Woe upon your mouth wicked unclean Leo!” It’s not everyday that one encounters marginalia cursing the pope. ••• To know thy enemy one needed access to their texts. But the very act of copying and reading the opposition’s literature was potentially problematic. Syriac writers tried to solve this conundrum in various ways: through literary framing, through reading marks, through additional marginalia. These interventions allowed Syriac Christians to register disapproval toward a text and to warn future readers that they too were about to encounter something heretical. But these strategies were neither isolated nor idiosyncratic. What made these tactics so persuasive and pervasive was how closely they reflected other prevalent aspects of Syriac manuscript culture. For Syriac Christians reading was anything but a passive activity. Syriac colophons abound with examples of scribes anticipating that their labors in reproducing texts would provide them with spiritual reward in the world to come. Often these same scribes would enlist the reader in this task, asking him or her to pray on behalf of the scribe who toiled in the manuscript’s production.²⁸ Scribes would occasionally further entice readers to pray for them claiming that any reader who did so would also receive a share of these blessings.²⁹ Those who bound, collated, indexed, owned, and repaired manuscripts also wrote similar prayer requests.³⁰ Some readers, however, 27 BL Add. 12,528, f. 138a. 28 E.g. BL Add. 12,134, f. 132b; BL Add. 12,135, f. 205a; BL Add. 12,138, f. 311b; BL Add. 14,431, f. 157a; BL Add. 14,712, f. 51a; BL Add. 14,500, f. 79b; BL Add. 14,506, f. 97a; BL Add. 14,555, f. 42b; BL Add. 14,484, f. 121b; BL Add. 14,514, f. 93b; BL Add. 14,458, f. 157b; BL Add. 14,457, f. 200b; BL Add. 14,473, f. 146b; BL Add. 14,493, f. 189a; BL Add. 14,475, f 208b; BL Add. 14,434, f. 128b; BL Add. 14,562, f. 140b; BL Add. 14,564, f, 194a; BL Add. 14,690, f. 178a; BL Add. 14,692, f. 99a; BL Add. 14,708, f. 51b; BL Add. 14,709, f. 94a; BL Add. 14,710, f. 227a; BL Add. 14,711, f. 220b; BL Add. 14,714, f. 138b; BL Add. 14,728, f. 238b; BL Add. 14,736, f 64a; BL Add. 17,103, f. 70b; BL Add. 17,119, f. 83a; BL Add. 17,151, f. 109a; BL Add. 17,158, f. 55b; BL Add. 17,190, f. 1a; BL Add. 17,199, f. 79a; BL Add. 17,221, f. 105a; BL Add. 17,224, f. 42b; BL Add. 17,227, f. 150b; BL Add. 17,231, f. 24b; BL Add. 17,240, f. 41a, 94a; BL Add. 17,251, f. 158b; BL Add. 17,257, f. 21a; BL Add. 17,261, f. 63a; BL Add. 17,269, f. 11a; BL Add. 18,714, f. 190b. 29 BL Add. 14,702 f. 53a; BL Add. 17,299 f. 77b. 30 Binders: e.g. BL Add. 14,635, f. 5a; BL Add. 21,454, f. 230b. Collators/correctors: e.g. BL Add. 12,135, f. 42b; BL Add. 12,148, f. 233b; BL Add. 12,149, f. 84a; BL Add. 14,431, f. 157a; BL Add. 14,506, f. 76a; BL Add. 14,547, f. 236a; BL Add. 14,565, f. 164b; BL Add. 12,149, f. 84a. Indexers: BL Add. e.g. 14,432, 236 Michael Philip Penn took the connection between written word and everlasting life a little too seriously resulting in a related phenomenon of pilfered prayers. That is, upon encounter such a prayer petition some readers erased the name of the original scribe and replaced it with their own.³¹ Underlying this type of intervention was the belief that the very act of a name being read would give that person merit, even if later readers (or at the very least God) knew that this went against the prayer’s original intent. Of course, ancient scribes were aware that later readers might modify the text they were writing. Thus one often finds curses against those who changed these notices.³² Unfortunately for their original authors, such curses were not always effective. After they changed the colophon, cautious readers also erased the curse.³³ Sometimes particularly cunning scribes tried to guard against this. For example British Library Additional 17,124 ends: “Anyone who in any way removes this notice, he will receive the curses and anathemas that we wrote above in double” (Coincidentally, this statement has remained unmodified).³⁴ In other cases, scribes invited the reader to be a collaborator. That is, some scribes would complain about a poor exemplar and then directly address the reader asking that he or she correct the work as best as they were able. For example, the scribe of British Library Additional 14,576 wrote: “I, the poor Theodores, vocalized this book without an exemplar. But whoever finds a suitable exemplar, on account of love [for God], may he correctly finish whatever is lacking.”³⁵ Similarly, when the scribe of British Library Additional 17,264 noticed that someone had erased some names from his exemplar he proclaimed: “These names were erased. O reader, upon your life, if you should come across [another] copy, correct them so that you might receive mercy.”³⁶ Just as scribes often felt their labors in copying a text would gain them otherworldly benefit, so too future readers felt that the act of reading would provide them with spiritual merit. This belief helps explain the large number of reader signatures found in Syriac manuscripts, places where readers recorded their name in the margins of the works they had read. Often these signatures also included a request f. 3a. Owners: e.g. BL Add. 14,636, f. 56b; BL Add. 14,544, f. 113b; BL Add. 17,182, f. 99b. Repairers: BL Add. 14,491, f. 132a; BL Add. 14,565, f. 164b; BL Add. 14,635, f. 5a. 31 E.g. BL Add. 14,577, f. 130a; BL Add.14,587, f. 136a; BL Add. 14,605, f. 139a; BL Add. 14,643, f. 60b. For a larger discussion of pilfered prayers see Michael Philip Penn, “Moving Beyond the Palimpsest: Erasure in Syriac Manuscripts,” JECS 18:2 (2010): 281–83. 32 E.g. BL Add. 12,172, f. 195a; BL Add. 14,442, f. 48a; BL Add. 14,454, f. 1a; BL Add. 14,485, f. 121b; BL Add. 14,486, f. 81a; BL Add. 14,487, f. 71b; BL Add. 14,503, f. 178b; BL Add. 14,522, f. 26a; BL Add. 14,550, f. 1a; BL Add. 14,593, f. 2a; BL Add. 17,102, f. 59b; BL Add. 17,181, f. 136b. For a larger discussion of such anathemas and their erasure see Penn, “Beyond the Palimpsest,” 283–85. 33 E.g. BL Add. 12,154 f. 1a; BL Add. 14,454, f. 1a. 34 BL Add. 17,124, f. 68a. 35 BL Add. 14,576, f. 84b. 36 BL Add. 17,264, f. 65a. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 237 that future generations of readers pray on behalf of the earlier reader’s soul.³⁷ As a result, when a discouraged Syriac scribe took on the persona of his codex complaining that, “we books are many but readers few,” the problem was not simply that the scribe was wasting his time copying such a long codex.³⁸ A larger issue was that, without readers, the circulation of spiritual merit central to the manuscript enterprise would come to a screeching halt. The strong connection between writing, reading, and salvation undoubtedly helped motivate the laborious copying of ancient manuscripts. When, for example, the scribe of British Library Additional 14,519 twice (!) complained about being bitten by flies as he was writing or the scribe of British Library Additional 12,174 bemoaned the poor quality of the velum he was forced to write upon, they could at least find some compensation knowing that they would gain a heavenly reward for having completed their task.³⁹ After surviving “the trials of ink” and “the trials of the pen” they would rejoice upon reaching a safe harbor.⁴⁰ But if the copying of good words was advantageous for one’s soul, what about evil ones? Concern for such spiritual demerits occasionally manifested itself in the ways Syriac scribes wrote specific names. For example, British Library Additional 14,509 begins with a song set to the melody “the priest Zacharias.” As written, however, this tune would be particularly difficult to sing. Every few lines one comes across an illegible word. lllegible that is until you turn the page 180 degrees. The scribe has written upside down the names of figures such as Marcion and Mani whom he considered heretical.⁴¹ This scribe wasn’t the only one to invert his opponents. For example, the scribe of British Library Oriental 2309 carefully wrote upside-down the names of those who supported the controversial doctrine of monothelitism.⁴² This was not, however, only a scribal concern. When coming across a suspect name later readers also often intervened. For example, the ninth-century lectionary British Library Additional 14,492 initially dedicated one set of readings to the Greek theologians Diodorus, Theodore of Mopsuesta, and Nestorius. When a later Miaphysite reader came across 37 BL Add. 12,139, f. 139a; BL Add. 12,170, f. 47a, 135b; BL Add. 14,434, f. 128b.; BL Add. 14,464, f. 63a; BL Add. 14,473, f. 148b; BL Add. 14,479, f. 101a; BL Add. 14,548, f. 2a; BL Add. 14,558, f. 171a; BL Add. 14,574, f. 40b; BL Add. 14,576, f. 55b; BL Add. 14,582, f. 161a; BL Add. 14,598, f. 239b; BL Add. 14,703, f. 268b; BL Add. 17,122, f. 11b; BL Add. 17,159, f. 92b; BL Add. 17,227, f. 150b; BL Add. 17,248, f. 140a; BL Add. 18,715, f. 138a. 38 BL Add. 12,170 f 135a. 39 BL Add. 14,519 ff. 17a, 66b. BL Add. 12,174 f. 175a, 424b 40 BL Add. 17,185, f. 61a; 17,217, f. 63; BL Add. 14,667, f. 50. Sebastian Brock, “The Scribe Reaches Harbor,” ByzF 21 (1995): 195–202. 41 BL Add. 14,509, f. 1a–b. 42 BL Or. 2309, f. 54b. Also consider a manuscript of Jacob of Edessa’s Hexameron (Lyon Syriac 2) where one also encounters gibberish, that is until you reorient the page and realize that the scribe has written upside down the name Satan every time it appeared in Jacob’s account (e.g. Lyon, f. 15a). 238 Michael Philip Penn these references to theologians later associated with the East Syrians, he erased their names from the codex.⁴³ With writing or reading a suspect name being such a concern, how much more an entire text. For example, reconsider the eighth-century manuscript British Library Additional 12,155. In addition to the marginal notes found in this 265 folia cantena text, there exists a strong pattern of alterations that takes place in the main text. Most of the manuscript’s hundreds of references to the Miaphysite luminary Severus of Antioch have been erased and then in many cases Severus’s name was later rewritten over the erasures. A marginal note sheds some light on the circumstances. It begins, “This volume fell into the hands of a heretic and he erased from it the name of the holy one and light of the whole world.” That is, at some point the manuscript passed from a Miaphysite to a non Miaphysite community where a reader erased Severus’ name. When the manuscript returned to Miaphysites, a later reader rewrote the original names over the erasures. The marginalia go on to state “Let the wrath of the Lord come upon him who dared this, and he even dared [to do] this many times.”⁴⁴ This reader was certainly not the only one who “dared to do this many times.” Syriac manuscripts abound with this type of intervention.⁴⁵ One should thus view textual reactions to the problem of knowing thy enemy as a subset of these larger concerns regarding the power of writing, reading, and the desire to carefully patrol orthodoxy. When manuscripts had direct spiritual consequences for those who composed and read them, when folks we call readers were occasionally invited and often morally required to physically change the texts they were reading, when texts and manuscripts were frequently crossing sectarian boundaries, it became imperative to figure out how to tell a heretic when you read one. Syriac scribes and readers appear to have modified manuscripts more frequently than any other group of early Christians. Nevertheless, modern scholarship concerning other linguistic traditions may be very helpful in contextualizing Syriac manuscript interventions. For example, consider the work of Latinist John Dagenais. In Dagenais’s words, medieval reading “was above all an ethical activity. … Texts … engaged the reader … They required the reader to take a stand about what he or she 43 BL Add. 14,492, f. 5a. So too, the original scribe of the eighteenth-century Cambridge Add. 1989 carefully followed his exemplar and included a prayer to the exactly the same East Syrian luminaries as found in the British Library lectionary. As with BL Add. 14,492, a later reader struck out each name. But, in this case, the alterations went a bit further and he replaced the struck out names with theologians he considered more respectable: Gregory, Basil of Caseseria, and John Chrysostom (Cambridge Add. 1989, f. 16b). 44 BL Add. 12,155, f. 12a. 45 For a larger discussion of Syriac manuscript changes motivated by heresiological concerns see Penn, “Beyond the Palimpsest,” 285–89. For similar types of interventions, but in these cases motivated by the rise of Islam see Michael Philip Penn, “Monks, Manuscripts, and Muslims: Syriac Textual Changes in Reaction to the Rise of Islam,” Hug 12:2 (2009): 235–57. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts 239 read.”⁴⁶ Dagenais observation of what he calls “the ethics of reading in manuscript culture” is particularly useful for understanding the ways Syriac Christians altered the texts that they encountered. When a Miaphysite came across a positive reference to the Council of Chalcedon or when a Syriac Christian an East Syrian confronted a condemnation of his hero Nestorius, modifying part of the offending passage was an “ethical reading practice.” The manuscript became a space where one “could take a stand” about what was being written and being read. A recognition of these dynamics of ancient reading also affects the way we read ancient manuscripts. Dagenais’s statement that “in the Middle Ages the primary ‘literary’ activity was not writing, and certainly not ‘authoring’ or ‘creating,’ but reading,”⁴⁷ reminds us that the works we study are not so much the product of individual authors or even of individual scribes but rather the accumulation of a series of readers. In Dagenais’s words we should approach manuscripts less as “literature” than as “lecturature.”⁴⁸ This paradigm shift concerning how Christians read manuscripts moves one from a type of text criticism whose primary goal is the recovery of an Urtext to an emphasis on transmission history where manuscripts reflect an evolving, frequently contested, multilayered process of meaning-making.⁴⁹ Such an approach puts Syriac materials, for the first time, in conversation with recent developments in emerging disciplines such as “new philology,” “new medievalist,” and “the history of the book.”⁵⁰ 46 John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de buen amor (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), xvii. 47 Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading, 22. 48 Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading, 23. 49 For brief critiques of traditional text criticism’s search for origins, see Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 220–21; Stephen G. Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65:1 (1990): 3–7; Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Material Texts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 12–15. 50 The bibliography of recent works often categorized as “history of the book” is immense. Especially influential are the works of Roger Chartier and Anthony Grafton as well as the University of Pennsylvania Press’s Material Texts series. Of particular import to the debate surrounding “new philology” and “new medievalism” was the January 1990 special issue of Speculum and the collection of essays Towards a Synthesis? Essays on the New Philology (ed. Keith Busby; Atlanta: Rodopi, 1993). Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading represents a particularly articulate critique of both “new” and “old” philology by a scholar who nevertheless remains very committed to studying medieval manuscript culture. His comments include such quotable remarks as “My dissatisfactions with New Philology arise when New Philology (and its congener, New Medievalism) begins to look like Old Theory – namely the theory of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. … The New Philology continually reveals its own origins in approaches to literature that many in the literary establishment, and especially in medievalist circles, have felt to be self-indulgent or self-serving, pointless, plagued by fundamental misunderstandings or misreadings, or just plain dull” (xv) and “On the other hand, traditional philology seems unwilling or unable to rise to the legitimate challenges to traditional ways of looking at texts raised by new approaches to 240 Michael Philip Penn The problematic necessity of Syriac Christians preserving oppositional literature is part of a larger phenomenon of early Christian materialization of difference. As a result of the ancient requirement to know thy enemy, Syriac manuscripts now become material witnesses. They attest that many early Christians patrolled the ever contested boundaries of orthodoxy, not through the composition of theological tractates, but through their – quite literally – active reading of them. For these Christians, the materiality of manuscripts provided both the incentive and the opportunity to define and guard orthodoxy. Bibliography Baum, Wilhelm, and Dietmar W. Winkler. Die Apostolische Kirche des Ostens: Geschichte der sogenannten Nestorianer. Klagenfurt: Verlag Kitab, 2000. –. The Church of the East: A Concise History. New York: Routledge, 2003. Bertaina, David. Christian and Muslim Dialogues: The Religious Uses of a Literary Form in the Early Islamic Middle East. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011. Brock, Sebastian P. “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 (1996): 23–35. –. “The Scribe Reaches Harbor.” Byzantinische Forschungen 21 (1995): 195–202. Cameron, Averil. “Disputations, Polemical Literature and the Formation of Opinion in the Early Byzantine Period.” Pages 91–108 in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures. Edited by Gerrit J. Reinink and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout. Leuven: Peeters, 1991. –. “Introduction.” Pages 1–6 in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700. Edited by Richard Price and Mary Whitby. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Choksy, Jamsheed K. Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Dagenais, John. The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de buen amor. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Griffith, Sidney H. “The Monk in the Emir’s Majlis: Reflections on a Popular Genre of Christian Literary Apologetics in Arabic in the Early Islamic Period.” Pages 13–65 in The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam. Edited by Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Mark R. Cohen, Sasson Somekh, and Sidney H. Griffith. Studies in Arabic Language and Literature 4. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999. –. “Answering the Call of the Minaret: Christian Apologetics in the World of Islam.” Pages 91–126 in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam. Edited by Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Jan J. Van Ginkel, and Theo M. Van Lint. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 134. Leuven: Peeters, 2005. medieval textuality. Too often the response has been shrill, or merely diversionary. The defense has rested on pronouncing the words ‘trendy’ or ‘fashionable,’ uttering ‘Derrida’ in a hoarse whisper, and reaching for the nearest cruciform object” (xvi). Also, see Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers, 1–25, 197–200. Know Thy Enemy: The Materialization of Orthodoxy in Syriac Manuscripts –. 241 “Answering the Call of the Minaret: The Topics and Strategies of Christian Apologetics in the World of Islam.” Pages 11–42 in Die Suryoye und ihre Umwelt. Edited by Andreas Heinz Martin Tamcke. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005. Grillmeier, Alois. Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche. 2 Vols. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1979–1990. Guidi, Ignazio, and Ernest W. Brooks. Chronica minora. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 3, Scriptores Syri 3. Paris: L. Durbecq, 1904. Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints. Berkely: University of California Press, 1990. King, Karen L. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Kiraz, George Anton. A Grammar of the Syriac Language. Volume 1. Orthography. Piscataway, N. J.: Gorgias Press, 2012. Lim, Richard. Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Louth, Andrew. “Why Did the Syrians Reject the Council of Chalcedon?” Pages 107–16 in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700. Edited by Richard Price and Mary Whitby. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Margoliouth, George. Descriptive List of Syriac and Karshuni MSS. of the British Museum Aquired Since 1873. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1899. Nichols, Stephen G. “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 65:1 (1990): 1–10. Penn, Michael Philip. “Monks, Manuscripts, and Muslims: Syriac Textual Changes in Reaction to the Rise of Islam.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 12:2 (2009): 235–57. –. “Moving Beyond the Palimpsest: Erasure in Syriac Manuscripts.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18:2 (2010): 261–303. Reinink, Gerrit J. “Tradition and the Formation of the ‘Nestorian’ Identity in Sixth- to Seventh-Century Iraq.” Church History and Religious Culture 89 (2009): 217–50. Rompay, Lucas Van. “Society and Community in the Christian East.” Pages 239–66 in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Edited by Michael Maas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. –. “The East (3): Syria and Mesopotamia.” Pages 365–86 in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. Edited by Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Schor, Adam M. Theodoret’s People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria. Transformation of the Classical Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Sellew, Philip. “Red Letter Bible.” Page 422 in The Oxford Guide to Ideas & Issues of the Bible. Edited by Michael D. Coogan and Bruce M. Metzger. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Simonsohn, Uriel I. A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Taylor, Andrew. Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Walker, Joel Thomas. The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Wright, William. Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired Since the Year 1838, Volume 2. London: Cambridge University Press, 1871.