Who Was St. Ephrem the Syrian? Theology in Hymns

Every weekday of Great Lent, Orthodox Christians make prostrations while the priest says a short prayer that begins "O Lord and Master of my life." The service books call it the prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian, and for many believers that prayer is all they know of him. The man behind the name was a fourth-century teacher who wrote his theology as poetry, in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, and whose hymns were sung by choirs in Nisibis and Edessa while the Greek-speaking world argued over Arius.

Ephrem is also a good test of honest hagiography. His own writings survive in quantity, but a large body of legend, and an even larger body of Greek writings under his name, grew up around him. This article tells his life as the Church remembers it, sorts the documented from the legendary, and asks what the Orthodox Church actually claims about him and about the Lenten prayer.

In brief

Ephrem was born, probably to Christian parents, in or near Nisibis (modern Nusaybin, Turkey) in the early fourth century. He served a series of bishops there as teacher and composer, lived through the Persian siege of 350, and left when the city was handed to Persia in 363. He spent his last ten years at Edessa and probably died on 9 June 373. He wrote only in Syriac, and nearly 400 of his teaching hymns (madrashe) survive. Jerome and Palladius, writing within fifty years of his death, call him a deacon of Edessa. Much of the popular story, including a visit to Egypt, ordination by St Basil and attendance at Nicaea, comes from a Syriac Life written perhaps two centuries later and from other late legends, and specialists treat those episodes as unreliable or unconfirmed. Most of the many Greek works under his name ("Ephrem Graecus") are not his, and the Lenten prayer is widely thought to be one of them. Because he died before the fifth-century divisions, every Syriac tradition claims him. The Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 28 January.

Thesis: Ephrem's own hymns, not the later legends, are the best evidence for who he was, and they show a Nicene teacher whose theology of praise and humility the Orthodox Church can honor fully while admitting that much of his traditional biography is late.

The life as the Church remembers it

The OCA's life of the saint is generous with detail. Ephrem was born to poor farmers in Nisibis, had a quick temper as a youth, was falsely accused of stealing a sheep and repented in prison. He became a disciple of St James (Jacob) of Nisibis, who took him to the First Ecumenical Council in 325. After Nisibis fell to the Persians he lived among hermits near Edessa, wrote against the Arians, and composed hymns for the feasts. Late in life he visited the monks of Egypt and then St Basil at Caesarea, who ordained him deacon; when Basil later wanted him made a bishop, Ephrem "feigned madness" to escape. In a famine he persuaded the rich of Edessa to give, cared for the sick, and then withdrew to his cave until death.¹ Some of this is early and solid, and some is late and doubtful.

The primary historical evidence

Ephrem's own writings

The best source for Ephrem is Ephrem. The Oxford Syriac scholar Sebastian Brock groups his genuine works in four categories: prose (commentaries on Genesis, part of Exodus and the Diatessaron, and works against Bardaisan, Marcion and Mani), artistic prose, the madrashe or stanzaic hymns, and the memre or verse homilies. The hymn collections survive in sixth-century manuscripts.²

The hymns also give us history. The first of the Nisibene Hymns can be dated exactly, because it describes the flooding around the city during the Persian siege of 350.³ In it the city herself prays, borrowing the story of Noah: "Stretch forth Thy bow against the flood, for lo! it has lifted up its waves against our walls!"⁴ {{very-strong: Ephrem lived in Nisibis through the siege of 350 and wrote hymns about it while the events were fresh.}}

In the last of his Hymns against Heresies he called himself a "herdsman" of the bishop's flock and prayed that he had built "enclosures" of hymns "for the lambs of your flock" (translated by Sidney Griffith). Griffith concludes that Ephrem served the bishops of Nisibis and then of Edessa as catechist, exegete and liturgical composer. "He was not a monk," Griffith writes, though as an unmarried man he was probably an ihidaya, a "single" person dedicated to God's service.⁵

The earliest outside witnesses

Jerome, writing in 392, calls him "deacon of the church at Edessa" and says his writings "are repeated publicly in some churches, after the reading of the Scriptures." Having read one of his books in Greek translation, Jerome "recognized even in translation, the incisive power of lofty genius."⁶ Palladius, about 420, also calls him "the deacon of the Church of Edessa" and tells of a famine: Ephrem shamed the rich, appointed himself "hospitaller," set up "some 300 beds" in the porticoes, and died about a month after the famine ended.⁷ Sozomen, writing in the 440s, repeats the famine story and adds that Ephrem's works "were translated into Greek during his life."⁸

{{strong: The famine relief at Edessa shortly before his death is reported by Palladius within about fifty years.}} Even so, the outside sources already reshape him. David Taylor points out that Palladius "already has the Edessan deacon metamorphosing into a monk."⁹ The date of death rests on Syriac chronicles: the Chronicle of Edessa gives 9 June 373, others give the same year with slightly different days, and Jerome says only that he died under Valens (d. 378).¹⁰ Brock's "He probably died on 9 June 373" is the fair summary.¹¹

Theology in hymns

Why hymns?

Sozomen gives the ancient explanation. Harmonius, son of the Edessene teacher Bardaisan, had written songs carrying his father's ideas, and "the Syrians were charmed with the elegance of the diction and the rhythm of the melody." So Ephrem learned the meters and "composed similar poems in accordance with the doctrines of the Church."¹² The strategy fits Paul's instruction to teach "one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Colossians 3:16, NKJV).

Jacob of Serugh (died 521), in a verse homily written more than a century later, says Ephrem trained women's choirs to sing in church: "Your teaching opened the closed mouth of the daughters / of Eve, and now the congregations of the glorious / [church] resound with their voices" (as quoted by Griffith, citing Joseph Amar's edition and translation).¹³ Brock's reference entry records the report as Jacob's.¹⁴

Praise instead of prying

Ephrem lived through the Arian crisis but answered it differently from Athanasius or the Cappadocians. The Jesuit scholar Robert Murray wrote that Ephrem "refuses to answer the Arians by developing speculative theology on the orthodox side": "Not fides quaerens intellectum but fides adorans mysterium!"¹⁵ Faith adoring the mystery, rather than faith seeking understanding.

The Pearl hymns, part of his Hymns on Faith, show the method. Ephrem picks up a pearl and sees in it the Son: "I went to look at it on one side, and it proved faces on all sides. I found out that the Son was incomprehensible, since He is wholly Light." Then the pearl speaks: "Search thou out the sea, but search not out the Lord of the sea!" And a warning follows: "Prayer and prying [come] from one mouth, and which shall we listen to?"¹⁶ When he blessed the one "who has not tasted / the bitter poison of the wisdom of the Greeks," Griffith notes, he did not mean Greek Fathers such as Athanasius or Basil, but those who measured revelation only by "Hellenic" logic, such as followers of Arius and Aetius.¹⁷

None of this makes him vague about doctrine. The Nativity hymns are firmly Nicene: "While He was lying on His Mother's bosom, in His bosom were all creatures lying."¹⁸ The Incarnation glorifies human nature, a theme Orthodox theology calls theosis: "To-day Godhead sealed itself upon Manhood, that so with the Godhead's stamp Manhood might be adorned."¹⁹ (See our article on theosis.) In the Hymns on Paradise, reading Genesis becomes a journey: "I read the opening of this book / and was filled with joy" (Brock's translation).²⁰ One of the Hymns on Faith ends with a prayer to Christ: "O Jesus, glorious name, / hidden bridge which carries one over / from death to life."²¹

A Father from before the divisions

Ephrem died fifty-eight years before the Council of Ephesus (431). The Syriac-speaking churches later divided into the Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox (non-Chalcedonian), the Maronites, and Chalcedonian Syriac Christians in communion with Constantinople. All of them claim him. Brock lists his commemorations: the Syriac Orthodox on the Saturday of the first week of Lent and other days, the Maronites on 27 January, the Church of the East on a Friday after Epiphany with the "Syriac Doctors," the Greek and Russian Orthodox on 28 January, and Roman Catholics on 9 June.²² On the Julian (old) calendar, 28 January currently falls on 10 February.

On the Christological questions that later divided these churches (see what Chalcedon defined), Ephrem was never asked, and it would be unfair to enlist him for one side. What he shared with all of them was the faith of Nicaea, sung rather than argued, in a Semitic language and imagery. He is a reminder that Orthodoxy has never been only Greek or Slavic. Rome honors him too: in 1920 Pope Benedict XV proclaimed him "Doctor of the Universal Church," at the request of the Syriac Catholic, Maronite and Chaldean patriarchs.²³

Ephrem Graecus and the Lenten prayer

By the Middle Ages the Greek-speaking Church possessed a vast library under Ephrem's name. Griffith notes that the standard catalogue of Greek patristic works needs more pages for the works attributed to Ephrem than for anyone except John Chrysostom.²⁴ Brock's verdict: only a few of these Greek texts "are really by him (and many are not even translations from Syriac)."²⁵ Griffith discusses one, the Sermo Asceticus, a homily to monks: of the thirty columns of Greek in the standard edition, only ninety-two lines have been found to be translated from a Syriac original. Yet he declines to call it "simply a forgery." The Greek writings carried Ephrem's spirit into monastic settings and new languages, and sayings under his name reached the Philokalia through Peter of Damaskos.²⁶

The Lenten prayer belongs to this Greek tradition. Bishop Irenei (Steenberg) of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a patristic scholar, told a 2017 conference on St Ephrem in Moscow that the prayer "is not found in the Syriac corpus of St Ephrem, and in all its known forms dates to a later period of coenobitic monastic development," and "is almost universally thought not actually to have been written by him."²⁷ In his translation of the standard Greek text:

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, idle curiosity, lust for power and idle talk;
But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.²⁸

{{debated: Whether any form of the Lenten prayer goes back to Ephrem himself.}} Bishop Irenei explains that the Church keeps the attribution "not insisting upon a direct ascription of the text to his hand, but on its being a part of the 'received legacy' of the saint."²⁹ The prayer can be loved as a fruit of the tradition Ephrem began, whoever first wrote it. (See also our guide to prayer, fasting and the Jesus Prayer.)

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary and near-contemporary evidence

• His own works, in sixth-century manuscripts: his theology, his service to the bishops of Nisibis, the siege of 350, the loss of Nisibis in 363, his opposition to Arians, Bardaisan, Marcion and Mani.
• Jerome (392), Palladius (about 420), Sozomen (440s): deacon of Edessa, read in churches, translated into Greek, the famine relief, death under Valens.

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

• The Syriac Life, which Brock dates "perhaps 200 years after his death" and calls "full of unreliable information."¹¹ It supplies the pagan-priest father, the expulsion from home and the vision of a vine growing from his mouth.³⁰ Brock judges that his parents were probably Christian.
• The meeting with Basil is told in a Life of Basil falsely ascribed to Amphilochius of Iconium; Taylor calls it "almost certainly fictitious."³¹ The nineteenth-century editor John Gwynn already saw that the story of Ephrem mourning Basil cannot be true, since Basil outlived him.³²
• The visit to Egypt, Gwynn observed, is "unknown as it is to all authorities save our Life"; the only manuscript naming the Egyptian monk Bishoi was copied around 1100 in that saint's own monastery.³²
• Nicaea in 325: Gwynn noted that it "has no early attestation."³² It is possible, since his bishop attended, but unconfirmed.
• The encomium of "Gregory of Nyssa", quoted by Benedict XV, Taylor dates to about 650 and calls "attributed incorrectly."³¹ The Testament of Ephrem is likewise regarded as inauthentic.³³
• The feigned madness is told by Sozomen in the 440s: early, but impossible to check.

(c) Reported miracles

The early witnesses report none. The supernatural details (Basil learning of his arrival by revelation, Ephrem suddenly speaking Greek, the prophetic vine) belong to the later Lives and should be read as the Church's way of honoring a teacher, not as testable reports.^{30 31}

The Orthodox position

Dogma: nothing in Ephrem's biography is dogma. By venerating him the Church affirms that he is a saint whose teaching is trustworthy and whose prayers may be asked. (See how someone becomes a saint in the Orthodox Church.) Common tradition: his feast on 28 January, his title as a teacher of repentance, hymnody as theology, and the Lenten prayer under his name. The traditional Lives are read as edifying, and the Church has never required belief in each episode. Opinion: whether he met Basil, went to Egypt or attended Nicaea, and whether the Lenten prayer has any link to him. Orthodox Christians may follow the evidence.

His theology fits the Orthodox mind closely: reverent silence before God, salvation as the deifying of human nature, and Scripture read within worship. See the Church Fathers guide, and our article on the Cappadocian Fathers shows the Greek side of the same struggle against Arianism.

Objections and honest answers

"If most of his Life is legend, did he exist at all?"

Ephrem is one of the best-documented Christians of his century: nearly 400 hymns in early manuscripts, an allusion to his work by Epiphanius of Salamis in about 377,⁹ Jerome's notice within twenty years of his death, and a hymn on the siege of 350 that fits other accounts of it. What is uncertain is the later portrait, not the person.

"His hymns show relic cult and Marian devotion the Bible does not teach."

A Protestant reader could point to the Nisibene Hymns, where the city is protected through the body of its first bishop: Nisibis "laid the body within her, and it became a wall without her."³⁴ Honor for the bodies of saints is clearly present by 350. But the stanza turns at once to Christ: "Place ye within you the living body, that it be a wall for your lives!" The "living body" seems to mean Christ's body received in the Eucharist, so the relic points beyond itself, and Ephrem's praise of Mary regularly leads into praise of her Son.

"Ephrem belongs to the Syriac churches, not to Byzantium."

Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Christians could fairly say that Byzantium mostly received a Greek "Ephrem" who was not the real one; Griffith's contrast between "Ephraem Byzantinus" and "Ephraem Syrus" makes the same point.³⁵ The Orthodox answer is agreement, not rivalry. He is a shared Father of all who keep the Nicene faith, and the recovery of his Syriac works is a gift to every church that venerates him. Catholics, for their part, gathered his praise from "Basil, Chrysostom, Jerome, Francis of Sales, and Alphonsus Liguori,"²³ though Benedict XV's letter, like the OCA's life, still followed the older legends.

"His hymns are harsh toward Jews."

This is true. The Nativity hymns say, "Shamed is that people which holds the prophets as true," and a Pearl hymn tells the pearl to "reproach the Jewish women that have thee hung upon them."³⁶ Studying the Hymns on Faith, Christine Shepardson argues that Ephrem "repeatedly connects Christian 'heretics' with Jews," and that this rhetoric "should be read primarily in light of his struggle against local Christians rather than Jews."³⁷ That context explains the language but does not excuse it. Saints are holy, not flawless, and the Church does not ask us to repeat every polemical line of a Father.

What we can say confidently

• Ephrem was a Syriac-speaking teacher and poet from Nisibis who served its bishops and lived through the siege of 350.
• He moved to Edessa after 363 and died there, probably on 9 June 373.
• Jerome and Palladius, within fifty years, call him a deacon of Edessa, and he led famine relief there shortly before his death.
• He wrote Nicene theology in hymns, only in Syriac; most Greek works under his name are not his.
• The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 28 January.

What remains disputed

• His year of birth and whether his parents were Christian (Brock: probably; the Syriac Life: a pagan father).
• Whether he lived as a monk; Griffith says no, while Palladius and Sozomen describe a solitary in a cell.
• Whether he attended Nicaea (possible, but not attested early), met Basil (Taylor: almost certainly fictitious) or visited Egypt (the late Life alone).
• How much of the Greek "Ephrem" preserves his teaching, and whether the Lenten prayer has any link to him.
• The details of the women's choirs, reported more than a century later.

Conclusion

The Ephrem of the evidence is more modest than the Ephrem of legend, and in some ways more attractive. He was a teacher in a frontier city under siege, writing songs so that ordinary women and men could sing the faith of Nicaea, and spending his last strength on the hungry of Edessa. He refused to treat God as a puzzle. "Search not out the Lord of the sea," he wrote, and the right response to the Incarnation was praise.

When Orthodox Christians bow to the ground in Lent and ask to see their own faults rather than judge their brother, they may be using words Ephrem never wrote. But they stand where he stood, before the one he called the hidden bridge from death to life. Holy Father Ephrem, pray to God for us.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable Ephraim the Syrian," Lives of the Saints, 28 January, oca.org/saints/all-lives/2026/01/28. Quotation: "feigned madness."
2. Sebastian P. Brock, "Ephrem," in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, electronic edition (Beth Mardutho), gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Ephrem: the four categories of genuine works, "Nearly 400 madrāše survive," the collections "preserved in 6th-cent. mss."
3. Brock, "Ephrem," GEDSH: the first Nisibene hymn "can be dated exactly, since it describes the flooding of the surroundings during the siege of Nisibis in 350."
4. Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns 1, refrain, trans. J. T. Sarsfield Stopford, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series (NPNF2), vol. 13 (1898), ccel.org.
5. Sidney H. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father for the Whole Church: The Universal Appeal of St. Ephraem the Syrian," Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 1.2 (1998): 197-220, paras. 8-9, quoting Hymns against Heresies 56.10-11 (Beck, CSCO 169).
6. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 115, trans. Ernest Cushing Richardson, NPNF2 vol. 3 (1892), newadvent.org/fathers/2708.htm.
7. Palladius, Lausiac History 40, trans. W. K. Lowther Clarke (London: SPCK, 1918), 139-41, tertullian.org.
8. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 3.16, trans. Chester D. Hartranft, NPNF2 vol. 2 (1890), newadvent.org/fathers/26023.htm.
9. David G. K. Taylor, "St. Ephraim's Influence on the Greeks," Hugoye 1.2 (1998): 185-96, para. 2 (also for Epiphanius, Panarion, "fl. 377", as the earliest allusion to Ephrem's work outside Syriac).
10. John Gwynn, "Introductory Dissertation," NPNF2 vol. 13, sec. V and notes 292 and 295 (the Chronicle of Edessa and Jacob of Edessa give 373; the Chronicle and the shorter Life give the 9th of Haziran/June; other authorities give the 15th, 18th or 19th; Jerome says only that he died under Valens).
11. Brock, "Ephrem," GEDSH: "He probably died on 9 June 373. His biography, written perhaps 200 years after his death, is full of unreliable information."
12. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 3.16 (as note 8).
13. Jacob of Serugh, Metrical Homily on Mar Ephrem 40-44, ed. and trans. Joseph P. Amar, Patrologia Orientalis 47.1 (1995), pp. 34-35, as quoted in Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 12 and note 33.
14. Brock, "Ephrem," GEDSH: "According to Yaʿqub of Serugh, Ephrem instituted women's choirs to sing his madrāše."
15. Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 89, as quoted in Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 19.
16. Ephrem, The Pearl 1.1-4 (= Hymns on Faith 81), trans. J. B. Morris, NPNF2 vol. 13.
17. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," paras. 20-21, quoting Hymns on Faith 2.24 (Beck, CSCO 154).
18. Ephrem, Hymns on the Nativity 3 (NPNF numbering), trans. J. B. Morris, NPNF2 vol. 13.
19. Ephrem, Hymns on the Nativity 1 (NPNF numbering), trans. Morris, NPNF2 vol. 13.
20. Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise 5, trans. Sebastian Brock, Saint Ephrem: Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1990), 102-4, as quoted in Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 26.
21. Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 6.17, trans. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 25.
22. Brock, "Ephrem," GEDSH, final paragraph on commemorations.
23. Benedict XV, encyclical Principi Apostolorum Petro (5 October 1920), paras. 4 and 21-22, vatican.va.
24. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 4, citing M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum II (1974), 366-468.
25. Brock, "Ephrem," GEDSH (CPG 3905-4175).
26. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," paras. 27-34 (the line count is Griffith's report, citing Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum II, 371, for Assemani's edition).
27. Bishop Irenei (Steenberg) of Sacramento, "The Lenten Prayer: 'of St Ephrem'? A Few Observations on a Varied Textual Tradition," paper at the IV International Patristics Conference, Moscow, 27 April 2017, pp. 1-2, synod.com. He cites Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, "The Greek Writings Attributed to Saint Ephrem the Syrian," in Abba (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), 81.
28. Irenei, "The Lenten Prayer," p. 3 (his translation of the Greek text).
29. Irenei, "The Lenten Prayer," p. 2.
30. Gwynn, "Introductory Dissertation," NPNF2 vol. 13, sec. III (the Life's account of his father and childhood).
31. Taylor, "St. Ephraim's Influence on the Greeks," paras. 2-4 (pseudo-Amphilochian Life of Basil; the encomium "attributed incorrectly to Gregory of Nyssa," c. 650, PG 46.819-50; the meeting with Basil "almost certainly fictitious").
32. Gwynn, "Introductory Dissertation," NPNF2 vol. 13, secs. V and VII.
33. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," para. 6 and note 19, citing Joseph P. Amar's studies of the Syriac Vita tradition and E. Beck.
34. Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns 13.21, trans. Stopford, NPNF2 vol. 13.
35. Griffith, "A Spiritual Father," paras. 5-8.
36. Ephrem, Hymns on the Nativity 1 and The Pearl 2.1, trans. Morris, NPNF2 vol. 13.
37. Christine C. Shepardson, "'Exchanging Reed for Reed': Mapping Contemporary Heretics onto Biblical Jews in Ephrem's Hymns on Faith," Hugoye 5.1 (2002): 15-33, abstract; developed in her Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Ephrem the Syrian. Nisibene Hymns, Hymns on the Nativity, The Pearl: Seven Hymns on the Faith. Trans. J. T. Sarsfield Stopford, J. B. Morris and A. Edward Johnston. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 13, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1898. ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf213.
• Ephrem the Syrian. Hymns on Paradise. Trans. Sebastian Brock. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1990.
• Ephrem the Syrian. The Hymns on Faith. Trans. Jeffrey T. Wickes. Fathers of the Church 130. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015.
• Jerome. On Illustrious Men. Trans. Ernest Cushing Richardson. NPNF2 vol. 3. 1892.
• Palladius. The Lausiac History. Trans. W. K. Lowther Clarke. London: SPCK, 1918.
• Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History. Trans. Chester D. Hartranft. NPNF2 vol. 2. 1890.
• Jacob of Serugh. A Metrical Homily on Holy Mar Ephrem. Ed. and trans. Joseph P. Amar. Patrologia Orientalis 47.1. Turnhout: Brepols, 1995. (Cited as quoted by Griffith.)

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Irenei (Steenberg), Bishop of Sacramento. "The Lenten Prayer: 'of St Ephrem'? A Few Observations on a Varied Textual Tradition." IV International Patristics Conference, Moscow, 2017. synod.com/synod/pdf/4enbpireneiprayerofstephraim.pdf.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Venerable Ephraim the Syrian." Lives of the Saints, 28 January. oca.org.
• Gwynn, John. "Introductory Dissertation: Ephraim the Syrian and Aphrahat the Persian Sage." In NPNF2 vol. 13. 1898.

Other scholarship

• Brock, Sebastian P. "Ephrem." In Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, ed. S. P. Brock, A. M. Butts, G. A. Kiraz and L. Van Rompay. Electronic edition, Beth Mardutho. gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Ephrem.
• Griffith, Sidney H. "A Spiritual Father for the Whole Church: The Universal Appeal of St. Ephraem the Syrian." Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 1.2 (1998): 197-220.
• Murray, Robert. Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. (Cited as quoted by Griffith.)
• Shepardson, Christine C. "'Exchanging Reed for Reed': Mapping Contemporary Heretics onto Biblical Jews in Ephrem's Hymns on Faith." Hugoye 5.1 (2002): 15-33.
• Shepardson, Christine C. Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria. Patristic Monograph Series 20. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
• Taylor, David G. K. "St. Ephraim's Influence on the Greeks." Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 1.2 (1998): 185-96.

Sources from other Christian traditions

• Benedict XV. Principi Apostolorum Petro. Encyclical on St Ephrem the Syrian, 5 October 1920. vatican.va.