Isaac of Nineveh

Isaac of Nineveh was a 7th-century Syriac Christian, born c.613 in eastern Arabia (Qatar), an area that spoke Arabic and Syrian. He was ordained Bishop of Nineveh in 676, but one record says he left that position not long after starting it. He is often referred to as Isaac the Syrian.

The reason may simply have been the desire to live the life of an ascetic. We are told he retired to a mountain in a province of Iran, and then joined a monastery called Rabban Shapur where he concentrated his energy on writing on Christian mysticism. It is said that his devotion to study was so great that at the time of his death he was nearly blind. (Of course, eyes naturally age as we grow older, and the invention of eyeglasses was centuries away.)

He wrote extensively on theology and asceticism. A later Syriac writer claimed that Isaac wrote seven volumes. They are discussed as three "Parts."  The First Part was translated first into Greek and then into other languages. It is the best known of the Parts, and was translated into English in 1923. It is a collection of homilies whose number and order vary depending on which manuscript one reads.

The Second Part was unknown until 1983, when a British Syriac scholar was reading a manuscript in the Bodleian Library that had been donated by an Assyrian priest who had lived and preached in Flint, Michigan. It contain 41 chapters, but one of the chapters, entitled "Headings on Spiritual Knowledge," has 400 chapters of its own. It was identified by matching it with quotations in other early manuscripts that were known to be by Isaac. Since then, other manuscripts have been identified as version of the Second Part.

The Third part is only known by a 1903 copy of a 14th-century manuscript that has since been lost.

If other Parts still exist, they have not been identified.

Isaac's writings suggest the idea of universal salvation, that all human beings can and will be restored to a proper relationship with God. In his writings we find sentences that claim "God will not abandon anyone." and "There was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist." He offers an analogy:

As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God; as a fountain that flows abundantly is not dammed by a handful of earth, so the compassion of the Creator is not overcome by the wickedness of the creatures... If He is compassionate here, we believe that there will be no change in Him; far be it from us that we should wickedly think that God could not possibly be compassionate; God's properties are not liable to variations as those of mortals.

Isaac died c.700 in Umayyad Iran. He is considered a saint in the Church of the East.

The Bodleian Library (as no doubt many other major research libraries in the world) contains donations that have not all been examined closely. Treasures lie within. Let's take a look next time at the Bodleian, and especially at its precursors in Oxford.

Syriac

The Syriac alphabet is a set of 22 consonants; there are no vowels. It was created in the 1st century CE as an offshoot of cursive Aramaic.

Written from right to left, (and occasionally vertically), the vowel sounds were implied by context. In the 8th century, diacritical marks were introduced to represent vowel sounds.

There were three variations of the script, one of which, the oldest and classical version called "Estrangela" is shown here. As the oldest version, Estrangela does not usually adopt the diacritical marks, and is therefore "pure" classical Syriac.

Looking at the table here, one might notice the first letter, ālep̄, and say "Isn't that the vowel "a"? It is actually a glottal stop, so not the same. Just below it on the table, Waw is the consonant "w" but can create the sounds of "o" and "u" when spoken. Yöt on the second row is the letter 'y' but can also create a vowel sound for "I" and "e."

Across the Middle East, Syriac was a major vernacular, literary, and religious language. It ha also been called Edessan, the Mesopotamian, and Aramaic. It was the main language of the early Christian era. As Syriac Christianity spread, the language became known as far as India and China. By the end of the Middle Ages, it became less a daily language and more reserved for liturgical use.

Syriac is still around. In fact, you can order a book designed to teach it to children.

While it flourished, however, it was used by several major authors of the early era. Jacob of Serugh (c.451 - 521) composed hundreds of homilies in verse. The poet Narsai (c.399 - 502) was nicknamed the "Tongue of the East" for his writings that influenced East Syrian liturgical theology. Jacob of Edessa (c.640 - 708) created the first formal Syriac grammar and translated Greek philosophical works into Syriac.

Then there was Isaac of Nineveh, also known as Isaac the Syrian, whose Syriac writings on mysticism were so popular that they were translated from Syriac into Arabic, Ethiopic, and Greek. We'll talk about him more tomorrow.