Jacob Aphraates

• Jacob Aphraates, “the Persian sage,” was born late in the 3rd century.
• He was the principal theologian of the Persian (i.e. Eastern Nestorian) Church in the 4th century.
• He was a monk and probably became a bishop of the

monastery of Mar Mattai (St. Matthew), east of Mosul, in North Iraq. He was an important figure in the Mesopotamian hierarchy.

• He witnessed the beginnings of the persecution of church leaders by the Sasanian King Sapor II, in the early 340’s.
• His writings have a very great philological value and are of fundamental importance for Syriac syntax.
• He is as yet hardly influenced by Greek philosophy and his Christological ideas are those of Nicene Fathers.
• He defended the unity of the Church against the Gnostics, and treated Baptism, the Eucharist and Penance rather fully.
• As a theologian, Aphraates is strikingly independent and remote from the controversies of his day in the Roman Empire. The “Church of the East” was so isolated that it was never asked to accept the Nicene Creed until the year 410; and apparently used, until that date, the formula that Aphraates gives (Hom. I).
• His Trinitarian doctrine and his Christology ignore the Council of Nicaea, to which the Persian Church apparently sent no representatives.
• In the year 344, he presided over a council of the church of his province (Adiabene), and the synodal letter is included in his works.
• His foundation is Scripture interpreted in a literal, historical manner.
• He cites the Bible over 1,000 times, usually from the Peshitta text.

• In 1869 W. Wright discovered the Syriac original text of twenty-three demonstrations, wrongly called homilies, which were written in the years 337 (1-10), 344 (11-22) and 345 (23); they give a kind of survey of the whole bodyof Christian doctrine. He writes on

faith (1), charity (2), fasting (3), prayer (4), exhortation to ascetics (6), penance (7), the resurrection of the dead (8), on “Christ, that he is the Son of God.” (17). He frequently attacks the Jews and attaches great importance to asceticism.

• The Gospels are cited according to Tatian's Diatessaron.
• The quotations from the Old Testament are taken from the Peshitta.
• A curious feature in Aphraates’ teaching is the use of expressions that plainly suggest that he regarded the Holy Spirit as the female element in the Godhead (XVIII.10). It is a thought strange to us.
• Aphraates wrote in his Demonstration IV on Prayer: The moment you start praying, raise your heart upwards, and lower your eyes downwards; enter inside your inner person and pray in secret to your Father who is in heaven…You who pray should remember that you are making an offering before God: let not Gabriel who presents the prayers be ashamed by an offering that has a blemish. When you pray to be forgiven, and acknowledge that you yourself forgive, consider first in your mind whether you really do forgive, and only then acknowledge ‘I forgive’. You must not act deceitfully with God and say ‘I forgive’ when you do not really forgive; for God is not like you, a mortal, whom you can deceive.”