The Incident of the Golden Calf in Pre-Islamic Syriac Authors

chapter 16 The Incident of the Golden Calf in Pre-Islamic Syriac Authors Andrew J. Hayes The ancient Israelites’ apostasy with the calf, recorded in Exod 32 and recalled in numerous other passages in the Scriptures (Deut 9:7–21; Ezek 16:1–63; 23:1– 49; Ps 106:19; see also Hos 1–4; Num 5:11–31), proved remarkably versatile and seminal in the hands of major early Syriac authors. It was of course de rigueur in connection with polemics against Jewish theological positions and ritual practices. But in that respect, especially regarding the elemental themes of the polemic, there is little to distinguish Syriac authors from their Greek and Latin contemporaries. Yet Syriac interpretations form a spectrum from directly anti-Jewish polemic, to broader treatments of salvation history in which such polemics usually remain latent, to some in which anti-Jewish arguments can scarcely be discerned. Within this spectrum, especially at the beginning, the calf story belongs firmly within the salvation historical themes typical of early Syriac tradition: the People and the Peoples, the church as royal bride, and the heart’s bridal chamber as the ascetical ideal (Murray, 2004, 41–68; Brock 1992, 115–30).1 The interwoven ascetical and ecclesial imagery, especially in charac- teristic poetic form, reveals the distinctive profile of early Syriac Christianity’s vision of this episode, with its stark contrasts between the height of divine mercy and the depth of human sin. It was a paradox Syriac poets especially could hardly resist exploring. Toward the end, interpretations turn more no- ticeably to polemical concerns that express the emerging identities of distinct confessional communities in the Syrian Orient. Throughout, the calf remains a source for the Syriac tradition’s distinctive conception and articulation of church life and ascetical experience. To illustrate this spectrum, the present account furnishes a brief overview of references to the incident and their overall thematic use before turning to examine more closely those texts and authors that illustrate principal as- pects: (1) Aphrahat, (2) Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh, (3) salvation-historical 1 In early Syriac authors, it is common to refer to the Jewish people and the Gentiles, especially in juxtaposition, using the single words ʿammâ (People/Nation) and ʿammê (Peoples/ Nations), respectively. For an account of this usage, see Murray 2004, 41–68. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004386860_017 The Incident of the Golden Calf in Pre-Islamic Syriac Authors 239 interpretations after Ephrem, (4) the calf in the spirituality of Philoxenus, and (5) the calf in intra-Christian polemics, especially the Christological controver- sies of the fifth and sixth centuries.2 The anti-Jewish polemics of Aphrahat and Ephrem have received several detailed treatments in their own right, but as I hope to show, the story of the calf, while very often linked to such polemics, is not exclusive to them, and a broader reading of the tradition proves worthwhile (see Neusner 1971, 169; Shepardson 2008; Narinskaya 2010; Lizorkin 2012).3 Overview Syriac literature first appears in the second century when, most notably, the task of translating the Old Testment into Syriac began, but the first major works of Syriac literature surviving under the name of a particular author ap- pear in the first part of the fourth century (Brock 2004, 161–64). In any case, other than a single passing reference in the third-century Acts of Judas Thomas, the story of the calf makes no appearance in the earliest stratum of Syriac literature (Wright 1871, 1:198). Aphrahat (d. 345) and Ephrem (ca. 306–373) thus provide the logical starting point. In the major works stretching from these two authors up until Sahdona and Ishoʿyahb III (both of the Church of the East) in the middle of the seventh century, more than seventy references to the calf incident can be found. Doubtless, many more remain to be discovered, especially in the unpublished works of Isaac of Antioch and Jacob of Serugh, leading poets of the fifth to the sixth centuries.4 A sense of proportion is nec- essary. In the works of those authors that have been edited, ten of the references belong to Aphrahat, more than thirty to Ephrem alone, and at least six short treatments, together with an entire mêmrâ devoted to the topic, belong to Jacob of Serugh. References in other major authors are much more sparse. One can say, therefore, that the Syriac interpretative tradition belongs chiefly to Aphrahat, to Ephrem, and to Jacob as Ephrem’s literary heir. 2 The Syriac tradition also preserves a large body of translation literature, liturgical texts, and anthology literature, such as exegetical catenae and patristic florilegia. The sheer breadth of these corpora makes impractical their inclusion in the present study, which focuses only on the early period’s principal authors or major anonymous works. Pseudo-Ephrem has also been left to one side. 3 Shepardson (2008, 23–24 n7) gives a fairly thorough bibliography. 4 The calf story appears only once that I can find in the corpus of Narsai, the third major fifth- century Syriac poet, even in places where Narsai treats anti-Jewish themes or the historical career of Moses. The state of publication of fifth century Syriac poetry, however, makes it unwise to draw a definite conclusion from this fact. .

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