Hope and Despair in Late Antiquity

This paper will examine a set of Syriac poems (Ephrem’s Madrāshê on Nisibis 1–12) as a case study for how late ancient leaders responded in times of crisis. These poems are primarily framed as laments spoken in the voice of the city of Nisibis, personified as a mourning woman (mother, penitent, and wife). Ephrem used the familiar figure of the mourning woman to guide the feelings of the Christian community in Nisibis in what he regarded as righteous and productive ways. They would receive catharsis (a licit expression of the violence of their emotions), consolation (the prospect that God would ultimately rescue them for the sake of his honor), and correction (to redirect their energies toward the reform of their own “pagan” habits). In short, the poems give voice to communal despair and offer hope for relief in the future. 

Military functions of churches, monasteries, mosques, and other sacred spaces in Late Antiquity are well known. Troops prayed in them before battle, for example. Officers met at these spaces for diplomacy. Arms were stored at temples. In this paper, I will bring to the fore an understudied military function of sacred spaces–their use as war archives. In light of a group of inscriptions, small objects, and texts, I will demonstrate the ways in which temples (here broadly construed to include various types of sacred spaces) were used for documenting and interpreting war. With the storage and exhibition of certain objects, and with the incision of inscriptions, temples documented the communal trauma that came with war, expressed despair, and incited hope. My aim with this study is to complicate our understanding of the making of sacred space and communal identity at the intersection of military and civilian realms in Late Antiquity.

Jacob develops three distinct visual categories of type, pretense, and schema to argue that Sinaitic theophany a) forms Israel as a community and elects them as his own at Sinai, yet b) ultimately identifies the Church as Israel through her vision of Christ. Thus, Jacob borrows and counter-narrates rabbinic exegetical tradition regarding Exodus 19-24. Theophany – and by extension, vision as theological category – mediate communal identity and relation to the other. Theophany has a past and future dimension. As a historical event, Sinaitic theophany is marked by visual and moral failure. Israel therefore cannot claim divine election at Sinai, according to Jacob. Yet, the successful vision of God in the future is not only through the positive content of this “failure”.  Thus, the community that receives the future vision of God must be continuous with the past community. Failure and hope, as well as the past and present communities, are linked.  

The majority of scholars, such as Henry Corbin (d. 1978) and others of Islamic Philosophy, argue that Suhrawardī (d. 1191) was the first Muslim philosopher to seriously use the thought of ancient Persian and Hermetic schools of wisdom in his thought. While the scholars above acknowledge that earlier Muslim philosophers were aware of the thought of the Persians and the Sabians, there is little research on how their thought was actually utilized. This presentation argues that the Brethren placed a significant amount of respect on pre-Zoroastrian religion and Persian culture. Furthermore, they saw the figures within the Zoroastrian religion as spiritual beings who could be incorporated into the Islamic conception of “Oneness of God” (tawḥid). By spiritually incorporating them into the Islamic worldview, one can then invoke them and seek their intercession. It is here that one can see how the Hermetic conception of theurgy manifests in early Islam.