School and Scholia in the Syriac Miaphysite Tradition. The Syriacisation of Dionysius the Areopagite as a Collective Exegetical Effort

Despite the crucial importance of Sergius of Resh‘ayna’s sixth-century translation, the real birth of Dionysius the Areopagite’s oeuvre as a canonical corpus in Syriac was marked by the version of Phokas of Edessa at the end of the seventh century. Phokas added to this version the translation of John of Scythopolis’ scholia, which had been written in the middle of the sixth century. These scholia were still the work of a Greek author; it was their appearance in Syriac, however, that elicited an intense production of analogous glosses by Syriac authors in the following centuries. This most especially holds true for the first half of the ninth century, when a group of West Syrian scholars gathered around the as yet little known Lazarus of Beth Qandasa (end of the eighth century) and Benjamin of Edessa (d. after 843) and collectively studied Phokas’ Areopagite (along with the Syriac translations of Gregory Nazianzen), composing new scholia on his writings. The same circle of scholars also distinguished itself through the remarkable number of liturgical commentaries they produced, and Dionysius’ hierarchical treatises were key in this domain: John of Dara’s (d. c. 860) commentaries on both Dionysian Hierarchies represent a peak of this process. Around the same time, a further, rather elusive commentary appeared, which was attributed to a certain, otherwise unknown, “Theodore bar Zarudi” in the second millennium, but was probably connected to the school of Lazarus of Beth Qandasa. This commentary is, unlike that of John of Schythopolis, a complete cycle of scholia on the whole Dionysian Corpus, written directly in Syriac, and marked the actual beginning of a Syriac tradition of Dionysian exegesis. This collective poring over Dionysius’ oeuvre was finally taken over in the twelfth century and arranged in the only commentary on the whole Corpus by another Dionysius, Dionysius bar Salibi. The present paper will briefly outline this history, presenting samples of the scholia, the commentaries and the colophons that accompany the manuscript witnesses of Phokas’ translation. At the same time, it will increase our knowledge of the barely known development of a proper scholastic movement within the Syriac Miaphysite Church.