Page 103 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

90 THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
who cannot plough with one ox cannot plough with two thoughts. Just as it is useful to
plough with two oxen, so it is right to employ one healthy thought. . . .
This is the greatest knowledge [of the sages] that when they do not know a thing, they
confess that they do not know it. For if a man confesses about something that he knows
it, and then something else that he does not know it ... in both these cases he has
spoken the truth, and because he does not lie in either of them his truth is victorious....
Like children playing on a wide staircase, when one sits on the lowest step his com-
panion in order to anger him sits on the middle step, and in order to resist both another
sits on the upper step—even such are the heralds of Error. . . .

It is in his prose Refutations that we observe most clearly Ephraim's
attitude towards the principal enemies of the Church in his day, who were
the followers of Marcion, Bardaisan, and Mani. Ephraim, it has been well
stated, 'may be described as a Monist and a Materialist—that is to say, he
recognises only one self-existing original entity or being, that is, God'.1 He
was outraged by the elaborate structure of the universe devised by the
heresiarchs, which appeared to him to deny the unity of God. His arguments
are marshalled with the vehemence of debating points. Too often his words
are virulent, 'We have not come to stir up now the mire of Bardaisan, for the
foulness of Mani is quite sufficient. For behold our tongue is very eager to
conclude at once and flee from him.' At times he resorts to scorn, 'They did
well who skinned the lying Mani, who said that Darkness was skinned,
though it has neither hide nor sheath-skin.' But sometimes his sarcasm is not
unjustified:
Oh, what [is to be said] of a teaching whose failures are more than its artifices [can
remedy] ? For as often as they need an argument they bring forward such proofs as these,
and as often as an allegory suits them they concoct such tales as these.
The Church of Edessa was fortunate to have in Ephraim a doughty champion
at a time when its fundamental tenets were challenged.2

The Arian community seems to have flourished at Edessa in the reign of
Constantius, of whom Ammian writes that, 'the plain and simple religion of
the Christians he obscured by a dotard's superstition; by subtle and involved
discussion about dogma, rather than by seriously trying to make them agree,
he aroused many controversies'. Somewhat later, the Arians of Edessa
aroused the wrath of Emperor Julian. 'In the insolence bred by their wealth',
he asserts, they attacked the followers of Valentinus, the Gnostic leader, and
committed 'such rash acts as could never occur in a well-ordered city'.
Julian ordered their money to be given to the soldiers as largitiones and their
lands to be confiscated to the Imperial exchequer.3 He could not refrain

1 F. C. Burkitt in St. Ephraim's Prose 2 For Ephraim on the Jews and pagans, see
Refutations (ed. C. W. Mitchell) II, 1921, cxv. pp. 101 f., 105 below. 3 Res privata.

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