Jacob of Serugh's Syriac three Homilies (memrā) on the Apostle Thomas in India celebrate the exploits of *Thomas (the Apostle, S00199) through a dramatic retelling of the account of his journey to India from the Acts of Thomas. Written in northern Mesopotamia in the late 5th/early 6th c.
Evidence ID
E06265
Type of Evidence
Literary - Sermons/Homilies
Liturgical texts - Hymns
Major author/Major anonymous work
Jacob of Serugh
Jacob of Serugh, Homilies on Apostle Thomas in India
Summary:
The primary focus of this trilogy is the journey of Apostle Thomas to India and his accomplishments there. The first and second homilies, based on the first Act of the Acts of Thomas, recount how Thomas quarrelled with other apostles, refusing to accept the result of the drawing of lots, and how the apostle was sold by the Lord to the merchant Habban so that he might reach India and bring Christianity to this land. The third homily, based on the second Act of the Acts of Thomas, tells how the apostle built a palace for the Indian king Gundophar, while distributing the money received for the project to the poor.
Liturgical ActivitiesSermon/homily
Non Liturgical Activity
Sermon/homily
Chant and religious singing
Non Liturgical ActivityComposing and translating saint-related texts
Source
The Homilies on Apostle Thomas in India are poetic celebrations of the Indian journey of Apostle Thomas. An original Syriac composition, it was almost certainly produced by the West-Syrian poet Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521). The Homilies belong to the literary genre of memrā, a narrative poem that employs couplets all in the same syllabic meter. Such poems, which appear to have been recited rather than sung, were presumably used in the liturgy, though there is no evidence from Late Antiquity of exactly how it happened. While it is clear that the Homilies are based on the first two chapters of the Acts of Thomas ($E###), no comparison of the two literary works has been carried out so far.A critical edition of the Homilies was published by W. Strothmann on the basis of four manuscripts, the earliest of which is British Library, Add. 14590 (8th/9th c.).
Syriac text and German translation: Strothmann 1976. See also Strothmann 1969; Panicker 1989. For general information on Jacob and his oeuvre, see Brock 2011; Lange 2004; Alwan 1986.
Discussion
The Homilies bear witness to the enduring popularity of the figure of Thomas among Syriac-speaking Christians of Mesopotamia during the late 5th and early sixth centuries. Moreover, they constitute so far the earliest specimen of the liturgical commemoration of the apostle in this milieu.Bibliography
Main editions and translations:
Strothmann, W., Jakob von Sarug. Drei Gedichte über den Apostel Thomas in Indien (Göttinger Orientforschungen, I. Reihe: Syriaca 12; Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1976).
Further reading:
Alwan, K., “Bibliographie générale raisonnée de Jacques de Saroug († 521),” Parole de l’Orient 13 (1986), 313-384.
Brock, S.P., “Ya‘qub of Serugh,” in: S.P. Brock, A.M. Butts, G.A. Kiraz and L. van Rompay (eds.), Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011), 433-435.
Lange, C., “Jakob von Sarug, † 521,” in: W. Klein (ed.), Syrische Kirchenväter (Urban-Taschenbücher 587; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2004), 217-227.
Panicker, G., “St. Thomas in India according to Jacob of Sarug,” The Harp 2 (1989), 59-64.
Strothmann, W., “Die Thomasgedichte des Jakob von Sarug,” in: W. Voigt (ed.), XVII. Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 21. bis 27. Juli 1968 in Würzburg: Vorträge. Teil 2 (Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Supplement 1.2; Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1969), 363-367.
Record Created By
Sergey Minov
Date of Entry
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00199 | Thomas, the Apostle | ܬܐܘܡܐ | Certain |
|---|
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