The Library of Paradise: A History of Contemplative Reading in the Monasteries of the Church of the East

358 Pages·2023·3.647 MB·English

by  David A. Michelson

OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
General Editors
Gillian Clark Andrew Louth
THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on
the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of
Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient
historians, and specialists in the classical and Jewish worlds.
Titles in the series include:
The Chronicle of Seert
Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq
Philip Wood (2013)
Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus
Andrew Hofer, O.P. (2013)
Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the Great
Thomas L. Humphries Jr. (2013)
Contemplation and Classical Christianity
A Study in Augustine
John Peter Kenney (2013)
The Canons of Our Fathers
Monastic Rules of Shenoute
Bentley Layton (2014)
Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and
Christian Contexts
Ann Conway-Jones (2014)
John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy
The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching
David Rylaarsdam (2014)
Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture
Matthew R. Crawford (2014)
The Practical Christology of Philoxenos of Mabbug
David A. Michelson (2014)
Law and Legality in the Greek East
The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883
David Wagschal (2014)
Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead
Constructing Early Christian Identity
Outi Lehtipuu (2015)
The Role of Death in the Ladder of Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition
Jonathan L. Zecher (2015)
Theophilus of Alexandria and the First Origenist Controversy
Rhetoric and Power
Krastu Banev (2015)
The Library of Paradise
A History of Contemplative Reading in the
Monasteries of the Church of the East
DAVID A. MICHELSON
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© David A. Michelson 2022
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First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022937769
ISBN 978–0–19–883624–7
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198836247.001.0001
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To Bethany, my wife of more than two decades.
Loving me has meant living half your life in a library.
Loving you has meant living half my life one step closer to Paradise.
Thank you for making this book and so many more important things possible.
I love you.

I place my trust in the mercy of our Lord that He will give strength to
my weakness, and that I shall endure.1
—ʿEnanishoʿ of Adiabene, Paradise
1 ʿEnanishoʿ of Adiabene, Paradise, pt. II/24; translated in E. A. Wallis Budge, ed., The Book of
Paradise, Being the Histories and Sayings of the Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert . . . : Volume I
English Translation, trans. E.A. Wallis Budge, vol. 1 (London: Printed for Lady Meux by W. Drugulin,
Oriental Printer, Leipzig, 1904), 381 [numbered Pa II/19 in the 1904 edition].

Acknowledgments
We books are many, but there is no one who reads in us. Behold, what
a great pity that we remain useless!1
—Annotation left by a medieval Syriac reader
Some of the first inklings of this project came during 2004–5 when I spent time
with the Syriac manuscripts in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room of the
British Library in London. I remain deeply grateful to those who welcomed me
there. I am specifically thankful to the former curator, Rev. Dr. Vrej Nersessian,
whose staff were always courteous and professional to the readers even during the
most unexpected of moments, such as when the 7/7 terrorist attacks forced them
to confine us with the books in the library for safety. I am glad that the collection
continues to be well curated today under the care of Ilana Tahan who has been a
leader in making the Hebrew manuscripts of the British Library accessible digi-
tally around the globe. May the Syriac manuscripts of the British Library soon
find new readers in the same way.
Initial research on this project was sparked by reading the warnings issued by
the eighth-century East Syrian author Joseph Ḥazzaya about the brain damage
which could occur from too much reading.2 As someone who is blessed or cursed
to read for a living, I was curious to understand the full context of those ascetic
warnings. As I pursued research on this project, I became increasingly aware of
the work of a small number of scholars who have studied the place of books,
reading, and exegesis in the history of the Church of the East. My book would not
have been possible without relying on these studies, especially the works of
Sabino Chialà, Muriel Debié, the late Mary Hansbury (may she rest in peace), and
Joel Walker. These publications have done much to make East Syrian exegesis and
East Syrian mysticism accessible to the scholarly public.
1 London, British Library, MS Add. 12,170, f. 135r. Sebastian Brock calls attention to this note in
Sebastian P. Brock, “The Development of Syriac Studies,” in The Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures,
ed. K.J. Cathcart (Dublin: University College Dublin, 1994), 102–3. My translation is from the text in
William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Acquired since the Year 1838:
Part II, vol. 2, 3 vols. (London: British Museum, 1871), 460. Caveat lector! This marginalium may be
more poignant than true, since it is ipso facto evidence of at least one reader. See the discussion of such
tropes in Section 2.1.1.
2 See Joseph Ḥazzaya, Letter on the Three Stages of the Monastic Life, chap III sec. 68; edited and
translated in Paul Harb, François Graffin, and Micheline Albert, eds., Joseph Ḥazzāyā: lettre sur les trois
étapes de la vie monastique, trans. Paul Harb, François Graffin, and Micheline Albert, Patrologia
Orientalis, 45.2 [No. 202] (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 338.