The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Long Middle
Jacob Bar-Salibi
died 1171Syriac
The most prolific Syriac writer of his century, commenting his way through the entire Bible.
Pictured: the era he stood in — Wycliffe Giving 'The Poor Priests' His Translation — W. F. Yeames, public domain
Summary
- Lived died 1171.
- Stood in The Long Middle (AD 600–1500).
- Hangs on The Fathers.
- Tradition: Syriac / Oriental.
The life
He was born Jacob at Melitene, in what is now eastern Turkey, and took the name Dionysius when he was made a bishop. Syriac writers usually call him Bar Salibi, son of Salibi. He belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church, the communion that had rejected the Council of Chalcedon six centuries earlier, and he lived his whole life under Muslim rule in a region also full of Armenians, Greeks, and newly arrived Crusaders.
He was a monk and a teacher before he was a bishop. In 1154 the patriarch Athanasius VIII made him bishop of Marash; he was later given Mabbug as well, and in 1166 he was translated to Amid, modern Diyarbakır, where he served as metropolitan until his death on 2 November 1171.
He was a hard administrator with a temper, and his career included open quarrels with his patriarch and with neighbouring bishops. The Syriac chronicler Bar Hebraeus, writing a century later, called him the crown of his age and also recorded that he was not easy to get along with.
What he produced is staggering in volume. Bar Hebraeus said that if all Syriac literature were lost, Bar Salibi's works alone could rebuild it.
He wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, Old Testament and New, the fullest ever attempted in Syriac. He worked on two levels at once, giving first the historical and literal meaning and then the spiritual, and he drew on the Greek fathers, on Ephrem, and on the Syriac tradition behind him. His Gospel commentary preserves quotations from lost works, including material from Hippolytus of Rome on Revelation and from Ephrem's commentary on the Diatessaron, which makes him a witness to second- and fourth-century texts that no longer exist in their own right.
He also wrote a treatise on the divine liturgy that is the standard explanation of the Syriac Orthodox rite; a Book of Theology; a set of polemical works against the Melkites, the Armenians, the Nestorians, the Jews, and the Muslims; canon law; a chronicle; and a poem on the fall of Edessa to Zengi in 1144, which he had lived through the aftermath of.
His Bible commentary is still in use in the Syriac Orthodox Church today, eight and a half centuries after he wrote it.
Sources: Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum; Dionysius bar Salibi, Commentary on the Gospels and Exposition of the Liturgy (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium); William Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature; Sebastian Brock, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature.
What was happening while he lived1 moments · AD 600–1500
- c. 1173Peter Waldo gives it all awayA wealthy merchant of Lyons hears the gospel read, sells what he has, hires translators to put the Gospels into everyday speech, and starts preaching. Condemned in 1184, his followers scatter into the Alpine valleys and keep the Scriptures alive there, often memorized, because owning a copy could cost a life.
In their own words
“On this Caius said that, just as in the Flood the heavenly bodies were not taken away and suddenly submerged, thus also is it to be in the end, as it is written [St. Matth. xxiv. 37] ; and Paul says, When they shall say, …”
Quotes on Revelation recorded by Dionysius Syrus · on Revelation 8:12
“Then the fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun and moon and stars were struck. A third of the stars were darkened, a third of the day was without light, and a third of the night as well.”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Jacob Bar-Salibi at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received.
Standing beside himThe Long Middle · 51 on this stretch of wall
Asked why God became man, and answered it so well the question has never gone away since.
Wrote England's first history from inside a Northumbrian monastery and dated everything from the birth of Christ, which is why we still count years that way.
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Preached with such fire that Europe followed him, and wrote 'Jesus, the very thought of Thee.'
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Wrote the most careful theology of the Middle Ages, then saw something of God and called all of it straw.
Wrote Columba's life, and pushed through a law protecting women and children from war.
Charlemagne's teacher, who cleaned up the Bible's Latin text and rebuilt the schools of Europe.