EPHRAEM, THE SYRIAN, as he is commonly called, was born at Nisibi. His father was a hea then priest, who beheld his intercourse with the Christians with horror, and ultimately expelled him from home because he would unite himself to them. James, bishop of Nisibi, received him into his house, and instructed him in Christian know ledge, and, on his death, Ephraem retired to Edessa, where he devoted himself to a solitary life of study and meditation. Drawn by the fame of Basil the Great to visit him at Ctesarea, he was, though reluctantly, ordained by him, and returned to Edessa as a deacon. He now set himself to oppose the heretical notions which were becoming prevalent in the Syrian churches, especially those of Bardesanes and the Arians. This he did, as by other means, so chiefly by means of hymns and metrical homilies. The fame he acquired drew around him a multitude of scholais, to whom he expounded the Scriptures ; and thus arose the school of Edessa, the successor of that of Antioch. Having refused the honour of the episcopate (it is said, by feigning insanity), he died in the year 378, though some place his death after 379. So great
was his reputation, that his works were read in the diurches of Greece after the reading of Scripture (Hieron. Catal. c. 115). His writings were nume rous'; those of them extant have been collected in 6 vols. fol., edited by Assemani, Rom. 1732. They are partly in Syriac, partly in Greek ; the .atter being, it is supposed, translations, though it is somewhat singular, if this be the case, that no work exists in both tongues. Among the former are commentaries on the whole of the 0. T., with the exception of Psalms and the writings attributed to Solomon. His commentaries on the N. T. have not come down to us, except those on the Pauline epistles in an Armenian translation, and a few fragments on the Gospels in the Catenx. Though Gregory of Nyssa says he followed the method of the school of Antioch in seeking to bring out the literal sense of Scripture, his extant commentaries chew a decided leaning to the allegorical method.— W. L A.