Teaching by Example in a Syriac Handbook on Rhetoric

According to the written sources available to us, knowledge of rhetorical devices and rules was common among intellectuals from the early days of the Syriac Christian history, as beautifully exemplified by the works of Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) or Jacob of Serugh (ca. 451-521). And yet, a testimony of the emergence of a proper, original techne comes from the Islamic period, with the ninth-century handbook written by the monk and teacher Antony of Tagrit. This handbook, portrayed by its author as the written outcome of a long oral teaching tradition, not only has the merit of handing down to us the Syriac rhetorical theory in didactic form, but also the methodology employed to teach it. This paper takes into account the examples that Antony of Tagrit used in his handbook On Rhetoric to explain rhetorical tools to his students. Such a focus allows to identify the sources on which rhetorical knowledge was based in the Syriac-speaking world, as well as its relationship with the Greco-Roman classical past. Not only does Antony employs excerpts from Greek narratives in Syriac translation (from Homer to Aesop, Heliodorus’ Aethiopica and others), but he integrates them with quotations from the Old and New Testament, some of the works of Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, as well as Syriac original compositions (e.g., by Ephraem, Jacob of Serugh, Balai, etc.). Therefore, in spite of its steady ties to “classical” rhetoric as well as Biblical and Christian oratory, Syriac rhetoric represents as a tradition on its own and this paper will show how such originality come into being.