# 6 Ephrem: the Syrian or the Aramaen? | Ephrem's fruity imagery (Tor Andrae)

Ephrem wrote exclusively in his native Aramaic language, using the local Edessan dialect, which later came to be known as the Classical Syriac. However, Ephrem's works contain several endonymic (native) references to his language (Aramaic), homeland (Aram) and people (Arameans). One of the early admirers of Ephrem's works, theologian Jacob of Serugh (d. 521), who already belonged to the generation that accepted the custom of a double naming of their language not only as Aramaic (Ārāmāyā) but also as "Syriac" (Suryāyā), wrote a homily dedicated to Ephrem, praising him as the crown of the Arameans , and the same praise was repeated in early liturgical texts. Only later, under the Greek influence, it became customary to associate Ephrem with Syriac identity, and label him only as "the Syrian", thus blurring his Aramaic self-identification, attested by his own writings and works of other Aramaic-speaking writers.

What do we mean by Madrashe? We might notice that it sounds very like the Arabic word Madrasa, a school. Here in Syro-Aramaic, it means a “teaching hymn”. These hymns are full of rich, poetic imagery drawn from biblical sources, folk tradition, and other religions and philosophies. We see a similar eclectic taste for the sacred and the profane in the qur’an.

Was there enough in Ephrem’s original text for the quranic writers, or the later editors, to give the grape passages a fruitier interpretation? Did they decide to move from a literal translation to a more interpretative translation? If so, this only goes to strengthen the case that it was a passage based on St Ephrems’ madrashe.

#ephrem #islamicorigins #syriacandethiopicsources
Time Codes
0:00 Music intro
0:46 Was Ephrem a Syrian or an Aramaen?
2:32 Tor Andrae
3:15 What is a Madrashe?
4:30 Oral vs Written
5:50 The Sensual Imagery
6:40 A hidden allusion to Paradise's virgins
8:00 It is understandable for the quranic writers to sexualise passage?