ephrem the syrian

“In the almost complete absence of written records, one must be permitted to guess, because there is nothing else to do.” –Hugh W. Nibley

Lecture: 'Ephrem's Economic Self: Metaphors for the Moral Life' Who: Professor Jeffery Wickes, Saint Louis University When: Thursday April 3, 2014, 11:00 am Where: 3716 HBLL (South Entrance), Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah About the Lecture: The earliest strains of biblical tradition depict sin using the language of 'stain' or 'burden.' But a range of economic metaphors for describing the moral life soon developed in post-biblical Aramaic culture. The Syriac poet Ephrem (d. 373 CE) uses these economic metaphors to describe his own poetic project. This presentation traces the development of this economics of the self, and asks why Ephrem used an explicitly moral vocabulary to depict himself and his theological poems.