02564nas a2200133   4500008003900000245009300039210006900132300001000201490000700211520213400218653001302352100001902365856004602384       1974                          d00aThe Exhortation to Candidates for Ascetical Vows at Baptism in the Ancient Syrian Church0 aExhortation to Candidates for Ascetical Vows at Baptism in the A  a59-800 v213 a<p>Throughout the present century historians of Christian asceticism, especially in the Syriac-speaking area, have returned repeatedly to the problem posed by a passage in Aphrahat's seventh&nbsp;Demonstration, the natural implication of which seems to be that in his day baptism was reserved for those who consecrated themselves to Christ in virginity or by renouncing marital intercourse, to become members of the ‘Covenant’ (qyāmâ) which was evidently regarded as the core or heart of the Church. The question was raised provocatively by F. C. Burkitt (1899, 1904) and taken up by R. H. Connolly, with an intervening reply by Burkitt, in 1905–7. Connolly rightly argued that by Aphrahat's time (fl. 336–45) married people must have been regarded as members of the Church, and that the ‘penitents’ discussed by Aphrahat were Christians who had ‘fallen’&nbsp;after&nbsp;baptism, but he overplayed his hand in identifying the&nbsp;Bnay Qyāmâ&nbsp;simply as ‘monks’. An undertone of denominational controversy remained throughout the subsequent discussion, continued by (among others) H. Koch (1911), K. Müller (1927) and E.J. Duncan (1945). It was A. Vööbus who showed the way out of the impasse by his perceptive suggestion that the exhortation in&nbsp;Dem.&nbsp;VII is a liturgical text which had survived into Aphrahat's day but whose restrictive implications were no longer in force. At the same time, under the powerful impetus of the discoveries of the Qumran, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean documents, with consequently increasing understanding of early Jewish Christianity in its many varieties, and realization that Syrian asceticism was not derivative from Egypt but probably earlier, the basic concepts and terminology of asceticism were being studied anew by A. Adam, E. Beck, G. Kretschmar, P. Nagel, M. Black, J. Gribomont, A. Guillaumont and others. Study of early Syriac asceticism continues, as is shown by G. Nedungatt's recent articles but there still remains more to be done to follow up Vööbus's hint about the genre of the exhortation quoted by Aphrahat in&nbsp;Dem.&nbsp;VII.</p>
10aAphrahat1 aMurray, Robert  uhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S002868850000877800465nas a2200157   4500008003900000024001400039245004400053210004300097260005500140300001000195490000600205653001300211100001900224700002000243856004400263       1980                          d  a49007472700aHellenistic-Jewish Rhetoric in Aphrahat0 aHellenisticJewish Rhetoric in Aphrahat  aRomebPontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum  a79-850 v310aAphrahat1 aMurray, Robert1 aLavenant, René  uhttps://syri.ac/bibliography/167714613800509nas a2200157   4500008003900000020001800039024001400057245005600071210005600127260005600183300001200239653001300251100001900264700002400283856004400307       1977                          d  a9782801700716  a87674162200aSome Rhetorical Patterns in Early Syriac Literature0 aSome Rhetorical Patterns in Early Syriac Literature  aChicagobThe Lutheran school of Theology at Chicago  a109-13110aAphrahat1 aMurray, Robert1 aFischer, Robert, H.  uhttps://syri.ac/bibliography/1664952760