SBL Annual Meeting

San Diego, CA November 23-26, 2024

SBL 2024 ANNUAL MEETING San Diego, California

FORM Project was presented at the SBL Annual Meeting

Representing and Contesting the Memory of Papa Bar Aggai in Syriac Epistolary Traditions

ABSTRACT

Several hagiographic and historiographic sources, including the Acts of Miles, the Acts of the Synod of the Eastern Syriac Church of the 424, and the Chronicle of Arbela attest to the intriguing story of Papa Bar Aggai, a bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the early 4th c. These texts discuss Papa’s clash with some Persian bishops who had questioned his authority over the bishoprics of Persia, and this conflict results in Papa’s temporary deposition. However, Papa is restored to his see because Western political and religious leaders intervened on his behalf. 

This paper investigates an understudied group of texts from the Papa Bar Aggai literary tradition: a probably sixth-century collection of letters that feature Papa’s apocryphal correspondence with influential figures like the Empress Helena, Eusebius of Rome, Judah Kyriakos of Jerusalem, Ephrem, and Jacob of Nisibis. This collection attests to the critical role of the figure of Papa Bar Aggai in formulating an episcopal lineage of the Church of the East. 

This paper reveals the portrait of Papa that emerges from the Epistolary collection. It shows how he, as catholicos, is presented as a type of prophetic figure, unfairly accused and deposed, yet vindicated by the “Western” Empire and Christianity. It explores the possibility that the story of Papa and his conflicts with his contemporaries may have given sixth-century bishops a myth or narrative to assert their authority at a time in the sixth century when ecclesiastical politics and conflicts threatened to undermine it. This paper traces thus the outworking of Papa’s memory in historiographical, hagiographical, and epistolary sources of the Church of the East.