The Appropriation of the Theme of Christ’s Descent to Hell in the Early Syriac Liturgical TraditionSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/L579MHWR/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Richard EdwardMcCarronThe Appropriation of the Theme of Christ’s Descent to Hell in the Early Syriac Liturgical Traditionhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/L579MHWRhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/L579MHWRhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/L579MHWR2000Jesus Christ's descent to the realm of the dead, called Sheol (<i>shyol</i>) in Syriac, is a central motif of the Syriac-speaking churches. This dissertation investigates the motif in the early Syriac literary and liturgical traditions and analyzes its appropriation by the liturgy of the East Syrian Church as set out in the contemporary printed editions of its Missal and Breviary. Because of the Syriac tradition's preference for symbol, metaphor, and poetry as vehicles to articulate and contemplate the Christian faith, this dissertation employs a hermeneutical approach that accounts for the interplay of literary and liturgical genres, attends to the multilayered sedimentations of language, and addresses the dynamic assimilation, transposition, distortion, and refiguration of the theme. Chapter two sets out the language and imagery of Sheol in the Syriac Bible (<i>Peshitta</i>), identifying the cumulative impact of the biblical imagery that the Syriac writers took up in a privileged way. Chapter three presents and evaluates the literary history of the descent motif, discerns the meanings that emerge in particular historical, cultural, and theological contexts, and identifies the compositional strategies that influenced the motif's development, in particular reinscription, amplification, and embedding. Chapter four demonstrates how the interpretative horizon of the Syriac literary tradition is extended and advanced by the liturgical tradition. The analysis focuses on the East Syrian tradition's liturgies for Pasch, Epiphany (<i>Denha</i>), baptism, and eucharist in their ritual contexts. These texts refigure the descent myth and its symbols to mediate the meaning of Christ's redemptive work for the community of faith. The final chapter reflects theoretically on the interweaving of discourses in East Syrian liturgy. The intention is to delineate the "appropriation" of the descent motif by the East Syrian liturgy, explicate how the motif generates theological meaning through the genres of liturgy, and elucidate how the motif in the Syriac liturgical tradition contributes to the wider theological tradition in terms of eschatology, pneumatology, and soteriology. The doxological character of liturgical language demands that when it appropriates an image, motif, or metaphor, it reconstitutes and reorients it. In these liturgical texts, the tradition's language is broken and refigured to emphasize the assembly's participation in the new life that comes from Christ's Pasch.
McCarron, Richard Edward. “The Appropriation of the Theme of Christ’s Descent to Hell in the Early Syriac Liturgical Tradition.” Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 2000.
Richard Edward McCarron, The Appropriation of the Theme of Christ’s Descent to Hell in the Early Syriac Liturgical Tradition (Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 2000).AphrahatDescensus ad inferosEasterEphremEpiphanyEucharistI-III CEIV-VII CEJacob of SarugJesusNT apocryphaNarsaiNestoriansOdes of Solomonbaptismhellliturgicsliturgysoteriologysymbolstheology