Saturday, October 28, 2023

Jacob of Serugh's teaching of Mary as the New Eve in the hymn "ḥawa ba-‘den"

  

3 Eve’s sin contracted the debt which was held in reserve for
Mary,
so that the young girl might repay her mother’s debt,
and thanks to her that document would be torn up which had
cried out against all generations.

 

4 The serpent, with venomous intention, breathed poison into the
ears of weak Eve
--this passed on, with murderous effect, flying from generation
to generation,
until there came forth the Son of Mary the Infant who slew that
snake.

 

. . .

 

24 There were two virgins, but the action of the two was quite
different:
the one brought down her husband, the other gave support to
her father
for in Eve Adam found a grace, but in Mary he was invited to
heaven! (Jacob of Serugh, “ḥawa ba-‘den,” in The Stanzaic Poems of Jacob of Serugh: A Collection of His Madroshe and Sughyotho [trans. Sebastian P. Brock; Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 72; Piscataway, N.J. Gorgias Press, 2022], 200, 210)