Commenting on Ephrem’s Carmina Nisibena (Nisibene Hymns):
Another reference to baptism
appears in stanzas 19 and 20, when Ephrem says that the community buried Jacob
“in her bosom” (b-ʽubb-āh, CN 13, 19, 4; 20, 5). At face value, this
means that the city has put the relics at its very centre: literally, this
echoes the lines with the preposition b-gaw (CN 13, 19, 3; 19, 6;
21, 3) and confirms that Jacob was buried inside the walls; metaphorically, it
could express the high honour in which the relics were held. Yet, and more
importantly, the word for “bosom”, or “womb” (ʽubbā), is used
figuratively in Syriac to mean “baptism.” The tenor of this metaphorical usage
is clear: as the womb contains the body of the child before giving birth to it,
so the water of baptism (maʽmōdītā, a feminine) contains the catechumen,
who, once he has emerged, is born to a new life. The metaphor can be expanded
to include the bishop: if the individual man and the church as a collective
represent the newborn and if baptism represents the womb, then the parent is
the bishop, by virtue of his role in administering baptism. And this is all the
truer—in Ephrem’s poetry—of Jacob, because he was the first bishop of the
community, or at least the first our poet records. Not by chance, Ephrem
introduces him at stanza 19 as kāhnā qadmā, “the first priest”,
underlining his foundational role. Yet in this context the father metaphor is
not spelled out explicitly as elsewhere; rather, Ephrem keeps the imagery
consistent with the vine metaphor and, instead of a father, describes the
bishop as a vintner(Giovanni Colpani, Poems on Bishops by Gregory of
Nazianzus and Ephrem the Syrian: Literary Comparison and Translation [Millennium
Studies 111; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2025], 433-34)
We have the following footnote in the above, which references
Nisibene Hymn 16.10 which speaks of the “baptism” and “second birth” of Mary:
. . . The lexicon quotes Ephrem, Epiph. 7, 25, 4
(ʽubbā d-maʽmudītā, “the womb of baptism”; the variant reading of mayyā
instead of ʽubbā is clearly facilior); 9, 2, 7 (b-ʽubbā
d-maʽmudītā); Crucif. 3, 8, 5 (b-ʽubbā d-mayyā); hymn.
eccl. 36, 3–6. See also CN 27, 13, 5–6: “You are sons of the Spirit,
/ and children born from water (bnay-mayyā)”; “I [Mary] am handmaid and
daughter// of the blood and the water / through which You purchased and
baptised me” (Nat. 16, 10). In hymn. virg. 7 all this theology of
the second birth is particularly clear: “Bodies totally stained /and already
hoary, when not destroyed // Sink with their sins like filth / and emerge pure
like newborn babies // for baptism [maʽmudītā] was for them / a new womb
[karsā] … It is priesthood [kāhnutā] that ministers / this womb (karsā)
with its promise” (hymn. virg. 7, 7, 3–8 and 8, 1–2). Here it is clear
how the bishop (kāhnā, here with the abstract kāhnutā, a
customary rhetorical figure in Ephrem), the womb and baptism are linked (see
also the typological passage of Maruthas of Maypherkat quoted by Murray 2006, 181).
The imagery of womb is widespread in other authors: Nars. hom. 21, p.
46–47, 341–342; pp. 52–53, 346–348; 32, p. 166, 148; Joh. Chrys. comm. in
Gal. 4, 28; in Joh. hom. 1–88 26, 1; Theod. Mops. Catechetical Homilies
14, p. 55; Procl. Cpol. hom. 7, 3, 4; Aug. serm. 56, 5; Zeno
of Verona 1, 55; 2, 28; Chromat. serm. 18, 3; Leo M. serm. 24, 3;
and especially Pacian. bapt. 6, 2 (Atque ita Christi semen, id est
Dei spiritus novum hominem alvo matris agitatum, et partu fontis exceptum,
manibus sacerdotis effundit, fide tamen pronuba, note the role of the
priest in this account). More discussion of this metaphor can be found at Ferguson
2009, passim. (Giovanni Colpani, Poems on Bishops by Gregory of
Nazianzus and Ephrem the Syrian: Literary Comparison and Translation [Millennium
Studies 111; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2025], 433 n. 115)
