ABSTRACT
Some of the earliest known literary works written in Syriac are prose dialogues. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Bardaisan (154-c.222 CE) composed dialogues against religious opponents, which, unfortunately, have not survived. In the same decades, a follower of Bardaisan, possibly his pupil Philip, was the author of the Book of the Laws of the Countries, a remarkably ambitious dialogue clearly influenced by Hellenistic literary and philosophical traditions.1 Later, in the fifth century, John of Apamea composed prose dialogues whose setting is very different from the Book of the Laws of the Countries. John of Apamea’s dialogues take place within Christian ascetic communities, between a solitary, the main speaker, and Christian brothers who are at different stages of ascetic advancement.2 At the same time, there circulated Syriac translations of Greek dialogues, such as Gregory the Wonderworker’s To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God 3 and the Erostrophus,4 the work that is the subject of the present chapter.
