ABSTRACT
The boundary between a ‘Passion’ and a biography of a Father of the church is fuzzy. Where the life seems more important for posterity than the manner of death, we deal with such stories — for example, that of Abibos — as part of patristic literature. The genre begins with The Lives of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers (ათსამეტ ასურელ მამათა ცხოვრება). Tradition, written and oral, names as many as nineteen Assyrian Fathers, presumably missionaries leaving Mesopotamia in the first half of the sixth century to strengthen Christianity in Georgia. Historians accept that some of the colonizing Fathers were the founders of Georgia’s monasteries and convents, as their names suggest: Shio Mghvimeli (მღვიმელი, ‘cave-dweller’), Davit Garesjeli (დავით გარესჯელი,,‘who sits outside’). Opinion is divided as to whether they were Syrians or Georgians, whether missionaries or refugees — monophysite or dyophysite — from Syria, where the dyophysite orthodoxy was being reasserted and yet monophysitism still resisted. All assumptions are flawed: Georgia was primarily monophysite in the sixth century, yet it is unlikely that the Lives of the Assyrian Fathers would have been written or that their cult would have been maintained between the ninth and twelfth centuries, when Georgia was once again strongly dyophysite. Some of the Lives are formalities composed for an eighteenth-century synaxary, but four, The Achievements and Passion of Saint Abibos, Bishop of Nekres (მოქალაქობაი და წამებაი წმიდისა აბიბოს ნეკრესელ ებისკოპოსისა), The Life of Ioane Zedazneli, The Life of Shio Mghvimeli, and The Life of Davit Garesjeli, all exist in original (keimenon) form, as well as extended, perhaps metaphrastic, versions. Disputes on the dating and authorship of these Lives could fill a monograph and will not be resolved until systematic stylistic analysis is applied. 1 Least likely is the authorship of Catholicos Arsen I Sapareli (830–87); quite plausible is that of Catholicos Arsen II (reigned 955–80) for the lives of Ioane Zedazneli and Shio Mghvimeli (which seem to be two parts of one work), and possibly of the Passion of Abibos. The Life of Davit Garesjeli, also in an earlier short and later extended version, is unattributed, and dated by various authorities to between 690 and 950.
