Podcast episode

December 25, 2024

Episode 199: Paul Pasquesi on the Book of the Holy Hierotheos

We are delighted to welcome Paul Pasquesi back to the podcast to talk about the Book of the Holy Hierotheos, a little-known and under-studied classic of late-antique Syriac ‘mysticism’. The Book, written in Syriac (though it claims to be a translation from the Greek) is made up of five discourses, detailing the stages by which the human mind can ascend back to God. It is explicitly an esoteric work, positioning itself as the work of one Hierotheos, the imaginary teacher of Dionysius the Areopagite; scholarly opinions differ on its relationship with the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus, but similar strategies are in place at any rate in terms of strategic pseudonymous authorship giving the stamp of canonicity to some very unorthodox opinions, in this case, very Evagrian opinions. Unlike the case of the Pseudo-D, these deviations from the baseline Christian approach lie not so much in extreme apophasis and detailed angelic hierarchies, but in a pantheistic approach to god and his accessibility and notions of universal salvation.

We discuss the text, its Nachleben in the Syriac tradition and beyond, and some of the extraordinary ideas held within its pages.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Robin Darling Young, Joel Kalvesmaki, Columba Stewart, Charles M. Stang, and Fr. Luke Dysinger, editors and translators. Evagrius of Pontus: The Gnostic Trilogy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2024.

A.L. Frothingham. Stephen Bar Sudhaili the Syrian Mystic and The Book of Hierotheos. Brill, Leiden, 1886.

F.S. Marsh, editor. The Book which is Called The Book of the Holy Hierotheos, &c. The Text and Translation Society/Williams & Norgate, London/Oxford, 1927.

Recommended Reading:

A good one-stop shop for the Holy Hierotheos is still Marsh’s edition and translation, if you can find it. Frothingham’s discussion is from the perspective that these ‘Syrian mystics’ are deeply wrong in their heresies (from, I guess, an acceptible Anglicanism? No idea.), so use with caution, but it still gives some good overview of what Hierotheos is doing; he accepts the attribution of the book to Stephen Bar Sudhaili which, as Pasquesi notes, isn’t necessarily right.

More detailed Recommended Reading to follow

Themes

Angelology, Apokatastasis, Ascent, Christian Mysticism, Esoteric Christianity, Evagrius of Pontus, Hekhalot, Hierotheos, John Philoponus, Justinian, Late Platonism, Monophysitism, Origenism, Orthodoxy, Pseudo-Dionysios, Spiritual Practices, Taṣawwuf, Universal Salvation