Authenticity of hymns On Epiphany The most complete, critical text of writings attributed to Ephrem was compiled between 1955 and 1979 by Dom Edmund Beck, OSB, as part of the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO). Beck's 1959 critical edition of the madrashe (hymns) and mêmrê (homilies) memre attributed to Ephrem led to much scholarly debate on the authenticity of the madrashe known as On Epiphany, as Ephrem was certainly not familiar with Epiphany as a feast celebrating Jesus' bapitism on 6 January. Unlike in Europe, where the Nativity of Jesus was celebrated on 25 December, but the baptism of Jesus would evolve into a separate feast called "Epiphany" on 6 January, there was only one Christian feast celebrated in winter in the time and place where Ephrem lived, namely the Nativity on 6 January, when baptism was also performed. A 1956 paper written by Beck himself therefore warned researchers not to base their reconstructions of Ephrem's baptismal theology on the contents of these madrashe, given the fact that many of the hymns presuppose that Epiphany and Nativity were two separate feasts celebrated two weeks apart, thereby challenging Ephrem's authorship. While the oldest surviving manuscripts of Ephrem's hymns date to the 6th century and contain hymns on the Nativity that Beck thought were certainly authentic, the contested hymns On Epiphany are missing from them. They do not appear in manuscripts until much later, in the 9th century, suggesting that they were interpolated. Scholars have largely accepted Beck's arguments that the collection as a whole was established after the 4th century, and that some hymns in them were not written by Ephrem, or at least not in the form that they have been preserved in, but that other hymns should nevertheless be considered authentic.
Authenticity of hymns On Epiphany The most complete, critical text of writings attributed to Ephrem was compiled between 1955 and 1979 by Dom Edmund Beck, OS,B as part of the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO). Beck's 1959 critical edition of the madrashe (hymns) and mêmrê (homilies) memre attributed to Ephrem led to much scholarly debate on the authenticity of the madrashe known as On Epiphany, as Ephrem was certainly not familiar with Epiphany as a feast celebrating Jesus' bapitism on 6 January. Unlike in Europe, where the Nativity of Jesus was celebrated on 25 Decembe,r, but the baptism of Jesus would evolve into a separate feast called "Epiphany" on 6 January, there was only one Christian feast celebrated in winter in ,the time and place where Ephrem lived namely the Nativity on 6 January, when baptism was also performed. A 1956 paper written by Beck himself therefore warned researchers not to base their reconstructions of Ephrem's baptismal theology on the contents of these madrashe, given the fact that many of the hymns presuppose that Epiphany and Nativity were two separate feasts celebrated two weeks apart, thereby challenging Ephrem's authorship. While the oldest surviving manuscripts of Ephrem's hymns date to the 6th century and contain hymns on the Nativity that Beck thought were certainly authentic, the contested hymns On Epiphany are missing from them. They do not appear in manuscripts until much later, in the 9th century, suggesting that they were interpolated. Scholars have largely accepted Beck's arguments that the collection as a whole was established after the 4th century and that some hymns in them were not written by Ephrem, or at least not in the form that they have been preserved in, but that other hymns should nevertheless be considered authentic.