VRS Research Spotlight: Maria Doerfler

For ancient historians, few experiences are as satisfying as examining original manuscripts that preserve writings from antiquity. While many such manuscripts reside in the major European cities or in their countries of origin, a number of them have found a home in New York's libraries. One such manuscript that has been central to my work at ISAW this year is a collection of funerary liturgies, known as UTS Syr 10, originally from the 18th century. The manuscript was originally the work of a scribe belonging to the Church of the East, a Syrian Christian tradition, but is now preserved in the Columbia University's Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, where it is in the process of being catalogued and made more readily available to the public. It contains liturgies for the burial of different kinds of Christians: bishops, priests, monks, as well as women and children.  

Among the texts used for the latter, we find an excerpt from a speech by which Sarah, the wife of the ancient Israelite patriarch Abraham, addresses her husband. The writer depicts Abraham on the verge of sacrificing the couple's only son, Isaac, in accordance with God's command.  Isaac's "binding" -- the so-called Akedah -- originally appears in Genesis, chapter 22. There, however, Sarah plays no part in the unfolding events -- a fact that many writers seem to have found deeply unsatisfying. 

Sarah here implores her husband as follows:  

"Where are you taking him- This one, our only son, whom the Lord gave us?
[If] you are going up to the mountain, I will go up with him.
[If] you seek to kill him- I will die in his stead.
And if it is the case that his Lord demands him [as a sacrifice],
with tears let us persuade [God] that He will leave to his parents an heir, who is the last one they have." 
 

This moving speech was originally part of an anonymous fifth-century C.E. poem on Genesis 22.  Somewhere along the way, however, Sarah's words began to be used as part of the commemoration of children who had passed away, to express the mourning of their families. 

This text accordingly has undertaken quite the journey: from the pen of a late antique writer, passed down from scribe to scribe to appear in an 18th century manuscript acquired by a 19th century New York librarian ... to be studied now by a 21st century historian in the context of a project on infant mortality in late antiquity. ISAW is dedicated to facilitating just these kinds of cross-cultural, cross-temporal encounters with the texts and artifacts of antiquity. It has been an honor to be part of such an institution this year -- and while my time as a visiting research scholar draws close to its conclusion, its fruits will remain with for years and publications to come.