Book of Steps

Collection of thirty Syriac discourses on the spiritual life and the pursuit of perfection, dating likely from the early fifth century.

Proposed dates range from mid-4th cent. to ca. 430. Collection of thirty Syriac discourses (memre) preceded by an introductory essay (mamllā) on the spiritual life and the pursuit of perfection. The anonymous author gives very few historical or geographical details in the memre, but one reference points to a location of the author and his spiritual community in northeast Iraq near the Lesser Zab River.

The collection does not have a Syriac title. Its Latin title (Liber Graduum) was given by Michael Kmosko in his 1926 critical edition of the Syriac text (with Latin translation), referring to the ascetical steps (massqātā) one must climb along the steep road to the heavenly city of Christ. This term is mentioned only in two memre, numbers 19 and 20. Kmosko utilized fifteen mss., only three containing more than five memre.

Kmosko theorized that the the book was a primary text of the Messalian movement in the mid-to-late-4th cent. This view was accepted by I. Hausherr and dominated scholarship for the next thirty years. In the 1950’s A. Vööbus challenged the Messalian characterization of the book and directed scholars towards its witness to early Syriac asceticism and spirituality. Others focused on the pneumatology (A. Guillaumont), ecclesiology (R. Murray), anthropology and prayer (A. Kowalski), structure (L. Wickham), and christology and asceticism (D. Juhl).

The thirty memre are of uneven length and utilize a variety of genres: extended biblical exegeses, sermons, discourses on ascetical method. The dominant theme threading throughout the collection is the description of the two statuses of Christian life: uprightness (kenutā) and perfection or maturity (gmirutā) and those individuals who attempt to embody these ways of life — the Upright (kene) and the Perfect (gmire).

Writing in the midst of a pre-monastic religious community, the author of the ‘Book of Steps’ attempted to counter a decline in the standards and fervor among the Perfect. The first half of the collection presents a rule for both levels as the ideal to which they aspire. The second half contains a variety of materials, with the last six memre advocating the legitimacy of the Upright.

The titles of the memre are: Preface by the editor of the collection; 1. Author’s introduction; 2. About those who want to become Perfect; 3. The physical and spiritual ministry; 4. On the vegetables for the sick; 5. On the milk of the children; 6. On those who are made Perfect and continue to grow; 7. On the commandments of the Upright; 8. On one who gives all he has to feed the poor; 9. On Uprightness and the love of the Upright and the prophets; 10. On fasting and the humility of body and soul; 11. On the hearing of Scripture when the Law is read before us; 12. On the hidden and public ministry of the church; 13. By the same author on the ways of the Upright; 14. On the Upright and the Perfect; 15. On Adam’s marital desire; 16. On how a person may surpass the major commandments; 17. On the sufferings of our Lord who became through them an example for us all; 18. On the tears of prayer; 19. On the discernment of the way of Perfection; 20. On the difficult steps which are on the road of the City of our Lord; 21. On the tree of Adam; 22. On the judgments which do not save those who observe them; 23. On Satan and Pharaoh and the Israelites; 24. On repentance; 25. On the voice of God and of Satan; 26. On the second law which the Lord established for Adam; 27. About the history of the thief who is saved; 28. On the fact that the human soul is not identical with the blood; 29. On the discipline of the body; 30. On the commandments of faith and the love of the solitaries.