Life
Jacob of Edessa was born in Aindaba near Aleppo, around 640. He studied at the famous monastery of Ken-neshre (on the left bank of the Euphrates, opposite Jergbis) and later at Alexandria.
On his return from Alexandria he was appointed bishop of Edessa by his friend Athanasius II, Patriarch of Antioch. He held this office for three or four years, as the clergy opposed his strict enforcement of the Church canons and he was not supported by Julian, the successor of Athanasius. Publicly burning a copy of the canons in front of Julian's residence, Jacob retired to the monastery of Kaisum near Samosata, and from there to the monastery of Eusebona where, for eleven years, he taught the Psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in Greek. Towards the close of this period Jacob again encountered opposition, this time from monks who despised the Greeks.
Jacob left Eusebona and proceeded to the great convent of Tel ĘżAde, one of several Syriac Orthodox monasteries on the 'mountain of Edessa' (? modern Tellgdi, northwest of Aleppo), where he spent nine years in revising and amending the Peshitta version of the Old Testament with the aid of the various Greek versions.
He was finally recalled to the bishopric of Edessa in 708, but died four months later.
Read more about this topic: Jacob Of Edessa
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)