School of Nisibis - Center of Syriac Theology

Center of Syriac Theology

Back in Nisibis the school became even more famous. It attracted students from all the Syrian Church, many of its students embodied important church offices, and its teaching was normative. The exegetical methods of the school followed the tradition of Antioch: strictly literal, controlled by pure grammatical-historical analysis. The work of Theodore was central to the theological teaching, and men like Abraham of Beth Rabban, who headed the school during the middle of the 6th century, spent great effort to make his work as accessible as possible. The writings of Nestorius himself were added to the curriculum only about 530.

At the end of the 6th century the school went through a theological crisis when its director Henana of Adiabene tried to replace Theodore with his own doctrine, which followed Origen. Babai the Great (551-628), who was the unofficial head of the Church at that time and also involved in reviving the strict Syrian monastic movement, refuted him and in the process wrote the normative Christology of the Church of the East, based on Theodore of Mopsuestia.

A small sampling of Babai's work is available in English translation. The Book of Union is his principal surviving work on Christology. In it he explains that Christ has two qnome (essences), which are unmingled and eternally united in one parsopa (personality). This, and not Nestorianism, is the teaching of the Church of the East.