Babai the Great

Babai the Great (ca. 551-628 AD) was an East Syriac writer.

Life

He was born in Beth `Ainatha in Beth Zabdai, where he received his basic education. He then studied at the School of Nisibis under Abraham of Beth Rabban. His next move was to become a monk at the "Great Monastery" on Mount Izla, which had been founded in 571 by Abraham of Kashkar (d. 588).

After some years he left in order to found his own monastery and school in nearby Beth Zabdai. In 604 he returned to the Great Monastery to become its Superior in succession to Dadisho`. He was strict in discipline, and carried out a number of reforms and issued a set of Canons, which are extant. This approach was not always popular, and many monks left.

On the death of the Catholicos Gregory in 608-9, the Shah Khosro II prevented the election of a new Catholicos. As a result, the Church of the East was jointly administered, during the interregum which lasted from 609 to 628, by the archdeacon of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Mar Aba, and by Babai. At this time Babai was appointed Visitor of the monasteries. Babai died in 628, not long after the death of Khosro II.

Works

His surviving works cover Christology, asceticism, hagiography and liturgy.

Christology

• Book of the Union. A Latin translation exists of this. "On the divinity and humanity (of Christ) and on the prosopon of the union" in 7 books (memre). The seventh book seems originally to have belonged to a separate work.

• Against those who say "Just as the body and soul are one qnoma, so too God the Word and the Man are one qnoma". A Latin translation exists of this.

• An excerpt to the effect that two natures implies two qnoma. This is preserved in a later collection of Christological texts, and has been translated into English.