Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)

The School of Nisibis was the main intellectual center of the Church of the East in the sixth and early seventh centuries C.E. and an institution of learning unprecedented in antiquity. Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom provides a history both of the School and of the scholastic culture of the Church of the East more generally in the late antique and early Islamic periods. Adam H. Becker examines the ideological and intellectual backgrounds of the school movement and reassesses the evidence for the supposed predecessor of the School of Nisibis, the famed School of the Persians of Edessa. Furthermore, he argues that the East-Syrian ("Nestorian") school movement is better understood as an integral and at times contested part of the broader spectrum of East-Syrian monasticism.

Becker examines the East-Syrian culture of ritualized learning, which flourished at the same time and in the same place as the famed Babylonian Rabbinic academies. Jews and Christians in Mesopotamia developed similar institutions aimed at inculcating an identity in young males that defined each of them as beings endowed by their creator with the capacity to study. The East-Syrian schools are the most significant contemporary intellectual institutions immediately comparable to the Rabbinic academies, even as they served as the conduit for the transmission of Greek philosophical texts and ideas to Muslims in the early 'Abbasid period.

What is involved in the study of an ancient institution of learning? Quite a lot, actually. For starters: religion, philosophy, sociology and languages. The very use of the English word "school" immediately brings to our minds a whole set of expectations: buildings, teachers, students, subjects studied, etc. However, in order to understand the "School" of Nisibis, we need to set aside modern expectations and examine what ancient documents themselves tell us about the institution in question.
No physical remains of this school have been found, so literary sources are the only ones we have. The most important source for information on the School of Nisibis is a document known as the "Cause of the Foundation of the Schools" written by a man named Barhadbshabba ('son of Sunday') around the year 600 CE. Adam Becker draws on this and other sources in an attempt to understand the nature of this institution and its place in the Church and society in which it was established.
While Becker's book is well written, it is not an easy read, because the range and complexity of the subjects to be dealt with is quite broad. They include East Syriac Christianity, Syriac proto-monasticism, Egyptian monasticism, Greek, Roman, Jewish and Islamic institutions of learning, Aristotelian logic, Neoplatonic philosophy, notions of the nature of pedagogy, the sociology and politics of Sasanian Persia, Alexandrian and Antiochean scriptural exegesis, specific ancient theologians such as Ephrem of Nisibis and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and on and on. No one person, of course, can be an authority on this vast array of subjects. But Becker, a historian, has brought together many strands in order to provide points of entry to scholars in several fields, including history, Syriac studies, ecclesiology and philosophy.
The "Cause" document sees pedagogy as beginning in heaven, when God taught the angels. Pedagogy has continued throughout human history. The School of Nisibis was intended to be an earthly establishment where this divine pedagogy could be carried on. After completing a course of study which included everything from basic literacy through advanced scriptural exegesis (strictly following the approach of Theodore of Mopsuestia), graduates of the school could go on to found new schools, teach in existing schools, move up in the ecclesiastical hierarchy or, alternatively, join a monastery and work toward eventually becoming solitary monks.
Well, this review is already getting long and it feels like it has barely begun. I will wrap it up by giving the book's table of contents:
1. Divine Pedagogy and the Transmission of the Knowledge of God: The Discursive Background of the School Movement
2. The School of the Persians (Part 1): Rereading the Sources
3. The School of the Persians (Part 2): From Ethnic Circle to Theological School
4. The School of Nisibis
5. The Scholastic Genre: The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools
6. The Reception of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the School of Nisibis
7. Spelling God's Name with the Letters of Creation: The Use of Neoplatonic Aristotle in the Cause
8. A Typology of East-Syrian Schools
9. The Monastic Context of the East-Syrian School Movement
Conclusion: Study as Ritual in the Church of the East
Note:
The key text for this study, the "Cause of the Foundation of the Schools," is available in English translation, along with other relevant documents, in a separate book only recently published by Becker: Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians). The volumes of the Liverpool series are, happily, very reasonably priced.