Babai the Great

[3] He was born to a family of humble means, and studied at the Christian School of Nisibis[4] under the directorship of Abraham of Beth Rabban.

Sometime around 571 A.D., when the Origenist Henana of Adiabene became the new headmaster, Babai's teacher, Abraham the Great of Kashkar, founded a new monastery on Mt.

Izla in 604, he expelled monks that lived with women on the fringes of the monastery, and enforced strict discipline, emphasizing a deep life of prayer and solitude.

King Khosrau II, ruler of the Sassanid Empire, stated only that his preferred candidate was Gregory, possibly meaning the bishop.

The Synod (council) rejected the king's initial candidate, taking advantage of the ambiguity of name, and chose Gregory of Seleucia.

The royal physician Gabriel of Shiggar, a staunch Miaphysite, suggested to make Henana of Adiabene or one of his students Catholicos, and also used his influence with the king to prevent an election.

To be popular in the newly gained provinces, King Khosrau II did not want to favor the Church of the East anymore.

During the successful Byzantine counterattack 622–628, Chalcedonians and especially Miaphysites were on the advance in Persia, and several sees and villages were lost by the Church of the East.

To defend and clarify the East Syriac tradition and theology against Henana's Origenism and the advancing Monophysites, Babai the Great produced some 83 or 84 volumes of writing.

The Book of Union is Babai's most systematic surviving Christological treatise, divided into seven memre that cover more than 200 folios.

An important source on the position of Babai the Great against Origen and his follower Henana of Adiabene is his commentary on Evagrius Ponticus.

But unlike the Greek, the 'Common Syriac Version', a translation of the Gnostic chapters of Evagrius by the Monophysite Philoxenus, was void of the specific Origenist-Evagrian Christology.

Babai tried to eliminate the Origenist ideas even further and presented Evagrius as opposed to Origen and his follower Henana by pointing out apparent contradictions between them.

The cursed Origen and his disciple, the fool Apollinaris, they teach completely different from Evagrius on the renewal of the soul after death".

And most important, instead of breaking with Theodore because of some extreme interpretations of his teachings, like others did, Babai clarified his position to the point that differences with western Christology became superficial and mostly an issue of terminology.

Babai in the 'Book of Union' teaches two qnome ('nature, essence', the miaphysite West Syriac Church uses the word to mean 'hypostasis'), which are unmingled but everlastingly united in one parsopa (from Greek prosopon, 'person, character, identity').

In the period in which Babai and others formulated their respective Christological models, words such as hypostasis and ousion had less specifically fixed definitions.

In the sixth century AD, Mar Babai wrote the Teshbokhta or (Hymn of Praise) explaining the theology of the Church of the East He writes:

The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East. The normative Christology of the Assyrian church was written by Babai the Great (551–628) and is clearly distinct from the accusations directed toward Nestorius. [ 10 ]