05/03/2025
Joe Amar just led the 2025 Maronite Enrichment Days at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Seminary in Washington DC.
Joseph Phillip Amar is a linguist and historian specializing in the languages and cultures of the Middle East. His main areas of focus are on literary interactions among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and on Arabic and Syriac literary history. His publications appear in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Patrologia Orientalis, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Le Muséon, Studia Patristica, The Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Parole de L’Orient. He is a regular contributor to America Magazine, Commonweal, and Religion Dispatches, where he writes on the intersection of religion and politics.
Dr. Amar is professor emeritus of Semitic Languages and Early Christian Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he founded the Program in Semitic Languages and Literatures and co-founded the Program in Early Christian Studies. His contributions to Maronite Enrichment Days are drawn from his forthcoming book, “Dangerous Poet. The Life and Troubled Times of Ephrem the Syrian.”
Here is a the link to the playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHobUObRWoKKSZ2iUEwEpKbfusVnTloaE
The Stories We Tell
We do terrible things to the saints. Instead of modeling ourselves on them, we recreate them in our own image. This session opens with an overview of how the Ephrem of history has been systematically erased and replaced by a caricature of someone who never existed. The reasons for this are as troubling as they are destructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekOKUwxynrs&pp=ygUWdGhlIGhpZGRlbiBwZWFybCBwcmVzcw%3D%3D
Ephrem’s World
Recovering the Ephrem of history begins by letting him speak for himself, from his own time and place. How did the circumstances of Ephrem’s life shape him? How did Ephrem become Ephrem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSpMVpxCbsc&pp=ygUWdGhlIGhpZGRlbiBwZWFybCBwcmVzcw%3D%3D
The Work of Your Helper
How did Ephrem understand himself? He informs us that he has the anointing of heaven, that he speaks for God, that the power that animates and enlivens scripture flows into him, and through him, into his own time. But there are skeletons in his closet: Ephrem carries a dark secret from his past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF1_w7_9ebw&pp=ygUWdGhlIGhpZGRlbiBwZWFybCBwcmVzcw%3D%3D
Why Ephrem Matters
Ephrem’s vision offers a path that is simple but hard. It is not the path of orthodoxy (right doctrine) or orthopraxy (right morality) but of orthopathy (authentic spirituality), which is nothing less than an embrace of ROZO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SgV4_RCRw&pp=ygUWdGhlIGhpZGRlbiBwZWFybCBwcmVzc9IHCQmECQGHKiGM7w%3D%3D
Ephrem’s vision offers a path that is simple but hard. It is not the path of orthodoxy (right doctrine) or orthopraxy (right morality) but of orthopathy (aut...
