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“More Interior than the
Lips and the Tongue”:
John of Apamea and
Silent Prayer in Late Antiquity

BROURIA BITTON-ASHKELONY

As scholars have observed, silent prayer was not a common mode of prayer
in antiquity, and it was usually regarded with considerable suspicion as an
anomalous practice. This essay explores the experience of the silent praying
self in late antiquity, a world deficient in established and explicit typologies of
prayer. It deals with the emergence of the concept of silent prayer in eastern
Christianity, which is deserving of more scholarly attention than it has so far
received. The first part provides an overview of the idea of silent prayer in late
antiquity and serves not so much to trace the overall development of the topic
as to argue that a new religious sensibility was emerging within Syriac Christi-
anity, revealing the delicate balance between transformation and rupture with
regard to the notion of “converse” with God, not only with non-Christian tra-
ditions but also with the Christian past itself. This notion is demonstrated in
the second part of the paper through the fascinating treatise On Prayer written
by the early fifth century Syriac author John of Apamea. I argue that John
developed an innovative theory and cultivated a distinctive pattern of the silent
praying self, one profoundly grounded in his perception of God as silence and
his theology of incarnation. Placing John of Apamea’s theory of silent prayer
in the broader context of late antique phenomenology and theology of prayer
suggests that his concept was far removed from neoplatonic vocabulary and
thought, and that there is no clear adherence to Evagrius’s teaching on pure
prayer. Rather, John is representative of a unique moment in Syriac spiritual-
ity—just before it was affected by the Evagriana Syriaca and reshaped by the
concept of pure prayer.

This essay was first delivered at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem in 2010. I am grateful to the members of the group and the
guests for their inspiration (Oded Irshai, Aryeh Kofsky, Hillel Newman, Roger Scott,
David Satran, and Samuel Rubenson), and especially to Derek Krueger, István Perczel,

Journal of Early Christian Studies 20:2, 303–331 © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press
304    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

The radical change in models of piety, in the ways humans imagined their
interaction with the divine, and the effects of transcendence in ascetic life
in the late antique Mediterranean world brought forward new concepts
and patterns of individual prayer, such as pure prayer, unceasing prayer,
spiritual prayer, Jesus prayer, remembrance of God, and prayer of the
heart, thus adding a new component to the prevalent non-Christian tradi-
tions of spiritual exercises.1 These new configurations of individual prayer,
well attested in Greek and Syriac texts and largely cultivated in eastern
Christian thought and behavior during and after the fourth century, were
not marginal. Each type of prayer, which was closely related to the spe-
cific concepts of religious anthropology and the self-perception developed
by each thinker, had a long history and vital function in shaping the new
eastern spiritual world of late antiquity and beyond, extending to later
Byzantine spirituality and culminating in the vibrant Hesychastic move-
ment of the fourteenth century.2 These prayers were, in fact, new spiritual
exercises or new technologies of the self in the Foucaultian sense of the
term,3 serving as a tool for orienting the self toward the divine, and they
profoundly affected mystical techniques and language in eastern Chris-
tianity. These new configurations rested on the extent to which biblical
notions and interpretations, theological stances, and philosophical con-
cepts and terminology penetrated the ascetic culture. It is worth noting at
the outset that the typology of these individual prayers is a complicated
issue and the distinctions in many texts are not easy to draw.4

and Lorenzo Perrone for their invaluable suggestions and comments. I also wish to
thank Columba Stewart for discussing with me this topic.
1. On individual prayer as a new spiritual exercise, see my article “Demons and
Prayers: Spiritual Exercises in the Monastic Community of Gaza in the Fifth and Sixth
Centuries,” VC 57 (2003): 200–221. The discussion here is related to Pierre Hadot’s
groundbreaking study, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Allbin
Michel, 1987); trans. Arnold I. Davidson and Michael Chase, Philosophy as a Way of
Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
2. The bibliography on the various sorts of individual prayer is vast. See, for exam-
ple, the bibliography on pure prayer, unceasing prayer, and Jesus prayer provided by
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza, Supple-
ments to Vigiliae Christianae 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 157–82.
3. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Technologies of the Self: A
Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H.
Hutton (Boston: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 16–49.
4. A case in point is the different sense of the heart and the mind in the western
and eastern Christian traditions, which clearly affected the definitions of inner prayer,
as has been argued by Sebastian Brock, “The Prayer of the Heart in Syriac Tradition,”
Sobornost 4 (1982): 131–42.
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   305

The same is true for the intriguing notion of silent prayer.5 An examina-
tion of Greek and Syriac patristic and monastic literature reveals a com-
plicated and hesitant approach to silent prayer in eastern Christianity.
Certainly, “silence” (σιγή), “stillness” (ἡσυχία), and non-vocal prayer are
complex categories in philosophical and religious thought and practice.6
Indeed, the absence of sound is one of the most obvious features of silent
prayer and one that is easily discerned. Yet silence is not an absence, and
it is not perceived here as an inability to conceptualize. Therefore, silent
prayer, a sort of an inner communication with God, is not merely a pos-
ture before the divine, a tribute to not speaking, or a sort of mystical lan-
guage of unsaying.7 Rather, it is a mental state in which one, through the
movement of his thoughts, communicates with God and uses the concept
of silence to give utterance to the essence of this interaction. The faculty
that prays a silent prayer is not limited to the mind, as in pure prayer;
rather the whole self is involved. As we shall see, it is an inner experience
and discourse that has its own creative power and transformative effec-
tiveness in spiritual progress, which was fully embodied in late antique
ascetic culture. It seems imperative to distinguish between the various
patterns of non-vocal prayers and their typical mechanism and function,
as well as to recognize the sporadic allusions to silence during prayer in
early Christian literature.8 Yet in many writings the distinctions between,
for example, spiritual prayer, pure prayer, and silent prayer are blurred,
casualties of a terminological overlapping that generated ambiguities and
misunderstandings concerning this subject. The widespread search of late
antique Christian authors in the East for distinctions, and questions as to
the precise sense of the various categories of individual prayer and how one
should pray, revealed the lack of knowledge and lucidity on the matter in
their society.9 On the other hand, there is sufficient evidence to follow the

5. Among the rare studies on silent prayer as a distinct sort of prayer in antiq-
uity is the insightful article by Pieter W. van der Horst, “Silent Prayer in Antiquity,”
Numen 41 (1994): 1–25.
6. On silence in Greek philosophy, Philo, Gnostic texts, and early Christian lit-
erature, see Raoul Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2 vols. (Bonn: Hanstein, 1986).
7. On apophatic language in general, see Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of
Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
8. Several early Christian texts in which silence in prayer is mentioned in passing
are indicated by Adalbert Hamman, “La prière chrétienne et la prière païenne, formes
et différences,” ANRW 2.23.2 (New York: De Gruyter, 1980): 1226–27. Here, too,
the author made no clear distinctions between the various sorts of prayer.
9. See, for instance, Cassian’s acknowledgment (Conlationes 9.9) about the diffi-
culty to describe the different types of prayers mentioned in 1 Tim 2.1, and Bitton-
Ashkelony and Kofsky, Monastic School of Gaza, chap. 8.
306    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

emergence of the various concepts and patterns of individual prayers in

eastern Christianity from the fourth century on. Scholars have also been
able to depict the integration of several models of individual prayers into
a complex system of thought and praxis of specific authors; a great atten-
tion has already been paid to, for example, Evagrius’s influential concept
of pure prayer in relation to his theology and metaphysics,10 the therapy of
desires, and the concept of eros,11 as well as to Jesus prayer and its impact
on the Hesychastic movement;12 yet this is not the case with silent prayer.13

10. David A. Ousley, “Evagrius’ Theology of Prayer and the Spiritual Life,” Ph.D.
Diss. (University of Chicago, 1979); Gabriel Bunge, “The Spiritual Prayer: On the
Trinitarian Mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus,” Monastic Studies 17 (1987): 191–208;
Gabriel Bunge, Das Geistgebet: Studien zum Traktat “De oratione” des Evagrios
Pontikos (Cologne: Luthe-Verlag, 1987). An analysis of pure prayer in the context
of mystical life is provided by Antoine Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert: Évagre
le Pontique, Textes et Traditions 8 (Paris: Vrin, 2004), 298–306; and Luke Dysinger,
Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2005). In relation to Greek philosophy, see Columba Stewart, “Imageless
Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus,” JECS 9 (2001): 173–204;
Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 170–73.
11. David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in
Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 70–77. Recently
Virginia Burrus explored the topic in the context of eros; see her “Praying Is Joying:
Musings on Love in Evagrius Ponticus,” in Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring
Passion at the Limits of Discipline, ed. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 194–204.
12. See, for example, Kallistos Ware, “The Origins of Jesus Prayer: Diadochus,
Gaza, Sinai,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright,
and Edward Yarnold (London: SPCK, 1966), 175–84.
13. Since the publication of Irénée Hausherr, Hésychasme et prière, OCA 176
(Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1966), which consisted of sev-
eral articles he had published on this topic in the early 1930s, much study has been
undertaken in the field of monastic culture in the late antique Mediterranean world.
Although I believe that a lot of Hausherr’s contributions and intuitions are still rele­
vant, it seems important to question one of his major paradigms, namely, the direct
link he perceived as running from several biblical notions of communication with
the divine to the ascetic value of stillness (ἡσυχία) and the various modes of personal
prayer, culminating in the fourteenth-century Hesychastic movement. At least with
regard to the topic of silent prayer Hausherr’s historical picture is fairly unclear. In
the same direction on ἡσυχία and prayer is Kallistos Ware’s “Silence in Prayer: The
Meaning of Hesychia,” in One Yet Two: Monastic Tradition East and West, ed. Basil
Pennington, Cistercian Studies Series 29 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications,
1976), 22–47. On the relationship between praying, keeping silent, and the Jesus
Prayer, see Kallistos Ware, “The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox
Spirituality,” Fairacres Publications 43 (1974): 1–33. The same approach to ἡσυχία
and prayer was adopted by Anne G. Keidel, “Hesychia, Prayer and Transformation in
Basil of Caesarea,” SP 37 (2001): 110–20. In the same spirit, and also lacking a clear
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   307

SILENCE IN THE DISCOURSE ON PRAYER

IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

As scholars have observed, silent prayer was not a common mode of prayer
in antiquity, and it was usually regarded with considerable suspicion as an
anomalous practice.14 Apart from the practice of magic, curses, and peti-
tions of criminal, erotic, or sexual nature, prayers in Greek religion were
usually said aloud.15 Yet the notion of silent prayer and the identification
of God with silence were widespread in the Gnostic milieu; an invocation
such as occurs in the following anonymous prayer of blessing, “O you
who are beyond verbal expression, ineffable, and invoked in silence,” was
common in Gnostic literature.16 The unknown author of First Thought in
Three Forms, discovered in Nag Hammadi, prays:
And there is light that exists hidden in silence, and which emanated.
But the latter [silence] exists alone and silent.
It is I alone, who am the ineffable, incorruptible, immeasurable,
inconceivable verbal expression . . .
That is, the inexplicable sound of the mother’s glory, the glory of the
engendering of the deity, a male virgin from a hidden intellect;
That is, silence—hidden from the entirety and inexplicable . . . 17

typology of inner prayer, is Jill Gather’s study, “Teaching on the Prayer of the Heart
in the Greek and Syrian Fathers,” Ph.D Diss. (Union Theological Seminary, 2009).
14. See van der Horst, “Silent Prayer,” 1–2; Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans.
John Raffan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 73–75; Danièle
Aubriot-Sévin, Prière et conceptions religieuses en Grèce ancienne jusqu’à la fin du
Ve siècle av. J.-C (Lyon: Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen, 1992), 146–96, and his
conclusion on the predominance of vocal prayer in Greek religion, 500–502; Simon
Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 184–88.
15. Van der Horst, “Silent Prayer,” 2–10, discusses the various motifs for silent prayer
in antiquity and provides several examples of silent prayer in ancient Greek literature.
16. Tractate 1 Poimandres, translated from the Corpus Hermeticum, vol. 1, ed.
Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 459. See also
the text known as The Three Tablets of Seth, which describes the three ascents toward
silence and then the descent, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 158. On the skepticism
about the value of language in Gnostic texts, such as in the Tripartite Tractate, see
Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:25–32. On the centrality of silence (σιγή) in Gnostic
writings in general, see Mortley, From Word to Silence, 1:55–60, 121–24.
17. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 98. It is known only in a single Coptic manuscript
from Nag Hammadi; the original Greek text is lost. The text combined various tra-
ditional materials, telling selectively the Gnostic myth from the second principle to
the crucifixion of Jesus. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 86, suggests that the date of
composition is before 350 c.e. See also Jean-Marie Sevrin, “La prière gnostique,” in
L’expérience de la prière dans les grandes religions, ed. Henri Limet and Julien Ries,
Actes du colloque de Louvain-La-Neuve et Liège 1978 (Louvain-la Neuve: Centre
d’histoire des religions, 1980), 367–74.
308    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Pieter W. van der Horst has argued that from the early imperial period on
things began to change, and the new trend to pray without words evolved
alongside a change in the conception of the nature of the deity. According
to him, it was mainly the later Platonists, with their ever more elevated
conception of the purely immaterial noetic divine world that gave a decisive
impulse to the new concept of silent prayer as the only fitting way to wor-
ship God. Drawing on the well known passage from Plotinus’s Ennead—
“Let us speak of the νοῦς in this way, first invoking God himself, not in
spoken words, but stretching ourselves out by means of our soul in prayer
toward him, since this is the way in which we are able to pray to him,
alone to the alone”18—and on his disciple Porphyry, who suggests vener-
ating God in profound silence and with a pure soul,19 as well as on other
neoplatonic authors, Van der Horst concludes that in early Christianity,
it was the combination of biblical and Platonic elements that facilitated
the acceptance and propagation of silent prayer.20 I am not persuaded.
Seeing the marginality of the topic of prayer in, for example, the writ-
ings of Plotinus—the most representative author of Neoplatonism in the
third century, it becomes hard to ascribe a prominent role to neoplatonic
trends in the change of the concept of prayer in Greek Christian thought.21
Moreover, there is little evidence of a specifically Plotinian influence among
eastern Christian writers down to the late fourth century, a situation that
slightly changed with the Cappadocian fathers, particularly in the writings
of Gregory of Nyssa.22 The road to, or awareness of, the One/Good, as

18. Ennead 5.1.6.9–12 (ed. Arthur H. Armstrong, Plotinus: Ennead 5, LCL 444
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984], 28–29, with Michael Atkinson,
Plotinus: Ennead 5.1 on the Three Principal Hypostases: A Commentary with Transla-
tion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983], 128–31). On the lofty aspect of prayer
in this passage, see John M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1967), 211–12. Similarly, Origen, De oratione 31.2 explains
that one should come to prayer by stretching out his soul instead of his hands, and
straining his mind toward God instead of his eyes.
19. Porphyry, De abstinentia 2.34.2; Van der Horst, “Silent Prayer,” 10–11.
20. Van der Horst, “Silent Prayer,” 13 and 18.
21. For Plotinus’s view on prayer of demand and magic incantation, see Rist,
­Ploti­nus, 199–212.
22. This is John Rist’s conclusion in “Plotinus and Christian Philosophy,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 386–413. An insightful comparison of Gregory of Nyssa to
Plotinus’s view on union with the One is provided by Martin Laird, Gregory of Nyssa
and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge and Divine Presence (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 117–30. Laird’s conclusion is much in line with Rist, who
acknowledged the rather limited direct influence of Plotinus’s thought on Gregory.
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   309

Plotinus conceived of it, engaged the various levels of the self,23 involving
a whole dynamic with the various levels of the nous and with the topmost
level of the nous as a faculty by which it might be achieved, and not by the
spiritual technique of prayer.24 Likewise, Marcus Aurelius, who represents
the Stoic attitude on contemplative life in the second century, used prayer
for requests, for advocating the ideal of self-sufficiency, and for extolling
one’s relation with the Monad; but he did not distinguish silent prayer as
a particular spiritual device.25 That would be the fifth-century Proclus’s
contribution, with whom the craft of inner prayer in the non-Christian
milieu reached its peak.26 Although it is beyond the scope of this essay
to provide a full explanation of the different approaches of Plotinus and
Proclus regarding the function of prayer in their philosophical systems, it
is still not an issue that should be ignored. I am inclined to build on John
Rist’s insight that Proclus seems to be thinking all the time from man’s

23. On the levels of the self in Plotinus’s teachings, see Pierre Hadot, Plotin ou la
simplicité du regard (Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes, 1989), trans. Michael
Chase, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1993), 23–34.
24. See, for example, Ennead 6.7.35 and John Bussanich, “Mystical Elements in
the Thought of Plotinus,” ANRW 36.7 (New York: De Gruyter, 1994): 5300–5330.
On the journey of the soul to God in Plotinus’s teachings, see Pierre Hadot, “Neopla-
tonic Spirituality: Plotinus and Porphyry,” in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, ed.
Arthur H. Armstrong (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 230–49. For a comprehensive
summary of Plotinus’s doctrine on the access to the One, see John Bussanich, “Plotinus’s
Metaphysics of the One,” in Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Gerson, 38–65.
25. Meditations 4.23, 9.40. See also Meditations 5.7 and Richard B. Rutherford, The
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 91, 200–205.
On the prayer to the Monad, see Pierre Hadot, La citadelle intérieure: Introduction
aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 160. Relating to the incompat-
ibility of Stoic philosophy and the notion of prayer of request, see Gilles Dorival’s
comments on Meditations 9.40, in his “Païens en prière,” in Prières méditerranéennes
hier et aujourd’hui, ed. Gilles Dorival and Didier Pralon (Aix-en-Provence: Publica-
tions de l’Université de Provence, 2000), 94–95. On prayer in the Stoic milieu com-
pared to early Christian prayers, see Marcel Simon, “Prière du philosophe et prière
Chrétienne,” in L’expérience de la prière, ed. Limet and Ries, 205–24.
26. Proclus, Commentary on 2 Timaeus 206.26–214.12. André Bremond, “Un
texte de Proclus sur la prière et l’union divine,” Recherches de science religieuse 19
(1929): 448–62, has already observed that “[c]e texte est, je crois, un des plus consi-
dérables de la literature néoplatonicienne sur la prière” (448). See also the discussion
on this passage by Robbert M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations,
Commentary, Philosophia Antiqua 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 86–87. On Proclus’s
piety and prayers, see Henri D. Saffrey, “Quelques aspects de la spiritualité des phi-
losophes néoplatoniciens: De Jamblique a Proclus et Damscius,” Revue des sciences
philosophiques et théologiques 68 (1984): 169–82.
310    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

standpoint, while Plotinus thinks rather from the standpoint of the One;27
this might explain Proclus’s innovative and creative concept of inner prayer,
resulting in what might be termed a minor treatise On Prayer, integrated
into his Commentary on 2 Timaeus (206.26–214.12). He advocates, and
inserts into a coherent system of thought, the notion of prayer as an inner
mechanism for self-transformation, one that contains precise degrees of
progress and leads to a unification of man with the divine. Thus, even if
we agree with the approach that takes into consideration the change in the
conception of deity as pure nous, which “inevitably leads to a worship in
total silence,” it does not provide an explanation for the profound change
in the concept of prayer within neoplatonic circles, nor for the emergence
of new patterns of inner prayer in late antique eastern Christianity.28
Certainly, the new perceptions of the self, manifested in Christianity and
Neoplatonism between the third and fifth centuries, also account for the
rise of the new techniques by which man seeks to encounter the divine.29
As Alain Le Boulluec has observed, drawing on biblical paradigms,30
Clement of Alexandria and Origen enhanced the traditional notion of
prayer common in the Greek and Roman religions, which consisted mainly
of petitions or requests addressed to the divine, or prayer that accompanied
the offering of sacrifices.31 Clement related to the notion of silent prayer

27. John M. Rist, “Mysticism and Transcendence in Later Neoplatonism,” Hermes

92 (1964): 213–25.
28. Van der Horst, “Silent Prayer,” 11. Although he discussed several early Christian
texts referring to silence in prayer, van der Horst himself acknowledged that “[o]ne
does not at all get the impression that silent private prayer quickly and easily made
itself the usual pattern of prayer behavior in Christian antiquity” (“Silent Prayer,”
20). Furthermore, taking into consideration the examples of silent prayer from late
antique Jewish sources mentioned by van der Horst (for instance, Mishna Berakhot
3.4–5, and the Babylonian Talmud on Berakhot 20b–21a, where a specific case of
reciting Shema in silence is discussed), one can barely argue for Jewish influence on
late antique Christianity in this matter.
29. For an analysis of the shift in ancient views of the self relating to the concep-
tions of Origen, Plotinus, and Proclus, see Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagi-
nation: Signifying the Holy in Late Antique Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 18–41. On the origins, formation, and limits of the self
in late antiquity, see the rich material provided in the collective volume Religion and
the Self in Antiquity, ed. David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005).
30. Alain Le Boulluec, Alexandrie antique et chrétienne: Clément et Origène,
Collection des Études Augustiniennes 178 (Paris: Collection des Études Augustini-
ennes, 2006), 137–49. See the four kinds of prayer in 1 Tim 2.1 and 1 Thess 5.17
on unceasing prayer.
31. For the central function of prayers of request in Greek religion in the archaic
and classical periods, see Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion, 56–69; André Méhat,
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   311

within a broad context in which he tackled the issue of communication

with the divine, raising the complex topic of the identity of the true gnos-
tic, that is, the true Christian. Silence is for Clement an ethical attitude, a
virtue, and a metaphorical way of referring to the transcendence of God,
stating that God is to be worshipped not by voice, but through reverence
and silence (σιγή).32 Choosing the topic of prayer as a mark of distinc-
tion imparted a polemical tone to his views on the matter. For Clement,
the prayer of Christians differed sharply from that of others—in particu-
lar, certain Gnostic sects—regarding many aspects, such as place, time,
direction, movement, and voice.33 Yet Clement did not directly tackle the
Gnostic identification of the divine with silence (σιγή) or the Gnostic con-
vention of invoking God in silence. Basing himself on God’s omnipresence,
he acknowledged that there is no need to pray in a particular place or at
a particular time; likewise, that there is no need to pray with the voice.
Given the nature of God, he said, it is possible to pass over the voice in
prayer. To pray is to present all of one’s spiritual being “interiorly” in order
to produce the intangible voice (φωνὴν τὴν νοητήν) through an unceasing
turning toward God.34 Clement makes it explicit that, given the incorporeal
nature of the divine and that God has no need of the senses (αἰσθήσεων),
though the Stoics mistakenly believed otherwise,35 God knows and hears
everything, not only the voice but also the thought (τῆν ἐννοίας).36 As is
well known, Clement considered the prayer of the true gnostic to be a

“La prière dans le monde gréco-romain,” DSAM 12 (1986), cols. 2202–11. On

prayer in the Greco-Roman world, see H. S. Versnel, “Religious Mentality in Ancient
Prayer,” in Faith Hope and Worship: Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient
World, ed. H. S. Versnel (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 1–63; Édouard des Places, La religion
grecque: Dieux, cultes, rites et sentiment religieux dans la Grèce antique (Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1969), 153–70. Des Places uses the phrase “La prière culturelle” (153),
which represents for him the prayer of the Greeks in general, stressing the difficulty
in distinguishing between prayer in poetic texts and in philosophical compositions.
See also, André Motte, “La prière du philosophe chez Platon,” in L’expérience de la
prière, ed. Limet and Ries, 173–204.
32. Str. 7.1.2.3 (ed. and trans. Alain Le Boulluec, Clément D’Alexandrie: Les Stro-
mates, SC 428 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997], 42–43). These aspects were discussed
by Raoul Mortley, “The Theme of Silence in Clement of Alexandria,” JTS n.s. 24
(1973): 197–202.
33. This is a subject that Clement developed in, for example, Str. 7.35 and 7.41
(SC 428:128–31, 145–47).
34. Str. 7.43.5 (SC 428:150–51).
35. Str. 7.37.1 (SC 428:134–35).
36. Str. 7.36.5 (SC 428:134–35). Clement mentioned prayer in the mind, Str.
7.49.6–8 (SC 428:168–69).
312    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

spiritual exercise in the contemplative life;37 in fact, “[the gnostic’s] entire

life is a sacred fest” (ἅπας δὲ ὁ βίος αὐτοῦ πανήγυρις ἁγία).38 The true gnos-
tic, he explained, is familiar with “other sorts of offerings” yet does not
use the abundant chatter of prayer that goes through the mouth (Matt
6.7);39 piety toward God (θεοσέβειαν), he said, is not in hymns or speech
or through Scripture and doctrines.40 It would be a mistake, however, to
think that Clement neglected the tangible aspect of prayer. He differen-
tiated the prayer of the “true gnostic” from other traditional modes of
piety, all the while repeatedly acknowledging that the gnostic, through
his offerings—of prayers, eulogies, scriptural reading before a meal, and
also hymns and psalms during meals and before going to bed—becomes
one with the divine choir (διὰ τούτων ἑαυτὸν ἑνοποιεῖ τῷ θειῳ χορῷ).41 It
appears, then, that although Clement perceived individual prayer as an
“interior cry,” in his eyes it consists also of exterior acts. After discussing
the nature of the divinity, Clement provides the prevailing definition of
prayer in the Greco-Roman world: “Prayer is a conversation (ὁμιλία) with
God.” It is precisely in this context that he relates to silent prayer, explain-
ing that even if we speak to God in a murmur, without opening the lips,
in silence (μετὰ σιγῆς), God listens to our inner conversation (ἐνδιάθετον
ὁμιλίαν).42 It appears that Clement was not troubled by the Gnostic ten-
dency to worship the divine in silence; both modes of prayer, vocal and
the “interior cry,” were embraced by him, without disclosing his prefer-
ence and without creating a specific concept of silent prayer. More or less
the same stance was adopted by Tertullian (De oratione 17.3–4) and by
Cyprian (De dominica oratione 4–5), who stressed that God listens not
so much to the voice as to the heart.43
In the same spirit, in Origen’s treatise On Prayer, written around

37. Str. 7.46.4 (SC 428:158–59).

38. Str. 7.49.3 (SC 428:166–67).
39. Str. 7.49.5–6 (SC 428:168–69).
40. Str. 7.38.1 (SC 428:136–37).
41. Str. 7.49.4 (SC 428:166–67).
42. Str. 7.39.6 (SC 428:140–41). André Méhat suggests finding the origin of this
definition of prayer in Aristotle’s dialogue On Prayer. See André Méhat, “Sur deux
définitions de la prière,” in Origeniana Sexta, ed. Gilles Dorival and Alain Le Boulluec
(Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 115–20. This definition of prayer, shared also by Evagrius
Ponticus, On Prayer 3, and the second-century sophist Maximus of Tyre, Disserta­tiones
5.8. See also J. Kevin Coyle, “What Was ‘Prayer’ for Early Christians?,” in Prayer
and Spirituality in the Early Church, ed. Pauline Allen, Raymond Canning, and Law-
rence Cross, 2 vols. (Queensland: Center for Early Christian Studies, 1998), 2:25–42.
43. Additional references on silent prayer are provided by van der Horst, “Silent
Prayer,” 18–19.
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   313

235 c.e., the notion of silent prayer is not a prevailing topic.44 Although

he interpreted key biblical passages and referred numerous times to biblical
paradigms associated with non-vocal prayer, such as Hannah and Jonah,
he did not explicitly advocate this mode of prayer.45 He evoked these
examples in the course of elucidating the typology and definition of the
various sorts of prayer listed in 1 Tim 2.1: supplications (δεήσεις), prayers
(προσευχάς), intercessions (ἐντεύξεις), and thanksgivings (εὐχαριστίας).46
Hannah’s prayer in 1 Sam 1.10–12 (“And she prayed to the Lord, and
wept bitterly. And she prayed a prayer . . .”) served as an example of
prayer-προσευχή, as well as a basis for his distinction between εὐχή and
προσευχή, the first term signifying a vow and the second an invocation.47
Likewise, Origen used the example of Hannah’s prayer “in her heart” (1
Sam 1.12–13), to illustrate his understanding of prayers that are “truly
spiritual,” since the Spirit prays in the heart of the saints.48 But he did not
emphasize the dimension of silence when commenting on the most obvi-
ous verse relating to non-vocal prayer in the Bible, that is, 1 Sam 1.13:
“Now Hannah, she spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice
was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk.” Origen’s view on
Hannah’s prayer becomes clear in his first homily on 1 Kings, where he
explicitly feels the need to explain her prayer while consecrating Samuel
to God (1 Sam 1.28). Here Origen interpreted the whole episode at length
and evoked the question whether Hannah’s words in 1 Sam 2.1–3 might be
considered as a prayer.49 Origen explained that her words are not a prayer
in the strict sense of the term; however, he used this example to resolve the
intriguing instruction in 1 Thess 5.17 to pray unceasingly, interpreting it

44. For a comparative study of Origen’s On Prayer, see Lorenzo Perrone, La

preghiera secondo Origene: L’impossibilità donata (Brescia: Morcelliana Editrice,
2011).
45. For example, Or. 2.5, 4.1–2, 13.2, 16.3 (ed. Paul Koetschau, GCS 3 [Leipzig,
1899], 303, 307, 326, 337), with Lorenzo Perrone, “La prière des chrétiens selon
Origène,” in Prières méditerranéennes, ed. Dorival and Pralon, 201–21.
46. Or. 14.2 (GCS 3:330–31).
47. Or. 14.4, 4.1–2 (GCS 3:332, 307). On this terminology of prayer in comparison
with the pagan’s vocabulary of prayer, see Hamman, “La prière chrétienne et la prière
païenne,” 1190–1247. See also the thorough investigation of the function and charac-
teristic form of the verb εὔχεσθαι in Greek religion as attested in ancient inscriptions,
Mary Depew, “Reading Greek Prayers,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997): 229–58. For
the use of εὔχεσθαι for a prayer of request, see Édouard des Places, “Deux études sur
la prière en Grèce,” Revue des études grecques 81 (1968): 167–71.
48. Relating to 1 Cor 14.15 and Rom 8.26, Or. 2.5 (GCS 3:303). See also Or.
12.1–2 (GCS 3:324–25), on the words of the saints’ prayers.
49. Hom. 1 Reg. 1.8–9 (ed. Pierre et Marie-Thérèse Nautin, Origène, Homélies
sur Samuel, SC 328 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1986], 122–29).
314    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

as a way of life of the just one, who proceeds according to God’s will and
the divine commandments.50 Nor did he develop the notion of silent prayer
in the course of commenting on such verses as 1 Cor 14.14–15 (“For if I
pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.
What is it then? I will pray with my spirit, and I will pray with the mind
also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the mind also”)51 or
Matt 6.5–9 (“Pray in secret with the door shut”), which he interpreted as
closing the doors of the senses (τὴν θύραν τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἀποκλείσας), a
sort of disposition of prayer, instructing one to pray in a secret chamber.52
Le Boulluec attempted to explain Origen’s disregard of silent prayer in his
treatise On Prayer as being a consequence of his wish to avoid using the
image given by Clement of communication with God as the communica-
tion of consciousness to consciousness.53
As Lorenzo Perrone has noted, unlike the almost total absence of the
notion of silent prayer in On Prayer, Origen in his Homilies is quite
explicit about it.54 For instance, in Homilies on Numbers Origen posits
vocal prayer in contrast to inner prayer, for which he uses the image of
the interior altar (Exodus 27), and combining the notions of praying in a
secret chamber (Matt 6.6) and praying with the spirit and with the mind
(1 Cor 14.14–15). Yet this leads Origen to merely alert the priests about
what is hidden behind the veil, that is, to be vigilant in order to keep the
interior man immaculate.55 Referring to the “cry” of Moses to the Lord
(Exod 14.15), Origen asks how the saints cry to God without words. He
answers by making an intrinsic connection between Rom 8.26 (“What we
ought to pray for as we ought we do not know, but the Spirit makes special
intercession with God with sighs too deep for words”) and Gal 4.6 (“God
sent forth the spirit of his Son into your heart, crying, Abba, Father”);
it is through the intercession of the Holy Spirit that the silent cry of the
saints is heard.56 He also explains that the mind would not be able to pray
unless the Spirit prayed for it, as if obeying it.57 Though Perrone’s conclu-

50. Hom. in 1 Reg. 1. 9 (SC 328:128–29).

51. Or. 12.1 (GCS 3:324): προσευχόμενοι πνεύματι προσεύχονται καὶ τῷ νοΐ.
52. Or. 20.2 (GCS 3:344).
53. Str. 7.43.3 (SC 428:150–51); Le Boulluec, Alexandrie antique et chrétienne,
142–43.
54. Perrone, “La prière des chrétiens selon Origène,” 214 with n. 62 and 63; Per-
rone, La preghiera secondo Origene, 352–59.
55. Hom. in Num. 10.3.
56. Hom. in Ex. 5.4 (ed. Marcel Borret, Origène: Homélies sur L’Exode, SC 321
[Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985], 162–65). On the role of the Spirit in prayer, see Per-
rone, “La prière des chrétiens selon Origène.”
57. Or. 2.4 (GCS 3:301–2).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   315

sion that Origen avoided any rigid classification of prayer is quite sound,58
it is intriguing that even when he interpreted the biblical paradigm par
excellence of silent prayer, Origen preferred to emphasize other aspects of
Christian prayer and not necessarily its silent dimension.59
The intensification of ascetic tendencies and the emergence of monas-
ticism in eastern Christianity from the fourth century on brought with it
changes and an amplification of the discourse on silence. Thus the monas-
tic literature of the period is replete with praise for stillness (ἡσυχία) and
with the notion of silence as refraining from speech. Yet it did not yield a
theory of silent prayer. Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, though discussing
the contemplative dimension of prayer in his treatise The Lord’s Prayer,
did not allude to Matt 6.6 (“When you pray, enter into your room and
shut the door and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees
in secret will reward you”), as one might expect; nor did he hint at any
biblical examples relating to non-vocal prayer. When his brother, Basil of
Caesarea, was asked about the meaning of the “secret chamber,” which
the Lord commands anyone who prays to enter (Matt 6.6), he answered
that in the event that one is caught up in a passion, he would do well to
remain apart in prayer and solitude until he overcomes this passion.60
Perceiving the discipline of silence as proof of self-control, Basil states
that training in silence is indeed valuable to newcomers: “One must keep
silence—except, of course, for the psalmody.”61 Basil, however, does value
the notion of honoring the mysteries of the Trinity by one’s very silence.62
In the same vein and stemming from the same cultural milieu, Evagrius
Ponticus extols such silent honoring: “In silence the ineffable should be
adorned.”63 Likewise, his teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus, states in relation

58. Perrone, “La prière des chrétiens selon Origène,” esp. 207.
59. For a different view on Origen’s concept of prayer, one that stresses its silence
aspect, see Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:69–71.
60. Short Rules 277 (PG 31:1277; trans. Anna M. Silvas, The Asketikon of St.
Basil the Great [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 426). In Short Rules 208,
Basil answered the question whether it is good to practice silence. See also Silvas’s
comments on these rules at Asketikon, 198 and 208; cf. Keidel, “Hesychia, Prayer
and Transformation in Basil.”
61. Long Rules 13 (PG 31:949; trans. Silvas, 198).
62. Basil, Homily 342.4, quoted by Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, The Trans-
formation of the Classical Heritage 20 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1994), 128.
63. Evagrius, Gnostikos 41 (ed. and trans. Antoine et Claire Guillaumont, Évagre
le Pontique, Le gnostique, SC 356 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1989], 166–67). For par-
allel statements in neoplatonic tradition and Gregory of Nazianzus, see Gnostikos
41 (SC 356:169).
316    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

to 2 Cor 12.1–4: “Because those are ineffable things, let us honor them in
silence (σιωπῇ τιμάσθω).”64 Basil, as is well known, advocated the notion
of remembrance of God and perceived continual prayer as a disposition
toward the divine, “not as unceasing act of speeches on the lips,” but the
whole of life as a continual prayer.65 Yet Jean Gribomont’s conclusion that
Basil showed himself reticent about speaking of prayer seems plausible.
According to him, prayer in Basil’s teaching is not a complicated exercise
that requires a specific method or guidance.66
Even an author such as Pseudo-Macarius in Mesopotamia at the end of
the fourth century, whose corpus of writings, especially the treatise known
as the Epistula magna, noticeably ascribed to prayer an especially impor-
tant role in the virtuous life, and who believed that one who obeys the
Lord builds up piety by means of the five virtues, the first being prayer—his
statements on the silent aspect of prayer did not result in any rich account
or defined theory.67 His ascetic rhetoric included such proclamations as “we
ought to pray neither according to any bodily habit (ἔθος σωματικόν), nor
with a habit of loud noise (κραυγῆς ἔθει), nor out of a custom of silence
(συνηθείᾳ σιωπῆς) or on bended knees.” Although silence was precious to
him, he did not go beyond such general statements as “those who approach
the Lord ought to pray in stillness (ἡσυχίᾳ), peace (εἰρήνῃ), and with great
quietness (καταστάσει), and not with disturbing outcries.” The true foun-
dation of prayer, he affirmed, is to be vigilant over thoughts (λογισμοί)
and to pray with much stillness and peace. For him, those who pray with
great noise are like coxswains who exhort the ­rowers to keep time.68 He
understood prayer also as an activity of the mind, as “sending the mind

64. Gregory of Nazianzus, Discourse 28.20 (ed. Paul Gallay, Grégoire de Nazianze,
Discours 27–31, SC 250 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978], 140–41).
65. Basil, Homilia in martyrem Julittam (PG 31:244).
66. Jean Gribomont, Saint Basile: Évangile et église, 2 vols., Spiritualité orientale
et vie monastique 36 and 37 (Bégrolles-en Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1984),
2:426–42.
67. The other four virtues are temperance, almsgiving, poverty, and long-suffering,
Homily 37, Greek, pp. 268–69. See also, Homily 40, a spiritual chain in which prayer
is the first, pp. 214–15, Greek text, p. 275. All the virtues are mutually bound to one
another; like a spiritual chain, each is dependent upon the other. On Psuedo-Macarius’s
teachings, see Columba Stewart, “Working the Earth of the Heart”: The Messalian
Controversy in History, Texts, and Language to AD 431 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991). On the centrality of prayer in Psuedo-Macarius’s thought, see Marcus Plested,
The Macarian Legacy: The Place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradi-
tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 38–42, 49–50.
68. Homily 6.1 and 6.3 (ed. Hermann Dörries, Erich Klostermann, and Matthias
Kroeger, Die 50 Geistlichen Homilien des Makatios, PTS 4 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1964], 63–65).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   317

to God”;69 yet he was less systematic, for instance, than Evagrius Ponticus
and quite nonchalant regarding spiritual distinctions, glibly using such
terms as “the spiritual pure prayer.”70
Although certain major biblical passages relating to silent prayer are
not ignored by the authors I have mentioned, their comments on the silent
aspect of prayer represent, for the most part, the merging of the silent
dimension of prayer with the notion of prayer of the spirit and of the
mind, without ascribing to it any specific function in itself. Nor did they
rank the silent aspect of prayer independently as a part of spiritual prog-
ress, such as the centrality of “fiery prayer” in Cassian’s teaching on the
ecstatic experience of God. Cassian, nonetheless, characterized the “fiery
prayer,” which according to him is known and experienced by very few,
by deprivation of voice, movement of the tongue, and pronunciation of
words: “The mind is aware of it when it is illuminated by an infusion of
heavenly light from it, and not by narrow human words.”71 While com-
menting on Matt 6.6, Cassian disclosed his understanding of the silent
dimension in prayer:
We shall fulfill this in the following way: we pray in our room when we
withdraw our hearts completely from the clatter of every thought and
concern. . . . We pray with the door shut when, with closed lips and in
total silence, we pray to the searcher not of voices but of hearts. We pray in
secret when, intent in heart and mind alone, we offer our petitions to God
alone. . . . We must pray with the greatest silence.72

The correspondence of Barsanuphius and John with monks in the com-

munity of Gaza in the sixth century provides one of the rare instances in
which the challenging aspect of silent prayer was plainly addressed. One
of the monks asked whether one should pray and recite psalms vocally
(μετὰ φωνῆς)—drawing on Ps 50.17 (“Lord, you shall open my lips, and
my mouth shall declare your praise”) and Heb 13.15 (“the fruit of our

69. Homily 6.1 (ed. Heinz Berthold, Makarios/Symeon: Reden und Briefe. Die
Samm­lung I des Vaticanus Graecus 694 (B), GCS 55 and 56 [Berlin: Akademie-­Verlag,
1973], here GCS 55:82).
70. Homily 33 (PTS 4:258).
71. For example, Cassian, Conlationes 9.25–26 (ed. Dom E. Pichery, Jean Cassien.
Conférences, SC 54 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1958], 61–62; trans. Boniface Ramsey,
John Cassian: The Conferences, Ancient Christian Writers 57 [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1997], 345–46). For “fiery prayer” in the general context of the experience
of prayer according to Cassian, see Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 114–21; Monique Alexandre, “La prière de feu chez
Jean Cassien,” in Jean Cassien entre l’orient et l’occident, ed. Cristian Badilita and
Attila Jakab (Paris: Beauchesne, 2003), 171–203.
72. Conlationes 9.35 (SC 54:71–77; trans. Ramsey, 353).
318    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

lips”)—the monk being well aware of the inconsistency that Scripture

might present for silent prayer. Putting the question in this manner dem-
onstrates that even though advocating hesychastic values, the monks of
Gaza did not as a direct consequence embrace silent prayer. The answer
of John, their spiritual guide, indicates his stance that prayer should be
done not only in the mind, but also with the lips (οὐ μόνον διὰ τοῦ νοός,
ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τῶν χειλέων χρεία).73 Yet, despite this clear statement in favor
of vocal prayer, Barsanuphius also expressed the opposite view: relating
to another biblical passage, he said to the monk that, if he happened to
invoke God “not with your mouth,” he should not imagine that he is not
invoking, since it is written in Scripture, “Shut your door and pray to your
Father in secret, that means close your mouth and pray in your heart.”74
What I observe in all these texts, as well as in others not cited here—such
as the Pachomian corpus, the Apophthegmata patrum, and the wealth of
questions and answers on prayer tackled in the monastic corpus of Gaza—
is the absence of a fully developed theory of silent prayer in Greek litera-
ture. In other words, in late antique Greek literature the notion of silent
prayer did not mature and reach the theoretical dimension or influence
attained by the concept of pure prayer developed by Evagrius Ponticus
toward the end of the fourth century, and the theoretical achievements of
Diadochus of Photice in the fifth century, in reshaping the biblical concept
of remembrance of God.75

PRAYER AS SILENCE IN THE

TEACHING OF JOHN OF APAMEA
However, if we turn to Syriac literature created from the fourth century on,
we may gain an entirely different picture about the notion of silent prayer.
In his exposition on the biblical paradigms of prayer—a list that resembles
that of other Christian writers such as Origen and Tertullian76—Aphrahat
relates thus to the example of Hannah: “Let us now come to the prayer of

73. Questions and Answers 165 (ed. François Neyt, Paula de Angelis-Noah, and
Lucien Regnault, Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza: Correspondance, SC 427 and 451
[Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998, 2001], here 427:562–65).
74. Questions and Answers 430 (SC 451:506–9).
75. For instance, Diadochus of Photice, Gnostic Chapters 59–61; see also the intro-
duction of Édouard des Places in his critical edition, Diadoque de Photicé: Oeuvres
spirituelles, SC 5 bis (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997), 49–52; Plested, The Macarian
Legacy, 168–73. Kallistos Ware, “Silence in Prayer: The Meaning of Hesychia,” has
gathered a wealth of materials on the topic.
76. Or. 13:2–4 (GCS 3:326–29), discussed by Perrone, La preghiera secondo Ori-
gene, 109–17.
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   319

silence (o`˙◊¾ o˙rÏı) that Samuel’s mother, Hannah, prayed.”77 Unlike

Origen’s interpretation of the same passage, Aphrahat terms Hannah’s
prayer a silent prayer. Turning then to discuss Samuel’s prayer and sacri-
fice, Aphrahat furnishes a list of biblical figures who prayed to God and
received help, among them Jonah, who prayed from the depth of the sea,
exhorting, “Our Savior taught the following kind of prayer: ‘You should
pray in secret to him who is hidden, but who sees all.’ For he said, ‘Enter
the chamber and pray to your Father in secret and the Father who sees
in secret will reward you.’” Here Aphrahat was commenting on the key
passage from Matt 6.6 (“Pray to your Father with the door closed”), that
is, pray in the heart; according to him, the door is the mouth, which one
should close, and the chamber is the temple of the Lord (1 Cor 3.16).78
As Sebastian Brock has noted, Ephrem provides a similar interpretation
(Hymns on Faith 20.6), drawing on the paradigm of Jonah who, according
to him, “prayed a prayer that had no sound: the herald was put to silence
in the fish’s belly . . . and God on high heard, for his silence served as a
cry.”79 In addition to the explicit evocation here of Matt 6.6 and Jonah 2,
Ephrem employs the imagery of giving birth, voice, and silence to denote
the dynamic of faith and prayer and their necessity for Christians: “To
you, Lord, do I offer up my faith with my voice, for prayer (o˙rÏı) and
petition (o˙rÚ·) can both be conceived in the mind and brought to birth
in silence, without using the voice (oϘ oϾ o˜˙◊· w„Ï=˙R).”80 He insists
on the hidden and non-vocalized experience of prayer, addressed to the
“hidden ear of God, while faith is for the visible ear of humanity,” imagin-
ing it “like a hidden taste within our body” (Hymns on Faith 20.10–11).
Furthermore, Ephrem went so far as to represent God through the imag-
ery of silence and stillness: “You are stillness which cannot be sensed and
silence which cannot be heard.” Nonetheless, as Paul Russell has convinc-
ingly argued, “In Ephrem’s eyes, silence is not only a metaphor for God
it also wraps itself around the few true things we are able to know about
God.”81 Whatever precise significance Ephrem attached to this metaphor,

77. Aphrahat, Demonstration 4.8 (ed. Ioannes Parisot, PS 1 [Paris: Instituti Francici
Typographi, 1894], 152; trans. Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and
the Spiritual Life, Cistercian Studies Series 101 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publica-
tions, 1987], 11).
78. On this passage and prayer of the heart, see Brock, “Prayer of the Heart,”
131–42.
79. Hymns on Faith 20.9 (ed. Edmund Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers
Hymnen de Fide, CSCO 154, Scr. Syri 73 [Louvain, 1955], 75); trans. Brock, 34).
80. Hymns on Faith 20.1 (CSCO 154:74; trans. Brock, 33).
81. Russell, “Ephraem the Syrian,” 32–33.
320    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

it might have affected the later conception of God and the relation of
the human and the divine in Syriac Christianity. Ephrem, however, did
not extend his view to a theory of silent prayer, as happened later in the
Syriac ascetic milieu; it seems that, in the fourth century, the distinction
between the various sorts of non-vocal prayer and silent prayer was still
in the making.
John of Apamea, or John the Solitary, is the earliest Christian author
known to me to shape a theory of silent prayer.82 His short treatise On
Prayer—published by Sebastian Brock and Paolo Bettiolo—was trans-
mitted by both West and East Syrian manuscript traditions, including
manuscripts attributing the treatise to the East Syrian writer Abraham of
Nathpar (sixth/seventh century),83 and an additional recension was trans-
mitted under the name of Philoxenos of Mabbug.84 In this treatise, John
of Apamea developed a coherent and innovative theory of silent prayer,
thus marking a new stage in the history of Syriac spirituality and attest-
ing to a new religious sensibility. Already in 1948, Irénée Hausherr in his
study, “Un grand auteur spirituel retrouvé: Jean d’Apamée,” recognized
the enormous effect that John’s writings had exerted on later Syriac ascetic
literature and spirituality.85 Scholars had great difficulty in locating this

82. Or, mistakenly, John of Lycopolis. On the problem of the identity of John,
see Irénée Hausherr, Hésychasme et prière, OCA 176 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum
Orientalium Studiorum, 1966), 63–86; Irénée Hausherr, “Un grand auteur spirituel
retrouvé: Jean d’Apamée,” OCP 14 (1948): 3–42 (= Etudes de spiritualité orientale,
OCA 183 [Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1969], 181–216.
Hausherr claims that there are three different authors under the name of John of
Apamea. Another attempt to identify John of Apamea was Werner Strothmann,
­
Johannes von Apamea: Sechs Gespräche mit Thomasios, der Briefwechsel zwischen
Thomasios und Johannes und drei an Thomasios gerichtete Abhandlungen, Patristi-
sche Texte und Studien 11 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972), 81–115. Strothmann
identifies three aspects of the same author. A good summary of the various arguments
relating to John’s identity is provided by Paul Harb, “Doctrine spirituelle de Jean le
Solitaire (Jean d’Apamée),” Parole de l’Orient 2 (1971): 225–28. Harb is in favor
of an author from Syria. See also René Lavenant, “Le problème de Jean d’Apamée,”
OCP 46 (1980): 367–90; René Lavenant, Jean d’Apamée: Dialogues et traités, SC
311 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1984), 15–19. Lavenant’s conclusion is in line with that
of Hausherr.
83. Ed. and trans. Sebastian Brock, “John the Solitary, On Prayer,” JTS n.s. 30
(1979): 84–101; Brock, Syriac Fathers, 191–96.
84. Identified and published by Paolo Bettiolo, “Sulla Preghiera: Filosseno o
Giovanni,” Le Muséon 94 (1981): 75–89. Bettiolo published the Syriac text with an
Italian translation. This recension also contains (76–77) two brief fragments: on con-
tinual prayer (o˙R=Óo o˙ÂÏ) and on pure prayer (o˙=Î� o˙ÂÏ).
85. Hausherr, “Un grand auteur spirituel retrouvé.” Hausherr summarized John
of Apamea’s three letters published by Lars Gösta Rignell, Briefe von Johannes dem
Einsiedler (Lund: Hakan Ohlssons, 1941).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   321

author, about whom we have almost no information; it is now commonly

agreed that John was a native of Apamea in northern Syria who lived dur-
ing the first half of the fifth century. On the basis of his Christology, Werner
Strothmann has claimed that John of Apamea was a post-Chalcedonian
Monophysite.86 This view was rejected by André de Halleux, who had
found no evidence of such a hypothesis in either John’s vocabulary or his
Christology; instead, Halleux dated John’s literary activity to the period
between the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon, that is,
between 431 and 451.87 Halleux sees John as a theologian of mysticism
whose Christology is simply a “christologie d’en haut” in line with early
Syriac pre-Chalcedonian theology, which John would have derived from
the school of Edessa.88
It is important to emphasize here that, while John of Apamea certainly
knew Greek,89 he hardly ever used Greek terminology in his writings
and he was far removed from neoplatonic thought.90 In addition, there is
no clear adherence to Evagrius’s speculative mysticism and teaching on
prayer, and it is still an open question to what extent John knew at least
some of Evagrius’s writings.91 As is well known, Evagrius’s concept of pure
prayer centered on the inner dynamic of the mind (νοῦς), thus a major part
of his descriptions is devoted to the nature and experience of the mind
itself, whereas John’s concept of silent prayer centered on the entire self.92
Furthermore, the role of the Bible in his spirituality, a sort of continual
meditation on Scripture, is central,93 and his patterns of thought are easily
characterized as typically Semitic.94 John’s written corpus is representative

86. Strothmann, Johannes von Apamea, 68–80.

87. André de Halleux, “La christologie de Jean le Solitaire,”Le Muséon 94 (1981):
5–36; Halleux, “Le milieu historique de Jean le Solitaire,” in III e Symposium Syri-
acum 1980, ed. René Lavenant, OCA 221 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium
Studiorum, 1983), 299–305.
88. Halleux, “Christologie de Jean le Solitaire,” 35.
89. Halleux, “Milieu historique de Jean le Solitaire,” 299–305.
90. For instance, according to Brock, “Discerning the Evagrian,” 62, the word
θεωρία occurs a small number of times in John’s writings.
91. This question was recently raised by Brock, “Discerning the Evagrian,” 67–68,
who stated that it needs further exploration.
92. On Evagrius’s doctrine of the nous, see Antoine Guillaumont, Les “Képhalia
Gnostica” d’Evagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’Origénisme chez les grecs et chez les
syriens (Paris: Seuil, 1962), 37–43; Julia S. Konstantinovsky, Evagrius Ponticus: The
Making of a Gnostic (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), esp. chap. 4.
93. See, for instance, John’s exegesis on the Cherubim and Seraphim in Dialogue
3, in Strothmann, Johannes von Apamea, 25–35, and also Lavenant’s introduction
at SC 311:22–24.
94. Brock, “John the Solitary,” 84 n. 8.
322    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

of an early phase and unique moment in Syriac spirituality: just a brief

moment before the great Syriac theological mutation of the second half of
the fifth century—namely, an openness to Greek culture and fidelity to the
old theology of Ephrem—and just before it was affected by the Evagriana
Syriaca, and by the concept of “pure prayer” that would reshape Syriac
spirituality and influence its religious thought and behavior as well as its
literary yield for many generations.
It is difficult to trace John’s sources for his concept of silent prayer, and
although in many senses it might be considered an innovation, the influence
of Ephrem, who perceived silence as the highest form of communication
with the divine, seems most likely.95 It is certainly grounded in his anthro-
pology of a tripartite model, which he described at length in his treatise
Dialogue on the Soul and in his letters, stressing that he based his under-
standing on Scripture.96 His concept consists of three levels, or orders, for
which John used the Greek τάξις: The somatic level (oR¯pÙ), the level of
the soul (oR◊ÙR), and the level of the spirit (oRÁÂ}).97 At the bodily level,
there is no possibility to know God’s mystery. At the level of the soul, spiri-
tual prayer is located.98 This model is a gradual process of liberation from
sin and passions to purity of soul, leading to the luminosity of the soul
(o◊ÙRq o˙Â=Ù◊), a progression that takes place as the result of a process
of “self-emptying” (o˙˜}ÒÓ), in imitation of Christ’s self-emptying (Phil
2.7, “Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”), toward the
stage of perfection (o˙Â}=ÓÐ).99 John assumed that a person can ascend
beyond the state that he terms as the purity of the mind (oR=Ú}„ o˙Â=΄)
in this life only if he receives divine revelation.100 He develops at length the
third stage (o}·Â„ oRÁÂ}), which it is possible to attain only in the new

95. Several examples attesting the influence of Ephrem’s theology on John are listed
by Halleux, “Christologie de Jean le Solitaire,” 18 n. 52. See also Paul S. Russell,
“Ephraem the Syrian on the Unity of Language and the Place of Silence,” JECS 8
(2000): 21–37. Russell notices that Ephrem does not value silence more than human
speech but rather sees it as necessary and appropriate with regard to certain subjects
in certain circumstances (29).
96. Ed. Sven Dedering, Johannes von Lykopolis: Ein Dialog über die Seele und die
Affekte des Menschen (Leiden: Brill, 1936); trans. Irénée Hausherr, Jean le Solitaire
(Pseudo-Jean de Lycopolis). Dialogue sur l’âme et les passions des hommes, OCA
120 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1939).
97. See, for instance, Dialogue, 13 and 66. For a summary of John’s threefold
model, see Bruce Bradley, “Jean le Solitaire,” DSAM 8 (1974), cols. 768–71. An
important analysis of John’s spiritual model is provided by Harb, “Doctrine spiritu-
elle,” 229–60. See also, Brock, Syriac Fathers, 79–80.
98. Dialogue, 14, and Harb, “Doctrine spirituelle,” 235–36.
99. See, for example, Ep. 2 (Rignell 56*–62*).
100. Dialogue 3 (Dedering 61).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   323

life, after the Resurrection. This stage is not a result of good actions or
virtues; it is a mind that partakes with God in the knowledge of his mys-
teries, a stage that only Christ was able to attain in this life.101
Toward the end of the fourth Dialogue, John concludes his distinction
of the threefold order by supplying a brief explanation of the spiritual
and corporal aspects of various topics. In this context he inserts an addi-
tional distinction dear to him: visible and invisible things, stating that the
request concerning invisible things is spiritual prayer (o˙=RÁÂ} D‰ o˙ÂÏ).
He thereby created a further distinction of three levels of stillness: corpo-
ral stillness (oR}ÐÙ o=Ï◊), which is the ceasing of speech; stillness of the
soul (oR◊ÙR o=Ï◊), when the mind no longer quarrels in its thoughts; and
spiritual stillness (oRÁÂ} o=Ï◊), when the soul no longer accounts for its
opinions.102 This threefold model of stillness corresponds to his model of
spiritual progress, in which spiritual prayer is located in the second stage.
It is worth noting that John was very accurate about terminology; thus he
did not confuse silence (o˜˙◊) with stillness (o=Ï◊), and he was consistent
in his use of the former in his treatise On Prayer.103
John’s theological starting point in his treatise On Prayer is John
4.21–24 (“Those who worship God should worship him in spirit and in
truth”) and 1 Cor 14.15 (“I will pray in spirit and in my mind”), reject-
ing the possibility that prayer consists solely in words, and explaining
that spiritual prayer (o˙=RÁÂ} o˙ÂÏ) is not something that is learned and
does not reach fullness as a result of either learning or the repetition of
words, “It is to Him who is Spirit that you are directing the movements
of prayer. You should pray, therefore, in spirit, seeing that He is spirit.”104
At first glance it seems quite surprising that John did not mention Rom
8.26 in this context. Probably, the intercessionary aspect of this verse,
an aspect that was not within the spectrum of John’s discussion on silent
prayer, is the reason for his textual choice here.105 However, except for
the particular notion of the movement of prayer (o˙ÂÏ� oÚÂ6), there is
nothing either idiosyncratic or surprising in such a statement in the con-
text of the rhetoric of prayer.106 Yet it is precisely from John’s subsequent

101. Dialogue 3 (Dedering 64). On the new life in the resurrection, see, for exam-
ple, Letter 3, 83–88.
102. Dialogue 4 (Dedering 90).
103. Usually o=Ï◊ is the equivalent term for ἡσυχία. Ephrem too distinguished
between the two terms in the context of prayer (Hymns on Faith 20.6).
104. Syriac: Brock, 89; trans. Brock, 97.
105. For such an interpretation of Rom 8.26, see John Dalyatha, Ep. 12.4.
106. The notion of movement of prayer o˙ÂÏ� oÚÂ6 is prevalent in Syriac spiri-
tuality and gained further development in Isaac of Nineveh’s teaching on prayer.
324    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

statements that we can discern he has something different in mind with

regard to “spiritual prayer,” something that goes beyond the Pauline view.
It is precisely in this context that he reveals his creativity and appears as
an innovative thinker who interiorized the notion of non-vocal prayer:
“He does not say anything at all about the tongue. The reason is that this
spiritual prayer is not offered up by the tongue or prayed by the tongue,
for it is more interior than the lips and the tongue, more deeply interior-
ized than anything on the lips, more interiorized than any words (oÏœÓ)
or vocal song.”107 It is this kind of prayer that John identified as the first
transformative moment in individual prayer, drawing on the heavenly
liturgical connotation, namely, the solemn singing of the Trisagion, when
one joins the “region of the angels,” and prays with them.108 John situated
the person who prays in the place where spiritual beings and angels are to
be found (ÌoÎ oÎoÏœÓ� oRÁÂg� o˙ÎÂ�·Â); “like them, he utters ‘holy’
without any words” (n�`Ó oÏœÓ oÏ�Â).109 In contrast to the earthly liturgy,
in which the Trisagion was uttered vocally, John perceived this elevated
spiritual stage as a silent moment. Thus this liturgical contrast reinforces
his opening statement about the spiritualization of worship: “No special
place is required for someone who prays to God. Our Lord said: ‘The hour
is coming when you will not be worshipping the Father in this mountain
or in Jerusalem’ (John 4.21).”110
This interior liturgical experience, however, is not static; once one ceases
from this kind of prayer and recommences the prayer of vocal song, then,
said John, he is distanced from the region of the angels and becomes again
an ordinary man (oÓ=Á◊ o◊Ro }·).111 This dynamic aspect of the spiri-
tual journey, which seems to be at the heart of John’s concept of silent
prayer, rests on a dichotomy he formulated of the “just” (o˜=�6) and the
“spiritual being” (oRÁ¯), probably reminiscent of the dichotomy already
featured in the Liber Graduum, which uses the terms upright (oRoÎ) and
perfect (o}=ÓÐ ), terms also used by John of Apamea in his letters and in

107. On Prayer 2 (Syriac: Brock, 89; trans. Brock, 97).

108. For the history of singing the Trisagion in eastern Christianity, see Juan Mateos,
La célébration de la parole dans la liturgie Byzantine (Rome: Pontificium Institutum
Orientalium Studiorum, 1970), 99–126.
109. On Prayer 2 (Syriac: Brock, 89; trans. Brock, 97). The Trisagion is also associ-
ated with the ascent to heaven. See, for example, the tradition in Acts of the Martyr-
dom of Perpetua and Felicitas 12 (ed. Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian
Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)], 121): “We heard the sound of voices in
unison chanting unceasingly: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy.’”
110. On Prayer 2 (Syriac: Brock, 89; trans. Brock, 97).
111. On Prayer 2 (Syriac: Brock, 89; trans. Brock, 97).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   325

Dialogue on the Soul.112 John believes that whoever sings, using his tongue
and his body, and perseveres in this worship both day and night, such a
person is one of the “just.” “But the person who has been deemed worthy
to enter deeper than this, singing in mind and in spirit (1 Cor 14.15), such
a person is a ‘spiritual being.’” John explained that a “spiritual being” is
more exalted than one of the “just”; yet one becomes a “spiritual being”
after being one of the “just.”113 John described in detail the stage of the
“just,” which consists of all the well-known components of ascetic life,
such as fasting, vocal psalmody, long periods on the knees, constant vigils,
the recitation of psalms, supplication, abstinence, limited food, humility,
and remembrance of God.114 This ascetic behavior, which includes as well
various sorts of individual prayers, corresponds to the first stage of John’s
threefold spiritual model, that of the body. When someone achieves all
this, he will arrive at singing as a spiritual being. What we have here is
not simply prayer without voice, but a clear hierarchical spiritual system
in which, paradoxically, the necessity for vocal prayer is decisive. John,
then, without any hesitation, proceeds to introduce the main theological
argument from which his concept of silent prayer stemmed: “For God is
silence (o‰Ïo }=Р‰ o˜˙◊), and in silence is he sung.”115 Far from any
rhetoric of inexpressibility and gnostic inclinations, he immediately makes
it clear that he is not speaking of “the silence of the tongue,” which he
considers an exterior silence. Rather, he employs a new image, the “inte-
rior tongue of the mind” (oÚ�Ó ÂÐÏ� oR◊Ï); it will be still from all speech
and from all thought.116 It is worth mentioning here the text entitled “On
Prayer: From the Teaching of the Solitaries,” whose style, according to
Sebastian Brock,117 suggests it may be derived from the works of John of
Apamea: “Grant me, Lord, by your grace that my mind may have converse
with the greatness of that grace—not by means of that converse which is

112. On Prayer 3 (Syriac: Brock, 89–90; trans. Brock, 98); Liber Graduum 13–14.
The “upright” is described in concrete terms as avoiding evil; the “perfect” as tran-
scending worldly conflict. For the terms o˜=�6 and oRoÎ as synonyms, see John of
Apamea, Dialogue (Dedering 59 and 61).
113. On Prayer 3 (Syriac: Brock, 89–90; trans. Brock, 98).
114. On Prayer 3 (Syriac: Brock, 89–90; trans. Brock, 98).
115. On Prayer 4 (Syriac: Brock, 90; trans. Brock, 98)
116. On Prayer 4 (Syriac: Brock, 90–91; trans. Brock, 98–99). The eighth-century
author John Dalyatha (Letter 12.7 [ed. Robert Beulay, La collection des lettres de
Jean de Dalyatha, PO 39.3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), 340–41]), discerned the limit
of mystical experience as a place where there are no more words, a realm in which a
boundary (oÓÂÁ˙) was imposed, that is, silence (o˜˙◊). Only the intellect (oÚ�Ó) is
permitted to pass over and see in this place all the mysteries (Ô=6o}).
117. Brock, Syriac Fathers, 180. The manuscript dates to the tenth or eleventh century.
326    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

constructed from the body’s voice or which is carried on by the tongue of

flesh, but grant rather that converse which praise you in silence, you the
Silent One who are praised in ineffable silence.”118 John’s powerful state-
ment that “God is silence” inevitably calls to mind incarnational theol-
ogy of Ignatius of Antioch, the only ancient author from whose writings
John of Apamea quoted directly.119 Ignatius, who attached a peculiar
value to silence120 and associated God with silence, described Christ in a
famous passage as the “Word-Logos that came forth from silence (ἀπὸ
σιγῆς).”121 Ignatius’s thought and terminology is generally recognized as
having affinities with Gnostic ideas and vocabulary, yet this is not the
case with John of Apamea. Despite mentioning several Valentinian con-
cepts, he was far removed from any Gnostic ideas. However, he greatly
valued Ignatius’s writings and incarnational theology.122 As scholars have
noted, the notion “God is silence” is related to John’s understanding of
the incarnation as he described it in his letter to Eutropius and Eusebius,
“God’s silence spoke with our voice so that we might hear.”123 John’s let-
ter, in fact, is a long christological exhortation, which he introduced as
“On the man of voice and word” (o˙ÏÓ oϘ� o◊R}· QÚ). John here was
cherishing the image of word-voice and overtly informing his reader that
he was drawing on Ignatius’s teachings.124 He first repeated some details
relating to the main course of events of Ignatius’s martyrdom as described
in his letters, mainly his plea to the Christians not to release him, since,
as he said, “I die for God of my own free will,” wishing to be “an imi-
tator of the suffering of my God.”125 He followed by quoting Ignatius’s
Letter to the Romans 2—“For if you remain silent and leave me alone,
I will be a word of God (ἐγὼ λόγος θεοῦ; or‰o o‰Ïo� o˙ÏÓ), but if
you love my flesh (σαρκός), then I will be again voice (πάλιν ἔσομαι φωνή;
oQ˜ GÏ oRo or‰ ·Â˙)”126—and then tried to interpret this paradigmatic

118. Anonymous 2; Brock, Syriac Fathers, 184.

119. He also mentioned by name Eusebius of Caesarea and referred to his Eccle-
siastical History in Dialogues 4, 55.
120. Henry Chadwick, “The Silence of Bishops in Ignatius,” Harvard Theological
Review 43 (1950): 169–72.
121. Magn. 8 (ed. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and
English Translation [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1992], 154–55). On silence as a char-
acteristic of God, see also Ignatius, Eph. 19.
122. John related to Valentian concepts. See Dialogue 4, in Strothmann, Johannes
von Apamea, 36.
123. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 110*), quoted by Brock, “John the Solitary,” 86–87.
124. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 89*).
125. Rom. 4.6 (Holmes, 170 and 172).
126. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 90*).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   327

declaration by asking, what does Ignatius mean when he says, “After leav-
ing this world he [Ignatius] will become word, and if he remains he will
be voice”?127 According to John, Ignatius wanted to declare that in the
future world man will become spirit. Refining his theological statement,
John stresses that even more excellent than the mingling (oý/ÂÓ) of the
word-λόγος in the voice, is the mixture of God-logos endued in the body
(~·Ï� o}ÐÙ· o˙ÏÓ o‰Ïo� oRËÏÂÁ).128 John uses this imagery to argue
for the unity of Christ:129 as the word and the voice create one unity, one
intellection (oÏÎÂÒ), one understanding (oR=·), the same is true for the
Son of God—that is, one impression (oÓ◊Â}) perceived in two powers.
Returning to Ignatius’s statements, John then explains that Ignatius was
expressing his desire to be with God and not in the world of the voice, the
corporeal life, desiring to become silence and no longer voice.130 The soul,
John states, tends toward silence, perceiving the spiritual life as an ascent
consisting of three orders (oÒÎË)—voice, word, and silence. According
to this scheme, however, the realm of silence will be attained only in the
new life.131 Thus Ignatius’s dynamic of λόγος-φωνή, was fully adopted and
elaborated on by John of Apamea to express the key notion of his theory
of silent prayer, namely, the desire to become word-λόγος in an awareness
of hidden things (o˙œ =ÒÎ� o˙ÂR◊Ð }Ó· o‰o o˙ÏÓ) and to ascend to
silence (oÏÚ˙o o›˙◊Ï).132
John perceived silence as the divine realm, “the invisible world in which
there is no voice,”133 and he saw the transformation in the future life as
the reduction to silence of all language, the cessation of all words and
all demonstrations.134 Once he had established the concept that God is
silence, John turned to introducing his concept of silence (o˜˙◊), which
we might describe as the mapping of the silent praying self: “Thus there
is a silence of the tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is the

127. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 90*).

128. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 94*). Halleux, “Christology de Jean le Solitaire,” 33–35,
shows that John used oÐ6ÂÓ and oR‹ÏÂÁ not in their profound scientific meaning
but rather in that of the ancient Syriac literature, that is, the oR‹ÏÂÁ of Christ as the
mystery of communion, as a model of Christ’s association with us.
129. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 95*).
130. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 118*).
131. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 119*).
132. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 118*). On this passage, see Brock, “John the Solitary,” 87;
Harb, “Doctrine spirituelle,” 256.
133. Ep. 3 (Rignell, 118*).
134. Dialogue 2, in Strothmann, Johannes von Apamea, 14–15, alluding to
1 Cor 13.8.
328    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

silence of the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the silence
of the spirit.”135 Each faculty has its own silence:
The silence of the tongue is merely when it is not incited to evil speech;
the silence of the entire body is when all its senses are not occupied by a
propensity to evil deeds;136 the silence of the soul is when there are no ugly
thoughts bursting forth within it; the silence of the mind is when it is not
reflecting on any harmful knowledge or wisdom; the silence of the spirit is
when the mind ceases even from the stirrings caused by created spiritual
beings and all its movements are stirred solely by Being, at the wondrous
awe of the silence137 which surrounds it.138

John was describing here the degrees and measures to be found in silence
and utterance, all the while introducing a powerful model of prayer in
which the whole self is touched by the embodiment of silence and oriented
toward the divine. He was fully aware that such a spiritual stage is rarely
attained. If one has not reached these higher states, then he advised using
psalmody and praise of the tongue.
As John makes clear in the last section of his treatise On Prayer,
the incarnation in the praying self does not cease in the realm of
silent prayer. Rather, the recitation of the words of prayer will not be
merely out of obligation, “but let your very self become these words”
(oÏœÓ Ôœ =R‰ KÓÂR› ˙Ro o‰˙� oÏo). John stressed that the recitation
is not advantageous unless “the word actually becomes embodied in you
(K· Ì◊Ð ˙˙), and becomes a deed,” thus rendering it possible to become
a man of God even in this world.139 In this striking passage, John assumes
that during vocal prayer, the incarnation continues, making a descent from
silence into the word. By expressing this earthly self-transformation, John
appears here as a mystical thinker who ascribes great value to the descent
from heaven of the person who was for a brief moment a “spiritual being.”
This dynamic of silent prayer also attests to the significance that John
ascribes to the threefold scheme, which represents not only a hierarchy of
spiritual progress but also a coherent perception of the self, one in which
the body, soul, and spirit function almost simultaneously. As he himself
prays, “How much more will you, Lord, magnify and praise that person

135. On Prayer 5 (Syriac: Brock, 91; trans. Brock, 99).

136. Brock, “John the Solitary,” 99 n. 3: “Or when the body is in a sort of death.”
137. Brock, “John the Solitary,” 99 n. 7: “In this state it is truly silent, aware that
the silence which is upon it is itself silent.”
138. Brock, Syriac Fathers, 194–95.
139. On Prayer 7 (Syriac: Brock, 91; trans. Brock, 99–100).
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   329

who offers his whole self to you.”140 It is within this pattern of cultivating
the self that John’s theory of silent prayer should be understood.
In addition to the indispensability of the doctrine of incarnation in its
Ignatian sense to John’s spirituality, he also operated with a sharp distinc-
tion between the visible and invisible realm, a peculiarity that dominated
his thought and prevailed throughout his writings. He assumed that the
revelations that God makes of the knowledge of mysteries are in their
essence totally invisible, that is, there are no exterior signs of the revela-
tions in the person who receives them.141 This stands in contrast to, for
instance, fourth- and fifth-century perceptions of the personal experi-
ence of God as it emerged in a variety of patristic writings, especially the
Macarian homilies and Diadochus of Photice’s Gnostic Chapters.142 Thus
John’s transformative model of spiritual life is neither theophanic in the
strict sense of the term nor ecstatic. Rather, he embraced a mystical model
of intensification of the religious life, culminating in the experience of the
inner liturgical silence.143

CONCLUSION

What I have discussed here is not a sort of “rhetoric of inexpressibility,”144

a kind of a language beyond language.145 Nor have I been concerned with

140. Trans. Brock, Syriac Fathers, appendix, “Prayers of the Mystics: Prayers of
John of Apamea,” 341.
141. This is a characteristic of John’s spirituality, prominent in his Dialogues. See
also Lavenant, Jean d’Apamée, 24–25.
142. On this topic, see my essay, “Personal Experience and Self-Exposure: From
Pseudo-Macarius to Symeon the New Theologian,” in Between Personal and Insti-
tutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity,
ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
143. On mysticism as an intensification of religious life, see Moshe Idel, “Perfor-
mance, Intensification, and Experience in Jewish Mysticism,” Archaevs 13 (2009):
95–136.
144. As coined by Paul F. Gehl, “Mystical Language Models in Monastic Educa-
tional Psychology,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984): 219–
43, esp. 220. He discussed this sort of rhetoric in the western monastic context in
“Competens Silentium: Varieties of Monastic Silence in the Medieval West,” Viator
18 (1987): 125–60.
145. For this aspect of silence, see, for example, P. Salmon, “Le silence religieux:
Pratique et théorie,” Mélanges benedictins (1947): 13–57; Joseph A. Mazzeo, “St.
Augustine’s Rhetoric of Silence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 175–96;
Marcia L. Colish, “St. Augustine’s Rhetoric of Silence Revisited,” Augustinian Studies
9 (1978): 15–24; Ambrose G. Walthen, “The Word of Silence: On Silence and Speech
in RB,” Cistercian Studies 17 (1982): 195–211.
330    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

silence as an ascetic discipline. Rather, I have dealt with the experience of

the silent praying self and with the transformative power of silence, point-
ing to the surfacing of a new religious sensibility in Syriac Christianity in
the first half of the fifth century. It is difficult to decide whether John of
Apamea’s new concept of silent prayer was part of a wider theological
trend that came to appreciate, more than previously, Ignatius’s incarna-
tional theology and the identification of God with silence, a trend that stuck
to Ephrem’s proclamations on silence as well. Indeed, John appears here
as an innovative thinker whose Christology and spirituality were largely
shaped by the notion of silence. While giving prominence to silence in the
context of prayer, John offered for the first time in eastern Christianity
a lucid concept of silent prayer that reconfigured the New Testament’s
notion of addressing the divine without words, inserting it into a coher-
ent and dynamic system of ascetic life that he perceived as a movement of
the whole self, an ascent from voice to silence—from the stage of “just”
to “spiritual being”—and descent from silence to voice. In John’s con-
cept, we witness a delicate balance of continuity and discontinuity with
the Christian past; he incorporates Ignatius’s insight into a new spiritual
context and lifestyle, with no dread of the gnostic perception of God as
silence, all the while raising the somehow prevalent minor dimension of
silence in prayer to a new stage, to be an independent entity, a transfor-
mative power that guided the whole self toward God. This is a profound
change in practice and attitude associated with individual prayer.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to inquire whether John’s concept of
silent prayer had any impact on the Syriac spirituality of the next genera-
tions or if it simply vanished. It is noticeable, however, that John’s concept
did not enjoy the great success of Evagrius’s theory of pure prayer, one of
the most inspiring and innovative mystical theories of late antiquity, which
dominated the Syriac ascetic scene for many generations.146 To a large
extent, Syriac spirituality would express its principles in terms consonant
with the Evagrian tradition. The terminology and phraseology coined by
Evagrius in his theory of pure prayer became well known and normative
among Syriac authors, among them Isaac of Nineveh in the second half of

146. On the Evagrian legacy of pure prayer, see my essay, “The Limit of the Mind
(ΝΟΥΣ): Pure Prayer according to Evagrius Ponticus and Isaac of Nineveh,” Zeitschrift
für Antikes Christentum 15/2 (2011): 291-321. See also the use of the Evagrian termi-
nology and concept of pure prayer in the anonymous text from the sixth or seventh
century translated by Brock, Syriac Fathers, 181–84. The Evagrian influence is also
apparent in Dadisho’ Qatraya, Discourse on Solitude, in Early Christian Mystics, ed.
A. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies 7 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1934), 232–34.
 BITTON-ASHKELONY / SILENT PRAYER   331

the seventh century, and his contemporary Dadisho’ Qatraya.147 One might
speculate that the Evagrian legacy of pure prayer adopted in late antique
Syriac Christianity muted the remarkable concept of silent prayer created
by John of Apamea. However, we still need to clarify to what extent John
was an influential author and trace the fusion of his thought and termi-
nology with other traditions in Syriac ascetic culture.

Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony is Senior Lecturer in the Department of

Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

147. For example, Sebastian Brock, “Discerning the Evagrian in the Writings of
Isaac of Nineveh: A Preliminary Investigation,” Adamantius 15 (2009): 60–72; Sabino
Chialà, “Evagrio il Pontico negli scritti di Isacco di Ninive,” Adamantius 15 (2009):
73–84. See also Antoine Guillaumont, “Les versions syriaques de l’oeuvre d’Évagre
le Pontique et leur role dans la formation du vocabulaire ascétique syriaque,” in
IIIe Symposium Syriacum 1980, ed. René Lavenant, OCA 221 (Rome: Pontificium
Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1983), 35–41. The influence of Evagrius on the
Latin world through Cassian’s teaching has long been recognized by scholars. See, for
instance, Owen Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968), 92. However, it is only with Columba Stewart’s study on the technique and
experience of prayer that the nature and scope of the Evagrian influence on Cassian
is fully traced. See Stewart, Cassian the Monk, chap. 5 and 7.