Making Sense of Persecution in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations

Abstract

he 4 century Demonstrations of Aphrahat provide a window through which we can observe a very early stage in the development of the martyrological tradition of the Syriac East. It will be seen that most of the characteristic features of that tradition are lacking in Aphrahat, and that an analysis of his response to the persecution that his Church is experiencing reveals an author whose perspective is not easily combined with the more typical martyrological accounts that would soon begin to be produced by Christians in the Persian empire. The persecution to which Aphrahat responds is briefly mentioned in the dating formulae found at the very end of the 23 and final Demonstration: