“Its Own Nature, Knowledge, and Form”: Paronomasia in the Syriac Translation of Evagrius of Pontus’s Great Letter

Abstract The Great Letter of Evagrius of Pontus (d. 399) has received considerable scholarly attention as a source for reconstructing Evagrius’ speculative theology; however, due to a relative paucity of manuscripts and the fact that the text only survives in Syriac, the reception and translation technique of the letter have not been systematically studied. This article proposes that the Syriac translation of the Great Letter contains numerous manifestations of paronomasia, or wordplay, that operate in Syriac but would not be meaningful in Greek. A translator may have inserted these paronomasias to add meaning to Evagrius’ metaphors and theological images. Furthermore, cognitive-linguistic evidence suggests that these paronomasias would have been seen as meaningful by readers or listeners even if they were not intended by the translator. For this reason, the Syriac Great Letter represents a nativizing of Evagrius’ text into a Syriac context that is not reducible to its Greek original.