Beyond Influence

The ERC-funded BeInf project proposes to move beyond influence as an analytical category and adopts a methodological and theoretical stance inspired by “connected history,” especially in the sense of histoire croisée as developed by Werner and Zimmermann and as adapted by others, such as Ghobrial’s ERC-funded project “Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity.” In particular, BeInf is interested in the various ways that individuals, communities, texts, works of art, etc. have intersected and interacted with one another. In this way, BeInf’s approach is similar to the “connected histories” of Subrahmanyam as well as to the broader – and less cohesive – methodological frameworks subsumed under the monikers Entangled History and Global History (see, among many others, Conrad’s What is Global History?), all of which in their own ways foreground connections, contacts, circulation, integration, and exchange. Yet, BeInf differs from these in that its scope is not that of macro-history but rather of micro-history, or better a series of micro-histories (à la Fauvelle), with the detailed study of texts and images at the core.

Previous scholarship on the connected histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity has – both in name and in practice – adopted influence as its primary analytical category. This includes Guidi and Conti Rossini, the founding proponents of this line of inquiry, as well as their critics Polotsky, Witakowski, and Marrassini. Research paradigms based on the notion of influence – regardless of whether arguing for or against it – have rightly been problematized in more recent scholarship for prioritizing simple, directional, one-sided exchange over more complicated and nuanced explanatory models. Here are several examples involving Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity that illustrate the problems with the paradigm of influence:

• The paradigm of influence is necessarily directional and one-sided. Nevertheless, connections and exchanges are usually, if not always, multivalent and multidirectional. In line with the paradigm of influence more broadly, previous approaches to the question of Syriac influence on Ethiopic Christianity have failed to engage connections and exchanges moving in the opposite direction. Consider, for instance, the Syriac monastery of Mār Mūsā al-Ḥabashī (“Moses the Ethiopian”) in Lebanon: This monastery was originally dedicated to Moses the prophet, but the presence of Ethiopian monks in Lebanon and Syria from the thirteenth century onwards seem to have played a role in its renaming to Moses the Ethiopian. It is the position of BeInf that such a datum is essential for narrating the connected histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity, though it has been neglected in previous scholarship, with its focus solely on Syriac influence on Ethiopic Christianity.
• The paradigm of influence relies on a simple model that eschews complexities and nuances. Consider, for instance, previous scholarship on the illumination programs of the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels (see here and here): Since their discovery, the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels have been compared to the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, with scholars specifically trying to trace how the illumination program in the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, which were presumed to be earlier, had influenced the illumination programs of the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels. This is despite the fact that there is not a straight line – whether historical or art historical – connecting the two. Rather, the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels belong to a group of illuminated gospel manuscripts from the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, along with a host of others, such as the Greek Rossano Gospels, the Greek Sinope Gospels, the so-called British Library Canon Tables, the Syriac “Paris” Gospels, and the Armenian Etchmiadzin Gospels, to name only a few. Departing from previous scholarship, BeInf aims to tease out the many intersecting webs, with all their complexities and nuances, that connect the Abba Gärima Gospels to the broader manuscript illumination traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean.
• The paradigm of influence prioritises outcomes and tends to eschew actual historical exchanges and interactions, as well as the actors and cultural brokers responsible for them, that produced the outcomes. A good example of this problem in previous scholarship revolves around the alleged Syriac loanwords in Ethiopic. Previous scholars drew a direct and immediate line of argument from the (alleged) existence of a group of Syriac loanwords in Ethiopic – an outcome of (language) contact – to a theory of Syriac influence on Ethiopic Christianity. Even if it is granted for the sake of argument that some of the Aramaic loanwords in Ethiopic are specifically Syriac, which is far from certain, it is still problematic to move from outcome to such broad conclusion without considering the actual historical exchanges and interactions themselves: Would the loanwords have come about only from the translation of the Bible? Or would they have been introduced through contact between Ethiopic- and Syriac-speakers? Or perhaps a combination of both? How many Syriac-speakers would have been required? How would the words have spread throughout all of Ethiopic? And, more broadly, what exactly do loanwords evidence beyond contact, which could be very minimal, between two (groups of) speakers? For instance, based on Japanese loanwords such as typhoon and tsunami in English, should it be deduced that Japan has “significantly influenced” the United Kingdom? Or, do English expressions such as apple of his eye, salt of the earth, and powers that be, which ultimately go back to Hebrew and Greek and which reached English by way of Tyndale’s translations of the Bible, show that speakers of Hebrew and Greek had “significant influence” on the United Kingdom in the sixteenth century? Previous scholarship’s focus almost exclusively on outcomes has resulted in a neglect of the actual exchanges and interactions, as well as the actors responsible for them, which in this case has led to far-reaching conclusions that cannot be substantiated by the evidence. In contrast, BeInf focuses on the actual historical exchanges and interactions, in this particular case by employing a more robust methodology of contact linguistics and more broadly by adopting the approach of “connected history.”
• The paradigm of influence constructs an asymmetrical system whereby one group actively influences, and the other is passively influenced. Consider again the illumination programs of the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels: Previous scholars, both past and present, have held that a model or prototype was created outside of Ethiopia, that this was copied and imitated in the Ethiopic Abba Gärima Gospels, and that deviations from the model are mistakes, corruptions, or misunderstandings. In such a view, the artists of the Abba Gärima Gospels – if they can even be called artists – are deprived of agency. A similar perspective has dominated previous studies of Ethiopic texts attributed to Syriac authors. These texts have generally been viewed as secondary and derivative and thus not worthy of study in their own right. Reception is, however, not a passive act: Ethiopic translators created new texts in Ethiopic, and scribes in turn created new texts again. BeInf foregrounds the agency of Ethiopian artists, scribes, and translators, in contrast to previous scholarship that upheld that they were passively influenced.

In moving beyond influence and adopting a methodological and theoretical stance inspired by “connected history,” BeInf is better positioned to interrogate the diverse and complex connections, contacts, exchanges, as well as the actors and cultural brokers responsible for them, between Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity. In doing this, BeInf also serves as a paradigm-shifting model for other projects that aim to address different areas of inquiry that have traditionally been dominated by ill-framed questions of influence.