In this homily, Jacob essentially insists on two main themes: that God–and God alone!–is the creator of everything that exists; and that everything that exists was created by God from nothing. Not to acknowledge these two fundamental principles leads inevitably to idolatry, an idolatry into which the world had already plunged when God chose to reveal Himself and the mystery of His creation to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

About the Series Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homilies on the Six Days of Creation. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.