Universalism and the ‘Book of the Bee’: a case study

 

Universalism and the ‘Book of the Bee’: a case study

The ‘Book of the Bee’, written by the 13th century bishop of the Church of the East Solomon of Basra, is a very interesting example of how easy can universalism be missed in a text. In the last chapters of the work, the author talks about eschatology. At the very end of the penultimate chapter, the author writes:

“In the new world there will be no distinctive names for ranks and conditions of human beings; and as every name and surname attributed to God and the angels had its origin from this world, and names for human beings were assigned and distributed by the government of this world, in the world of spiritual and intellectual natures there will be neither names nor surnames among them, nor male nor female, nor slave nor free, nor child nor old man, nor Ethiopian nor Roman (Greek); but they will all rise in the one perfect form of a man thirty-three years of age, as our Lord rose from the dead. In the world to come there will be no companies or bands but two; the one of the angels and the righteous, who will mingle and form one Church, and the other of the devils and sinners in Gehenna.” (Solomon of Basra, Book of the Bee, chapter 59, translation by E. Budge; source: https://sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb59.htm )

If the book ended here, we would certainly conclude that Solomon saw the ultimate separation between the righteous and the sinners as definitive. However, right at the end of the work, in the last chapter, the author makes it clear what are his views and quotes in his support some important figures of his Church: https://sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb60.htm . At the end of the chapter, he quotes an authoritative text that seems to say that the punishment of the ‘mind’ will last ‘forever’ but then he expressly denies that the seemingly definitive language used in the New Testament is in fact definitive:

“In the 'Book of Memorials' he says: 'I hold what the most celebrated of the holy Fathers say, that He cuts off a little from much. The penalty of Gehenna is a man's mind; for the punishment there is of two kinds, that of the body and that of the mind. That of the body is perhaps in proportion to the degree of sin, and He lessens and diminishes its duration; but that of the mind is for ever, and the judgment is for ever.' But in the New Testament le-`âlam is not without end.”  (Solomon of Basra, Book of the Bee, chapter 60, translation by E. Budge; source: : https://sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb60.htm )

Here ‘le-`âlam ’ is a Syriac word that is rendered as ‘forever’ and ‘eternal’.

Anyway, if no surviving manuscripts had the last chapters (and Budge makes it clear that not all manuscripts contain the last chapter in its entirety: https://sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bbpref.htm ) or attestations of the last chapter existed (like the one given by Joseph Assemani: https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/02/latin-text-and-english-translation-of.html ), we would certainly conclude that Solomon of Basra believed in a definitive separation between righteous and sinners in the end.

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