Philip Michael Forness's Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East analyzes the Christological content of Jacob of Serugh's preaching. What may seem a straightforward task emerges as anything but straightforward. The assessment of whether Jacob belongs to the Chalcedonian or the non-Chalcedonian camp has been contested over several centuries of scholarship. While Forness agrees with recent trends emphasizing Jacob's non-Chalcedonian status, his analysis of Jacob's sermon literature makes ample contribution to these arguments. Moreover, the development of Forness's argument advances the crowded field of scholarship on homilies by crafting new methodologies for the historical use of sermon corpora sparse on references to the preacher's location and audience.

Much of the work done on late antique sermons focuses on well-known preachers whose sermons contain rich references to the physical audiences assembled before them, the corpora of John Chrysostom and Augustine being prime examples. By contrast, Jacob's sermons offer an example of a corpus largely lacking in this type of material and are consequently much more difficult to use as historical sources. The metrical nature of most of his sermons limit the opportunity for unplanned interactions with the audience that we sometimes find recorded by stenographers in other corpora. His preaching also preferred elaboration on biblical imagery over engagement with contemporary events. As such, the immediate context of Jacob's preaching generally remains elusive.

Forness articulates his methodology for dealing with this type of corpus by drawing on research into audiences from the field of communication studies. He applies a distinction between the “audience addressed” and the “audience invoked” in order to demonstrate the relevance of bringing to bear the broader intellectual context with which Jacob engaged (29–30). Far from simply assuming the relevance of this broader context, Forness demonstrates it through careful analysis of letters sent by Jacob to a variety of different audiences and through attention to marginalia and colophons in the manuscript witnesses to Jacob's works. Like concentric ripples produced by dropping a pebble into a pond, Forness shows how various communities, separated from the moments of Jacob's preaching by time, space, and medium of transmission, each make up part of Jacob's “audience invoked.” These audiences contain clerical and monastic elites, secular authorities, those outside Roman borders (and thus geographically distant from politicized debates over the Council of Chalcedon), and elite reading communities.

The thread that runs through the Christology expressed to this seemingly disparate set of audiences also comprises Forness's main contribution to the question of Jacob's status as a non-Chalcedonian. Forness situates Jacob through a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of a Christological debate that focused on pairing the miracles and sufferings of Jesus. Chapter 2 analyzes the history of this pairing beginning with Gospel references and tracing it through the sixth century. Drawing on Syriac, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Armenian sources, Forness demonstrates the prevalence of using the pairing of miracles and suffering to discuss Christology. Theologians seeking to express a variety of Christological positions employed the juxtaposition of Jesus performing miracles while also suffering to express their theology. While some used the contrast between these activities to emphasize a division between the human and the divine in Jesus, others used this pairing to emphasize the unity of the actor who did both of these things. While the use of the pairing itself cannot demonstrate Jacob's Christology, Forness demonstrates throughout the book that Jacob consistently stands in a tradition of employing the pairing to emphasize the unity of Jesus and indeed his single nature after the Incarnation. He shows Jacob's deep investment in the interpretation of the pairing offered by Zeno's Henotikon and, indeed, in an interpretation of the Henotikon that was explicitly anti-Chalcedonian.

Forness analyzes the use of this Christological theme in several of Jacob's sermons. He shows how Jacob uses this pairing to articulate a non-Chalcedonian Christology with relevance to various homiletical contexts including catechesis, typical parish preaching, and among learned reading communities. He shows the relevance of Jacob's Christological commitments to a homily against the Council of Chalcedon, to the typological interpretation of Moses's life, and to Peter's declaration in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus was the Christ. The appearance of the pairing in such varied contexts shows the consistency of Jacob's Christology and his interest in espousing non-Chalcedonian ideas to lay, clerical, and elite audiences, even if we lack significant indication of the make-up of the audiences present for the delivery of specific sermons.

At first glance, it might seem odd that Forness gives roughly half of the book, introduction and chapters 1–3, to establishing the context and theory for the analysis of the Christology of Jacob's sermons. Nevertheless, Forness's careful analysis of Jacob and his context, including works in multiple languages and manuscript witnesses, proves essential for understanding Jacob's preaching of Christology. His advances in the analysis of sermons and their audiences provide new ways to understand the formation and cultivation of religious communities among laypeople (see Jack Boulos Victor Tannous, The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers [Princeton University Press, 2018]). Forness's analysis also provides compelling proof of his non-Chalcedonian commitments, contrary to the arguments of some previous scholarship. Given the strength of his argument, one would have liked to see Forness reflect on the history of scholarship on Jacob in the conclusion. One wonders whether the potential for ambiguity in the pairing of miracles and suffering might have played a role in previous scholars missing the significance of how Jacob used this theme to express his Christology. Nevertheless, Forness offers a compelling argument in support of his main theses. The result is a book that has much to offer those interested in Jacob of Serugh, Syriac studies, the development of non-Chalcedonian theology and communities in the sixth century, or simply the historical analysis of sermon corpora.