Henana of Adiabene

Henana of Adiabene was director of the School of Nisibis, the theological center of the Church of the East (571–610).

His predecessor was Abraham of Beth Rabban who had worked hard to make the legacy of Theodore of Mopsuestia more accessible. Before he became headmaster, Henana of Adiabene had occupied the chair of biblical exegesis. His teacher was a certain Moses, who was probably Byzantine orthodox. Many of Henana's ideas were close to Byzantine theology, and his appointment as head of the school might have been in line with a general uneasiness with the radical decrees of the Synod of Beth Lapat.

Henana was a humble man, worked tirelessly, and stood to his convictions. Under his leadership the school initially continued to grow. He wrote extensive commentaries and other works, but only two works and a number of citations have been preserved. A speech for the commencement of the academic year from the time when Henana was director has survived, and in it Henana is described as the equal of Theodore in productivity, and with the authority to choose the best from among all traditions. However, Henana did not reconcile the teaching of Theodore with the other creeds; he tried to replace him.

Theodore held that a union of the two natures in Christ was unthinkable. Henana on the other hand favored a union of the two natures, the divine and the mortal, in Christ in one hypostasis, as specified at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Accordingly, he believed in God's suffering on the Cross, impossible without a union between the two natures, and he accepted the decisions of Ephesus and believed that the term 'mother of God' was appropriate for the Virgin Mary.

Theodore had taught that man was created mortal. Henana believed that Adam was initially immortal, and that he became mortal through sin. It also appears that Henana rejected Theodore's idea that the book of Job was a book of fiction composed by a Hellenist, and rejected his commentary on Job.

Henana's Byzantine orientation was so complete that he even followed the Byzantine fashion of the day, which was the teaching of Origen. It was popular among Byzantine monks, but disputed and finally condemned in 553. One of the more extreme positions held by the followers of Origen was the belief in spherical bodies and the denial of the resurrection of the body of the Lord on the third day. This clashed head on with any literal interpretation of scripture, certainly with the rigorous literal interpretation of the Antiochene type.

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