Abstracts 

The ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, or ARAM, was founded by Dr. Shafiq Abouzayd in 1986/1987 at Oxford University, where the new Society found wide backing from the Oriental Institute and its staff. The Society was formally launched on 24th January 1987, the day of its inauguration, which is considered its birthday.

ARAM owes much to Sebastian Brock as he fought for its success since the first days of its existence. Although Shafiq Abouzayd was the initiator and founder, ARAM could have not grown so swiftly and healthily without Sebastian Brock’s full backing.

ARAM draws its name from the Aramaic language and culture: this includes Syriac Christianity, which played a crucial role in the development of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilisation. Therefore, the ARAM Society has laid the foundation for the study of the continuity between the Aramaic-Syriac civilisation and other Syro-Mesopotamian civilisations. The broad range and interdisciplinary connections demonstrated by ARAM conferences show how closely intertwined these cultures are, and that Aramaic-Syriac civilisation would not have flourished without intellectual cross-fertilisation.

ARAM’s cultural mission for the Syro-Mesopotamian area is also a mission of peace and brotherhood among its people, with their different social and spiritual beliefs. It is a Society for everyone who shares an interest in its identity, irrespective of race, religion or status. 

Since its foundation in 1989, ARAM has never stopped working for Syriac Christianity, and many other conferences organised by ARAM have also dealt with aspects of Syriac Christianity, as demonstrated in our work on the Mamluks, the Ottomans, Orientalism, etc.

We have also published about 150 articles on Syriac Christianity in our ARAM Periodical, and we are planning to organise more conferences on Syriac Christianity in the future. Finally, our main target is to make the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Oxford University) a permanent centre for the study of Syriac Christianity and other key areas of Oriental Christian studies such as the Melkite Byzantine Church of Antioch.

The group of early Christian writings commonly dubbed as the Apostolic Fathers have survived only partially in Syriac. Nevertheless, the western scholarly discovery of these traces – following mainly the successive acquisitions of the cache of Syriac manuscripts from Deir al-Surian by Henry Tattam and then by Auguste Pacho for the British Museum – raised a series of questions about, and prompted the emergence of new hypotheses for, the transmission and original outlook of some of the Apostolic Fathers writings. In particular, the monumental work of J.B. Lightfoot, then bishop of Durham, on the manuscript transmission of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch still holds the consensus to date. This paper follows the intricacies of his collaboration and broader interaction with the UK Syriacists of his time towards building his peculiarly successful argumentation. 

For over one hundred years, the study of Syriac medical and magical sources has been pursued by those who expressed clear prejudices against both the sources and the people responsible for them. Unfortunately, the problematic agenda set over a century ago by scholars such as Wright and Budge has continued to impact negatively on the field. This paper will attempt to shine a light on this problematic past, not to diminish the accomplishments of previous scholars (many of whom were brilliant and left a worthy legacy), but instead to help illuminate a better way forward.

Befriended by J. Rendell Harris, Alphonse Mingana, a refugee from Iraq,  was twice financed by Edward Cadbury to return to the Middle East in order to collect manuscripts.  These constitute the majority of the 662 Syriac manuscripts within the Mingana Collect today. Although for the most part the manuscripts are quite late, dating from the last 500 years, they preserve a considerable number of texts and authors not otherwise represented in collections elsewhere in Great Britain (including the British Library, with its very large collection).  The Collection also includes a small number of fragmentary and much older manuscripts, bought in Europe, but which originate from St Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai.   The paper will aim to highlight some of the particularly important manuscripts in the Collection.

The Archbishop’s Assyrian Mission set up its printing-press in Urmia, Persia in 1886. It was part of the Mission’s programme to print for the Church of the East the service books that were scarce in manuscript in parish churches.  From the start, this programme was impeded by the problem of supposed heretical language in the books, which the Mission’s strict principles did not allow it to print. The problem was got around, however, and over the years 1890-1909 four substantial books were printed: (1) the Taksa, or missal; (2) the Qdam
w-Bathar, or book of daily offices; (3) the Ba‘uta d-Ninwaye, or order of service for this penitential observance; and (4) the ‘Anida, or burial service. This paper briefly records the printing-history and survival of these books.

Delivering his lectures in cassock and biretta, encircled by pipe smoke and pinching snuff, one of Bristol’s Orientalists was Reverend De Lacy Evans O’Leary (1872-1957), reader and then special lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac. From 1908 until his death, O’Leary taught Aramaic, Syriac, Koine Greek, Hellenistic history and Syrian history in what was then the Oriental Languages Department at the University College Bristol, soon incorporated into the newly founded University of Bristol (f. 1909), which transition demoted most of the Oriental department lecturers into special (part-time) lecturing status. O’Leary’s interests were primarily in Egyptian and Syriac Christianity, although he did write some studies within comparative Semitics and Islamic history. His research interests in Syriac studies, however, seem to have been short-lived as his focus shifted to Coptic literature. His scholarship is characterised by overarching interests in non-Chalcedonian theology and hagiography. Nevertheless, O’Leary’s contributions to Aramaic and Syriac studies are pedagogical and collegial, as a teacher of Harold Herbert Rowley, and a friend of contemporary British Orientalists. He supported Bristol’s early Egyptological efforts, contributing a regular ‘Bibliography of Christian Egypt’ feature to the JEA. As a Bristol academic, his career spanned two World Wars. In WWI, O’Leary served as a chaplain in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, stationed on the Sinai peninsula. His warm character was remembered by all as charming, savant-like, and collegial—a dyed-in-the-wool gentleman scholar. His charm found less appeal in his later years as vicar in ‘low-church’ parish of Christ Church, Barton Hill, east Bristol, as his liturgical preferences became increasingly High Anglican. His career endured decades of what we would call employment casualisation, which precariousness he tolerated while supporting financially his mother and unmarried sisters on his meagre parish stipend and part-time lecturing salary, at the last stage all retiring to Weston-super-Mare. O’Leary having left all his papers to the University of Bristol in his will, my presentation will delve into the O’Leary archival materials and piece together some of the highlights of his fascinating career and life.

Orthopraxy has been the subject of research, particularly in scholarship on Byzantine-Latin and Byzantine-Armenian relations. Studies such as Tia Kolbaba’s “Byzantine Lists” have proven quite definitively that religion is “concerned as much with ritual as with doctrinal content”.

In the context of intra-Christian polemics, liturgical and broader cultural practices, popular piety, and moral habits constitute an opportunity to discredit the Christian other by creating the appearance of discontinuity. These differences are pretexts for a broader discussion which ultimately aims to prove that the opponents have an erroneous understanding of Christianity. Whilst for many believers, the intricacies of the Christological debates were too abstract to appreciate, criticisms of easily observable practices which also spoke to the deeper emotional level of faith were much more impactful. These (perceived) liturgical discrepancies are features that exhibit identity and are therefore potentially powerful polemical tools.

Acting primarily as a handbook for Miaphysite Christology, Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī’s (Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan of Āmid, d. 1171) treatise “Against the Chalcedonians” also exhibits intimate knowledge of Byzantine liturgical practices. Criticising, for example, elements of the rite of the Prothesis as well as fasting practices, this treatise constitutes a one-of-a-kind example of Syriac engagement with the wider liturgical polemics characteristic of the Middle Ages. My paper will therefore explore some salient features of this treatise and elaborate on the surprisingly close connections between the Syriac Orthodox and the Byzantine Churches.

Bibliography

The paper will primarily be based on Dionisius Bar Ṣalībī’s unedited treatise “Against the Chalcedonians” found in CFMM 350 and SOP 116.

René Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1966).

Jean Darrouzès, Nicétas Stéthatos. Opuscules et lettres, SC 81 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1961).

Louis Horst, Des Metropoliten Elias von Nisibis Buch vom Beweis der Wahrheit des Glaubens (Colmar: Eugen Barth, 1886).

Nicholas Kamas, “Humbert of Silva Candida and the Byzantine Rite” (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2019).

Tia Kolbaba, “Byzantines, Armenians, and Latins: Unleavened Bread and Heresy in the Tenth Century”, in George Demacopoulos, Aristotle Papanicolau (eds), Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 45-57.

Tia Kolbaba, Byzantine Lists. Errors of the Latins (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

Venant Laurent, “Le rituel de la proscomidie et le métropolite de Crète Élie”, REB 16 (1958).

Robert Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Volume 5: The Precommunion Rites, OLA 261 (Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 2000).

Cornelius Will, Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae Graecae et Latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant (Leipzig: N. G. Elwerti, 1861).

During his residency at the East India Company in Baghdad, Claudius Rich amassed a  diverse collection of manuscripts, including Syriac texts that subsequently became the British  Library's first holdings in that language. Rich, in his journals, emphasized the moral responsibility  of travelers to safeguard manuscripts from potential destruction in the East. This notion of  preservation, often found in the narratives of nineteenth and twentieth-century orientalists,  continues to echo in contemporary discourse, albeit under different guises, even if the practices of  collecting have been reworked and reshaped. This paper offers a critical analysis of manuscript  collecting, particularly in the British context. Through a reexamination of Claudius Rich’s writings  as well as archival materials at the British Library, this paper demonstrates that collecting  manuscripts was not an apolitical, secular, or scientific endeavor. Instead, I argue that it is part of  the social logic of the colonial British empire. The Syriac manuscripts brought by Rich allowed  the British Library to compete with its British and European counterparts. What was a small  collection of Syriac manuscripts, is now one of the largest in the world. Today, manuscript  collection has given way to a different form of appropriation—digitization. As a result, after  discussing Rich’s endeavors, the paper will raise questions about the implications of modern-day  practices revolving around manuscripts, how they retain some colonial aspects, and most  importatnly how they impact the field of Syriac studies. In other words, it invites us to look at  manuscripts not to learn about other cultures, but about our own academic one.

Bibliography:

Abberley, Will. “Race and Species Essentialism in Nineteenth-Century Philology.” Critical  Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 4, (2011): 45–60. 

Ahmed, Sara, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University  Press, 2006. 

Azoulay, Ariella. Potential history: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso, 2019. Elsner, Jaś, and Roger Cardinal. The Cultures of Collecting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University  Press, 1994. 

Hallaq, Wael B. Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge. Columbia University  Press, 2018. 

Harris, P. R. A history of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973. London: British Library, 1998. King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and “the Mystic East.” New  York: Routledge, 1999. 

Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism Was  Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Mroczek, Eva. “True Stories and the Poetics of Textual Discovery.” Bulletin for the Study of  Religion, vol. 45, no. 2, (2016): 21–31. 

Rich, Claudius James. Narrative of a residence in Koordistan, and on the site of ancient nineveh:  With journal of a voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad and an account of a visit to shirauz and  Persepolis. England: Scholar Select, 2016. 

Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1979.

Simon Mills, A Commerce of Knowledge: Trade, Religion, and Scholarship Between England and  the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1760 

Stewart, Susan. On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the  Collection. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993 [1984]. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins. Swenson, Astrid, and Peter Mandler. From plunder to preservation: Britain and the heritage of  Empire, c.1800-1940. Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2013.

Digital humanities, we’re told, is the way of the future. Libraries and archives often face demands for the imaging of manuscripts to enable the study of texts via digital surrogates. But digitisation is easier said than done. Dedicated studio space, specialist language and photography skills, conservation personnel, software, hardware, and ample amounts of time and money are all requisite ingredients in making sure that the final product is digestible, let alone impressive. 

In this paper, I will explore the British Library’s recent digitisation of some 190 Eastern Christian manuscripts, including 100 items in Syriac and/or Garshuni. I will provide an overview of the selection, conservation, description, photography, and final display of the digitised items. I will look at how the process still relies heavily on analogue codicological skills, in addition to enormous human resources that cannot be substituted by digital technologies, including artificial intelligence. I will tease out the interplay of Library needs and desires with the expectations of readers of the materials, both specialized and not. In doing so, I will explain the symbiotic relationship between digitisation campaigns and the development of in-person, low-tech skills for the categorisation and understanding of manuscripts and their contexts of production. 

In concluding my paper, I will look to draw lessons learned from the process. I will ask what the balance of benefits to costs are in further digitisation campaigns. As more and more copies of canonical texts become available, reducing the relative benefit of imaging each remaining, non-digitized manuscript. Is additional digitisation worthwhile, or are we better off investing in new forms of scholarly research?

Isaac of Nineveh’s reception history is deeply intertwined with the history of Syriac studies in the UK. It was in the Bodleian Library that Sebastian Brock found a complete manuscript of the ‘Second Part’ of Isaac’s corpus in 1983. This discovery led to a renewed interest in the seventh-century ascetic, and numerous academic works exploring various aspects of Isaac’s thought have since appeared.

The publication of the Second Part also confirmed beyond all doubt that Isaac believed in universal salvation. However, while the recent flourishing of research on Isaac has coincided with an increase in the popularity of universal salvation among theologians, little attention has been paid to Isaac as a potential constructive interlocutor in current doctrinal debates about universalism. Most of the constructive retrieval from the Church Fathers undertaken by contemporary theologians in their treatments of universalism has focused on Origen and those most clearly indebted to him, such as Gregory of Nyssa.

My ongoing doctoral research concerns Isaac’s approach to universalism. I aim first to give an account of Isaac’s soteriology which is both historically informed and theologically intelligible, and which identifies those respects in which Isaac differs from other universalist Fathers. I then intend to bring Isaac into conversation with a selection of modern theologians involved in debates about universalism. I hope to achieve three things:

• first, to demonstrate that Isaac offers resources for thinking about soteriology which differ somewhat from those provided by other Fathers such as Origen and Nyssen;

• second, to add greater nuance to genealogies of universalism in the Early Church, which sometimes lean towards portraying all universalist Fathers as Origenian;

• third, to encourage doctrinal theologians to pay greater theological attention to Syriac-speaking Fathers and understand them to be potential conversation partners just as the Latin and Greek Fathers are.

I propose to summarise my doctoral work in a 15-minute paper.

Bibliography

Brock, S.P. ed. (2022) Saint Isaac of Nineveh: Headings on Spiritual Knowledge (Yonkers: SVS)

Brock, S.P. ed. (1995) Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian): ‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV-XLI (Leuven: Peeters)

Hansbury, M. ed. (2016) Isaac the Syrian’s Spiritual Works (Piscataway: Gorgias)

Hart, D.B. (2019) That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Hronich, A. (2023) Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene: Wipf and Stock)

Miller, D. ed. (2020) The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. 2nd ed (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery)

Ramelli, I. (2013) The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Leiden: Brill)

Today in Germany, Syriac Orthodox children and teenagers are able to learn about their religious tenets in Syriac religious education at public schools. In those classes, they use textbooks designed for this purpose in the German diaspora. These textbooks draw along a tradition of religious education of the heartlands. But at the same time, we see the novelty in these state-approved Syriac Orthodox materials. Through the changes in the genre, we can see developments happening in the Syriac community in the European diaspora. This paper uses this entry by looking at these textbook materials, demonstrating the key concerns of the Syriac Orthodox community in the European and, specifically, in the German context. The concerns are different from those that have been drawn to the traditional scope of education.

In particular, we have seen how these textbooks reshape the education of the Syriac Orthodox community within Germany. If the old catechism emphasized the truth of the church as unique vis a vis other Christian denominations or Judaism and Islam, the textbooks explore these issues from another approach. While the material still upholds religious principles, it greatly emphasises perspectives on interconfessional dialogue and human rights. While traditional education focuses on passing on the tenets of the faith, the new education material takes into account the surroundings and rearranges its curriculum around life in a pluralistic and multi-religious sphere. The new education helps us to trace the new concerns that are raised in the community in Europe.

Short bibliography

Heleen Murre-van den Berg, "Texts, Language, and Religion in the Making of Syriac Orthodox Communities in Europe." In: Refugees and Religion: By Birgit Meyer and Peter van der Veer. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021) 179–197.

Ignatius Afram Barsoum, The Sacred Flower of the Christian Catechism, 1912.

Josef Önder, Auf dem Weg zum Glauben, Syrisch-Orthodoxe Religionslehre 5/6, (Glane: Bar-Hebräus-Verlag 2019).

Augin Yalcin, Shumi & Shabo erleben Symbole und Sakramente - Von Metaphern und Mysterien: Ein Unterrichtsprojekt für die Klassen 9/10 im Syrisch-Orthodoxen Religionsunterricht, (Glane: Bar-Hebräus-Verlag 2009).

This paper proposes a new edition and English translation of the Syriac work of natural history conventionally known as the Buch der Naturgegenstände (“Book of Natural  Things,” henceforth BNG). The BNG was edited in 1892 from a single manuscript (MS  India Office, Syr. Nr. 9) by Karl Ahrens, who translated the text into German and provided extensive commentary on its relation to other, mainly Christian sources,  including the Physiologus and the homilies of Basil of Caesarea. Despite positive reception by leading scholars of the day (Nestle 1892; Noëldeke 1891), the first edition of the BNG has received very little attention since, and there has been virtually no effort to study the BNG’s sources or the history of its development.  

The recent discovery of another copy of the BNG – to be discussed in the talk – now makes it possible to improve the text of Ahrens’s edition in a number of places;  furthermore, the English translation accompanying the new edition should make this text more widely available to scholars in related fields (e.g. classics, philosophy,  theology). The edition will also be accompanied by a study of the potential sources of the BNG, including those not taken into consideration by Ahrens, such as the  Hexaemeron of Jacob of Edessa (already suggested by Nestle 1891, 352); finally, the commentary will re-examine the ascription of this text to Aristotle, which no longer seems as fanciful now as it did in Ahrens’s day.  

Bibliography: 

Ahrens, Karl, ed. Das "Buch der Naturgegenstände." Kiel: Haeseler, 1892. Ahrens, Karl. Zur geschichte des sogenannten Physiologus. Ploen: S.W. Hirt, 1885. 

Bakos, Jan. “Quellenanalyse der Zoologie aus dem Hexae meron des Mo s e bar Ke p(h)a.” Archí v Orienta lní 6, no. 1 (1933): 267-271.  

Furlani, Giuseppe. “Il Manoscritto Siriaco 9 dell’india Office.” Rivista Degli Studi Orientali 10, no. 2-4 (1923): 315-20.  

Gippert, Jost. "Die Verarbeitung antiker Naturmythen in einem fru hchristlichen Text."  Studia Iranica, Mesopotamica et Anatolica 3 (1997-1998): 161-177. 

Henkel, Nikolaus. Studien zum Physiologus im Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,  2013. 

Nestle, Eberhard. "Ahrens, Gymn.-Lehr. K., ‘Das Buch der Naturgegensta nde’. Herausgegeben und u bersetzt. Kiel, Haeseler, 1892." Theologische Literaturzeitung 17,  no. 14 (1892): 351-353.  

Noëldeke, Theodor. “Das ‘Buch der Naturgegensta nde’ hrg. und erla utert von K. Ahrens,  Gymnasiallehrer. Kiel 1892. Haesler.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen  Gesellschaft 45, no. 4 (1891): 694-97. 

This paper will offer a reflection on the rich fruits of interaction and exchange in Syriac studies between the UK and North America over the past 50 years. My method will be vaguely reminiscent to that of John of Ephesus in his Lives Of the Eastern Saints: brief portraits of particular scholars – both teachers and students – who have given distinctive themes, directions, and priorities to this scholarly flourishing. The through-theme will be the way in which historical circumstances provided specific kinds of support to facilitate this interaction: for example: funding opportunities for Americans to undertake graduate study in the UK (e.g., the Marshall Fellowship; amenable professional societies adjacent to Syriac Studies (the Byzantine Studies Conference, the North American Patristic Society); the establishment of new scholarly venues that have brought British scholars to American meetings (the North American Syriac Symposium, the Dorushe Graduate Student Conference); and various kinds of institutional support for workshops, Syriac courses, and professional meetings (e.g., Dumbarton Oaks, HMML).  All of these are contexts which have significantly fueled continuing interactions and collaboration between American and British Syriac scholars.

Ephrem the Syrian is recognized by Syriac Christians of all denominations as the Harp of the Spirit and arguably the greatest author in the Syriac language. Yet, that cultural capital is not easily transferable across linguistic borders. In this paper I will take a closer look at British contributions to the appreciation of Ephrem the Syrian at both poet and theologian, paying special to the role of translation in establishing Ephrem’s reputation. This may seem to be an unpromising topic. After all, until recently it could be said that “Ephrem is not well served by English translations.” Yet, there is a productive ambiguity in such a statement that invites us to investigate both the quantity and the quality of the translations of the poetic works of Ephrem produced in the United Kingdom. In this paper I want to consider both categories through a series of questions: Why have British scholars decided to translate or not translate Ephrem? What makes a translation successful? What are the limits of translation, and how can they be mitigated? What cultural capital accrued to Ephrem, to Syriac literature, and to Syriac studies because of these translations? I will tackle these questions in relation to the British contributions to the study and translation of Ephrem made between lives of J.B. Morris (1812–1880) and Robert Murray (1926-2018). I will conclude the paper with some reflections on the implications of these contributions for the future of Syriac studies in the United Kingdom.

The paper will argue that the Old Syriac or Edessan Syriac inscriptions of the first three centuries CE should be set in the context of the other contemporary epigraphic Aramaic dialects and that the fact that Edessa was regarded as the fountainhead of Christian Syriac has had some negative consequences in the way that academia has structured knowledge in this field, with consequences even for the way in which text-corpora and dictionaries have been written. In the more modern context, the way that Syriac Studies developed in Europe, mainly as an adjunct to Biblical Studies, has created problems for how Syriac should fit into academic structures, resulting in the precariousness of the subject in academia (at least in the UK and Ireland). The strong natural links of Syriac Studies with Classical Studies and even Archaeology and Art History could be used (and to some extent are beginning to be used) to redress the balance, as could stronger links with Turkish and Iraqi academia. It will be suggested that the long-term future of Syriac Studies might be ensured through the promoting and developing of these links and by engagement with Middle Eastern scholars.

Modern scholarship on the Dormition/Assumption of the Virgin Mary is indebted to the work of two 19th-century English scholars of Syriac. William Wright (1830-1889) and Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1926) produced the first editions and translations of the earliest known accounts of the end of the Virgin’s life. Their respective publications of the Departure of Mary in six books (also known as the Transitus Mariae [CANT 123-124]) in 1864 and 1902, as well as other Marian works such as the Proto-Gospel of James (CANT 50) from the same 5th- and 6th-century Syriac manuscripts, remain a point of reference in contemporary scholarship, which has yet to produce critical editions of many of these key works. As such, Wright and Lewis’ editorial decisions and scholarly approaches to the texts have continued to shape the way in which modern scholars study these Marian accounts.

This paper discusses Wright and Lewis’ scholarship on the Departure and other early Marian works. It seeks to identify the effects of this earlier research on contemporary academic approaches to the Virgin Mary in late antiquity. Wright and Lewis’ editorial decisions about the limits of texts (what to include or omit), as well as choices about which works to publish together, has shaped the way that subsequent scholars orient their own reading of the same works. More broadly, Wright and Lewis’ use of certain genre categories for the Departure has, at least in part, influenced what other types of texts later scholars read alongside this account of Mary’s Dormition and Assumption. In conclusion, the paper will offer new results from my doctoral research on the Departure, highlighting ways in which I have followed Wright and Lewis’ approach and discussing decisions to depart from their methodology. 

Bibliography

Hochstedler, Andrew. “The Late Antique Syriac Book of Mary and a New Witness to the Departure of Mary in Six Books from Sinai Arabic 588.” Apocrypha 33 (2022): 91–166. Forthcoming.

Horn, Cornelia B. “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives on Structural and Motif Parallels Regarding Jesus’ Childhood in Christian Apocrypha and Early Islamic Literature: The ‘Book of Mary,’ The Arabic Apocryphal Gospel of John, and the Qur’ān.” Apocrypha 19 (2008): 267–91.

Lewis, Agnes Smith, ed. Apocrypha Syriaca: The Protevangelium Jacobi and Transitus Mariae, with Texts from the Septuagint, the Corân, the Peshiṭta, and from a Syriac Hymm in a Syro-Arabic Palimpsest of the Fifth and Other Centuries. Studia Sinaitica 11. London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1902.

Naffah, Charles. “Les « histoires » syriaques de la Vierge: Traditions apocryphes anciennes et récentes.” Apocrypha 20 (2009): 137–88.

Wright, William. Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament: Collected and Edited from Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum. London: Williams and Norgate, 1865.

———, ed. “The Departure of My Lady Mary from This World.” The Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record 6–7 (1865): 417–48, 108–60. 

The University Library, Cambridge is the repository of one of the finest -and oldest- collections of Syriac manuscripts in the UK. In 1632, 8 Syriac manuscripts were amongst a donation of 86 Oriental manuscripts that were received from Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham, the widow of the Duke of  Buckingham. These had been acquired by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham in 1625 from the estate of the late Thomas van Erpe (Thomas Erpenius), Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of  Leiden who died in 1624 from the plague. The paper will discuss the 8 Syriac manuscripts which formed part of the ‘Erpenius’ collection and in particular, Cam. Mm.6.29 which the Catalogue of  Benefactors recorded as Liber Mutilus Philosophicus et Astrologicus characteribus Syriacis. Although incomplete and lacking a colophon, Cam. Mm.6.29 includes a partial translation of Zosimos of  Panopolis’ alchemical work and the Treatises of Democritus, giving valuable insight into metallurgical processes from Antiquity. 

Bibliography: 

Marcinellus Berthelot, La Chimie au Moyen Age, 3 vols. (Paris: 1893). 

Rubens Duval, “Notice sur les manuscrits d’alchemie publiés dans ce volume” in Berthelot, op. cit., xlvi - xlviii. 

Erica C. D. Hunter, “When Black Bronzes are Beautiful. Zosimus Texts in Cam. Mm.6.29” in I Bronzi Antichi,  Produzione e Technologia, ed. A. Giumlia-Mair (Edition Moniqe Mergoil, Montagnac: 2003) 655 - 60.

The production of summary, comprehensive presentations of the Christian faith, a genre often referred to by the name summa theologiae, is recognized as a key component of catechetical and apologetic discourse in the Syriac churches from the early Islamic period onwards. Yet, despite its widespread presence in Syriac and, especially, Christian Arabic literature, this genre’s formation and development remains very poorly understood (cf. Rassi 2022, 41-54). The aim of this presentation is to zoom in on one neglected aspect of this theological activity: the practice of prefacing compendious theological introductions to Syriac biblical commentaries. One author who seems to have played a pivotal role in this regard is the West Syrian bishop Moses bar Kephā (d. 903). By compiling and systematizing earlier theological sources (both Christian and non-Christian) in the introductions to his  Hexaemeron and Gospel commentaries, Bar Kephā paved the way for later summary expositions of the faith to be composed by West Syrian authors such as Dionysius bar Ṣalībī (d. 1171) and Jacob bar  Shakkō (d. 1241). While Bar Kephā’s Hexaemeron has been fully published (Schlimme 1977), the introduction to his Gospel commentary remains unpublished and is only fragmentarily preserved in a codex unicus at the British Library. However, the combined study of the extant text, its sources and subsequent re-use by dependent authors allows us to reconstruct now lost portions, thus fostering a better understanding of this important work as a whole. The latter point may be illustrated by focusing as a test case on one particular chapter that responds to the Muslim allegation of biblical falsification (taḥrīf),  a chapter that has been the subject of two forthcoming publications of mine. 

Select Bibliography 

Bar Kepha, Moses. Commentary on the Gospels: Introduction, London, British Library Add MS 17274,  fol. 26v-48v.  

Reller, Jobst. Mose bar Kepha und seine Palienenauslegung nebst Edition und Übersetzung des  Kommentars zum Römerbrief, GOFS, 35. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994. 

Jacobs, Bert. “An Early Syriac Response to the Charge of Taḥrīf in George of Bʿeltan’s Commentary  on the Gospel of Matthew.” In Eastern Christians’ Engagement with Islam and the Qur’ān (c.  8th–18th Centuries). Texts, Contexts and Knowledge Regimes, ed. Octavian-Adrian Negoiță.  The European Qur’an, Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, forthcoming. 

Jacobs, Bert. “Appraising Bar Ṣalībī’s Knowledge of Islam: Insights from a Neglected Response to the  Allegation of Taḥrīf.” In Dionyius bar Ṣalībī, A Polymath of the Syriac Renaissance, ed. Bert  Jacobs, Herman Teule, and Joseph Verheyden, TSEC, Leiden-Boston: Brill, forthcoming. 

Rassi, Salam. Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World: ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis and the  Apologetic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. 

Rudolph, Ulrich. “Christliche Bibelexegese und muʿtazilitische Theologie: Der Fall des Moses bar  Kepha (gest.903 n.Chr.),” Oriens 34 (1994): 299-313. 

Schlimme, Lorenz. Der Hexaemeronkommentar des Moses bar Kepha: Einleitung, Übersetzung und  Untersuchungen, Göttinger Orientforschungen, I. Reihe: Syriaca 14. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,  1977.

Nonnus of Nisibis was a 9th-century Syriac theologian from Northern Mesopotamia. He was a Miaphysite Christian who was particularly involved in religious controversies with Christians from other denominations, Muslims, and Jews. Four works composed by Nonnus in Syriac are preserved in a single manuscript (BL Add. MS 14594, dated to the 9th or 10th century AD). A current research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) aims to produce the first complete edition and modern translation of these writings, i.e., Nonnus’ so-called Apologetic Treatise, his treatise against the East Syriac metropolitan Thomas of Beth Garmai, a letter to an anonymous person about the two natures of Christ, and a letter to a monk called John. The paper presents the general outline, first findings, and the current state of the project. Furthermore, it aims to discuss the tasks and challenges connected with editions and translations of Syriac texts as well as the significance of Nonnus’ works for Syriac literature.

Bibliography

Griffith, Sidney H., The Apologetic Treatise of Nonnus of Nisibis, ARAM 3 (1991) 115–138.

Jakob, Joachim, Syrisches Christentum und früher Islam. Theologische Reaktionen in syrisch-sprachigen Texten vom 7. bis 9. Jahrhundert, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 95, Innsbruck and Vienna 2021.

Thomson, Robert W., Nonnus of Nisibis: Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John. Translation of the Armenian Text with Introduction and Commentary, SBL Writings from the Islamic World 1, Atlanta 2014.

Van Roey, Albert, La liberté du Christ dans la doctrine de Nonnus de Nisibe, in: Ignacio Ortiz de Urbina (ed.), Symposium Syriacum 1972. Célebré dans les jours 26–31 octobre 1972 à l’Institut Pontifical Oriental de Rome (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 197), Rome 1974, 471–485.

Van Roey, Albert, Nonnus de Nisibe: Traité apologétique. Etude, texte et traduction, Bibliothèque du Muséon 21, Louvain 1948.

The Syriac Orthodox Church arrived in Brazil at the beginning of 20th century through waves of immigration of Syriac Christians from countries at war, such as Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon. In Brazil, Syriac Christianity developed into two different forms of churches: colonial churches and missionary churches. Colonial churches are mostly attended by immigrant descendants of Syriac origin while missionary churches are attended by Brazilians. In these missionary churches, there are also priests of Brazilian origin who converted to Syriac Christianity. They have been studying the Syriac language and theology and they work in the daily practice of the congregation in the Syriac Orthodox rite in the interior of the country. The growth of Syriac missionary churches in Brazil resulted in their recognition in 2012 by the Syriac Patriarchate of Antioch, which appointed a supervising archbishop for them in the country. While the Syriac Diaspora has four churches, the Syriac missionary churches have more than 20 in Brazil. The Syriac Diaspora people from the colonial churches are dying, and the four churches will soon disappear once their sons and grandchildren do not identify themselves as Syriac Christians anymore or attend the churches. So, the colonial churches are growing, and soon only they will represent the Syriac Christianity in Brazil. It is a unique phenomenon: simultaneously, the original Syriac church is vanishing while a new one is growing. 

Bibliography 

ARMBRUSTER, Heidi. Homes in Crisis: Syrian Orthodox Christians in Turkey and in Germany, [in:] New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home, ed. Nadje Al-Ali, Khalid Koser, Routledge, London–New York, 2002.

GARNETT, Jane & HAUSNER, Sondra L. Religion in Diaspora. Cultures of Citizenship: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 

HAGER, Anna. When Ephrem meets the Maya: defining and adapting the Syriac Orthodox Tradition in Guatemala. Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, Vol. 23.2, 215-262, 2020.

KIRAZ, George.The Syriac Orthodox in North America (1895-1995): A Short History. Gorgias Handbooks, 2019. 

MORATO, Mariano Andrés Morato. Los Arabes Cristianos en Argentina: Cuestión Identitaria y Religión. X Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia. Escuela de Historia de la Facultad de Humanidades y Artes, Universidad Nacional del Rosario. Departamento de Historia de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Rosario, Argentina, 2005.

WOŹNIAK-BOBIŃSKA, Marta. Modern Assyrian/Syriac Diaspora in Sweden. Department of Middle East and North Africa, University of Lodz, 2020.

In the early 1990s, a dedicated group of volunteers living in Oxbridge—not necessarily associated with the prestigious universities—undertook a grassroots initiative that would have a profound impact on Syriac computing. This talk delves into the captivating narrative of "The SyrCOM People," the passionate individuals whose collective efforts laid the foundation for the establishment of the Syriac Computing Institute, the forerunner of Beth Mardutho, between 1992 and 1996.

During this period of the dawn of the internet, the landscape of Syriac language computing was barren, with limited digital resources available for a language rich in cultural and historical significance. Recognizing this gap, a small but determined cohort of volunteers seized the opportunity to make a lasting contribution. What began as a shared interest among like-minded individuals soon evolved into a collaborative movement that transcended geographical boundaries.

Projects that were worked on between 1992 and 1996 include Sedra (a lexical resource), e-GEDSH (an online encyclopedia), a concordance to the Syriac NT, and a comparative edition of the Syriac gospels. More importantly, these projects gave impetus to crowdsourcing and executing long-term projects without governmental or institutional funding. Working tirelessly, typically in their spare time, these individuals undertook the herculean task of creating digital tools, databases, and resources that would eventually become the backbone of Beth Mardutho.

This talk explores the pivotal role played by the Oxbridge volunteers, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the innovative solutions they devised. From encoding Syriac scripts to developing software tailored to the unique linguistic characteristics of the language, their collaborative efforts exemplify the power of grassroots initiatives in effecting transformative change.

As we revisit this historical period, we gain insights into the synergies of academia, passion, and technology that led to the establishment of the Syriac Computing Institute. The story of "The SyrCOM People" serves as an inspiring testament to the impact a dedicated group of individuals can have in preserving and promoting linguistic and cultural heritage through the realm of computing. 

—ܐܢܐ ܐܢܐ ܓܦܬܐ

While many early Christians upheld sexual asceticism as an ideal form of Christian life, nowhere was this truer than in Syrian forms of early Christianity. According to Sebastian Brock (1984: 7), “in some  communities in the East, views like these were held with such seriousness that celibacy was regarded as  an essential condition for baptism” — a situation that continued “well into the third century.” So too,  Carl Kraeling notes (1967: 154) that many early Christian witnesses from Syria exhibit a preference for  “celibacy and the dissolution of all marriage bonds for all who accept baptism,” with “the Christian  communities of Mesopotamia” existing primarily “as companies of men and women known respectively  as ‘sons of the Covenant’ and ‘daughters of the Covenant’.” 

This linkage of celibacy and baptism in third-century Syrian Christianity falls precisely within the orbit of interest in the baptismal ceremony of the Christ assembly at Dura Europos, highlighting the very real possibility that the mid-third-century Christian assembly there included members who were  Solitaires. To date, however, there has been very little attempt to understand how the Syrian interest in  Solitaires might affect the overall interpretation of the Christ assembly and its artwork in its baptistery.  

Although this short presentation cannot fill that lacuna, it highlights the historical basis (one neglected artifact from elsewhere in Dura Europos) for differentiating between three forms of identity within the Christ assembly of Dura Europos — including Solitaires. This tripartite differentiation allows us to press further into conceptualizing how the Christ assembly may have constructed a baptismal service within the architectural spaces of the Christian building.  

Short Bibliography: 

Brock, Sebastian. 1984. Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity. London: Variorum Reprints. 

Brock, Sebastian. 1985. The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian. Rome:  Center for Indian and Inter-Religious Studies. Revised edition; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications,  1991.  

Brock, Sebastian. 1990. St Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary  Press.  

Brock, Sebastian P. and Susan Ashbrook Harvey. 2008. Holy Women of the Syrian Orient. Second edition;  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

du Mesnil du Buisson, Robert. 1959. “Inscriptions sur Jarres de Doura-Europos.” Melanges de l’Universite  Saint Joseph 36: 1–50.  

Kraeling, Carl Hermann. 1967. The Christian Building: The Excavations at Dura-Europos conducted by Yale  University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Final report 8, Part 2. New Haven, CN: Yale  University Press.  

Peppard, Michael. 2016. The World's Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria. New Haven,  CN: Yale University Press. 

For nearly two centuries, the collection of manuscripts which the British Library acquired from the monastery of Dayr al-Suryān in Egypt has profoundly shaped the study of Syriac in Europe. Even today, William Wright’s richly detailed three-volume catalogue of the collection is an essential reference work in the field. This co-authored paper surveys recent scholarship on Wright’s catalogue and announces the publication of a new digital version of Wright’s catalogue prepared by a research team at Vanderbilt University.

The first part of the paper offers a scholarly evaluation of Wright’s catalogue in light of the exponential growth of Syriac studies in the last three decades. In addition to highlighting the many ways in which Wright’s catalogue remains an invaluable guide, this paper will also call attention to some of the less-noted misconceptions which have resulted from Wright’s editorial design choices, including both inadvertent lacunae and intentional omissions.

The second part of the paper introduces, Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library: A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue, a digital enhancement of Wright’s work published by Syriaca.org in partnership with the British Library as an open access online resource. The paper will demonstrate how new methods of digital representation can permit users to engage the Dayr al-Suryān manuscripts from diverse perspectives. For example, the print format of Wright’s original catalogue only permitted one organizational method (i.e. genre/thematic). The new database allows users to search and rearrange the manuscripts according to new and multiple criteria, many of which were not central to Wright’s own system of organization (e.g. chronology, additions, marginalia, scribes, or forms of decoration).

Finally, the paper concludes with a call for how this project might itself be further revised as a first step toward a comprehensive digital catalogue of all Syriac manuscripts in the British Library including those acquired before and after Wright’s tenure.

Related Bibliography

Publications:

Brock, Sebastian P. An Inventory of Syriac Texts Published from Manuscripts in the British Library. Gorgias Press, 2020.

Maier, Bernhard. Semitic Studies in Victorian Britain: A Portrait of William Wright and His World Through His Letters. Würzburg: Ergon, 2011.

Michelson, David A. “Mixed Up by Time and Chance? Using Digital Methods to ‘Re-Orient’ the Syriac Religious Literature of Late Antiquity.” The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 5, no. 1 (2016): 136–82. https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000073.

—. “Manuscripts without Readers? Perspectival Obstacles to the Study of Syriac Ascetic Reading.” In David A. Michelson, The Library of Paradise, 15-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Reif, Elizabeth, and Michael Penn. “The Wright Decoder: A Page Index to the Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 16, no. 1 (2013): 37–92.

Databases:

Michelson, David A. and William L. Potter. Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library: A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue. Nashville, TN: Syriaca.org and Vanderbilt University, forthcoming 2024. https://bl.syriac.uk/ 

Penn, Michael. DASH: Digital Analysis of Syriac Handwriting. Palo Alto, CA: Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research at Stanford Libraries, 2019. http://dash.stanford.edu

Since the beginning of the Christian veneration of the Maccabees in the third century, and roughly until the sixth century, the cult of the Judean martyrs sparked intense debate within various Christian communities. Preceding Christ and explicitly linked to dietary laws, their deaths led some to brand them as non-Christian; forcing Christian leaders to defend their veneration and “Christianise” their deaths. By the mid-sixth century, however, this discourse waned in many communities, making way for a distinctive Syriac devotion focused on the mother of the seven sons, known as Shmuni. Shmuni's central role brought a narrative shift. Syriac authors presented her as an exemplar for grieving mothers, moulding her as the ideal model for coping with the loss of their children. 

For Syriac communities, it is assumed that there was a period during which these two cultic strands coexisted, likely between the fifth and sixth centuries. Yet, Syriac homilies on the Maccabees tend to represent only the latter cultic trend. Focusing on the recently published homily on the Maccabees by Jacob of Serugh (Akhrass, 2017), this paper will argue that it bears witness to the very moment in which these two cultic trends coexisted in the early sixth century. Arguably, this intriguing juncture provoked Jacob to join the debate about the Maccabees’ Christianity on the one hand, as well as describe at length Shmuni’s grieving over her sons’ horrendous deaths, on the other. One of the more elaborate Late Ancient Syriac homilies on the Maccabees, it sheds light on the complex hagiographic landscape of Syriac communities in Late Antiquity.

Bibliography

Akhrass, R. and Syryany, I., 160 Unpublished Homilies of Jacob of Serugh. Volume I. Homilies 1–72, (Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate: Damascus, 2017).

Harvey, S. Ashbrook., “Guiding Grief: Liturgical Poetry and Ritual Lamentation in Early Byzantium” in M. Alexiou and D. Cairns (ed.), Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and after, (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2017): 199-216.

Brock, S., “Eleazar, Shmuni and Her Seven sons in Syriac Tradition” in M. F. Baslez and Olivier Munnich (ed.), La mémoire des persécutions: Autour des livres des Maccabées, (Peeters: Louvain, 2014): 329-336.

Doerfler, M., Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity, (University of California Press: Oakland, California, 2019).

Witakowski, W., “Mart(y) Shmuni, the Mother of the Maccabean Martyrs, in Syriac Tradition”, VI Symposium 

Syriac Christian women may appear elusive. Very little writing by women in Syriac survives, and the kinds of religious texts that dominate the extant corpus of Syriac literature can seem to offer few insights into the social realities of everyday life. Despite these challenges, important studies of women have been produced by pioneering scholars including Susan Harvey for the early Christian period and Heleen Murre van-den Berg for the Ottoman-era Church of the East (Brock and Harvey 1987; Harvey 2001; Harvey 2005; Harvey 2010; Harvey 2018; Murre-van den Berg 2004). Some individual Syriac women of high status (such as Shirin, wife of Khusro II, or Sorghaghtani Beki, daughter-in-law of Genghis Khan) are fairly well-known, as are the ascetic bnāt qyāmā. But in general women remain on the margins of Syriac studies, as reflected by the relatively limited space dedicated to them in recent encyclopaedias and surveys of Syriac Christianity.

This paper will first examine the history of scholarship on Syriac Chirstian women, and the main challenges in the field (in part, the problem lies in defining who is a ‘Syriac Christian woman’, given that Syriac Christianity does not represent one institutional or imperial religion). It will then outline my future plans for a research project on women and Syriac Christianity, and explain some of my methodological principles. These include:

1. Considering sources in languages other than Syriac, in recognition of the fact that Syriac-using communities have almost always been multilingual, and that women’s lives are less likely to be documented directly in Classical Syriac itself. 

2. Moving beyond the focus on authors and scribes to consider other roles in manuscript production; many women are attested as commissioners, owners, and donors of Syriac manuscripts. 

The paper will give some examples of women’s roles in manuscript production, drawn in part from collections in British libraries and archives, to demonstrate the great potential of these collections for shedding new light on Syriac Christian women. It hopes to contribute to an inclusive vision of the future of Syriac studies. 

Bibliography:

Brock and Harvey 1987: S.P. Brock and S.A. Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley, 1987).

Harvey 2001: S.A. Harvey, ‘Spoken Words, Voiced Silence: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001), pp. 105-31.

Harvey 2005: ‘Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s choirs and sacred song in ancient Syriac Christianity’, Hugoye 8.2 (2005), pp.125-49. 

Harvey 2010: S.A. Harvey, Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition (Milwaukee, WI, 2010).

Harvey 2018: S.A. Harvey, ‘Women and Children in Syriac Christianity’, in D. King (ed.), The Syriac World (Abingdon, 2018), pp. 554-56.

Murre-van den Berg 2004: H.L. Murre-van den Berg, ‘Generous Devotion: Women in the Church of the East between 1550 and 1850’, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 7.1 (2004), pp. 11-54.

Interpreting biblical texts in Syriac in late antiquity involved working with a variety of versions, authors, and texts. This paper focuses on two Syriac works which stand out for the rich exegetical traditions they present: the commentary of the East Syriac bishop and scholar Ishoʿdad of Merv (fl. 850) and the Collection of Simeon, a West Syriac compilation of biblical interpretations from the late ninth century (Vat. Syr. 103). The paper examines their reception of the biblical account in which Saul consults the female necromancer of Endor to gain access to his deceased mentor Samuel (1 Samuel 28). Both works offer multilayered interpretations. Ishoʿdad often tacitly draws on Theodore of Mopsuestia, and in this case explicitly mentions Narsai and Gabriel of Qatar as well as anonymous ‘teachers’ and ‘people’. In the Collection of Simeon, the interpretation in the main text of the manuscript is attributed to Ephrem, though it was composed at a later date. In addition, the central text is supplemented by extracts from Cyril of Alexandria in the margins. The paper will address how the interpretations elaborate on the biblical account, use both factual and spiritual approaches to make sense of the story, disavow necromancy as a demonic practice, and debate if Saul really gets to meet Samuel’s spirit. The Syriac interpretations will be studied against the background of recent work on necromancy in biblical, Greek Christian and Near Eastern contexts. In this way, the paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the late antique afterlife of biblical women and the collection of knowledge in Syriac commentaries.

Bibliography

Greer, Rowan A. and Mitchell, Margaret M., The "Belly-Myther" of Endor: Interpretations of 1 Kingdoms 28 in the Early Church (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007).

Grypeou, Emmanouela, ‘Talking Heads: Necromancy in Jewish and Christian Accounts from Mesopotamia and beyond’, Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 16 (2019), 1-30.

Hamori, Esther J., ‘The Prophet and the Necromancer: Women's Divination for Kings’, Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (2013), 827-843.

Scher, Addai (ed.), Theodorus Bar Koni Liber Scholiorum, pars prior (CSCO 55, Syr. 19, Paris, 1910).

Van den Eynde, Ceslas (ed. and trans.), Commentaire d'Ishoʿdad de Merv sur l'Ancien Testament III. Livres des Sessions (CSCO 229, Syr. 96, Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1962).

The manuscript Mingana Syr 561, the prized possession of the Mingana Collection in Birmingham University, is known as a unique full copy of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Catechetical Homilies. The short study of Sebastian Brock has also shown this manuscript as a significant source of the history of Mongols and the Church of the East in the 14th century, thanks to the extensive marginal note with the list of the Mongol rulers. Some other notes were discussed by the French editors of the MS, Raymond Tonneau and Robert Devreesse, but were not studied quite thoroughly. My paper will present the first comprehensive study of the marginal notes and other types of reader’s engagements with the materiality of the manuscript Mingana Syr 561 and will reveal the transformation of a theological manuscript into a spiritual notebook. 

The margins of this manuscript, which was apparently in private possession of many readers, contain notes by at least six different hands, apart from the scribe’s who also corrected himself on the margins. Many notes are simple corrections of the mistakes that attentive readers encountered in the text. There is an ownership note, repeated on several pages; at times, the name of that owner, a certain priest Bar‘edta, was scrapped off by, apparently, a new owner. There are the repairs of the text made by a professional hand after the water damage. This manuscript is also a rare example of the child’s engagement with a medieval book: there are childish scribbles and doodles on some pages. Yet, the most remarkable notes are the quotations from the Book of Psalms, dialogue poems, hagiography, and memre, and what seemed to be personal compositions by some readers. Unrelated to the main text, those quotations have been left on the margins by at least four different readers. The readers/owners of Mingana Syr 561 seemed to treat it as a certain spiritual notebook, in which, in addition to the core theological works that it initially contained, they wrote down inspirational quotations from other books which they may not have had in their private possession but borrowed them from somewhere. 

Bibliography:

MS Mingana Syr 561

BROCK, Sebastian. “A Syriac List of Mongol Rulers,” in Der Christliche Orient und seine Umwelt: Festschrift for Jurgen Tubach, eds. Sophia G. Vashalomidze and Lutz Greisinger (Wiesbaden, 2007), 327-36.

Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Nicene Creed, Woodbrooke Studies V, ed. A. MINGANA. Cambridge: Heffer, 1932. 

Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, on the Saсraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, Woodbrooke Studies VI, ed. A. MINGANA. Cambridge: Heffer, 1933.

HILL, Kristian. “Note on the Acquisition History of the Mingana Syriac Manuscripts,” in Manuscripta Syriaca: des sources de première main, eds. F. Briquel Chatonnet and M. Debié (Paris: Geuthner, 2015): 11-38.

Les Homélies Catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsueste: reproduction phototypique du Ms. Mingana Syr. 561, traduction, introduction, index, ST 145, eds. R. TONNEAU and R. DEVREESSE. Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1949.

The history of Syriac studies in Renaissance and Reformation Europe has been a subject of growing interest. While most recent studies have focussed on developments on the continent, few have discussed early modern interest in Syriac among Scottish thinkers. My paper will address the life and works of the early Presbyterian leader Andrew Melville (1545–1622). Like many humanists of his time, Melville’s interest in the Syriac language stemmed from his Christian Hebraism. Having studied Semitic languages with Jean Mercier and Cornelius Bertram in Paris and Geneva, Melville’s main achievement was to reform the curricula of Scottish universities in line with other European institutions. As principle of the University of Glasgow, he gave languages paramount importance, mandating the teaching of Syriac and ‘Chaldaic’ (Biblical Aramaic), among other languages deemed essential to Biblical interpretation. However, unlike Mercier and Bertram, Melville left no body of work on Syriac per se, despite his reputation as a skilled teacher of languages. My paper attempts to recover aspects of Melville’s encounter with Syriac—fragmentary as it is—and to discuss its significance to his theology, humanism, and church activism. I will also discuss Melville’s legacy in Scotland concerning the teaching and study of Syriac following his incarceration in the Tower of London and subsequent exile.

In the field of Syriac studies, several prominent scholars from the UK, or scholars that have developed at least part of their research in the UK, have produced some contributions on prominent intellectuals from the Syro-Mesopotamian area, whose names are more or less directly linked to notable theological-episcopal schools such as Edessa and Nisibis.

The aim of this paper is to offer a preliminary overview of a single particular phenomenon related to these schools: the mobility of students in the Syro-Mesopotamian regions, focusing on the period between the 4th and 5th centuries.

Movement for study purposes was caused by a variety of factors. Choices forced by family directives, availability of funds to invest in education, and individual decisions, together with 'geopolitical' events (e.g. Sasanian and Eastern Roman military campaigns), had a considerable impact on the mobility of both students seeking a traditional education and Christians interested in theological studies. For Christian students, religious affiliation and Christological diatribes were equally important in the choice of more or less long periods of study away from their cities of origin, sometimes driving them to move from large cities such as Antioch to more peripheral locations.

This contribution intends also to reflect briefly on the disciples' movements within episcopal networks. Bishops, as socio-political authorities, performed various forms of patronage functions for their disciples, stimulating the circulation and promotion of young pupils and protégés both within and outside the ecclesiastical sphere, not infrequently directing and controlling their mobility. The episcopal networks in the Syro-Mesopotamian area, the first prodromes of which can be traced back to the Councils of Ancyra (314) and Nicaea (315), grew in size in the following decades, constituting part of the success of phenomena that we can, with some caution, define as 'proto-scholastic' (such as Ephrem the Syrian and his circle). In the course of the 5th century, links between schools, teachers and networks of bishops were consolidated (as testify the letters of Theodoret of Cyrrhus or Jacob of Serugh), but these links could degenerate and result in major conflicts (as the case of Rabbula and Ibas of Edessa shows).

Short bibliography

Al-Hamad M. F., Healey J., Late Antique Near Eastern Context: Some Social and Religious Aspects, in Shah M., Abdel Haleem, M. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Qur’anic Studies, Oxford 81-96.

Becker A. H., Devotional study: The School of Nisibis and the development of "scholastic" culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Princeton 2004.

Becker A.H., Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom. The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Philadephia 2006.

Bettiolo P., Scuole e ambienti intellettuali nelle chiese di Siria, in C. D’Ancona (ed.), Storia della filosofia nell’Islam medievale, volume primo, Torino 2005, 48-100.

Boot P., Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity, Berkeley 2013.

Bowersock, G. W., The Syriac Life of Rabbula and Syrian Hellenism, in T. Hagg, P. Rousseau (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, Oakland 2000.

Brock S. P., Singer of the word of God: Ephrem the Syrian and his significance in Late Antiquity, Piscataway 2020.

Brock S. P., The rise of Christian thought: the theological schools of Antioch, Edessa and Nisibis, in Christianity. A History in the Middle East, Beirut 2005, 143-160.

Cecconi G. A., Mobilità studentesca nella tarda Antichità: controllo amministrativo e controllo sociale, in Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, t. 119, n°1. 2007, 137- 164.

Cvetković C. A., Gemeinhardt P., Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity: Connection and Communication Across Boundaries, Berlin-Boston 2019.

Di Paola L., Vescovi, notabili e governatori nella corrispondenza di Teodoreto di Cirro, in R. Lizzi Testa (a c. di), Le trasformazioni delle élites in età tardoantica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Perugia, 15-16 marzo 2004, Roma 2006, 155-176.

Doran R., Stewards of the Poor: The Man of God, Rabbula, and Hiba in Fifth-Century Edessa, Collegeville 2006.

Drijvers J. W., The School of Edessa: Greek Learning and Local Culture, in J. W. Drijvers, A. MacDonald, Centres of learning. Learning and location in pre-modern Europe and the Near East, London, 49-59.

Millar Fergus G. B., Empire, church and society in the Late Roman Near East: Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens (collected studies, 2004-2014), Leuven 2015.

Rapp C., Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, Berkeley 2005.

Rigolio A., Beyond schools and monasteries : literate education in Late Roman Syria (350-450 AD), PhD. Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013.

Rigolio A., Christians in Conversation: A Guide to Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and Syriac. Oxford 2019.

Schor A. H., Theodoret’s People. Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria, Berkeley- Los Angeles-London, 2011.

Taylor D., The Coming of Christianity to Mesopotamia, in D. King, (ed.), The Syriac World, London 2018, 68-87.

Van Ginkel J. J., Greetings to a virtuous man. The correspondence of Jacob of Edessa, in B. T. Haar Romeny (ed.), Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day, Leiden 2008, 67-81.

Watts E. J., City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Berkeley - Los Angeles – London 2008.

Wickes J., Between Liturgy and School: Reassessing the Performative Context of Ephrem’s Madrāšē, in JECS 26, n. 1, 25-51.

Michael Weitzman is best known to Syriacists as the author of The Syriac version of the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1999). This remains as yet the most comprehensive monograph on the Old Testament Peshitta, and has had a profound impact on Syriac biblical studies.

Like many other Jewish scholars who, though primarily or originally Hebraists or Rabbinicists, have contributed to Syriac studies, his interest in Syriac arose from his Semitic studies. However, unlike them, he was also a gifted mathematician. In the era before computing in the Humanities was possible, his 1974 PhD was a statistical survey of the Peshitta of Psalms. He became a lecturer at University College London in 1972, and later Reader (senior lecturer) from 1997, and published in the fields of Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac. His monograph on the Peshitta Old Testament was about to be published — and a second volume was apparently envisaged — when he died suddenly  in 1998, at the age of only 51, much mourned by his students and colleagues as a fine person as well as a brilliant scholar.

A quarter century having now elapsed since his death, this paper will reassess Michael’s contribution to Syriac studies through both his well-known book and also his articles.

As the adjacent heartland of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate lay engulfed in the fratricidal civil war of the Fourth Fitna (811-813), an excited Georgian litterateur would take to his writing-desk. Dressed in a guise of historiography that has until now escaped scrutiny, the Continuation of the Life of Vaxt’ang Gorgasali anonymously penned thereon would bear as its true point of focus the propounding of a Pseudo-Methodian apocalyptic vision of world powers’ favourable reorganisation: the totality of Arab-Islamic dominion, so consistently injurious to the regions of Kartli, was to imminently disintegrate amidst internal division, its death-blow being dealt by a triumphally resurgent Byzantium whose emperor would reconquer its former territories, most notably Jerusalem, at the Arabs’ expense, and elevate alongside himself his fellow Christians. Indeed, the author would even adopt and adapt to fit his chronology the ‘seven weeks/sevens’ formulation which the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius had itself used to denote the length of Arab-Muslim rule before its destruction by the Byzantine emperor, with ‘ܫܒ̈ܘܥܝܢ ܫܒܥܐ’ becoming ‘შჳიდნი შჳიდეულნი’ (‘shwidni shwideulni’) in as close a lexical mirroring as is linguistically feasible in Classical Georgian. Coupled with the prophecy’s pronouncer Heraclius immediately prior to this receiving a heaven-sent monk who predicts the rise of Muḥammad’s Arabs and the collapse of the Roman empire (constituting a clear reference to the Syriac Baḥīrā Legend), and the same emperor’s subsequent ‘farewell’ pronouncement to his empire’s eastern regions (‘მშჳდობა’, ‘peace!’ precisely matching the vocative address ‘ܦܘܫܝ ܒܫܠܡܐ’, ‘be in peace!’ that featured in this tale of 8th-century Syriac origin), what emerges is a scene and author steeped in Syriac apocalypticism and popular legend. After delving then into this particularly striking passage and for the first time concretely demonstrating the influence of Syriac literary (and perhaps even oral) traditions on Georgian historiography, in concluding, discussion will then widen by mapping avenues for further illumination of Syriac influence upon the wider corpus of medieval Georgian literature which lies in wait for similar discoveries of profound intertextuality.

Bibliography

Ancient Texts (* = those particularly focused on, with only select elements of the others being drawn in as proofs)

al-Azdī, Futūḥ al-Shām

al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk

*Anonymous Chronicle to 1234

Apocalypse of James

Apocalypse of John the Little

Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ezra

Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (Greek)

*Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (Syriac)

Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenoute

Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalamūn

*Baḥīrā Legend (Syriac)

Barhebraeus, Chronography

*Continuation of the Life of Vaxt’ang Gorgasali

Conversion of Georgia (Mokcevay Kartlisay)

*Edessene Apocalypse

Leonti Mroveli, Life of the Georgian Kings

Letter of Pseudo-Pisentius

Life of Vaxt’ang Gorgasali

*Michael the Syrian, Chronicle

MS. Matenadaran 9100 f. 365v-370r

Sa‘īd ibn Baṭrīq, Naẓm al-Jawhar [Eutychius, Annals]

Stepanos Orbelian, History of the Province of Syunik

Sumbat’ Davitis-dze, Life and Tale of the Bagrat’ionis

Modern Literature

(Virtually nothing has been written discussing Syriac literary elements entering Georgian historiography, and there is no prior commentary on the central text of this paper that so illuminates that influence, but key surrounding literature is detailed here)

ანჩაბაძე, გ. (1987), ‘ჯუანშერი და მისი ‘ცხოვრება ვახტანგ გორგასლისა’’, in მაცნე: ისტორიის სერია, vol. 4, pp. 184-188. [‘Juansher and his ‘Life of Vaxt’ang Gorgasali’’]

Brock, S. (2012), ‘Sinai: A Meeting Point of Georgian with Syriac and Christian Palestinian  Aramaic’ in Chitunashvili et al. ed. Caucasus Between East and West: Historical and Philological Studies in Honour of Zaza Aleksidze, pp. 482-494.

Brosset, M. (1849), Histoire de la Géorgie Depuis L’Antiquité jusqu’au XIXe Siècle, Première Partie, Imprimerie de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences.

Conrad, L. (2002), ‘Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma’ in Reinink, G. and Stolte B. The Reign of Heraclius (610-641): Crisis and Confrontation, Peeters, pp. 113-156.

Conterno, M. (2014), La “descrizione dei tempi” all’alba dell’espansione islamica: Un’indagine sulla storiografia greca, siriaca e araba fra VII e VIII secolo, De Gruyter.

Doborjginidze, N. (2017), ‘Generic Concepts and Topoi of Medieval Georgian Historiography’ in Amirav, H., Hoogerwerf, C. and Perczel, I. ed Christian Historiography between Empires, 4th-8th Centuries, Peeters, pp. 67-80.

Doborjginidze, N. (2019), ‘Medieval Georgian Projection of Religious Historiography of Late Antiquity: Mapping of Biblical peoples (Tabula linguarum et populorum)’ in Scrinium, vol. 15, pp. 239-255.

Howard-Johnston, J. (2010), Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century, Oxford University Press.

Hoyland, R. (1991), ‘Arabic, Syriac and Greek Historiography in the First Abbasid Century: An inquiry into Inter-Cultural Traffic’ in ARAM, vol. 3, pp. 211-233.

Hoyland, R. (2011), Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Liverpool University Press.

კეკელიძე, კ. (1973), ‘ლეონტი მროველის ლიტერატურული წყაროები’ in idem. ეტიუდები ძველი ქართული ლიტერატურის ისტორიიდან, ტომი XII, სტალინის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის გამომცემლობა, pp. 10-31. [‘Literary sources of Leont’i Mroveli’]

მამულია, გ. (1964) ‘ლეონტი მროველის და ჯუანშერის წყაროები’ in მაცნე, vol. 4, pp. 243-275. [‘Sources of Leont’i Mroveli and Juansher’]

Rapp Jr., S. (2003), Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts, Peeters.

Toumanoff, C. (1963), Studies in Christian Caucasian History, Georgetown University Press.

Watt, J. (2002), ‘The Portrayal of Heraclius in Syriac Historical Sources’ in Reinink, G. and Stolte B. The Reign of Heraclius (610-641): Crisis and Confrontation, Peeters, pp. 

63-80.

Woods, D. (2018), ‘Heraclius’ Alleged Farewell Salute to Syria’ in Byzantion, 88, pp. 423-433.

The Orientalist Christian Raue (1613-1677), otherwise known as Christianus Ravius or also, by his self-attributed anglicized name, as Christian Ravis, spent part of his career travelling through seventeenth-century Europe in England. In 1647, as part of the educational reformation program promoted by the so-called Hartlib Circle, he held some lectures on the oriental languages at London-House in St. Paul’s churchyard and was then appointed, in 1649, Fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford, where he lectured Hebrew and served as librarian for about a year. With the aim of deepening his knowledge of the Arabic and other Oriental languages, as well as in search of manuscripts, Ravius had previously (1639-1641) undertaken a journey to Constantinople and other parts of the Ottoman dominions. His journey to the East was financed by a prominent figure of the English clergy, namely the Archbishop of Armagh James Ussher (1581 -1656). To the same Ussher, Ravius would later dedicate the Discourse of the Orientall Tongues, which was published in 1649 as a joint English edition together with A Generall Grammer for Ebrew, Samaritan, Calde, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Tongue (London, 1648).

Most likely due to the peculiar theory of the unity of all Semitic languages elaborated in the Grammer, this work was later greeted with a certain caution. Yet, within it there is on display – and, for this reason, even more inexplicably neglected by scholars – some interesting first-hand information on the way in which Syriac was commonly or, vice versa, extraordinarily written in the East at the time of Ravius. This information is, moreover, framed by the author in a critical historical perspective. 

In my contribution I will first reinstate Ravius’ assertion into the chain of transmission of knowledge reconstructed so far and I will analyse the apparently minimal impact that it had on Syriac studies (in England and beyond). Secondly, I will make some considerations on how his words nevertheless shed useful light on the sources underlying the first statement on the topic ‘quomodo Syri scribunt’, which is traced back to the Italian humanist Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi (1469-1540).

Bibliography:

Jean-Pierre Abel- Rémusat, Recherches sur les langues tartares, ou Mémoires sur différents points de la grammaire et de la littérature des Mandchous, des Mongols, des Ouigours et des Tibétains, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1820).

Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi, Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam atque Armenicam et decem alias linguas. Characterum differentium Alphabeta, circiter quadraginta, et eorundem invicem conformatio. Mystica et cabalistica quamplurima scitu digna. Et descriptio ac simulachrum Phagoti Afranii. (…) (Pavia, 1539).

Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, “Writing Syriac: manuscripts and inscriptions”, in D. King (ed) The Syriac World (London: Routledge, 2019), 243-265.

Riccardo Contini, “Gli inizi della linguistica siriaca nell’Europa rinascimentale”, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 68 (1994 [1995]), 15-30.

Alain Desreumaux, “Comment peut-on écrire en syriaque? ou Des problèmes du scribe devant sa page blanche”, in C. Batsch and M. Vârtejanu-Joubert (eds) Manières de penser dans l’Antiquité méditerranéenne et orientale. Mélanges offerts à Francis Schmidt par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses amis (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 105-126.

William H. P. Hatch, An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1946).

Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land, Anecdota Syriaca I: Symbolae Syriacae (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1862).

François Lenormant, Essai sur la propagation de l’alphabet phéncien dans l’ancien monde, vol. 2 (Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, 1872).

Giorgio Levi della Vida, Ricerche sulla formazione del più antico fondo dei manoscritti orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana, SeT 92 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1939).

Jean-Pierre Paulin Martin, “Syriens orientaux et occidentaux. Essai sur les deux principaux dialectes araméens”, Journal Asiatique 6 (1872), 305-483.

Andreas Masius, Grammatica Linguae Syricae (Antwerp: Plantin, 1573).

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “The ‘Generall Grammer of Orientall Tongues’ and universal language schemes in seventeenth-century Britain: the contribution of Christian Ravius”, in D. Cram et al. (ed.), History of Linguistics, vol. I: Traditions in Linguistics Worldwide (Proceedings of the VIIth International Conference for the History of Linguistic (Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishers, 1996), 131-141.

George Philipps, A letter by Mār Jacob, bishop of Edessa, on Syriac orthography; also a tract by the same author, and a discourse by Gregory Bar Hebraeus on Syriac accents (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1869).

Guillaume Postel, Linguarum duodecim characteribus differentium alphabetum, introductio, ac legendi modus longè facilimus. Linguarum nomina sequens proximè pagella offeret, (…) (Paris: Dionysium Lescuier, 1538).

Christian Ravis, A Discourse of the Orientall Tongues viz. Ebrew, Samaritan. Calde, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic. Together with a generall grammer for the said tongues (London: W. Wilson for T. Jackson, 1649).

Christian Ravis, A Generall Grammer for Ebrew, Samaritan, Calde, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Tongue (London, 1648).

Virgil B. Strohmeyer, The Importance of Teseo Ambrogio Degli Albonesi's Selected Armenian Materials for the Development of the Renaissance's Perennial Philosophy and an Armenological Philosophical Tradition (Yerevan: Publishing House of the NAS RA “Gitutyun”, 1998).

Gerald Toomer, Christianus Ravius: an Intellectual Biography (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2023).

Robert J. Wilkinson, “Constructing Syriac in Latin – Establishing the Identity of Syriac in the West over a Century and a Half (c. 1550–c. 1700): An Account of Grammatical an Extra-Linguistic Determinants”, Bulletin de l’Académie Belge pour l’Etude des Langues Anciennes et Orientales 5 (2016), 169-283.

Robert J. Wilkinson, “The Early Study of Syriac in Europe”, in D. King (ed) The Syriac World (London: Routledge, 2019), 751-769.

Robert J. Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, Acquired since the Year 1838, vol. 3 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1870-1872).

Over the last five years, I have been thoroughly researching a core area of the Syriac culture and Syriac  Christianity, engaging myself with the complexity of the region of Ṭūr ‘Abdīn (southeastern Turkey). I  am excited to present my research in this context, which may offer a fresh lens through which to explore such a resilient human and material landscape. I aim to examine the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn Syriac cultural heritage from the standpoint of its Late Antique material culture and settlement pattern in a period spanning four centuries (4th to 7th). This will provide an opportunity to reassess established notions on the administrative and strategic role of rural monasteries within the early-Byzantine framework, while introducing a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of the interactions between the local Syriac monastic pattern, the rural settlements, and the Roman military outposts. Special attention will be paid to the distribution and topographical relations that existed within the late antique network of monasteries, as to the way in which the geomorphological specificity of this fairly isolated mountainous territory contributed to shape – and preserve – the Syriac genius loci of Ṭūr ‘Abdīn. Furthermore, I will explore the political and strategic dynamic between this local micro-ecology and the broader Roman frontier system, employing a set of approaches ranging from remote sensing and topographical tools to the analysis of relevant Syriac annalistic chronicles, calendars and hagiographies. Finally, my aim is to identify the historical and environmental factors that enabled this region and its Syriac communities, to maintain a strong connection with their early Christian past. I believe that the real importance of this area in the field of humanities lies in the resilience of its Syriac identity through its human landscape,  making the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn case a compelling observation point for the scholars of the ‘Syriac world’,  despite the unfortunate scarcity of field investigation in the region. In conclusion, I hope to demonstrate how new approaches can enrich the discourse within Syriac studies, while raising awareness of the urgency for comprehensive researches on Ṭūr ‘Abdīn's history and landscape development, given its location—both now and then—along a tense geopolitical fault line. 

Among the legal canons produced by Isho‘ bar Nun (d. 828), there are several slave laws, which have never been studied in their own right. These slave laws range from slave-born children being legally permitted to inherit from their father’s estate to the strict prohibition on Christian slaveowners being allowed to sell a slave to a non-Christian. This paper will briefly examine these slave laws and highlight their distinctive aspects in the context of Abbasid Iraq.

Short Bibliography:

Breydy, Michel. “La IIIe apologie de Duwayhī et la tradition des canons de Timothée Ier, d’Īšo‘barnūn et autres,” Pages 241-250 in Actes du premier Congrès international d’études arabes chrétiennes (Goslar, septembre 1980). Edited by Samir Khalil Samir (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 218; Roma: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1982).

Fiey, Jean-Maurice. Chrétiens syriaques sous les Abbassides surtout à Bagdad (749–1258). CSCO 420, Subs. 59. Louvain:Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1980.

Sachau, Eduard. Syrische Rechtsbücher, vol. 2. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1908.

Sauget, Joseph-Marie. “Décisions canoniques du patriarche Išo‘barnûn encore inédites,” Apollinaris 35 (1962): 259-265.

Tillier, Mathieu. L’invention du cadi: la justice des musulmans, des Juifs et des chrétiens aux premiers siècles de l’Islam (Bibliothèque historique des pays d’Islam 10; Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2017).

Tillier, Mathieu. “The Evolution of Judicial Procedures in East-Syrian Canon Law after the Islamic Conquests: The Judicial Oath,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 70:3-4 (2018): 227-240.

Weitz, Lev E. “Shaping East Syrian Law in ‘Abbāsid Iraq: The Law Books of Patriarchs Timothy I and Išō‘ Bar Nūn,” Le Muséon 129:1-2 (2016): 71-116.

When Jessie Payne Smith died in 1933, aged 77, she was described by Alphonse Mingana as “the last volume of a living encyclopaedia”. Famous as a Syriac lexicographer – completing her father’s great Thesaurus Syriacus and writing a Supplement and the Compendious Syriac Dictionary – it is less well known that she was an active supporter of the Assyrians of the Church of the East, and visited their homelands in 1901. Entirely overlooked is the fact that in 1904 she was a founding member of the Oxford Women’s Suffrage Society which she chaired from 1904-1913, and on whose executive committee she remained until 1918 when women over 30 were enfranchised in the UK (suffrage for women over 21 coming in 1928). Since she held no academic post – an impossibility for women in her day – documentation for her career is limited, but this paper will seek to reintegrate some of these different strands of the fascinating life of one of Britain’s greatest ever Syriac scholars.    

  In 1904 Francis Crawford Burkitt stated that the Acts of Thomas “is a work written originally in Syriac, as I hope is now generally recognised”. Burkitt had presented what he regarded as definitive arguments for the priority of the Syriac in a JTS article four years earlier, focusing on a series of nine individual points where the Greek text is said to mistranslate the Syriac and so discloses its own secondary status. What Burkitt “hopes” is that his own article will be widely noted and that its conclusion will be accepted, thus giving the Acts of Thomas its own distinctive profile and generating discussion of its role within a specifically Syriac literary and ideological context. The present paper is concerned with the paradoxical legacy of Burkitt’s argument in more recent scholarship. On the one hand, it has indeed been “generally recognised” that the Acts of Thomas was originally composed in Syriac. On the other hand, Burkitt would have been disappointed to read that, in spite of Syriac priority, “it is now generally agreed that... the existing Syriac texts are later catholicized versions and that the existing Greek texts, albeit translations of the Syriac, have in general preserved the primitive form of the original Acts” (J. K. Elliott). As a result, it is the Greek text that underlies standard translations while the Syriac remains marginal. Contrary to this consensus and in support of Burkitt, I argue that the Greek Acts of Thomas shows a consistent tendency to paraphrase the Syriac. This claim will be substantiated by comparative analysis of selected passages. The paper will conclude with reflections on the likely significance of this piece of apostolic literature in an early Syriac environment – before it was reduced to “apocryphal” status.

The collection of Syriac manuscripts in the British Library (formerly in the British Museum) which came from the library of Dayr al-Syrian in Egypt between 1838 and 1864 is generally recognized as the ‘crown jewel’ among contemporary Syriac collections. Early scholars who worked on these manuscripts had to do so unaided, but since the publication by William Wright in 1870-1872 of the Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since 1838, access to the collection has been aided by this magnificent catalogue. Its production, involving the organization of a great mass of disorganized leaves and the identification of the treatises in them, was a huge achievement, begun by Cureton but largely the work of Wright. Wright’s other publications in Syriac included A Short History of Syriac Literature, which naturally made much use of what he had learned from this work on the Museum’s manuscripts. It also contained, however, a quite negative judgement on the quality of Syriac literature, an assessment which he explicitly shared with Renan, citing the latter’s De philosophia peripatetica apud Syros at the outset of his own work. The publication of much of Wright’s correspondence (Bernhard Maier, Semitic Studies in Victorian Britain, 2011) should enable us to determine whether he shared the wider Orientalist views of Renan, and to consider whether or to what extent Wright’s assessment of Syriac literature falls within that Orientalist approach to non-Indo-European literature propounded by Renan and sharply criticized by Edward Said in his celebrated book of that name (Orientalism).

Theodore bar Koni’s Scholion was written in southern Iraq in c.790, in a region of great religious diversity and in the shadow of the ruins of many ancient cultures. Former scholarship has seen Theodore’s exegesis as a response to Muslim rule or investigated his testimony to the history of Mandeans and Manichees. This paper investigates his response to astrological ideas and dualism, as indications of how widespread ideas of popular religion or natural science were policed in a Christian context, and his treatment of the prophet Zoroaster, who was variously identified with minor characters from the Old Testament, such as Baruch, Baalam and Nimrod.

The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the emergence of civil legislation among Syriac-speaking Christian communities during the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. While attempting to establish episcopal authority, forge inter-communal boundaries, and exert control over communal resources, the substantive civil law of the Church of the East engaged with, repudiated, and drew from Sasanian legal norms, such as levirate marriage and inheritance law. Similar legal entanglements, however, can be observed in the also nascent but greatly overlooked corpus of procedural legislation.

In such a framework, this presentation explores Book 4 of Ishoʿbokht’s Corpus Iuris as a case study for Sasanian influences in Syriac ecclesiastical procedural law. Akin to the Book of a Thousand Judgements, a late Sasanian legal compilation, the bishop of Rev-Ardashir underscored the importance of documentation in the articulation of legal claims as well as utilized the traditional Sasanian dichotomy between trustworthy official and doubtful private seals as the basis for his adjudicating principles among competing claimants. Extensive corpora of Zoroastrian and Christian seals from the 6th to 8th centuries facilitated and further substantiate these shared legal norms. Similarly, contradicting longstanding Christian condemnations against swearing, Ishoʿbokht incorporated Sasanian practices of oath-taking as admissible forensic evidence and regulated the right of giving an oath as legal advantage. Turning from procedural law to legal culture, the paper concludes with a contextualization of Ishoʿbokht’s Sasanian legal entanglements as a marker of social and legal differentiation for his Christian community within the new Islamic empire. Far from an autonomous system built solely on Christian Scriptures and synodical cannons, Syriac cannon law thus emerges as a structurally pluralistic system engaging with and absorbing Sasanian law.

Selective bibliography:

Jamali, N. 2017. “The Book VI of Īšō‘-bokht’s Corpus Juris and the Emergence of Procedural Laws in the Church of the East.” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 17(1):37-48.

Jany, J. 2010. “Private Litigation in Sasanian Law.” Iranica Antiqua 45:395-418.

Macuch, M. 1993. Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis zu Beginn des siebenten Jahrhunderts in Iran: Die Rechtssammlung des Farrohmard I Wahraman. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

—. 1997. "The Use of Seals in Sasanian Jurisprudence. " In Sceaux d’orient et leur employ, edited by Rika Gyselen, 79-87. Paris.

Payne, R. 2015. “East Syrian Bishops, Elite Households, and Iranian Law after the Muslim Conquest.” Iranian Studies 48 (1): 5–32.

—. 2015. A state of mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian political culture in late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sachau, E. 1914. Syrische Rechtsbücher. Volume 3. Berlin: Georg Reimer 

Simonsohn, U. 2011. A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Weitz, L.E. 2018. Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.