This volume is the first in a series of English translations of the Syriac Peshitta along with the Syriac text carried out by an international team of scholars. Greenberg and Walter have translated the Peshitta of Isaiah, while Kiraz and Bali have prepared the Syriac text in the west Syriac script fully vocalized and pointed. The translation and the Syriac text are presented on facing pages so that both can be studied together. All readers are catered for: those wanting to read the Syriac text of Isaiah in English, those wanting to improve their grasp of Syriac by reading the original language along with a translation with its extensive annotations, and those wanting to focus on a fully vocalized Syriac text.

The Peshitta, a translation from the Hebrew, was probably written in Edessa in Mesopotamia in the second century CE. Greenberg and Walter furnish an Introduction giving background information about the Syriac text, and explain and illustrate their translation technique. Addenda are included in the Introduction, giving examples of mistranslation from the original Hebrew into Syriac, examples of apparent corruption of the Syriac text having occurred prior to our extant manuscripts, and a discussion of many passages which are particularly difficult.

Appendices are provided: the first compares the versification of the Syriac text used here, printed in Mosul by the Dominicans in the nineteenth century, with that of manuscript 7a1 as edited and used as the basic text of the Leiden Peshitta edition of Isaiah. A second compares the variants of Mosul with Leiden and indicates when its variants lack any support from ancient manuscripts. A third gives an overview of the rendering of Hebrew names into Syriac.