Part of Alphonse Mingana’s Woodbrooke Studies: Christian Documents in Syriac, Arabic, and Garshuni, edited and translated with a critical apparatus, of which the present book is volume 2, The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi is accompanied in this volume by The Lament of the Virgin and The Martyrdom of Pilate. These three texts demonstrate the variety found in Mingana’s extraordinary collection. The namesake of the volume, Timothy’s apology for Christianity, is an eighth-century manuscript and one of the earliest documents concerning Christianity’s relationship with Islam. In it the “Nestorian” Patriarch Timothy I (780-823) presents his case for his faith to the third Abbasid Caliph Mahdi. The other two documents share a common Egyptian origin and Garshuni epigraphy. Neither The Lament of the Virgin nor The Martyrdom of Pilate claim a great antiquity and both works are pseudepigraphical. Mary’s lament, in the former work, is her sadness at the empty tomb, a piece in which she is conflated with Mary Magdalene. The latter piece presents Pontius Pilate as a saint and lays out his spiritual accomplishments that are crowned by his martyrdom. The texts are presented in their original languages as well as in English.

Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937) was an educator at the Chaldean Seminary in Iraq. He was also a priest in the Assyrian tradition and a collector of ancient manuscripts. He is renowned for his Mingana Collection, a set of nearly 3000 early Syrian and Arabic documents which he acquired and preserved. His rare volume of the writings of Narsai is also available from Gorgias Press. Mingana eventually immigrated to England, where he spent 17 years in Manchester to continue his work on Oriental Studies.