Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies

An English translation of the second edition of Peter Kawerau's Die Jakobitische Kirche im Zeitalter der syrischen Renaissance (1960).

A new English translation of the two apologetic works by the 9th-century East Syrian theologian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī. The Book of the Proof and The Book of Questions and Answers were written to defend Christian beliefs in the face of Muslim criticism.

ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī (d.c. 850) was the first Christian to write a systematic theology in Arabic, the language of the Muslim rulers of ʿAmmār’s Middle East. This study of his two works that were only discovered in the 1970’s seeks to analyse the way he defends Christian beliefs from criticism by Muslims over the authenticity of the Gospels, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, the death of Christ by crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ, and the nature of the afterlife. ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī wrote his theology in dialogue with Muslim thinkers of his time and his work offers guidance to Christians in today’s world who live in Islamic contexts in how to relate Christian convictions to a Muslim audience.

In the present work, De Syrorum Orientalium Erroribus, Auctore P. Francisco Ros S.I.: A Latin-Syriac Treatise from Early Modern Malabar (1586), Antony Mecherry S.J. brings to the fore a recently identified sixteenth-century treatise on ‘Nestorianism’ written by Francisco Ros S.J. (1559–1624), a Catalonian from the Jesuit province of Aragón, who successfully promoted the mission praxis of accommodatio primarily among the Saint Thomas Christians of early modern Malabar in South India. This newly discovered first treatise composed by Ros, a Latin missionary, represents the initial phase of his mission as a polemicist in the making, who read the Syriac sources of the Church of the East found in Malabar, through a Catholic theological lens. In addition to exploring the underlying conflicts emerged out of an unprecedented encounter of apparently unlike theological and liturgical identities in the same mission field of early modern India, this book provides the readers with a historiographical critique against the backdrop of which the author presents his analysis of the Rosian treatise.

This book collects systematically all the personal names found in Old Syriac sources in such a way as to enable them to be dealt with from a structural and lexical point of view and compared with other corpora of Aramaic personal names as well as Hebrew and Arabic names. As far as possible, the personal names of the new finds of unpublished inscriptions discovered recently are included. Thus, this study covers all the personal names which are found in the Syriac corpus so far. The book fills a significant gap in scholarship, since there are dedicated works on Palmyrene, Hatran and Nabataean personal names, but no such work exists for early Syriac (i.e. pre-Christian Syriac) personal names.

This volume presents and analyzes information on the pre-Islamic and early Islamic historical geography and toponyms of the Beth Qaṭraye region as well as newly discovered vocabulary from a language referred to as Qaṭrāyīth (“in Qatari”) used by its inhabitants.

The theotokias are prayers dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos). In the early fourteenth century, the Patriarch of the Coptic Church, Ibn Qiddis, composed and paraphrased – in Coptic – the Theotokias. His work has only survived in a single manuscript. This book introduces the author, John Ibn Qiddis, his liturgical, pastoral, and literary activities, and the Coptic language of his time, followed by the texts and an English translation.

Moshe Bar Kepha was a prolific writer of the ninth century. His writings reflect various aspects of West Syriac theology and ecclesiology, and his literary legacy links the earlier Syriac exegetical tradition (beginning with Ephrem) with the Syriac 'Renaissance' of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. His use of sources crosses Christian confessional boundaries in such a way that his works are tinged with aspects of Syriac exegesis from both East and West Syriac traditions. In his Commentary on Luke, the Muslim-dominated context in which Moshe lived is clearly evident in the background, and his aim is to fortify the credibility of the Christian faith and the validity of Christian doctrines for his readers.

This monograph traces how ‘Jewish’ elements were introduced into and disseminated throughout the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥədo Church through a series of multi-layered, socio-politico-cultural processes. Drawing on historical and literary evidence, Afework tracks the incorporation of Jewish features into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from pre-Aksumite Christianity, before the fourth century, through the sixteenth century.

This book examines the function and development of the cult of saints in Coptic Egypt, focusing primarily on the material provided by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more specifically, the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic.

The year 652 marked a fundamental political change in the Middle East and the surrounding region. An important and contemporary source of the state of the Christian Church at this time is to be found in the correspondence of the patriarch of the Church of the East, Išū‘yahb III (649–659), which he wrote between 628 and 658. This books discusses Išū‘yahb’s view of and attitudes toward the Muslim Arabs.

This book is a classic in the history of the Oriental Churches, which are sometimes portrayed as heretical in general church history books, if mentioned at all. Written by a Copt, it portrays the history of the faith of these non-Chalcedonian Churches with first-hand knowledge of their traditions. The author covers Alexandrine Christianity (the Copts and the Ethiopians), the Church of Antioch (Syriac Orthodox), the “Nestorian” Church of the East, the Armenian Church, the St. Thomas Christians of South India, the Maronite Church, as well as the Vanished Churches of Carthage, Pentapolis, and Nubia.

This volume presents the work of contemporary Orthodox thinkers who attempt to integrate the theological and the mystical. Exciting and provocative chapters treat a wide variety of mysticism, including early Church accounts, patristics (including the seemingly ever-popular subject of deification), liturgy, iconography, spiritual practice, and contemporary efforts to find mystical sense in cyber-technologies and post-humanism.

A long-awaited and essential tool for the study of one of the earliest texts of the Christian Apocrypha and an important text in Syriac literature, theology, and history.

A study of a homily in praise of Saint Thomas, written in Syriac by a Catholic missionary. The homily, which is preserved in two manuscripts, is an important witness to the interaction between the Indian Syrian Christians and the Western Catholic missionaries.

Drawing on the expertise of scholars from a variety of backgrounds, this anthology specifically seeks to shed light on this genocide from a multidisciplinary perspective and serve as a step for developing the future scholarship about the Sayfo.

One of the most popular monastic authors with a nearly universal spread over time is Isaac of Nineveh, a mystic of the late 7th century, who belonged to the East Syriac Church. This book is dedicated to the doctrine of knowledge, as described in Isaac of Nineveh’s discourses, in its double dimension, worldly/philosophical and theological (the former considered to be more discursive/intellectual and the latter intuitive/ experiential) and the rapport established between these two, prolonged in the concept of vision, as the highest form of spiritual experience.

An exploration of the ways in which crosses reflect and shape ideas and practices in Ethiopian culture: from religious values and rituals to magic and apocalyptic beliefs, and from individual identities to socio-political structures and power relations.

Is monastic profession in the West-Syriac tradition a “second baptism”? A relationship clearly exists between the two rites of initiation in the West-Syriac tradition: the monastic profession and baptism. Aydin examines these two rites of initiation, comparing their external structures, common imagery and theological themes, and reveals that the monastic rite closely parallels, or even is modeled upon, that of baptism. Mor Polycarpus Edip Aydin explores the idea of monastic profession as a “second baptism,” or rather, the realization of what the gift of the Spirit at baptism really implies. An extensive Appendix contains Syriac texts with English translations pertaining to the Syriac rite of monastic profession, with relevant commentaries by Syriac Fathers from the 6th to the 10th centuries.

A long-awaited and essential tool for the study of one of the earliest texts of the Christian Apocrypha and an important text in Syriac literature, theology, and history.

The book addresses the history of Syrian Orthodoxy during a critical juncture of its history that spans the late Ottoman period and treads well beyond to witness remarkable revival, indeed renaissance. The work uniquely utilizes over 6000 uncatalogued and unpublished archival documents that were made available for it.

Cyrillona (fl. 396) was a younger contemporary of Ephrem the Syrian whose work has been celebrated as comparable in both beauty and its significance for our understanding of early Syriac Christianity. This study reassesses conventional claims about the author’s identity, date, and the constitution of his corpus. It introduces each of Cyrillona’s five surviving poems and examines their poetic form and genre, structure and rhetorical features, and critical questions of text, interpretation, and theology.

This volume offers an array of theological and sociological studies on Family, Love, and Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. As new ways of understanding these institutions and concepts emerge in a modern society, this compilation sponsored by the Sophia Institute of Eastern Orthodox Studies incorporates a revisiting of biblical and Patristic understandings as they are received in the wider Orthodox Christian perspective.

The Syriac writers of Qatar have not received the scholarly attention that they deserve in the last half century. This anthology seeks to redress such an underdevelopment by providing new material in English translation with accompanying Syriac and Garshuni editions to encourage further research in the sub-field of Beth Qatraye studies. It includes the work of some of the most prominent scholars in this field.

A detailed study of a cycle of fourth-century liturgical poems, in Syriac, dedicated to a great pioneer of the Syriac ascetical tradition. Hayes analyzes its various portraits of the saint, shaded differently by Ephrem and his later imitators.