The Armenian Church Synaxarion is a collection of saints’ lives according to the day of the year on which each saint is celebrated. Part of the great and varied Armenian liturgical tradition from the turn of the first millennium, the first Armenian Church Synaxarion represented the logical culmination of a long and steady development of what is today called the cult of the saints. This volume, the first Armenian-English edition, is the eleventh of a twelve-volume series—one for each month of the year—and is ideal for personal devotional use or as a valuable resource for anyone interested in saints.

Higher critical studies of the last century have raised important questions regarding the unity of Numbers 22–24. Balaam’s multifaceted profession, for example, is often considered a marker for blended traditions. This study proposes that the solutions to such issues lie in the comparative materials. Utilizing primary sources and recent studies, it highlights conventions of supernatural revelation that were common throughout the ancient Near East. Those conventions of prophecy and divination—of both practice and reporting—are then compared with the details of the Balaam Cycle, resulting in a cohesive reading of the story.

The person of Christ enjoys an indisputably special place in Islamic tradition. Khalid Sindawi’s Christ in Twelver Shiite Thought and Tradition is a fresh investigation into the nature of Christ in Muslim thought with special attention to Twelver Shiism, which is often left out of the conversation despite its unique integration of Christ into Islam beyond the Qur’anic traditions. Sindawi’s comparison of the Shiite Christ and Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī demonstrates that the Shiite Christ has played a definitive role in shaping Shiites’ perception of the character of Ḥusayn, who acquired a greater degree of sanctity thanks to the sacred qualities he shares with the Shiite Christ. The Christ we encounter in Shiite narratives differs from the Christ revealed in the narratives of non-Shiite Muslims and, therefore, there is more than one “Muslim Christ.”

An Amerind Etymological Dictionary is a revision, extension, and refinement of the lexical and grammatical evidence for the Amerind linguistic family that was initially offered in Greenberg (1987). The evidence is presented in terms of 909 etymologies arranged alphabetically according to the English gloss. Each etymology begins with the English gloss followed by a hypothetical phonetic form from which the individual Amerind forms are presumed to have derived. Within the body of each etymology, the evidence is arrayed in terms of the thirteen branches of Amerind. The complete classification of all Amerind languages considered is given in the back of the book.

The Journal of Language Relationship is an international periodical publication devoted to the issues of comparative linguistics and the history of the human language. The Journal contains articles written in English and Russian, as well as scientific reviews, discussions and reports from international linguistic conferences and seminars.