The Laughable Stories

Dialogue poetry is a genre that began in ancient Sumer and continues in rich fashion in the Syriac tradition. Sebastian Brock has selected an edition of twenty six dialogue poems: between the Church and Zion; Abraham and Isaac; Joseph and Benjamin; the body and the soul; Joseph and Mary; the thief and the cherub; Mary and the Magi; the church and the believers; the angel and Mary; among the months of the year; between the angel and Zachariah; death and Satan; Jesus and the faithful; the two thieves; Jesus and John; the sinful woman and Satan; Abel and Cain; and wheat and gold.

What was Joseph’s reaction when he arrived home to find Mary pregnant? How did Mary manage to persuade him that her child was none other than the Son of God? The Syriac literary tradition had a unique way of answering these sorts of questions raised by the Bible. Dialogue poems (sughyotho) offer lively, thought-provoking, and often delightful re-imaginings of Biblical events. They expand the Biblical stories, giving the familiar characters more dialogue and describing their inner thoughts. The collection provides five dialogue poems featuring Mary, in Syriac original with facing English translation.

Gregory Bar Hebraeus, most well known for his historical works, also produced a grammar of the Syriac language. The present volume presents his grammar typed in Serto font and accompanied by Latin chapter headings.

This volume is part of a series of English translations of the Syriac Peshiṭta along with the Syriac text carried out by an international team of scholars. Greenberg and Walter have produced an annotated translation of the Peshiṭta version of The Twelve Minor Prophets, while Kiraz and Bali have edited the Peshiṭta text. The English translation and the Syriac text are shown on facing pages so that both can be studied together.