布洛克《叙利亚传统研究导论》（中英文对照版）第二部分

V. TOOLS

In any academic discipline it essential to discover what are the main tools of the trade. Likewise it is important to learn how to find one’s way around the secondary literature, and to distinguish which are likely to be the best reference books, and what are the most reliable sources of information on specific topics. Here some guidance is offered in a selection of important areas.9

A. GRAMMARS

These are best divided into two categories, elementary and reference grammars:

Elementary Grammars

There are now a number of helpful beginner’s grammars in English, all provided with exercises and glossaries. J. F. Coakley’s revision of Robinson’s Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar (Oxford, 2002) has introduced many improvements into this long-lived and useful work. Other such works include J. F. Healey’s Leshono Suryoyo. First Studies in Syriac (1980; revised edition with accompanying CD, Piscataway NJ, 2005), T. Muraoka’s Classical Syriac for Hebraists (Wiesbaden, 1987), and W. M. Thackston’s An Introduction to Syriac (Bethesda, 1999). While most elementary grammars use Serto script, that by Thackston employs Estrangelo, and the vocalization is provided by means of transcriptions. A recent very helpful introduction is provided by George Kiraz in his The New Syriac Primer (Second Edition, with downloadable material; Piscataway NJ, 2013). Another very handy reference tool is his Verbal Paradigms in Syriac (2010). Since different elementary grammars set out the material in differing ways, it can be helpful to make use of several different elementary grammars at the same time.

9 Specifically aimed at Byzantinists, a summary guide to Syriac Studies is to be found in my “Syriac Sources and Resources for Byzantinists”, in E.Jeffreys (ed.), Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London 2006, I, Plenary Papers (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 193–210.

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Comparable beginner’s grammars in other languages include: for German, A. Ungnad, Syrische Grammatik (2nd ed., Munich, 1932; repr. Hildesheim, 1992) is particularly well set out and has an interesting selection of texts (with a glossary); for French, there is Frey’s Petite grammaire syriaque (Fribourg, 1984), which uses (vocalized) Estrangelo; and two recent grammars serve for Italian and Spanish readers: M. Pazzini, Grammatica siriaca (Jerusalem, 1999), and J. Ferrer i Costa and M. A. Nogueras, Manual de gramática siríaca (Barcelona, 1999). Even more recently a beginner’s grammar in Armenian by A. Akopian (Erevan, 2003), and one in Polish (by

A. Tronina and M. Szmajdzinski, 2003), have appeared, a gratifying indication of the ever widening appeal that Syriac studies are acquiring!

It is often helpful to start on reading simple vocalized texts at an early stage: for such purposes the grammatical analysis of the Peshitta Gospels in old tools like H. F. Whish’s Clavis Syriaca (London, 1883) will be especially helpful to those learning the language on their own. Much shorter, but similarly conceived, and with a brief introductory grammatical sketch, are the Syriac Reading Lessons, by “The Author of The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon etc.,” in other words B. Davidson (London, 1851).

Mention should also be made of some elementary books designed for teaching Syriac to schoolchildren (as opposed to older students). G. Kiraz’s The Syriac Primer (Sheffield, 1988) has the benefit of an accompanying tape; his more recent The Syriac Alphabet for Children (Piscataway NJ, 2004) is aimed at teaching the basic shapes of the letters to young children. One from the Middle East that makes use of English as well as Arabic explanations is Asmar El-Khoury’s Companion (Beirut, 1972).

Reference Grammars

Of intermediary sized grammars there are German ones by E. Nestle (with an English translation, Berlin, 1889) and by C. Brockelmann (Leipzig, 1899 and many subsequent editions); the latter in particular is very handy. Both these works also contain a selection of texts and a glossary. Of comparable size and coverage in French (but without any texts) is L. Costaz’ Grammaire syriaque (Beirut, 2nd ed. 1964), where there is a useful typographical distinction between material meant for the less advanced and that reserved for the more experienced student.

The standard reference grammars are those by R. Duval, Grammaire syriaque (Paris, 1881) and (above all) T. Nöldeke, Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik (Leipzig, 2nd ed. 1898); the German reprint of 1966 contains some supplements and an index of passages quoted, and these are included in the reissue of the English translation by J. A. Crichton, Compendious Syriac

Grammar (Winona Lake, 2001; the supplementary notes being translated by P. T. Daniels), whose original edition was published in 1904. Although both these works pay generous attention to syntax, there is actually a great need for a specifically diachronic study of Syriac syntax. A much more recent reference grammar is by T. Muraoka, Classical Syriac. A Basic Grammar with a Chrestomathy (2nd ed., Wiesbaden, 2005); this also contains a select bibliography on Syriac studies arranged under different topics. A great deal of information, often difficult to discover elsewhere, can be found in George Kiraz’s Turraṣ Mamlla. A Grammar of the Syriac Language. Vol. 1, Orthography (Piscataway NJ, 2012).

Of the older reference grammars, that by A. Merx, Grammatica Syriaca (Halle, 1867), in Latin, might be singled out. An intriguing glimpse into the earliest European grammars, produced during the Renaissance, is provided by the facsimiles in W. Strothmann’s Die Anfänge der syrische Studien in Europa (Göttingen, 1971).10

It should not be forgotten that there are numerous grammars by native Syriac scholars, going back to Jacob of Edessa in the seventh century. The thirteenth-century polymath, Barhebraeus, even wrote a short verse grammar, as well as a much more detailed one in prose. Of the more recent grammars published in the Middle East mention should be made of the Arabic one by C. J. David (Mosul, 1879; 2nd ed. 1896), the learned Syrian Catholic metropolitan of Damascus and editor of the Mosul edition of the Peshitta (1887–91), and of the French Clef de la langue araméenne (Mosul, 1905) by Alphonse Mingana, later of Birmingham fame.

It may come as a surprise that there are several modern grammars produced in India. These are the work of scholars from the various Syriac Churches in Kerala. The most extensive grammar is that by T. Arayathinal, Aramaic Grammar (2 vols; Mannanam, 1957, 1959), running to over 1000 pages! This is in East Syriac script, and it includes extensive exercises (both Syriac-English and English-Syriac; a key to them is provided at the end). Ample illustrative examples are provided, and a particularly helpful feature is the separate listing, in the table of contents, of the places in the course of the grammar where questions of syntax are discussed. In the preface the author (from the Syro-Malabar Church) tells how he had, throughout his work, continually received encouragement, “though behind the curtain,” from Mar Ivanios, the Archbishop of Trivandrum who had been the prime

10 A summary overview of the history of Syriac scholarship in Europe will be found in Section J, below.

mover in the creation (in 1930) of the Eastern Rite Catholic Syro-Malankara Church (which uses the West Syriac liturgical tradition).

Although Ariyathinal’s grammar contains exercises, its length made it less suitable as a teaching grammar, and in Kerala this gap was filled by Gabriel of St. Joseph’s Syro-Chaldaic (Aramaic) Grammar (7th ed., revised by Emmanuel [Thelly]; Mannanam, 1984). A useful feature of both these grammars is the provision of the Syriac grammatical terminology, alongside the English.

B. ANTHOLOGIES OF TEXTS (CHRESTOMATHIES)

The chrestomathy at the end of Brockelmann’s Syrische Grammatik offers a particularly good selection of texts (there is a slight difference in choice of texts between the earlier and later editions), with samples in all three scripts, both vocalized and unvocalized. One of the pieces included is part of the Teaching of Addai, the Syriac account of the legend concerning king Abgar’s correspondence with Jesus. Brockelmann’s work contains a useful glossary, of which an English edition, with added etymological notes, has been published separately by M. Goshen Gottstein under the title A Syriac Glossary (Wiesbaden, 1970).

A new chrestomathy, with a wide variety of texts, together with brief introductions and with annotation is provided by M. Zammit, ‛Enbe men Karmo Suryoyo (Bunches of Grapes from the Syriac Vineyard)—A Syriac Chrestomathy (Piscataway NJ, 2006). Another recent selection of extracts is to be found in the Grammar by Akopian, mentioned above. Two other collections, from the middle of the last century, also deserve mention. R. Köbert’s Textus et Paradigmata Syriaca (Rome, 1952) contains some twenty pages of paradigms followed by an interesting selection of texts, both biblical and non-biblical, in a handwritten Serto. A glossary to this is provided in his Vocabularium Syriacum (Rome, 1956), to which there is a supplement in Orientalia 39 (1970), pp. 315–19. A good variety of texts, in vocalized Serto script, is to be found in L. Costaz and P. Mouterde’s Anthologie syriaque (Beirut, 1955). There are brief introductory notes on the authors represented.

Most of the older grammars contain chrestomathies at the end, and sometimes these will include texts not published elsewhere (e.g., the Syriac version of the Lives of the Prophets will be found in E. Nestle’s grammar). There are also several nineteenth-century chrestomathies without grammars attached, and again many of these contain unpublished texts; of these the most important are by A. Rödiger (Halle/Leipzig, 3rd ed. 1892) and P. Zingerle (Rome, 1871–73).

From the Middle East there is a good graded series of reading books (Serto) published in Qamishli (in eastern Syria; a modern town facing ancient Nisibis, now Nuseybin across the border in Turkey): A. N. Karabash, Herge d-qeryana, “Reading Exercises,” in eight volumes (vol. 8, 1972). These contain several texts by contemporary Syriac authors.

Two older anthologies printed in the Middle East are of importance since they include some texts not yet printed elsewhere. These are the Kthabuna d-parthuthe, or “Little book of scraps,” published by the Archbishop of Canterbury ’s mission at Urmia in 1898, and J. E. Manna’s Morceaux choisis de littérature araméenne (2 volumes; Mosul, 1901; reprinted Baghdad, 1977). Both of these employ the East Syriac script.

C. DICTIONARIES

Besides the glossaries attached to the various grammars and chrestomathies already mentioned, the beginner will also find W. Jenning’s A Lexicon to the Syriac New Testament (Oxford, 1926) particularly useful, seeing that one of the most readily available vocalized Syriac texts is the British and Foreign Bible Society’s edition of the Peshitta New Testament (now reprinted by the United Bible Societies). There are two further lexical aids for the Peshitta New Testament: T. Falla’s, A Key to the Peshitta Gospels I–II (Leiden, 1991, 2000), and G. Kiraz’s Lexical Tools to the Syriac New Testament (JSOT Manuals 7; Sheffield, 1994). The former, which has so far only reached the letter yodh, is especially helpful for those with an interest in comparing the Syriac with the Greek original. The prime feature of Kiraz’s Lexical Tools lies in the word frequency lists, ranging from the most frequent (1085–4234 times) down to those occurring just 10–11 times. Obviously students are well advised to concentrate on the high flyers when learning vocabulary. Other features are: a list of homographs occurring in the Peshitta New Testament, convenient reference tables with paradigms of verbs, English and Syriac indexes (each keyed to the word frequency list), and a skeleton Syriac grammar, indicating the main structures, and providing a reverse index of all the suffixes.

For those who read Italian, M. Pazzini’s Lessico concordanziale de Nuovo Testamento Siriaco (Jerusalem, 2004) will be found very helpful.

Of the dictionaries proper the three most easy to handle are Jessie Payne Smith (Mrs. Margoliouth), Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903 and many reprints), arranged alphabetically and very good for idioms; L. Costaz, Dictionnaire syriaque-français (Beirut, 1963; repr. 1994), arranged by root, and including English and Arabic equivalents as well as French; and the Gorgias Concise Syriac-English, English-Syriac Dictionary, compiled by S.P.

Brock and G.A. Kiraz (Piscataway NJ, 2015), arranged alphabetically and based for the most part on the Compendious Syriac Dictionary. Any one of these should prove adequate for most practical purposes, but none of them gives any references to sources. If one is interested in attestation and sources, then one must consult the two monuments of Syriac lexicography, (Jessie’s father) R. Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus, and C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum (Berlin, 1895; much expanded second edition, 1928).

Brockelmann’s Lexicon is a much more convenient size to handle, and it is in a single volume. Arrangement is by root and the language employed is Latin (at the end there is a useful reverse Latin-Syriac index; the second edition simply gives the page reference for the Syriac equivalent, but the first edition more conveniently provides the Syriac word itself). Lists of references, especially for rarer words, are very helpful, but quotations are never given, for reasons of space. A considerably adapted English translation and revision of Brockelmann’s Lexicon by M. Sokoloff, the compiler of two invaluable dictionaries of Jewish Aramaic (Palestinian and Babylonian), is now available under the title A Syriac Lexicon. A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum (Winona Lake/Piscataway NJ, 2009). This new edition has reordered the entries so that they are strictly alphabetical, and no longer arranged by root; it has also updated (and corrected) many of the references, above all where better editions are now available (especially important for Ephrem); the etymological notes are also considerably improved. Especially for English-speaking students of Syriac, this transformation of Brockelmann’s Lexicon is an invaluable resource, in particular on those occasions when one needs to consult further that the three shorter dictionaries.

Robert Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus in two folio volumes (Oxford, 1879, 1901) must be one of the most splendid of the many dictionaries which the Oxford University Press has put out: the beautiful headings and layout, with ample margins for annotation, are matched by the wealth of examples quoted. The work (which, like all dictionaries, draws on the fruits of many earlier dictionaries) employs Latin rather than English, and is arranged by root.

A Supplement to the Thesaurus of R. Payne Smith (Oxford, 1927) was compiled subsequently by his daughter Jessie, in order to include those texts which had been published for the first time only in the intervening years. Some further additions, mainly taken from medical texts, will be found in Orientalia 8 (1939), pp. 25–58.

Both Brockelmann and Payne Smith (father and daughter) made good use of the tenth-century Syriac lexicographers, Bar Bahlul (ed. R. Duval, 1888–91) and Bar ‘Ali (Part 1 ed. G. Hoffmann, 1874; part II by R. J. H. Gottheil, 1908). The advanced student will find that these two works are sometimes worth consulting in their own right.

Of the older European dictionaries, E. Castell’s Lexicon Heptaglotton (London, 1669 and reprints), based on Walton’s Polyglot, and C. Schaaf, Lexicon Syriacum Concordantiale (Leiden, 2nd ed. 1717) still have their uses. Schaaf covers only the New Testament, but effectively acts as a concordance to this.

There are also several Syriac dictionaries published in the Middle East; of these the following deserve particular mention since they sometimes include words absent from the European dictionaries: G. Cardahi, AlLobab, sive Dictionarium Syro-Arabicum (2 volumes; Beirut, 1887–91); T. Audo, Dictionnaire de la langue chaldéenne (Syriac-Syriac, in 2 volumes; Mosul, 1897; several recent reprints); and J. E. Manna, Vocabulaire chaldéen-arabe (Mosul, 1900), reprinted, ed. R. J. Bidawid, as Chaldean-Arabic Dictionary, with a new appendix, pp. 856–986 (Beirut, 1975). Of these, Audo’s Dictionnaire is particularly useful, and it served as the basis for the most recent large-scale dictionary, by the learned Indian Syriac scholar, E. Thelly, Syriac-EnglishMalayalam Lexicon (Kottayam, 1999). Very recently another impressive Syriac-Syriac dictionary has been published; this is the Key of Language: Syriac Dictionary/Qlido d-leshono. Leksiqon Suryoyo, by Yuyaqim d-Beth Yahqub (St Augin Monastery Press, 2016). The compiler is the refounder and abbot of the Monastery of St Augin in south-east Turkey, and his very detailed work is an astonishing achievement.

A large number of important Syriac texts have been published since almost all these dictionaries were compiled and, because these newly edited texts sometimes include words or formations not yet recorded in any of available dictionaries, there is certainly ample room for at least another supplement to the Thesaurus!

All the dictionaries mentioned so far confine themselves to premodern texts in Classical Syriac. Since Classical Syriac still functions actively as a literary language (variously known as ktobonoyo when spoken, and Modern Literary Syriac when written),11 and since the modern world

11 This is the term used by E. Wardini, “Neologisms in Modern Literary Syriac,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint Joseph 53:5 (1993/4), pp. 401–566, 54 (1995/6), pp. 167– 324. For the term ktobonoyo, see G.A. Kiraz, “Kthobonoyo Syriac: some observations and remarks”, Hugoye 10:2 (2007), pp. 129–142. For the general

requires the creation of many new usages and numerous neologisms, there is a great need for new dictionaries to cover these. Several beginnings have been made by different enthusiasts for the language, though none yet are Syriac-English. Of those serving other languages the following are substantial (it is impressive that three come from Iraq):

• Şabo Hanna and Aziz Bulut, Wörterbuch Deutsch-Aramäisch, Aramäisch-Deutsch (Heilbronn, 2000), which runs to over 900 pages. | • Odisho M. Giwargis Ashita, Hilqa deLeshana. Assyrian [Syriac]Arabic Dictionary (Baghdad, 1997); at the end (pp. 590–705) there is a useful Syriac-Arabic-English glossary of scientific, medical, and other technical terms). | • Younan Hozaya and Anderios Youkhana, Bahra. ArabicAssyrian Dictionary (Erbil, 1998).

Besides the English-Syriac section of the Gorgias Syriac-English, English-Syriac Dictionary, there is another for English-Syriac which also covers modern usage: Zeki Zitun, Bukhro. English to Syriac Dictionary (Australia, 2007)

The different names given to Syriac in these dictionaries reflect the arguments in the different communities of Syriac tradition over how they should describe themselves in a modern secular world. Although useful, none of these dictionaries could be described as a scientific work of lexicography (and none, of course, give any references). One day, no doubt a long way off in the future, it would be a fascinating and very worthwhile task to compile a dictionary to cover this material, based on a representative collection of texts.

One of the main problems facing those writing in Classical Syriac today is posed by the need to provide terms for everyday items of the modern world. This is topic of an interesting work entitled Tawldotho, or background, see my “Some observations on the use of Classical Syriac in the late twentieth century,” Journal of Semitic Studies 34 (1989), pp. 363–75.

Syriac Neologisms. Principles—Criteria & Examples (Aleppo, 1997), by Abrohom Nouro (1923–2009), one of the main proponents of the use of Classical Syriac as both a written and a spoken language.12

A complete list of all Syriac dictionaries ever published has been compiled by D.G.K. Taylor, An Annotated Bibliography of Printed Syriac Lexica (Piscataway NJ, forthcoming). A short introduction to the topic can by found in my “Syriac Lexicography: reflections on resources and sources,” Aramaic Studies 1 (2003), pp. 165–78 (also reprinted in A.D. Forbes and D.G.K. Taylor (eds.), Foundations for Syriac Lexicography (Piscataway NJ, 2005), pp. 195–208.).

D. THE BIBLE IN SYRIAC

New Testament

The beginner will find the British and Foreign Bible Society’s edition of the Peshitta New Testament (1920) extremely useful for reading practice: it is very clearly printed and is fully vocalized (Serto with West Syriac vowel signs). The text has been reprinted many times, and two forms are currently widely available: the United Bible Societies’ Syriac New Testament and Psalms, and in the New Testament section of their Syriac Bible (1988 and subsequent reprints; the first edition, of 1979, reprinted a different edition of the New Testament text, that by S. Lee).

This edition also has the advantage that it contains a reliable text, and for the Gospels it is based on the critical edition by Pusey and Gwynn (1901); the latter has a facing Latin translation and gives the variant readings (usually of a very minor character) from a number of early manuscripts). Since the original Syriac New Testament Canon did not contain 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, or Revelation, there is no Peshitta translation of these books available; as a result the Bible Society prints a later translation, probably belonging to the sixth century, for these particular books.

A good way to familiarize oneself with reading unvocalized texts is to read the edition of the Peshitta New Testament in Estrangelo script, published by The Way International under the title The Aramaic New Testament (New Knoxville, 1983) alongside one of the vocalized editions. Once familiar with Estrangelo script, a very instructive thing to do is to study the three different versions of the Syriac Gospels, the Old Syriac, the Peshitta, and the Harklean, which are very conveniently juxtaposed in

12 On this see E. E. Knudsen, “An important step in the revival of Literary Syriac: Abrohom Nuro’s Tawldotho,” Oriens Christianus 84 (2000), 59–65.

G. Kiraz’s Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshitta and Harklean Versions (4 vols, Leiden, 1996). After reading only a few verses it will become obvious how fashions in biblical translation have radically changed between the time of the Old Syriac (probably early third century) and the Harklean (early seventh century).

Kiraz derived his texts from the best available editions. In the case of the two Old Syriac manuscripts these were F. C. Burkitt, Evangelion daMepharreshe (Cambridge, 1904), for the Curetonian manuscript (with variations of the Sinaiticus at the bottom of the page in the apparatus; the smaller sized Estrangelo type in the notes is actually based on Burkitt’s own beautiful Syriac handwriting, itself based on the earliest dated Syriac literary manuscript, copied in Edessa in November 411); and A. S. Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels (London, 1910) for the Sinaiticus (also giving the variations in the Curetonianus). Since the Sinaiticus (not to be confused with the famous Greek manuscript known by the same name!) is a palimpsest, with the Old Syriac as the largely erased undertext, it is likely that eventually much more of its text will become legible, once new techniques for reading palimpsests have been satisfactorily developed. A forthcoming Synopsis of the Syriac Gospels, by D.G.K. Taylor, will make use, not only of new multispectral images of the undertext of Sinaitus Syrus, but also of what remains of the third Old Syriac Gospel manuscript which has recently come to light in St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai.

While Pusey and Gwynn’s edition was at hand for the Peshitta, Kiraz’s text of the Harklean was specially provided by A. Juckel, using one of the oldest available manuscripts, written less than a century after the revision had been undertaken. This was because the text of the Harklean in the old edition by J. White was taken from a much later and less satisfactory manuscript. White’s edition of the complete Harklean New Testament, published under the misleading title of Versio Syriaca Philoxeniana (2 vols, 1778, 1803) still remains the only edition for Acts (where the Harklean is an especially important witness), but for most other books it has now been replaced by the recent edition of the major Catholic Epistles and the Pauline Letters by B. Aland and A. Juckel (Das Neue Testament in Syrische Überlieferung, I, II.1–3; Berlin, 1986–2002). This splendid comparative edition provides not only the text of the Peshitta and the Harklean (based on the oldest manuscripts), but it also gives the text of quotations to be found in later Syriac writers.

An edition of the Peshitta New Testament, well provided with crossreferences and other notes, has also been produced by the Monastery of St

Gabriel in Tur ‘Abdin (south-east Turkey), entitled ‘the Peshitta of Mardin’

(2007).

A collection of Syriac quotations from, or probably from, the Diatessaron (Gospel harmony) was made by I. Ortiz de Urbina, Vetus Evangelium Syrorum; Diatessaron Tatiani, as volume VI of the Madrid Polyglot (1967); although this appeared after the first part of the Syriac manuscript with Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatessaron had been published by L. Leloir (1963), it now needs supplementing from the more recently published section of the manuscript (1990). Expert guidance on the many hazards and problems connected with the study of the Diatessaron is to be found in W. Petersen’s Tatian’s Diatessaron (Leiden, 1994).

There are several English translations of the Peshitta New Testament, or parts of it: by J. Murdock (1851), W. Norton (1890), and G. M. Lamsa (1933); none of these is satisfactory, and the only reliable English translations are that of the Old Syriac Gospels by F. C. Burkitt (in his edition of the Curetonian), and those published in the Gorgias Press’s bilingual series, Syriac-English, the Antioch Bible.

For a long time Schaaf’s New Testament lexicon (listed under Dictionaries, above) was the nearest thing to a concordance to the Syriac New Testament. Despite its title, The Concordance to the Peshitta Version of the Aramaic New Testament, published by The Way International (New Knoxville, 1985), this turns out to be a word list, giving references to the different main grammatical forms; though useful as such, it does not have the wonderful convenience of a concordance proper. Several beginnings had been made in the past on compiling such a concordance, but it was only when someone who combined expertise in both Syriac and computing took up the task that a real concordance to the Syriac New Testament finally appeared: this was G. Kiraz’s magnificent A Computer-Generated Concordance to the Syriac New Testament (Leiden, 1993), in six volumes (the last two consist of various useful appendices). The Syriac colophon at the end of the final volume will reveal (among other things) who won the Oxford versus Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames in 1992. A more compact form of this invaluable work is in preparation. The Old Syriac Gospels are now served by A Key-Word-in-Context Concordance, produced by J. Lund, in collaboration with G. Kiraz (3 vols, Piscataway NJ, 2004).

Old Testament: Peshitta

For the Peshitta Old Testament there is the convenient United Bible Societies’ edition of the whole Syriac Bible. This is in fact a reprint of the edition by S. Lee, published in 1823. Early in the twentieth century good

editions of the Pentateuch (Estrangelo) and Psalms (Serto, unvocalized) were published, and the latter (now vocalized) appears in the United Bible Societies’ edition of the Syriac New Testament and Psalms.

Currently a large-scale new edition of the Peshitta Old Testament, based on early manuscripts, is in the course of publication by the Peshitta Institute (Leiden/Amsterdam); so far the following volumes have appeared:

Sample edition: Song of Songs, Tobit, IV Ezra (1966)

III¹: Isaiah (1987) | IV²: Chronicles (1998)

Ezra (1972).

These are beautifully printed in Estrangelo script; the edition makes use of all known early manuscripts as well as of many later ones. As its basic text, the earliest complete Peshitta Old Testament manuscript, in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, is employed; as its designation (7a¹) indicates, it dates from the seventh century (the first number gives the century, the letter indicates the category—here, complete Old Testament—and the third the serial number within the category). Since all the editions of the Peshitta Old Testament published from seventeenth to the nineteenth century were based on late manuscripts, it is essential to use the Leiden edition if one is interested in the relationship of the Peshitta to the Hebrew original; since the current United Bible Societies’ edition reprints Lee’s nineteenth-century edition, this caveat also applies there as well).

There are also reliable editions of several individual books: Psalms (W. Barnes, 1904); Lamentations (B. Albrektson, 1963); Wisdom of Solomon (J. A. Emerton, 1959); Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus; N. CalduchBenages, J. Ferrer, and J. Liesen, 2003, with English and Spanish translations), and the Apocrypha (P. de Lagarde, 1861).

Of the old editions containing the entire Peshitta Old Testament, that of S. Lee (London, 1823), using Serto script, can sometimes be picked up second-hand; it is largely based on Brian Walton’s London Polyglot Bible (1657), which in turn goes back to the Paris Polyglot of 1645. The manuscripts employed for these editions were mostly of very late West Syrian provenance, though Lee made some use of the twelfth century “Buchanan Bible,” which had been brought back from India by the Reverend Claude Buchanan and presented to the University Library, Cambridge, around 1809.

The American Presbyterian Mission printed an edition at Urmia (north-west Iran) in 1852 containing the entire Peshitta Old Testament; for this, local East Syrian manuscripts were used as the basis, and the script employed is also East Syrian. A revision of this, made by Joseph de Kelayta, was published by the Trinitarian Bible Society in 1913 (printed in rather diminutive East Syrian characters; this has been reprinted a number of times).

A second Middle Eastern edition, prepared by the Syrian Catholic bishop C. J. David, was published by the Dominican press at Mosul, 1887– 92; for this East Syrian script (vocalized) was employed. This edition was reprinted at Beirut in 1951. A handsome facsimile reprint, in three volumes, of the original edition has been published by the Gorgias Press (Piscataway NT, 2010). If one is looking for a vocalized text of the Bible in East Syriac script, this edition will serve the purpose well.

Mention should also be made of the magnificent photolithographic reproduction of the seventh-century manuscript of the Peshitta in the possession of the Ambrosian Library in Milan (7a1); for this, A. M. Ceriani was responsible (1876–79). A facsimile edition of this is now available from the Gorgias Press (2013, with an Introduction by E. Vergani).

Since there is generally very little variation between Peshitta manuscripts (at least compared with Septuagint ones), for most purposes it will make little difference which edition of the Peshitta Old Testament is used, although, as mentioned above, for any serious work on the Hebrew text underlying the Peshitta use of the Leiden edition is absolutely essential, since the text of the Peshitta evidently underwent some small but important modifications during the course of its history.

Two English translations of the Peshitta Old Testament are in the course of appearing, book by book. That sponsored by the Peshitta Insitute, and based on the Institute’s critical editions, is aimed more at an academic public, while the Gorgias Press’s bilingual Antioch Bible is meant for a wider readership: its text is specifically based on the Mosul Bible of

1887–1892, but the script has been altered to the West Syriac, with full vocalization. An impressive number of individual volumes of the Antioch Bible, covering books of both the Old and New Testament, have already appeared.

Old Testament: Syrohexapla and Other Syriac Versions

For the Syrohexapla A. M. Ceriani produced a photolithographic edition (1874) of a ninth-century manuscript in the Ambrosian Library containing the second half of the Old Testament (Job–Malachi). The companion volume to this manuscript was still in existence in the sixteenth century and was used by various Renaissance scholars; subsequently, however, it disappeared in circumstances still unknown. Other scattered Syrohexapla texts containing books from the first half of the Old Testament were collected together and edited by P. de Lagarde (Bibliothecae Syriacae, [Göttingen, 1892]; an earlier edition of this [1880] employed Hebrew type). Some subsequent finds were published by W. Baars in New Syrohexaplaric Texts (Leiden, 1968, with a valuable introduction), while a photographic edition of a Pentateuch manuscript from southeastern Turkey has been published by A. Vööbus (Louvain, 1975). There is also a critical edition of The Syrohexapla Psalter (for which several manuscripts survive), by R. J. Hiebert (Atlanta, 1989).

Fragments of a sixth-century translation, made from the Septuagint, of certain books have been published by A. Ceriani, in Monumenta Sacra et Profana, vol. 5 (1875). A late seventh-century revision of certain books of the Peshitta, but making use of Greek manuscripts, was undertaken by Jacob of Edessa; this interesting combination of two traditions, Hebrew and Greek, of the same sacred text, can be studied in the recent edition (with English translation), The Books of Samuel in the Syriac Version of Jacob of Edessa, by A. G. Salvesen (Leiden, 1999).

Old Testament: Tools There are concordances to the following parts of the Peshitta Old Testament:

Pentateuch: W. Strothmann, Konkordanz zum syrischen Bibel. Der Pentateuch (4 vols, Wiesbaden, 1986); and P. Borbone, J. Cook, K. Jenner, and D. M. Walter, The Old Testament in Syriac, V. 1 Concordance. The Pentateuch (Leiden, 1997). These two works complement one another; the latter is based on the Leiden edition, and indicates the corresponding Hebrew equivalents.

Historical and Wisdom books, with Ruth and Esther: W. Strothmann, Konkordanz zum syrischen Bibel. Die Mautbe (6 vols, Wiesbaden, 1995). The title refers to the name of a particular grouping of Old Testament books found in some manuscripts.

Psalms: N. Sprenger, Konkordanz zum syrischen Psalter (Wiesbaden, 1976).

Prophetical books: W. Strothmann, Konkordanz zum syrischen Bibel. Die Propheten (4 vols, Wiesbaden, 1984).

Hosea: P. G. Borbone and F. Mandracci, Concordanze del testo siriaco di Osea (Turin, 1987).

Ecclesiastes: W. Strothmann, Konkordanz des syrischen Koheletbuches nach der Peshitta und der Syrohexapla (Wiesbaden, 1973).

Ecclesiasticus: M. M. Winter, A Concordance to the Peshitta Version of Ben Sira (Leiden, 1976).

There is also a word list for the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books: W. Strothmann, Wörterverzeichnis der apokryphen-deuterokanonischen Schriften des Alten Testaments in der Peshitta (Wiesbaden, 1988).

An invaluable List of Old Testament Peshitta Manuscripts was published by the Peshitta Institute (Leiden) in 1961. A new edition is in preparation. Bibliographies and Introductions Bibliographies

The Peshitta Old Testament is well served by P. B. Dirksen, An Annotated Bibliography of the Peshitta of the Old Testament (Monographs of the Peshitta Institute, 5; Leiden, 1989), with a supplement (also by P. B. Dirksen) in P. B. Dirksen and A. van der Kooij (eds.), The Peshitta as Translation. Papers read and the II Peshitta Symposium (Monographs of the Peshitta Institute, 8; Leiden, 1995), pp. 221–36. Subsequent publications, for 1996–2010, can be most readily found in my Syriac Studies. A Classified Bibliography, vol 2. 1991– 2010 (Patrimoine syriaque 7; Kaslik, 2014), pp. 77–112.

No comparable bibliography for the Peshitta New Testament (or for any of the other Syriac versions) exists, though fairly complete coverage can be gained by consulting the general bibliographies of Syriac studies listed below (Chapter V, G).

Introductions There are a number of general introductions to the Bible in Syriac:

S. P. Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition (2nd edn, Piscataway NJ, 2006). Among the translations of this book is one into Classical Syriac

(Piscataway NJ, 2002), by Augen Aydin (now Mor Polycarpus Aydin, Syrian Orthodox metropolitan of the Netherlands).

“The Bible in Syriac,” in The Hidden Pearl, III (Rome, 2001), pp. 221– 53.

M. van Esbroeck, “Les versions orientales de la Bible,” in J. Kraşovec (ed.), Interpretation of the Bible (Ljubljana/Sheffield, 1998), pp. 399–509 (for Syriac: pp. 480–502). Peshitta Old Testament:

P. B. Dirksen, “The Old Testament Peshitta,” in M. J. Mulder (ed.), Miqra. Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Assen, 1988), pp. 255–97.

La Peshitta del Antico Testamento (Brescia, 1993). M. Weitzman, The Syriac Version of the Old Testament. An Introduction

(Cambridge, 1999). This masterly work is much more than an ordinary introduction.

References to the considerable number of recent monographs on different books and aspects of the Peshitta Old Testament, often in the series Monographs of the Peshitta Institute Leiden, can readily be located in the bibliographies mentioned above.

Syriac New Testament:

The best introduction remains B. M. Metzger’s The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), where the first chapter is devoted to the Syriac versions. It should, however, be noted that the Philoxenian/Harklean problem, which he discusses, is now resolved: the surviving manuscripts represent the Harklean version, whereas the Philoxenian is lost, apart from quotations.

Biblical exegesis:

Two contributions by L. van Rompay to M. Saebø, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. History of its Interpretation, I.i (Göttingen, 1996), pp. 612–41, and I.ii (2000), pp. 559–77, offer an excellent overview of the subject, and give good guidance for further reading. For the New Testament there is a helpful listing of the relevant Syriac authors and texts by J.C. McCullough, “Early Syriac Commentaries on the New Testament”, Near Eastern School of Theology: Theological Review (Beirut) 5 (1982), 14–33, 79–126.

The Bible in Christian Palestinian Aramaic

By way of appendix to this section a word should be said about the Christian Palestinian Aramaic (or Palestinian Syriac) version of the Bible, made from Greek (in fact all the surviving texts in this dialect are translations from Greek). As has already been seen, this is a Western Aramaic dialect quite separate from Syriac, even though it uses an Estrangelo script. Only fragments of the version survive, often as the underwriting of palimpsest manuscripts. All the older manuscripts containing fragments of biblical books have recently been re-edited by C. Müller-Kessler and M. Sokoloff in their A Corpus of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, of which the following volumes have appeared so far:

I, The Christian Palestinian Aramaic Old Testament and Apocrypha Version from the Early Period (Groningen, 1997), IIA and B, Gospels; Acts of the Apostles and Epistles (1998). III, The Forty Martyrs of the Sinai Desert, Eulogius the Stone-Cutter, and Anastasia (1996) V, The Catechism of Cyril of Jerusalem (1999).

For the New Testament the most extensive texts are in later Gospel Lectionaries (of the eleventh and twelfth century), and these were edited by the Scottish twin sisters A. S. Lewis and M. D. Gibson, The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels (London, 1899). C. Müller-Kessler has also written the standard grammar, Grammatik des Christlich-Palästinisch-Aramäischen, I (Hildesheim, 1991), while M. Sokoloff’s A Dictionary of Christian Palestinian Aramaic (Leuven, 2014) replaces the earlier one by F. Schultess, Lexicon Syropalaestinum (Berlin, 1903).

E. HISTORIES OF SYRIAC LITERATURE

A number of recent introductions to Syriac literature are now available. Thanks to the initiative of a Maronite priest, Fr. Maroun Atallah, the Centre d’études et de recherches orientales (CERO) in Antelias (Lebanon) has recently published a very useful collective volume entitled Nos sources. Arts et littératures syriaques (Antelias, 2005), with contributions by an international group of scholars, written in English, French, and German. Since this provides chapters on all the most important genres and topics, it serves as a very helpful introduction to Syriac literature as a whole.

In English there is S. P. Brock, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature (2nd edn, Piscataway, 2011), written originally for the M.A. Course in Syriac Studies at the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute in Kottayam, Kerala (affiliated to the Mahatma Ghandi University of Kottayam). This

gives summary introductions to 100 Syriac authors (in chronological order) and to the main genres; some basic guidance on secondary literature in English is provided. Over half the book is devoted to short sample passages in translation from the more important writings. Guidance on the main editions can be found in the bibliography to T. Muraoka’s, Classical Syriac (2nd ed., 2005), pp. 144–53.

A much more detailed and extensive introduction, but confined to Syrian Orthodox authors is Aphrem Barsoum’s The Scattered Pearls. A History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, translated by M. Moosa (2nd revised edition, Piscataway NJ, 2003); there is also a German translation (Wiesbaden, 2012). Patriarch Ignatius Afrem Barsoum, who died in 1957, had an unrivalled knowledge of Syriac literature and he mentions many authors and works which do not feature in any of the western histories of Syriac literature. Although his references to manuscripts are not always as precise as one might have wished, his book serves as an essential supplement to the standard history of Syriac literature by A. Baumstark (for which, see below).

The French collaborative volume entitled Christianismes orientaux. Introduction à l’étude des langues et des littératures (Paris, 1993) has an excellent chapter on Syriac by M. Albert (pp. 299–372). Likewise excellent are two contributions in Italian by P. Bettiolo: “Lineamenti di Patrologia siriaca,” in A. Quacquarelli (ed.), Complementi interdisciplinari di Patrologia (Rome, 1989), pp. 503–603; and “Letteratura siriaca,” in A. di Berardino (ed.), Patrologia V, Dal Concilio di Calcedonia (451) a Giovanni Damasceno. I Padri Orientali (Genoa, 2000), 413–93. All three provide good bibliographical guidance.

In German, a recent volume in the Kohlhammer Taschenbücher (no. 587; 2004), entitled Syrische Kirchenväter and edited by W. Klein, and meant for the more general reader, has chapters on 18 important authors (or in one case, figure) in the three main ecclesiastical traditions (Chalcedonian, Church of the East, Syrian Orthodox).

None of these works, however, goes anywhere near replacing A. Baumstark’s Geschichte der syrische Literatur (Bonn, 1922; repr. Berlin, 1968), which remains the standard reference work, indispensable for every serious student of Syriac literature. Unfortunately Baumstark’s German style is notoriously difficult and the layout is not exactly reader-friendly, so that this is not the sort of book one would want to read from cover to cover. What renders it indispensable, however, is the provision, in the notes, of all the manuscripts for each work mentioned. Now, nearly a century later, these listings are in much need of considerable supplementation, in view of more recent catalogues of major collections of Syriac manuscripts, such as those in Birmingham (UK), Paris, St Catherine’s Monastery (Sinai), Deir al-

Surian (Egypt), and those made available through the work of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), for which see below.

Of the older works on Syriac literature, perhaps still the best, and certainly the most readable, is R. Duval’s La littérature syriaque (Paris, 3rd ed. 1907), which treats the subject by genre; this now also available in English translation by O. Holmey, Syriac Literature (Piscataway NJ, 2013). W. Wright’s A Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1894; repr. Piscataway NJ, 2001) is now outdated as an introduction, but it remains useful for the more advanced student, since Wright had an exceptionally good knowledge of the texts, having previously catalogued the very large collection of Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum (now in the British Library); what Wright lacked, however, was any real appreciation of Syriac literature in its own right. Better known for his popular (but now outdated) How Greek Science passed to the Arabs (London, 1954), de Lacy O’Leary had earlier written a short, but rather dry, work entitled The Syriac Fathers (London, 1909).

Two further works from the first half of the twentieth century should be mentioned: prior to writing his great work of 1922, Baumstark contributed a good section on Syriac literature in his Die christliche Literaturen des Osten I (Leipzig, 1911). J. B. Chabot’s Littérature syriaque (Paris, 1934) is a well-informed introduction, as one would expect from an experienced editor of Syriac texts.

For the dwindling number of Syriacists who read Latin, I. Ortiz de Urbina’s Patrologia Syriaca (Rome, 2nd ed. 1965) is a very handy tool for reference, being a catalogue of the main theological writers and their works; its bibliographies, attached to each section, will be found very useful, though of course these now frequently need updating. A brief and necessarily selective survey of Syriac literature was contributed by A. Baumstark and A. Rücker to the Handbuch der Orientalistik, III: Semitistik (Leiden, 1954), pp. 169–204.

A very much older, reference work which is still of great value to the specialist is J. S. Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis, in three large volumes (Rome, 1719–28; repr. Piscataway NJ, 2002), where a volume each is devoted to “Orthodox,” “Monophysite,” and “Nestorian” writers. Generous excerpts from manuscripts in the Vatican library are given throughout; in several cases these excerpts still remain the sole published source available. At the beginning of volume III Assemani printed the important medieval catalogue of Syriac authors and their writings, compiled by ‛Abdisho‛, the East Syriac metropolitan of Nisibis who died in 1318.

Most Western histories of Syriac literature give the impression that Syriac literature died out after the Mongol invasions. Only Baumstark gives a few subsequent writers. This impression is actually a totally false one, for classical Syriac has continued to be an important literary language right up to the present day. The extent of this more recent literature was almost totally unknown to European scholars until the publication of R. Macuch’s Geschichte der spät-und neusyrischen Literatur (Berlin, 1976), which covers both literature in classical Syriac and that in Modern Syriac (first written down in the seventeenth century). (For some addenda and corrections see the review in the Journal of Semitic Studies 23 (1978), pp. 129–38).

Macuch in fact based his work very closely on three important histories of Syriac literature published in the Middle East. The first of these has already been mentioned, Afrem Barsaum’s Scattered Pearls, originally published in Arabic in 1943, with an enlarged second edition in 1956. Macuch in fact used the Syriac translation, made by the late metropolitan of Mardin (southeastern Turkey), Mar Iuhannon Philoxenos Dolabani, himself a considerable Syriac scholar; this was published at Qamishli (Syria) in 1967. The second of the three works used by Macuch was Albert Abuna’s Adab al-lugha al-aramiyya, “Aramean literature” (Beirut, 1970), also in Arabic, which is a fine general history of Syriac literature; while the third was P. Sarmas’s Tash‘ita d-siprayuta atoreta, “History of Assyrian [i.e., Syriac] literature” (Tehran, 1969–70), which is in modern Syriac and covers East Syriac writers. Dr. Sarmas, who died in 1972, was one of the foremost authorities on Syriac in Iran.

For those interested in seeing what Syriac scholars, both Western and Middle Eastern actually look like, the collection of photographs in Abrohom Nouro’s My Tour in the Parishes of the Syrian Church in Syria and Lebanon (Beirut, 1967) is to be recommended. The author, whose family comes from Edessa, was a real enthusiast for the Syriac language and one whose energy and dynamism knew no bounds; both he and his wife, Antoinette, spoke Classical Syriac at home.13

13 I first had the pleasure of first meeting Malfono (= Teacher) Abrohom Nuro in the mid-nineteen-sixties: it was early one morning at the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate in Charfet (Lebanon) where I was staying the night: having heard rumours that a European mestaryono (“syriacisant”) was at large, he had taken a taxi out from Beirut at once and turned up only shortly after dawn. The poem which he wrote in honour of Arthur Vööbus can be found at the beginning of the Festschrift in his honour (for this, see Chapter V H).

F. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Since Syriac literature spans a wide area both in time and in space there is no single work that covers the historical background. For the home of Syriac, Edessa, an eminently readable work is J. B. Segal’s Edessa, the Blessed City (Oxford, 1971; repr. Piscataway NJ, 2001); the author was an authority on the early pagan inscriptions and mosaics from the area, and he has explored some fascinating byways of local literary history in the course of writing this book.

The earliest history of Syriac Christianity is extremely obscure, thanks to the absence of good historical sources prior to the fourth century. The evaluation of the Teaching of Addai, which purports to describe the conversion of Edessa in the reign of King Abgar V, as a result of his correspondence with Jesus, has greatly differed among modern scholars: some reject it outright as containing nothing of historical value, while others see it as containing genuine elements, but which have been retrojected from the late second century to the time of the crucifixion. The former view was notably that of W. Bauer in the first chapter of his Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (which originally came out in German in 1934, but whose second edition, of 1963, was eventually published in English translation, Philadelphia, 1971); in more recent years it has been developed by H. J. W. Drijvers. The second view is associated especially with the name of F. C. Burkitt, who has been followed by a number of (mainly English) scholars. A related issue is whether earliest Syriac Christianity derived from the hellenized Gentile Christian milieu of Antioch (as might be suggested by the earliest known Christian Syriac author, Bardaisan), or whether it was mediated more directly from a Jewish Christian community in Palestine. The evidence is conflicting, and perhaps one should see this not as a case of either the one, or the other explanation as being correct, but suppose that these two different strands existed side by side, the former affecting the ruling classes in Edessa, and the latter the wider population of the region. A discussion of the evidence can be found in my “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity” (1992), reprinted as Chapter II of From Ephrem to Romanos (Aldershot, 1999).

Once the fourth, and especially the fifth and sixth centuries, are reached, the picture becomes much clearer, and some coverage at least of Syriac Christianity within the Roman Empire is to be found in the standard histories of the Early Church and of Late Antiquity, of which there are now many. A historian of Late Antiquity who has paid considerable attention to Syriac soucres is F.G.B. Millar in his A Greek Roman Empire. Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450) (Berkeley, 2006), and more of relevance can be

found among his collected articles, Religion and Community in the Roman Near East: Constantine to Muhammad (London, 2013), and Empire, Church and Society in the Later Roman Near East (Leuven, 2016). For the seventh century background, P. Booth’s Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2014) is very helpful. One of the few works which deals specifically with the history of Syriac Christianity in this period is W. S. McCullough, A Short History of Syriac Christianity to the Rise of Islam (Chico, 1982).

There is a long tradition of Chronicles written in Syriac, written between the fifth and thirteenth centuries (inclusive); a general presentation of these can be found in E.-I. Yousif’s Les chroniqueurs syriaques (Paris, 2002); in much more detail M. Debié’s L’écriture de l’hitoire en syriaque (Louvain, 2015) is the essential guide. In English, a schematic survey can be found in Chapter 1 of my Studies in Syriac Christianity (Aldershot, 1992). A number of the Syriac Chronicles are now available in English translation, several in the Liverpool series Translated Texts for Historians:

A.N. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool, 1993). This includes a historical introduction by R. Hoyland, and a translation, by S.P. Brock, of the apocalyptic section of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius.

W. Witakowski, Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, Part III (Liverpool, 1996). This late eighth-century Chronicle is now less cumbrously known as the Zuqnin Chronicle; Part III, covering the sixth century, is based on a lost part of John of Ephesus’ Church History.

A. Harrak, The Chronicle of Zuqnin. Parts III and IV, AD 488–775 (Toronto, 1999). Part IV is especially important for the early Abbasid period.

F.R. Trombley and J.W. Watt, The Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite (Liverpool, 2006). A local Edessene work incorporated into the late eighth-century Zuqnin Chronicle; it covers the years 494 to 506.

A.H. Becker, Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis (Liverpool, 2008). This includes all the main sources, apart from the Statutes,

for the famous East Syriac School of Nisibis which flourished especially in the sixth century.

G. Greatrex, C. Horn, R. Phenix, The Chronicle of PseudoZechariah Rhetor (Liverpool, 2011). This sixth-century chronicle covers from the mid-fifth to the mid-sixth century.

M. Moosa, The Syriac Chronicle of Michael Rabo (the Great) (Teaneck NJ, 2014). The author of this extensive chronicle, starting from creation, was the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch who died in 1199. The Chronicle is of particular interest for the Crusader period.

D. Wilmshurst, Bar Hebraeus, the Ecclesiastical Chronicle (Piscataway NJ, 2016). He covers the history of the Chruch of the East up to the end of the fifth century, as well as that of the Syrian Orthodox Church.

A. Harrak, The Chronicle of Zuqnin, Parts I and II. From Creation to the Year 506/7 AD (Piscataway NJ, 2017)

For those interested in Syriac sources for the early Arab period, R. Hoyland’s Seeing Islam as others saw it: a Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, 1997) is an excellent guide.

The East Syriac Tradition

Two excellent books cover the entire span of the history of the Church of the East: C. Baumer’s The Church of the East. An illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London, 2006), and D. Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church. A History of the Church of the East (London, 2011). On a much briefer scale there is W. Baum and D. Winkler’s The Apostolic Church of the East. A Concise History (London, 2003).

For the early history of the Church of the East as it existed under the Sasanid empire (roughly modern Iraq and Iran) there are two older English works: W. A. Wigram, An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church, 100–640 AD (London, 1910), and W. G. Young, Patriarch, Shah and Caliph (Rawalpindi, 1974). Wigram was a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mission to the Church of the East and he did a great deal to bring knowledge of that Church’s plight to the English-reading public. For the period, of the origins of Christianity in Mesopotamia (where legends abound) neither of these two works is sufficiently critical, and a more

reliable account will be found in J. M. Fiey’s Jalons pour une histoire de l’église en Iraq (Louvain, 1970), which covers up to the seventh century. A more detailed history spanning the Persian period is J. Labourt’s Le christianisme dans l’empire perse (Paris, 1904), a solid work which still retains its value. For the very earliest period two recent works by C. and F. Jullien (two twin sisters) are of particular relevance: Apôtres des confins. Processus missionnaires chrétiens dans l’empire iranien (Paris, 2002), and Aux origines de l’église de Perse: les Actes de Mari (Louvain, 2003).

The large body of Martyr Acts from the Sasanian period are gradually becoming more accessible thanks to translations. An important reassessment of their significance, especially of those under Shapur II in the mid fourth century, is provided in R. Payne’s A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2015).

For the Church of the East’s history under the Abbasid caliphs, besides Young’s book, there is an valuable work in French by J. M. Fiey, Chrétiens syriaques sous les Abbasides, surtout à Bagdad (749–1258) (Louvain, 1980); this focuses on the Patriarchs of the Church of the East. The most famous of these was Timothy I, whose extensive correspondence includes an account of a dialogue he had with the caliph al-Mahdi, the subject of H. Putman’s, L’Eglise et l’Islam sous Timothée I (780–823) (Beirut, 1975). Timothy is also the subject of a fine study by V. Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I patriarca Cristiano di Baghdad (Paris, 2009).

As was mentioned earlier, ninth-century Baghdad was the scene of great intellectual ferment, with the translation into Arabic of Greek philosophical, medical and scientific texts. This involved close cooperation between Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, and it was especially in the earlier period of the “translation movement,” promoted by the Abbasid Caliphs, that Syriac scholars played an essential role, translating first from Greek into Syriac, and thence into Arabic. Two recent French books provide an entry into this subject from a Syriac perspective: E. I. Yousif, Les philosophes et traducteurs syriaques. D’Athènes à Bagdad (Paris, 1997), and R. Le Coz, Les médecins nestoriens au Moyen Âge: les maitres des arabes (Paris, 2004).14

This was also the period of the dramatic expansion of the Church of the East along the Silk Road to China, where a famous stele, in Chinese and Syriac, dated 781, records the coming of Christianity a century and a half

14 In English, there are several articles on this topic vol. 4 (2004) of the Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies. For the Aristotle translations, the collected articles by H. Hugonnard-Roche and J.W. Watt, mentioned in section H under Collected Volumes, are particularly important.

earlier. There is now a good general account by I. Gillman and H.-J. Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500 (Richmond, 1999). Recent new finds, and a series of conferences in Salzburg (Austria) on the topic have led to a number of new studies.15

The Mongol period (thirteenth to fourteenth century) is well covered in the short book by J. M. Fiey, Chrétiens syriaques sous les Mongols (Louvain, 1975). One of the most fascinating Syriac texts from this period is the account of the travels, from China to the Middle East and (in the case of one of them) to Western Europe, of two monks of the Church of the East (one of whom ended up as being made Patriarch!). Several English translations of this exist, the fullest is that by E. A. W. Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan (London, 1928). The recent Italian translation by P. G. Borbone, Storia di Mar Yahballaha e di Rabban Sauma (Turin, 2000), has an excellent introduction and annotation.

The historical geography of the Syriac Churches in the area largely covered today by Iraq is the subject of several very valuable works by J. M. Fiey, above all his Assyrie chrétienne, I–III (Beirut, 1965–8). Father Fiey lived much of his life in Iraq and so was exceptionally well placed to write on this subject. For the period from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century (for which there are virtually no relevant narrative historical sources available) D. Wilmshurst’s The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East (Louvain, 2000) makes wonderful use of the evidence from colophons in over two thousand manuscripts, and is well provided with maps of villages (very appropriately the book is dedicated to the memory of Father Fiey, who died in 1995). Four detailed maps of remote villages are also to be found in J. Sanders’ Assyrian-Chaldean Christians in Eastern Turkey and Iran. Their Homeland Recharted (Hernen, 1997).

Much information about the Church of the East in the Ottoman period, based largely on manuscript sources, is to be found in H. Murre-van den Berg, Scribes and Scriptures. The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (Eastern Christian Studies 21; Leuven, 2015).

In the second half of the nineteenth century various western missions, mostly based in Urmia (northwestern Iran) had an important impact on the life of the Church of the East. Three books in particular cover different

15 Several of these are edited by D.W. Winkler and Li Tang; volume 12 of Études syriaques (2015) is entirely devoted to the subject (for the title, see below, under H. Series. A helpful introduction to the earlier material is provided by J. Ferreira, Early Chinese Christianity: The Tang Christian Monument and Other Documents (Early Christian Studies 17; Strathfield NSW, 2014).

aspects of this: J. F. Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church of England. A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission (Oxford, 1992); H. L. Murre-van den Berg, From a Spoken to a Written Language. The Introduction and Development of Literary Urmia Aramaic in the Nineteenth Century (Leiden, 1999); and (from a wider perspective) J. Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East. Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists and Colonial Powers (Leiden, 2000).16

A very well-informed account of developments in the twentieth century is provided by an Indian bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Aprem, The Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century (Kottayam, 2003).

The West Syriac Tradition

The period of the emergence of the Syrian Orthodox Church as a separate entity, in the fifth to sixth century, is covered, from different perspectives, by W. H. C. Frend’s The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (Cambridge, 1972) and by I. Shahid’s Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, I.1–2 (Washington D.C., 1995), II.1 (2002). Much more focused are F. Alpi’s two volume La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les Églises d’Orient (512–518) (Beirut, 2009) and V. Menze’s valuable study, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Oxford, 2008). Helpful guidance to the more important theological texts of this period is now available in the course of the section “Ad Fontes” in A. Grillmeier’s Christ in Christian Tradition, II.1 (London, 1987), and in Part III of A. van Roey and P. Allen, Monophysite Texts of the Sixth Century (Leuven, 1994). The obscure (and controversial!) origins of the Maronite Church which emerged as a separate body, with its own Patriarch of Antioch, in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries are objectively discussed by H. Suermann in his Die Grundungsgeschichte der Maronitischen Kirche (Wiesbaden, 1998). Both the Maronite and the Byzantine (or “Rum” = Rhomaios, i.e., Byzantine) Orthodox Patriarchates of Antioch accept the Council of Chalcedon and their separation from one another now clearly seems to be connected with the monothelete/dyothelete controversy of the seventh century; this is well brought out by J. Tannous in his ‘In search of Monotheletism’, published in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 68 (2014), 29–67, which makes excellent use of recently published Syriac texts which are of relevance.

16 On the origins and adoption of the term ‘Assyrian’ there is a good study by A.H. Becker (see below, Appendix, note 23).

For the earlier Arab period the only general works available are in German: W. Hage, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche in frühislamischer Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1966), and P. Kawerau, Die jakobitische Kirche im Zeitalter der syrischen Renaissance (Berlin, 2nd ed. 1960); the latter deals with the twelfth to thirteenth century. A good collection of studies on the ‘Syriac renaissance’ is to be found in H. Teule and others (eds), The Syriac Renaissance. A Period of Interreligious and Intercutural Dialogue (Eastern Christian Studies 9; Leuven, 2010).

The history of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the later Middle Ages and the Ottoman period has been little studied; for the late Ottoman period, however, there is now Kh. Dinno, Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period and Beyond (Piscataway NJ, 2017). Information concerning the massacres of Syriac Christians, as well as of Armenians, at the time of the First World War is now becoming more available; two important books on the subject are S. de Courtois, The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the last Arameans (Piscataway NJ, 2004), and D. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway NJ, 2006).

For the historical geography of the Syrian Orthodox Church, there are two very useful works by E. Honigmann, Évêques et Évêchés Monophysites d’Asie Antérieure au VIe siècle (Louvain, 1951), and Le Couvent de Barsauma et le Patriarcat Jacobite d’Antioche et de Syrie (Louvain, 1954). The early history of Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey, an important cultural homeland of the Syrian Orthodox Church, is expertly studied by A. N. Palmer in his Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier. The Early History of Tur ‛Abdin (Cambridge, 1990). (The present-day people and architecture of the area beautifully recorded in photographs by H. Hollerweger in his Tur Abdin. Lebendiges Kulturerbe—Living Cultural Heritage—Canli Kültür Mirasi [Linz, 1999]).

G. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS

C. Moss’s Catalogue of Syriac Printed Books and Related Literature in the British Museum (London, 1962) provides the nearest thing available to a bibliography of Syriac studies up to about 1959; it is arranged alphabetically by author (ancient, as well as modern). For relevant printed books of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, a useful listing can be found in the bibliography in Nestle’s Syriac Grammar.

From 1960 onwards reasonably complete coverage is provided by the periodic classified bibliographies published in Parole de l’Orient as follows:

1960–1970: Parole de l’Orient 4 (1973), pp. 393–465.