For more than a century Oriens Christianus has been one of the leading international periodicals in the domain of Eastern Christian Studies. From its very beginning in 1901 it covers the complete range of Eastern Churches and languages as well as liturgy, art, archaeology, and, to a minor extent, Islam. This long-lived periodical is a tool for tracing the development of Eastern Christian studies in general and the history of Oriental scholarship in Germany in particular. The early volumes of the journal facilitated the formation of a scholarly Orientalist community. They established a standard of scholarship and criticism beyond national and ecclesiastical polemics. This 35-volume collection gathers all the contributions of Oriens Christianus from 1901 until 1938.

This monumental eight-volume history of Syria in Arabic begins with the earliest peoples of the region, the Hittites and Phoenicians. Carrying through the historical record, al-Dibs deals with the conquests of Alexander, the Romans, the Islamic Empire under the Caliphs, up to the Ottoman Empire.

Part of Alphonse Mingana’s “Woodbrooke Studies” (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. 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. The Lament of the Virgin is Mary’s sadness at the empty tomb; in this piece she is conflated with Mary Magdalene. The Martyrdom of Pilate presents Pontius Pilate as a saint and lays out his spiritual accomplishments that are crowned by his martyrdom.

The Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Nicene Creed is an important document of an instrumental age in the development of Christianity. Theodore (c. 350-428) was clearly the most important biblical scholar of his age. While his theology eventually led to his loss of favor among some branches of the church, Theodore was at least partially responsible for three church councils held to deal with his ideas, including those of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Mingana has published here, as Woodbrooke Studies 5, for the first time a document that had previously been lost and which contains Theodore’s observations on the outcome of the Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed.

The Work of Dionysius Barsalibi Against the Armenians represents the nature of some disputes in the Christianity of the Middle Ages. Dionysius Barsalibi (d. 1171) in a very rare manuscript, begins by giving a brief sketch of the political and religious history of the Armenians. Dionysius argues that Christ’s body was corruptible up until the time of his death, and only after that did it become incorruptible. This underscores the fact that Christ had a true human body and that he digested food just like other people. The implications for this interpretation in connection with the Eucharist are obviously essential aspects to be resolved in this controversy.

The Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist is an important witness to the development of Christianity. Theodore (c. 350-428) was clearly the most important biblical scholar of his age. In a series of six homilies Theodore here addresses the Lord’s Prayer as a springboard to discuss what actually constitutes prayer. His homilies on the sacraments are essential witnesses to the historical development of these sacraments. His work here is basically a commentary on the text of the liturgy, an awareness of the centrality of the sacraments to the life of the church in his age.

This invaluable nine-volume set on the Chronicle of Michael the Great makes the scholarly resources on this unique manuscript available together for the first time. Now inaccessible, the Chronicle is the largest medieval chronicle known, and is available here for the first time in history as a facsimile copy of the original manuscript, as well as in a copy of the original Syriac, the French translation, an abbreviated Armenian recension, and Arabic versions. The Chronicle is one of the most important primary sources on the history of the Middle East, especially the period between the rise of Islam and the Crusades.

Dr. Humm tries to identify the psychological states associated with early Christian prophecy in the context of the Greco-Roman world. Reviewing (generally) Christian reports, he tries to classify them following a set of generally observable practices and claimed mental states.

Bioarchaeology of the Near East (Volume 1, 2007) includes contributions by Theya Molleson, Douglas H. Ubelaker, and Joseph L. Rife, as well as short fieldwork reprots.

Bioarchaeology of the Near East (Volume 2, 2008) includes contributions by Nathan K. Harper, Sherry C. Fox, Mateusz Baca, and Martyna Molak, as well as short fieldwork reprots.

This is a coursebook for intermediate - advanced students of Biblical Hebrew. Constant reference is made to modern reference grammars and to the grammatical comments of medieval Jewish exegetes. All exercises are based on actual Biblical verses, with translations and explanations throughout.

The ostraca of the Coptic Museum, written on pottery pieces, limestone flakes and wood, present the lives of ordinary people in their interactions with one another, including in economic and personal ways.

Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536), translated the (pseudo-)Aristotelian text known as the De Mundo from Greek into Syriac in the early sixth century. This Index presents a thorough listing of the Greek-Syriac and Syriac-Greek correspondences in the text.

Since the 1850s until the outbreak of World War I, the Dominican Press in Mosul, Iraq, produced scholarly, liturgical, and pedagogical publications to service the local Christian communities. These hard to find publications have now been cataloged in detail by J. F. Coakley and David G. K. Taylor.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homily on the Reception of the Holy Mysteries. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homily on Simon Peter. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies on the Six Days of Creation. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homily, The Veil on Moses' Face. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homily on the Tower of Babel. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies on Elijah. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug.

This work, based almost entirely on the primary Arabic texts of Sunnî and Shîca Islam, offers a fresh examination of the life of Fatima, Muhammad’s only surviving child, and reveals for the first time her distinctive and fascinating personality.

More than a literary survey, this introduction to the history of late and Neo-Syriac (Neo-Aramaic) covers the works of the past several centuries. Macuch begins with the post-Mongolian period to the end of the 18th century. For the 19th century, Macuch considers the situation of the Assyrians in this period, including the American, Anglican, and Russian Orthodox missionary enterprises in Urmia, noting the writers of the foreign missions. For the twentieth century he includes literature from the period of the wars up to the 1970s. Various East-Syriac and West-Syriac authors of the Chaldean and Church of the East, and Syrian Orthodox and Maronite traditions, as well as the Syrian literature of Malabar in southern India are also considered.

This volume presents a description of the Neo-Aramaic dialect that was spoken by the Jews of Sanandaj in western Iran, but which is now virtually extinct. The material for the volume was gathered firsthand in fieldwork conducted with the last remaining speakers in Israel. The volume consists of a detailed grammatical description, a corpus of transcribed texts, including folktales, historical accounts and portrayals of customs, and an extensive glossary.

This volume reads the diverse contents of Jeremiah as a kind of dialogue between competing perceptions of the exile. The author argues that coherence is to be found precisely in the incoherence, as it reflects the communal trauma of exile.

This book examines Paul’s descriptions of his conversion experience in Galatians and 1 Corinthians, and argues that the mission to the Gentiles is best viewed as Paul’s response to the rejection of his claim to be an apostle.

This book argues that the genre of the seven messages in Revelation 2–3 is hybrid prophetic oracle. This oracle is influenced by the Old Testament covenantal elements functioning as a set of lawsuit exhortations. Graves defends this by demonstrating the influence of the Ancient Near Eastern vassal treaty structure in the seven messages. He illustrates this influence by using the message to Smyrna. Written in a readable format this work is both an excellent introduction to the book of Revelation as well as a fitting work for the apocalyptic specialist.

This volume consists of 14 papers delivered by Assyriologists and biblical specialists at the 2007 Society of Biblical Literature congress in sessions devoted to the scholarly legacy of the late Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

This collection of essays offers an innovative exploration by an Asian theologian of various issues and themes that engaged the early teachers of faith, with a special focus on their ongoing relevance to Christian theological discourse and praxis today.

The volume contains 12 papers presented at the conference "Time and Astronomy in Past Cultures" (Torun, Poland 2005). Five of them concern Near Eastern calendars and sky-watching, three are devoted to European archaeoastronomy (including a paper on Stonehenge), two represent ethnoarchaeological research in the Baltic area.

A collected-essays volume that explores what we can learn by looking into the matters of language, rhetoric, style, and ideology about the producers and readers of biblical books. Contributors include P. Guillaume, J-D Macchi, R. Rezetko, D. Rom-Shiloni, F. Stavrakopoulou, I. Young and the three editors.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures in 2008. Contributors include D. Stein, R. Kletter, J. Cook, Y. Shemesh, A. Pinker, R. Hendel, S. Olyan, A. Marx, R. Schmitt, D. Wright, S. Apóstolo, H. Basser, T. Römer, J. Jacobs, M. Kline, M. Avioz, E. Assis, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, N. Na'aman, Y. Garfinkel, S. Ganor, A. Steinmann, and I. Young. The review section includes more than fifty reviews.

The commentary of Rabbi David Kimhi (1160-1235) on the prophet Isaiah, chapters 1-39, in a Hebrew critical edition, makes up the main portion of this study. Presented with an English introduction by Louis Finkelstein, the commentary also includes a useful biography of Kimhi in English, an introduction to his commentary, and a presentation of a previously unknown treatise on Genesis in Hebrew.

This monograph presents an unpublished historical resource in the form of a register of dues collected for the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate during the second half of the nineteenth century. Bcheiry provides the original text, an English translation, and an extensive socio-economic study.

This book traces the rich religious, cultural, artistic, ecconomical, social and historical relations among the Greeks and the Middle East people from the Late Antiquity up to the 17th century.

The book describes how the bishops of a tiny Christian community in South India, on several occasions determined the history of the famous St Thomas Christians, whose own histories will now need to be rewritten.

This comprehensive study offers a critical, comparative analysis of the sources available on Bardaisan and a reinterpretation of his thought. In this connection, special attention is paid to many parallels with Origen, to the possible relationship between Origen, Bardaisan, and their schools, and to the implications of the valuable fragments preserved by Porphyry.

The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate that as early as the first phase of his activity (386-393 AD), Augustine did make use of some Origenian works, and that basic elements of his early theology were derived from the Alexandrian master.

This study sets out all the provisions for initiation in the Byzantine tradition, drawing on early manuscripts of the euchology and the typikon of the Great Church (Hagia Sophia). The sections of the book provide texts and commentary for enrolment of children in the rites of the eighth and fortieth days, catechesis and prayers during Lent, final preparations, including consecration of Chrism and the rites of apotaxis and syntaxis on Good Friday, Baptism at the Easter Vigil, postbaptismal rites and rites of closure, and provisions for the other baptismal feasts.

This book covers the history of the Syrian church of India from its founding by the apostle Thomas in 52 A.D., until the first half of the twentieth century. The relations of the Church of India with the See of Antioch were interrupted by the rise of the Nestorian teaching. The coming of the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth century, followed by the Dutch and then the British and their efforts to convert the Syrian Indians to their own persuasions, is discussed with fairness and objectivity. The several delegations of the Apostolic See of Antioch to India from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries form an indispensable account of the vicissitudes of a struggling native Indian church trying to preserve its Antiochene identity.

The History of Syriac Dioceses, by the late Patriarch Aphram I of Antioch and all the East, is a synopsis of a much larger study still in manuscript form. This selected portion of this history, published for the first time in English translation along with the original Arabic text, offers the reader an in-depth treatment of the conditions of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Barsoum’s wrote many historical essays which he published in now hard-to-find journals, mainly al-?ikmah and al-Majalla al-Ba?riyarkiyya al-Suryaniyya (Jerusalem). This collection of articles, published in the original Arabic with an English translation by Matti Moosa, forms the core of Barsoum’s historical writings.

A fitting contribution to Gorgias Liturgical Studies, Sebastian Brock’sHoly Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition is a sensitive and evocative treatment of an issue key to any liturgical tradition—that of the role of the Holy Spirit in worship. With a keen awareness of the tradition of Syrian Christianity, Brock begins his exploration with the concept and the role of the Holy Spirit in the Syriac Bible.Symbols of the Spirit, the sources used to glean this information, and how it ties in with the Eucharist and Pentecost, as well as baptism itself and the subsequent practice of anointing.

Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998 as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal, Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected names in the world of Syriac today. This is Volume 6 of the journal from 2003.

Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998 as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal, Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected names in the world of Syriac today. This is Volume 8 of the journal from 2005.

Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998 as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal, Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected names in the world of Syriac today. This is Volume 9 of the journal from 2006.

Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998 as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal, Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected names in the world of Syriac today. This is Volume 12 of the journal from 2009.

Based on the works of Süryânî journalists such as Naûm Fâik, this book argues against the traditional view of the Ottoman Süryânî community: rather than an early generation of Assyrian nationalists, the early-twentieth century intellectuals were supporters of the Ottoman state.

The volume deals with the liturgical dimension of mystical, ascetical, and hymnographic texts and traditions circulated in Christian environment including different liturgical texts of the Coptic and the Byzantine rite, especially in its Slavonic and Georgian versions.

Scrinium. Revue de patrologie, d’hagiographie critique et d’histoire ecclésiastique, established in 2005, is an international multilingual scholarly periodical devoted to patristics, critical hagiography, and Church history. This volume is dedicated to patrology and contains a partial publication of the papers of the 3rd Conference of the Asian Pacific Early Christian Studies Society.

Given the twenty-first century association between the Holy Land and the Bible, we may assume that such a relationship just exists, and that the land is like the Book and contains a timeless quality. Eothen requires us to question this supposition. Alexander Kinglake describes a Palestine which is largely a wilderness on the verge of being defined by the political and religious forces of the west. He offers us a glimpse into the past to a society and place as it began to engage with Europe, and with the West.

Moslem Women is built around six main chapters, with half devoted to the place and experience of Islamic women and half considering Christian mission to Islamic women and associated themes. The Zwemers acknowledge some of the great women of Islamic history, such as Rabia, the famous early mystic, and Nurah Mahal, wife of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. They speak in glowing terms about advances in the women’s situation in post-Ottoman Turkey. Samuel and Amy Zwemer’s dedication to serving Muslims and to seeing them as people rather than as faceless numbers provides an excellent model for today’s Christians who feel called to engagement with Islam.

Ignaz Goldziher was a pre-eminent scholar of Islam during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book encapsulates his own lifetime of work and provides something of an historical commentary on his epoch in the Western academic study of Islam. One of its strengths is that Goldziher’s investigation of historical development probes into underlying religious motivations and allied theological issues. The book quickly became a classic of its day. It remains a classic that, in our day, is well worth re-visiting as it can still inform our understanding of contemporary Islam, whose roots lie in all that Goldziher covers.

Temple Gairdner’s The Rebuke of Islam, published in 1920, has long been recognized as one of the classics of Christian response to Islam in the early 20th century. Part of its significance is that Gairdner’s approach sums up the very best of earlier approaches (especially in the 19th century), but breaks significantly new ground and therefore points forward to approaches that have been developing between his time and the present day.

Based on lectures delivered in Chichester Cathedral, this book mirrors typical nineteenth century English attitudes toward the non-European space. This needed Christianity and European political oversight, or its people would remain backward and spiritually lost. The book shows how someone whose inclinations were liberal could look at Islam and dislike what he saw. On the other hand, the book also shows that a non-specialist scholar in the second half of the nineteenth century could write seriously if not impartially about Islam using material available in European languages. This suggests that Islam was a subject of increasing interest in Victorian England.

A convert to Christianity from the Qadiri Order, John A. Subhan is well-known for his seminal work, Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines. Sufism prepared him for faith in Jesus and his Injil. His Sufi background and intimate knowledge of its beliefs and practices enabled him to explain Sufism to others. All ten chapters in Sufism are interesting not least the chapter eight which contains an engaging comparative discussion of Sufism in the broader Hindu context. It is a must read for all, not only because it is a window into the world of a great Sufi convert but also because it provides us with a view of his world, some or most of which still continues.

The Abrohom Nuro library is arguably the richest private collection of Syriac material, especially containing rare titles published in the Middle East in the 1800s and early 1900s. Nuro presents here a checklist of the collection.

Abdisho bar Brikha (d. 1318) was a prominent East Syriac writer. While many of his works did not survive, his The Paradise of Eden, a collection of theological poetry, reached us. This edition is based on the rare Urmia (1916) and Mosul (1928) text editions by J. de Kelaita.

Aestimatio provides critical, timely assessments of books published in the history of what was called science from antiquity to the early modern period in cultures ranging from Spain to India, and from Africa to northern Europe. The aim is to allow reviewers the opportunity to engage critically both the results of research in the history of science and how these results are obtained.

Aestimatio provides critical, timely assessments of books published in the history of what was called science from antiquity to the early modern period in cultures ranging from Spain to India, and from Africa to northern Europe. The aim is to allow reviewers the opportunity to engage critically both the results of research in the history of science and how these results are obtained.

In this stellar study of what the works of select patristic authors (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius Ephraem, and Jerome) reveal about the Aggadah, Samuel Krauss offers an insightful and provocative reading of the sources.

This work sets out to compare the pre-first millennium BC law collections of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Hatti. By highlighting and explaining consistent differences in both framing and content it questions the notion of a uniform ancient Near Eastern legal culture.

`Enbe men Karmo Suryoyo is a chrestomathy intended primarily for students who have covered the essentials of Syriac morphology and syntax, but it should also interest anyone who enjoys Syriac literature in general. The twenty-six selections consist of examples of Syriac prose and poetry from the second until the thirteenth centuries AD. The readings reflect a wide and varied range of subject matter. Inevitably, selections of a religious nature predominate, but historical, ethnographic, chemical, astronomical, and linguistic excerpts produced by famous Syriac authors, as well as less familiar ones, have been included. A Syriac-English glossary and an index of grammatical points are included.

This volume contains papers from the First International Congress on Eastern Christianity held in Córdoba, Spain, November 2005. The encounter of medieval Christian writers with several linguistic traditions through the Middle Ages produced one of the most important branches of Middle Eastern literature. This encounter not only changed the nature of the respective writings throughout time, but also influenced considerably the development of the legacies transmitted by the writers and the scholars of various Eastern Christian churches. The volume illustrates the strength of Christian cultural life through the Middle Ages under different socio-political situations, including the context of a predominantly Islamic culture.