The Christian era in Syriac and Arabic sources does not always correspond with the western calculations. Until quite recently the members of the Syriac churches used the era of the Seleucids (of Alexander the Great; East and West Syrians) as the era of the creation of Adam (Melkites). The use of the Christian era became more common from the 16th century, due to the closer contacts between the Oriental and the Latin churches.

Christianity reached China in its Syriac guise in the seventh century. Christian documents written in Chinese which have come down to us from the period of the Tang Dynasty contain a large number of proper names which are, or appear to be, transcriptions of Syriac names. In this paper, originally published in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, the author provides a list of the transcribed proper names with their modern and reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations, together with the suggestions made by scholars in the past for the original forms of these names.

A translator of Aristotle and friend of Jacob of Edessa and Athanasios of Balad, George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes (d. AD 724) was an important figure in the history of the life and thought of the Syrian Orthodox Church. This article offers a study of the first three of George’s eleven extant letters and relates them to the larger Christian and Islamic context of his day. It will be of interest to students of Greek patristics, Syriac Christianity, and early Islamic history.

Scholarly study of the transmission of Aristotelian philosophy from Greek late antiquity to medieval Islam is to some extent still influenced by the account in Ibn Abī Uṣaibi‛a attributed to al-Fārābī, which served as the basis for Max Meyerhof’s famous essay Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad. The present work, utilising evidence unknown to Meyerhof and still often neglected in more recent scholarship, argues that such a restriction never represented the whole Syriac tradition, but reflects an alternative logical curriculum with deep roots in the ancient world, while Syriac writers who were proficient in Greek adhered throughout to the other strand of this two-strand tradition, that of the full Organon.

A volume of collected essays that explores what we can learn about the producers and readers of biblical books by looking into matters of language, rhetoric, style, and ideology. What do they teach us about these literati’s world of knowledge and imagination, about the issues they had in mind and the ways they came to deal with them through authoritative literature? The book includes essays on such issues as whether linguistic theories can solve literary-critical problems, on what is “late biblical Hebrew,” on parallelism and noun groups in biblical poetry, and the communicative meaning of some linguistic choices.

With a focus on the Kitāb Ādāb al-falāsifah, a book of aphorisms attributed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, some of the important aspects of the Kitāb are laid out, particularly those dealing with religion and the pursuit of philosophy. Although putatively, translators and scholars such as Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, opened the way for philosophical dialogue between Muslims and Christians of Orthodox churches on precepts, often based on Aristotle, which they could agree would lead to wisdom and a humane society.

This study seeks to address the common bridal imagery pervasive in ancient Syriac Christianity by asking how Jacob of Serug employed the presentation of biblical women in his homilies to serve as imagery for the Church.

Twenty-four contributions on matters dealing with Byzantine and Oriental lands, people, and cultures through different perspectives, including history, maritime trade, documents, travelers, and art. These essays trace the history of the relations between the Greeks and the peoples of the Middle East from Late Antiquity up to the seventeenth century.

This book argues that it is the rejection of Paul’s claims to be an apostle in the same sense as the other apostles that ultimately underlies his “mission to the Gentiles.” This argument is advanced through a careful analysis of Paul’s references to his “conversion” in Galatians 1:15-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:8, paying particular attention to Paul’s evocative use of the language of abortion. The contextualization of this curious self-description in 1 Corinthians 15:8 draws upon a growing body of work concerning an area of ancient life that continues to fascinate and perplex moderns; the exposure of unwanted infants.

This book proposes a new occupation model for the remains of Khirbet Qumran, the site associated with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Using the latest in virtual reality technology, the author reconstructs the site of Qumran and demonstrates that the site was initially built as a Hasmonean fortress, and was later expanded into a residence for a self-sufficient community responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.