The initial installments of Alphonse Mingana’s Woodbrooke Studies: Christian Documents in Syriac, Arabic, and Garshūni, edited and translated with a critical apparatus, began as articles within the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester, starting in volume 11. Taken together, the several articles in this and following issues of the journal constitute the start of a series of publications that would bring important manuscripts to light. In this initial foray into publishing the manuscripts in his personal collection, Mingana offers translations and critical comments on seven documents: A Treatise of Barsalībi against the Melchites; Genuine and Apocryphal Works of Ignatius of Antioch; A New Jeremiah Apocryphon; A New Life of John the Baptist; Some Uncanonical Psalms; the Vision of Theophilus; and the Apocalypse of Peter. Each of these widely divergent documents contains important insights into early Christianity and are here brought together as the first volume in the Woodbrooke Studies, the series of which Gorgias Press will be publishing under the titles of the particular documents they contain.

Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937) was an educator at the Chaldean Seminary in Iraq. He was also a priest in the Assyrian tradition and a collector of ancient manuscripts. He is renowned for his Mingana Collection, a set of nearly 3000 early Syrian and Arabic documents which he acquired and preserved. His rare volume of the writings of Narsai is also available from Gorgias Press. Mingana eventually immigrated to England, where he spent 17 years in Manchester to continue his work on Oriental Studies.