Syriac-English New Testament (Gilded)

The Traditional Syriac Peshitta Text and the Antioch Bible English Translation

General Editor George Anton Kiraz; Translated by Jeff W. Childers, J. Edward Walters, Daniel King & Robert A. Kitchen

After the success of the Antioch Bible, this publication is a new, historic edition of the Syriac-English New Testament in a single, very special, gilded volume. The English translations of the New Testament Syriac Peshitta along with the Syriac text were carried out by an international team of scholars.

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Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC

SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4191-9

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- Vegan leather, gilded paper edges (In Print) ISBN 978-1-4632-4191-9

Publication Status: In Print

Publication Date: Aug 31,2020

Interior Color: Black

Trim Size: 6 x 9

Page Count: 1093

Languages: English

ISBN: 978-1-4632-4191-9

$63.95

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About the Peshitta

The Peshitta Bible, written in the Aramaic variety known as Syriac, is the standard and authoritative text of the Bible for several Christian communities both in the Middle East and the southwest coast of India. These are: The Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Church, the Syriac Catholic Church and their Malayalee offshoots of Kerala. The Peshitta for these communities is what the King James Bible is for the English-speaking world. Once, the influence of the Peshitta extended East to China, Tibet, Turkmenistan, and India with a vast geographical area that surpassed that of the church in the West. Throughout their long history of almost two thousand years, these Eastern Christians lived under the shadow of empires and endured a long and turbulent history. Their Bible, the Peshitta, endured with them and survived to preserve for us an ancient Biblical legacy with distinctive Semitic features and unique Aramaic readings that help us better underset the transmission history of the Scriptures. Today, any respected modern Bible in English or any other language frequently cites the Peshitta as an ancient authority.

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REVIEWS

Excerpts from Kristian S. Heal, RBL 09/24

“This is a beautifully produced New Testament. It is tastefully bound, and the translation is clearly typeset with headings set in red. The front matter invites the reader into the world of the Syriac New Testament both ancient and modern…

The Syriac Bible has most frequently been written about by those outside the Syriac liturgical tradition. The preface to this volume offers the subtly different perspective of a scholar talking about his own tradition…and that difference is valuable. Kiraz speaks objectively but not dispassionately (viii–ix). He writes as an advocate of the importance of the Syriac Peshitta version, not just for Christians of the Syriac liturgical tradition, but for anyone who “wants a snapshot of what the Scriptures may have looked like during the first few centuries of the Christian era” (ix).

The introduction successfully reaches the target audience, which is not just English-speaking Syriac Christians but also English readers of the New Testament who want access to the ancient Syriac tradition (lix).

This latter section begins with a fascinating description of the first printed Peshitta New Testament, published in 1555. This edition was a collaboration between Moses of Mardin and Albrecht Widmanstadt, and Kiraz does a great job of giving a fuller account of Moses/Mushe of Mardin’s involvement in this project, which was obscured in earlier European accounts. The story of the printing of the Syriac New Testament thus offers a useful slice of European and Middle Eastern intellectual history from sixteenth century humanism to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philology and text criticism, as well as the rise and role Bible societies and mission presses in the modern publication of the Peshitta New Testament. Kiraz offers a rich history, often augmented by insights from the Syriac churches absent from previous surveys."

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About the Peshitta

Please note, the book cover shown above may be subject to minor alterations.

Sample Illuminations

Sample Variant Readings

Sample Page

REVIEWS

Excerpts from Kristian S. Heal, RBL 09/24

Existing reviews

Syriac-English New Testament

George Kiraz, Syriac-English New Testament. The Traditional Syriac Peshitta Text and the
Antioch Bible English Translation (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2020. $63.95. pp. xvi + 79 +
1015. ISBN: 978-1-4632-4191-9.
Syriac is the dialect of Aramaic used in Edessa and became an important literary language
around the 2 nd and 3 rd centuries. The use of Syriac increased following the extension of
Christianity in the Semitic speaking world. It also spread along the Silk Road so that there is
a famous Chinese & Syriac inscription in Xian (781 AD) and still today several million Indian
Christians use a Syriac liturgy.
The flourishing of Syriac studies today may be attributed to two figures: Sebastian Brock and
George Anton Kiraz. Sebastian Brock is acknowledged as the greatest living Syriac scholar,
and has inspired countless students not only with his learning but with his gentle, wise and
unstintingly generous spirit. George Kiraz was born into a Syrian Orthodox family in
Bethlehem in 1965 and emigrated to Los Angeles in 1983. Highly qualified linguistically and
in language processing, in 1986 he produced the first Syriac computer fonts (I was one of his
first customers). His Syriac fonts are now used worldwide. In 2001, with his wife Christine,
George Kiraz founded the Gorgias Press in Piscataway, New Jersey. Their visionary efforts
have taken Syriac studies into the digital and online world, retrieving and editing primary
sources, lexica, journals and teaching material with quite extraordinary energy. Texts and
editions which could only be inherited or found after years of patient searching when I was
a student in the 1970s have again been made accessible in what is a technological
renaissance for Syriac studies.
Among its flagship publications, in 2012 Gorgias Press began publishing a multi-volume
edition of the Peshitta Bible (The Antioch Bible), providing a fully pointed and vocalised text
with an idiomatic English translation on the facing pages. This was beautifully produced but
quite a daunting investment with over 35 volumes. At the end of 2020, following the
success of the Antioch Bible, Gorgias Press published in a single volume a historic new Syriac
and English New Testament. This is a fully pointed and vocalised text in the Jacobite script
with a facing translation by an international team of scholars. The entire translation was
reviewed by Sebastian Brock.
It is an elegant edition. The font and vocalisation are very legible and it is durably bound in
leather and a pleasure to handle. It is dedicated to the memory of George Kiraz’ parents and
it is the Syriac New Testament I had longed to have for more than 45 years. There are
different editions with gilded or non-gilded pages.
It is not only an elegant text but comes with an informative and readable 76 page
introduction. This summarises the history of the Syriac gospels through the ‘Gospel of the
Mixed’ (the Diatessaron), the ‘Gospel of the Separated’ (the two Old Syriac manuscripts),
the formation of the Peshitta and post-Peshitta revisions (Philoxenus of Mabbug and
Thomas of Harqel). There is a short history of the manuscript and lectionary tradition and
then a fascinating account of the momentous transition from manuscript to print in the sixteenth century. The Syriac New Testament was printed for the first time in Vienna in 1555 in a collaboration between a learned monk Mushe (Moses) and the German orientalist and humanist Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter (1506-1557). Mushe, son of Isaac, was a Syrian Orthodox monk from near Mardin who was sent to Europe with two manuscripts of the Syriac New Testament and letters of recommendation from the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch ‘Abdullah I bar Stephanos (Patriarch 1520-1557). ‘Abdullah I had heard of printing
in Europe and decided to print the Syriac New Testament for the benefit of his people. Mushe arrived in Europe sometime before September 1549. He travelled first to Rome and then to Venice (the contemporary capital of typography and printing) where he met Guillaume Postel (1510-81), a French linguist who had learned Syriac. However, they were
unable either to find funding or a Venetian printer willing to take on the task.

Postel probably advised Mushe to travel to Germany in search of Widmannstetter who had already purchased two gospel manuscripts and was known to have earlier tried unsuccessfully to find a Syriac printer in Venice. In those dangerous times, Mushe travelled in the company of Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-1558), the cousin of Mary Tudor, Queen of England (‘Bloody Mary’), who was then returning to England from Lake Garda. Mushe and Widmannstetter met near Augsburg and went together to Vienna where Widmannstetter
introduced him and the project to King Ferdinand. With the financial support of Ferdinand I (King of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, who became Holy Roman Emperor on the death of his brother Charles V in August 1556) a special print type (font) was
designed, modelled on the handwriting of Mushe. The project then progressed rapidly and the Peshitta New Testament was published before the end of 1555.

It is impossible not to reflect on how this courageous and tenacious tradition was taken to its next monumental stage in 1986 when the young George Kiraz designed the first DOS-based Estrangela computer font and later founded his own publishing house. This is a remarkable story as well as a truly beautiful Syriac New Testament.

From: Iain | Date: 8/11/2021 8:29 PM

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	Contributor	Biography
	GeorgeKiraz	George A. Kiraz is the founder and director of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, the Editor-in-Chief of Gorgias Press, and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He earned an M.St. degree in Syriac Studies from the University of Oxford (1991) and an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1992, 1996). He has published extensively in the fields of computational linguistics, Syriac studies, and the digital humanities. His latest books include The Syriac Orthodox in North America (1895–1995): A Short History (2019) and Syriac-English New Testament (2020). George is an ordained Deacon of the rank of Ewangeloyo (Gospler) in the Syriac Orthodox Church where he also serves on several Patriarchal, Synodal, and local committees. He lives in Piscataway, NJ, with his wife Christine and their children, Tabetha Gabriella, Sebastian Kenoro, and Lucian Nurono.
	JeffChilders	Jeff W. Childers is Carmichael-Walling Professor of New Testament & Early Christianity in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. He has a DPhil in Syriac Studies from the University of Oxford and specializes in the literature and history of Oriental Christianity.
	J.Walters	James Edward Walters (PhD in Early Christianity, Princeton Theological Seminary) is currently an Assistant Professor of Religion at Rochester College in Rochester Hills, MI. He works primarily with the early Syriac tradition and is interested in late antique Christianity, the reception and transmission of Scripture, and ancient Mediterranean religions.
	DanielKing	Daniel King (Translation Consultant, SIL International and Associate Fellow, Cardiff University) specializes in Greek-Syriac translations in Late Antiquity, and especially in Syriac philosophy. He has published on the Syriac reception of Aristotle, John Philoponus, and Cyril of Alexandria. He is the author, inter alia, of The Syriac World (Routledge, 2019) and The Earliest Syriac version of Aristotle’s Categories (Brill, 2010).
	RobertKitchen	Robert A. Kitchen is the Minister of Knox-Metropolitan United Church, Regina, Saskatchewan. He holds a D.Phil in Syriac Language and Literature from the University of Oxford. Along with Martien F. G. Parmentier he has translated the Book of Steps for Cistercian Publications.

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