TeCLA (Texts from Christian Late Antiquity) is a series presenting ancient Christian texts both in their original languages and with accompanying contemporary English translations.
The first ever edition and translation of a biography of Sallara and his mother Elishbah, exploring both its local context – their asceticism and deeds in North Mesopotamia in the early 7th century – and the geopolitical events underway in the Middle East: war between Persia and Byzantium, and the rise of Islam in the region.
An edition of George of the Arab's homily on the Chronicon - on the reckoning of the year and the computation of the dates of feasts such as Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter.
The Life of Theodotus of Amida is that rare thing: a securely dated eye-witness account of life under Arab Muslim rule in the first century of Islam, and one of the few extant texts from seventh-century North Mesopotamia. It is imbued with local color and contemporary detail, revealing an intimate knowledge of the terrain, its inhabitants and officialdom, as well as the precariousness of the lives of those living in the borderlands between the Byzantine and Islamic empires.
The Shbītho d-Dayroye is a thirteenth-century anthology dedicated to the personal prayer of monks and nuns. The collection comprises the writings of great saints in the Syriac Orthodox tradition including Ephrem the Syrian, Abraham Qidun, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Philoxenos, Basil the Great, and Isaac the Syrian. For each of the seven daily prayer times (morning, third hour, noon, ninth hour, evening, and night), there is a main prayer and a closing prayer. The present edition is the first translation to make the spiritual treasures of the original Syriac text available to readers in English.
Jacob of Sarug's homily on the red heifer slaughter ritual in Numbers 19. For Jacob, the narrative is a prefigurement of Christ's death and its ability to restore and permanently purify all who enter the church through baptism.
During the 6th century AD, Īshōʿyahb I, Patriarch of the Church of the East, produced a code of law dealing with questions raised by Bishop Jacob of Darai in the Gulf. Perennial Church issues include priestly conducts, ecclesiastical rankings, and ordinations. Legal matters for the faithful concern wills, marriages, vows, lending at interest, and swearing. Most interesting are names of church architecture that the Code gives, including bema, diaconicon, and qestroma, terms that are still used today.
Ishoʿdad of Merv’s (fl. 850 AD) Commentary on Daniel provides an important witness to East Syriac exegetical technique. In it Ishoʿdad typically emphasizes an historical reading of the Old Testament above any kind of allegorical, spiritual, or even Christological interpretation. Most notable is Ishoʿdad’s belief that the Maccabees fulfilled several of the visions described in the book of Daniel, even including the Heavenly Kingdom of Daniel chapters 2, 7, and 8, and the physical resurrection of Daniel 12. These interpretations dramatically depart from most eastern and western commentators who considered Daniel’s visions to portend the rise of the Roman Empire and the advent of Christ. Ishoʿdad’s commentary is translated here into English for the first time.
Although the verse homilies of Jacob of Serugh are well known to lovers of Syriac literature, his stanzaic poetry, in the form of madroshe and sughyotho, have been largely forgotten. This volume contains twenty-five poems preserved in their complete form and attributed to Jacob in old manuscripts of the sixth/seventh to ninth/tenth century preserved today in the British Library, but largely originating from Deir al-Surian in Egypt.
In the thirteenth-century, a debate transpired over the course of several days between a monk named Jurjī and several Muslims jurists in the city of Aleppo. This debate represents a careful and sophisticated example of a literary genre that had been developing among the Christians living under Islamic rule since the seventh century. The immense popularity of this work is demonstrated by the sheer volume of surviving manuscripts, which number around hundred. This volume provides a critical edition and translation of the text.
An edition and English translation of the "Description of the Prayers", one of the few extant works by Ignatius V Bar Wahib (Patriarch of Antioch from 1293-1333). The text has been taken from a manuscript of the Orthodox Theological Seminary, Kottayam, copied in 1915 from a manuscript of the Konat Library. The treatise offers a description of the external aspects of the canonical prayers, including washing and prostration.
Different parts of the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary are known from the second century onwards. Translations and adaptations into Syriac and other languages also became available from very early centuries. The compilation in the Syriac language was translated into Malayalam in 1925, but an English translation containing the full text did not exist at all. This gap has been filled now by this work. Sebastian Brock’s Foreword gives important information on the background and authenticity of the different sources that form the basis of the text. This biography is unique in that it brings together some very early accounts of the birth of Mary, the birth of Jesus, the flight into Egypt, and most importantly, the very rare account of the ‘Dormition’ or ‘falling asleep’ of the Blessed Mother.
Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homily on Edessa and Jerusalem. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.
The first ever critical edition and complete translation of the Syriac Life of Saint Simeon of the Olives, who was an abbot of Qartmin Monastery in Tur Abdin and a bishop of the city of Harran in the late seventh and early eighth century AD.
Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homily on Samson. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.
Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains two of his homilies on Paul. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.
George was one of the last scholarly Syrian Orthodox bishops to live in the early Islamic period. His metrical homily, probably composed to be sung during the consecration of the Myron, is presented here with the vocalised Syriac text and English translation on facing pages.
Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains two of his homilies on Jacob. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.
Many stories and legends about John the son of Zebedee have survived from antiquity. He was known as one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, as the “Beloved Disciple” and author of the Gospel of John, and even as the recipient of the divine revelation in the Apocalypse. Later traditions, such as the Greek Acts of John, told of how John traveled to Ephesus and converted people to Christianity. John was an important figure to Catholic Christians, to Gnostic Christians, and to Manichaeans. He also found a distinct place among Syriac Christians who preserved their own story about John’s acts in Ephesus. William Wright first introduced the History of John in 1871 using two manuscript witnesses. Since then, more witnesses have been discovered, but little work has been done on this native Syriac apocryphon. The present volume brings together all of the known Syriac witnesses to the History of John with a new translation and includes, for the first time, a critical discussion of the history, provenance, and importance of this text for the study of Syriac Christianity and Christian Apocrypha more generally.