Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage PDF Download

Author: Sebastian P. Brock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593337148
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (GEDSH) is the first major encyclopedia-type reference work devoted exclusively to Syriac Christianity, both as a field of scholarly inquiry and as the inheritance of Syriac Christians today. In more than 600 entries it covers the Syriac heritage from its beginnings in the first centuries of the Common Era up to the present day. Special attention is given to authors, literary works, scholars, and locations that are associated with the Classical Syriac tradition. Within this tradition, the diversity of Syriac Christianity is highlighted as well as Syriac Christianity's broader literary and historical contexts, with major entries devoted to Greek and Arabic authors and more general themes, such as Syriac Christianity's contacts with Judaism and Islam, and with Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, and Georgian Christianities.

Author: Robert A. Kitchen
Publisher: Gorgias Press
ISBN: 9781593339807
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
The Syriac Book of Steps collects 30 memre by an anonymous late 4th century author in Persia. It describes the struggle of an actual Christian community, not an idealized one, to live a life in the pursuit of perfection in the midst of a hostile culture. The author details the aspirations and standards of the two ranks of Christians prior to the advent of monasticism: the Upright--married people who work and perform acts of charity--and the Perfect who are celibate, do not work, but live a life of prayer, wandering through the region teaching and mediating conflicts.

Author: Theodore Henry Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019968717X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 188

View

Book Description
Classical Syriac is the third language of early Christian literature after Greek and Latin, and as a dialect of Aramaic it has a special relationship with the words of Jesus. This sixth edition of the classic textbook continues to provide a clear introduction to the language, with larger text and improved explanations.

Author: Kristian S. Heal
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813221668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

View

Book Description
This collection of sixteen new critical essays offers fresh perspectives on the Book of Steps, adding greater detail and depth to our understanding of the work's intriguing picture of early Syriac asceticism as practiced within the life of a local church and community.

Author: Seely J. Beggiani
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813227011
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

View

Book Description
Presents the insights of St. Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh, two of the earliest representatives of the theological world-view of the Syriac church.

Author: David Gaunt
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785334999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

View

Book Description
The mass killing of Ottoman Armenians is today widely recognized, both within and outside scholarly circles, as an act of genocide. What is less well known, however, is that it took place within a broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups during and after the First World War. Among those populations decimated were the indigenous Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) who lived in the borderlands of present-day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or “Sayfo” (literally, “sword” in Aramaic), presenting historical, psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives that shed much-needed light on a neglected historical atrocity.

Author: Robert Murray
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780567030825
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 422

View

Book Description
A study of Syriac Christianity up to the early fifth century CE, its beliefs and worship, its life and art. This book offers a vivid picture of the development and character of the culture, illustrating both its original close relationship to Judaism and its remoter background in Mesopotamian civilization.

Author: A. J. Berkovitz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512824194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

View

Book Description
The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one's last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text among all the books of the Hebrew Bible. A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity clarifies the world of late ancient Judaism through the versatile and powerful lens of the Psalter. It asks a simple set of questions: Where did late ancient Jews encounter the Psalms? How did they engage with the work? And what meanings did they produce? A. J. Berkovitz answers these queries by reconstructing and contextualizing a diverse set of religious practices performed with and on the Psalter, such as handling a physical copy, reading from it, interpreting it exegetically, singing it as liturgy, invoking it as magic and reciting it as an act of piety. His book draws from and contributes to the fields of ancient Judaism, biblical reception, book history and the history of reading.

Author: Robert A. Kitchen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 236

View

Book Description
"The Book of Steps is a collection of 30 sermons and Biblical interpretation by an anonymous author living in the Persian Empire (modern Iraq) during the late 300's. One of the largest examples of early Syriac literature, the Book of Steps describes the struggle of a Christian community prior to the advent of monasticism to live a faithful, committed life in the pursuit of perfection. The author details the aspirations and standards of the two ranks of Christians in his community: the Upright ones—married lay people who work in the world and perform the various acts of Christian charity—and the Perfect ones who are celibate, do not work, but live a life of prayer, while wandering through the region teaching and mediating conflicts. The Book of Steps is a unique work because it presents a living portrait of an actual religious community, not an idealized one, in the midst of a hostile culture. While the author advocates an ascetical lifestyle, this community does not practice the extreme physical asceticism so often associated with the Syriac church during this period. Unlike many works on the spiritual life, the author gradually seems to withdraw his praise for the higher rank, the Perfect, and begin to encourage, if not favor, the lower rank, the Upright."--

Author: Philip Michael Forness
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192561790
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

View

Book Description
Preaching formed one of the primary, regular avenues of communication between ecclesiastical elites and a wide range of society. Clergy used homilies to spread knowledge of complex theological debates prevalent in late antique Christian discourse. Some sermons even offer glimpses into the locations in which communities gathered to hear orators preach. Although homilies survive in greater number than most other types of literature, most do not specify the setting of their initial delivery, dating, and authorship. Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East addresses how we can best contextualize sermons devoid of such information. The first chapter develops a methodology for approaching homilies that draws on a broader understanding of audience as both the physical audience and the readership of sermons. The remaining chapters offer a case study on the renowned Syriac preacher Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521) whose metrical homilies form one of the largest sermon collections in any language from late antiquity. His letters connect him to a previously little-known Christological debate over the language of the miracles and sufferings of Christ through his correspondence with a monastery, a Roman military officer, and a Christian community in South Arabia. He uses this language in homilies on the Council of Chalcedon, on Christian doctrine, and on biblical exegesis. An analysis of these sermons demonstrates that he communicated miaphysite Christology to both elite reading communities as well as ordinary audiences. Philip Michael Forness provides a new methodology for working with late antique sermons and discloses the range of society that received complex theological teachings through preaching.