Mitteliranische Handschriften, pt. 4: Iranian Manuscripts in Syriac Script in the Berlin Turfan Collection. By Nicholas Sims-Williams. Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, vol. 18, 4. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012. Pp. 249.

This paper presents the newly rediscovered ‘Syriac Galen Palimpsest’. The manuscript has been subjected to the latest imaging techniques, which has allowed scholars to identify its undertext as containing a Syriac translation of Galens Book of Simple Drugs. After discussing the history, imaging and identification of the manuscript, we proceed to consider its significance for our understanding of the transmission of Greek medical lore in Syriac and Arabic, for which the Book of Simple Drugs serves as a (...) convenient model. Several common misconceptions,regarding the Syriac medical traditions are addressed, including the assumed inferiority of the Syriac translations, compared to the Arabic ones, and the role of Syriac as an intermediary between Greek and Arabic. (shrink)

From the Greeks to the Arabs and Beyond written by Hans Daiber, is a six volume collection of Daiber's scattered writings, journal articles, essays and encyclopaedia entries on Greek-Syriac-Arabic translations, Islamic theology and Sufism, the history of science, Islam in Europe, manuscripts and the history of oriental studies. The collection contains published (since 1967) and unpublished works in English, German, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, including editions of Arabic and Syriac texts. The publication mirrors the intercultural character of Islamic (...) thought and sheds new light on many aspects ranging from the Greek pre-Socratics to the Malaysian philosopher Naquib al-Attas. A main concern is the interpretation of texts in print or in manuscripts, culminating in two catalogues (Vol. 5 and 6), which contain descriptions of newly discovered, mainly Arabic, manuscripts in all fields. Vol. 1: Graeco-Syriaca and Arabica. Vol. 2: Islamic Philosophy. Vol. 3: From God's Wisdom to Science: A. Islamic Theology and Sufism; B. History of Science. Vol. 4: Islam, Europe and Beyond: A. Islam and Middle Ages; B. Manuscripts - a Basis of Knowledge and Science; C. History of the Discipline; D. Obituaries; E. Indexes. Vol. 5: Unknown Arabic Manuscripts from Eight Centuries - Including one Hebrew and Two Ethiopian Manuscripts: Daiber Collection III. Vol. 6: Arabic, Syriac, Persian and Latin Manuscripts on Philosophy, Theology, Science and Literature. Films and Offprints: Daiber Collection IV. (shrink)

Among the corpus of extant Greek works attributed to Gregory the Wonder-worker is a little treatise about the soul addressed to a certain Tatian. A fragment of the same work, which is missing its introductory preface, appears among the works of Maximus the Confessor. In addition, there are two manuscripts of a Syriac translation that also lack the introductory preface. One of these Syriac manuscripts was found at St. Catherine’s at Mt. Sinai and dates from the seventh century, (...) which indicates that the attribution of the work to such a late figure as Maximus the Confessor is incorrect. Yet the work, which I shall call De animafor the purpose of this inquiry, does not exhibit many obvious linguistic parallels with the admittedly quite small extant corpus of Greek works that are securely attributed to Gregory. Moreover, no early external evidence confirms that Gregory indeed wrote a treatise on the soul. In several of the Greek manuscripts as well as in the Syriac manuscripts the work remains unattributed to any author. In this paper I shall argue that: 1. earlier arguments that De anima depends on Nemenius of Emesa’s De natura hominis are dubious 2. the work displays some linguistic parallels with the extant works of Justin Martyr, which may suggest that it was directed at Justin’s student, Tatian the Syrian, either by Justin himself or by another student of Justin. (shrink)

This volume contains the Arabic translations of a lost treatise by Alexander of Aphrodisias "On the Principles of the Universe" with English translation, introduction and commentary. It also includes an Arabic and Syriac glossary. The introduction and commentary deal in detail with the manuscripts, the translators and the exegetical tendencies of the text, as well as with its reception in Arabic philosophy. The main theme of the work is the motion of the heavenly bodies and their influence on the (...) physical world. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview about the transmission of Greek popular philosophical writings in Ethiopian literature. Information about the historical and religious background in Ethiopia until the 13th century is very scanty, and also the conditions of transmission of Greek philosophy in monastic circles are poorly attested. An analysis of the ambivalent attitude towards Greek philosophy and secular education in Syriac and Coptic monasticism could shed some light on intellectual preconditions in Ethiopian monasteries, because they were significantly influenced by (...) these circles. The manuscript tradition of relevant writings gives us an additional clue which themes and works were preferred among monks in Egypt. Manuscripts containing popular philosophy circulated in the existent network of monasteries in Egypt and Ethiopia, and an increased interest, especially in the 15th/16th centuries, in these writings give rise to their translation from Arabic into Ethiopic. (shrink)

Four critical essays (on De Anima, on In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius, on Patristic Platonism, and on the doctrine of apokatastasis in Gregory of Nyssa and Origen), new Greek edition of De anima also based on the Coptic version predating every Greek manuscript, translations of, and commentaries on, both De Anima and In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius, appendixes (on the Syriac and Coptic translations of De Anima and on its reception among the Cambridge Platonists, with the first (...) Italian translation of an essay by Jane Lead[e]), bibliographies. (shrink)

Our methods of research, duly elaborated hereafter, would benefit from being applied to the realm of the East. For that matter, the examination of Syriac, Armenian, Coptic or Arabic manuscripts does not differ in the least from that of a Greek or Latin manuscript. The rules developed by classical philologists are just as valid for the study of the Maxims of Phtahhotep and the Precepts of Kagemeni…Alphonse Dain (1975), Les Manuscrits (Paris, Les Belles Lettres)One of the objects of a (...) comparative history of the scholarly practices in the West, the Far East, the Arab world and classical antiquity is the role of libraries in the constitution, transmission and transformations of the great textual corpora. To the institutional and social aspects of the politics of social memory should be added the range of intellectual and technical practices which have as their aim the conservation of this inheritance: material conservation and transmission - copying texts, restoring them, transferring them from one medium, one script and one language to another - but also work on the literal level and the meaning, the content and the form. (shrink)

This inquiry will be limited to an analysis of Turkic borrowings that have been attested in inscriptions found in Mongolia and southern Siberia in the period beginning around the year 700 A.D., as well as in Turkic-Uighur manuscripts, beginning around the year 900 A.D., conserved in northern Tarim (especially in the Turfan region) and in Dunhuang, which is a Chinese outpost on the main road of the silk trade. We will look only at borrowings that predate Islamization, a process that (...) developed rapidly during the eleventh century and of which some borrowings are still part of the language of the Islamic Turkish world. Although most of our study will concentrate on pre-Islamic borrowings that were fully assimilated into written words, we will will also investigate some transcriptions of foreign terms that are mentioned in various manuscripts of a theological bent (most notably of Indian, Iranian, Chinese, and Syriac origin and found in Buddhist, Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian texts) as well as words of a very technical nature. We will also look at more contemporary terms that are derived from several major semantic fields. (shrink)

This article returns to an old but not hitherto satisfactorily solved question, and aims at putting forward a new approach to the study of the sources and authorship of two contemporary treatises on agriculture: the Nabatean Agriculture and the Geoponica. Each of them embodies a long tradition reaching from Antiquity to the 10th century in two different cultural provinces expressed in Greek / Latin and Arabic languages. But there is another common feature of these works. Both of them survived in (...) a significant number of manuscripts, and constitute a kind of revision of previous compilations which drew their contents from more ancient treatises brought to light between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, and to some extent could be qualified as the outcome of an effort for systematising the corpus of agronomical science. Texts and translations from Greek to Latin, from Greek to Syriac or to Arabic, and from Arabic to Armenian attest to this cultural intercommunication. (shrink)

Singing and praying in the words of biblical men and women is basic to sacramental mimesis, i.e., Christian imitation of the actions of the saints with the intention of thereby opening themselves to grace. This evidence counters the “voiceless victim” paradigm prevalent in much feminist scholarship. In pre-Christian Jewish liturgy, the song of Miriam after the Crossing of the Red Sea was already important in the annual celebration of the Passover. Jesus emphasized the spiritual equality of the sexes in his (...) teaching and ministry, and this led to increased visibility for women in Christian tradition: Susanna was the first of at least eight women interpreted as types of Christ. She was presented this way even within the synoptic Gospels themselves [see “Aneboesen phone megale: Susanna and the Synoptic Passion Narratives,” forthcoming in Gregorianium]. Moreover, the practice of presenting examples from both sexes in sermons and church decoration was so pervasive as to constitute a pastoral program of the Church. Such balanced representation of the sexes is found in both texts and art. The linguistic range of the evidence for the singing of women’s words includes Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Slavonic, and German. The artworks depicting women are from throughout the Christian world, including Dura Europos, Jerusalem, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Syria, Armenia, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany. More than twenty biblical women are treated in the essay. Women’s words, quoted from the biblical record or imaginatively supplied, became the prayer of the whole congregation. Miriam’s words remain focal universally on Holy Saturday. The acclamations of Elizabeth and of the Virgin Mary became prominent early in both East and West . Both Byzantine and Gregorian chant commemorated them and other women such as Eve, Esther, Judith, Sarah , Susanna, Martha of Bethany, the Samaritan woman, the Canaanite woman, the woman with the ointment, the Samaritan woman, the ten virgins of the parable , and especially the Holy Women at the Tomb . Their proclamation of the Lord’s rising became particularly important in Byzantine resurrection hymns used at Easter and year-round. With four other first-century female saints– Junia, Mariamne, Photina and Thecla– Mary Magdalene was deemed ἰσαπόστολος “equal to the apostles,” because the angel commissioned her to announce the Lord’s Resurrection to the disciples. Martha’s profession of faith is the fullest recorded in the Gospels and became the basis for a Byzantine communion prayer . Repeatedly, one finds that women’s words were sung at important Sunday feasts and during Holy Week. In Gregorian chant their words were sung over the course of several days. Susanna’s words are readily found in fifty Gregorian chant manuscripts from the ninth through fifteenth centuries, used in cathedrals, in monasteries and other religious houses, and in parish churches; an appendix lists these manuscripts. Throughout the continent–in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, England, Wales–the varied communities of the church sang Susanna’s words. Moreover, her words as mediated through Gregorian chant were quoted by Bernard of Clairvaux in a sermon and by Hermann of Scheda in his account of his conversion from Judaism. These men used Susanna’s words to evoke her as a type of Christ and thereby to seek to be like him themselves. That is, they experienced sacramental mimesis through singing women’s words. (shrink)

Ibn Sarābiyūn is one of the last exponents of classical Syriac medical writing, and one of the most influential authors for the development of medical theory and practice in late ninth-century Baghdad in particular, and for the Arabic medical tradition in general. During the last thirty years, three important studies have been published regarding the life and work of Ibn Sarābiyūn, each of which dealing with a different aspect of the transmission of this important author’s œuvre. Likewise, during the (...) last twenty-five years, a number of texts associated with Ibn Sarābiyūn's works have been edited, allowing us today to shed new light on the relation between the original Syriac and the numerous translations into Arabic, Latin and Hebrew. Furthermore, through analysing and comparing a number of manuscripts containing different parts of Ibn Sarābiyūn's work which have not hitherto been considered together, progress can be made towards answering the question how Ibn Sarābiyūn was translated and used during the medieval period. (shrink)

This treatise of medicine by Yühannā ibn Sarābiyūn, written in Syriac in the 8th century, translated into Arabic in the 10th century and then into Latin in the 12th century, is a typical example of the transmission of Hippocratic medicine from the Arabic East to the Latin West in the Middle Ages. However, while the complete Latin translation of Gerard of Cremona has reached us, we have only fragments of the Arabic text, dispersed in five manuscripts preserved in four (...) European libraries. In the first part we shall try to establish the biographical information about the author and the four translators of his treatise from Syriac to Arabic. In the second part we shall study the Arabic fragments of the Paris manuscript and the two Escorial manuscripts, first by examining their language, and then by comparing them to the Latin translation. Composé en syriaque au VIII e siècle, traduit en arabe au X e siècle, puis en latin au XII e siècle, ce traité de médecine de Yūḥannā ibn Sarābiyūn est un exemple typique de la transmission de la médecine hippocratique de l'Orient arabe à l'Occident latin au moyen âge. Mais si la traduction latine de ce traité, faite par Gérard de Crémone, nous est parvenue dans son intégralité, nous ne possédons que des fragments du texte arabe, dispersés dans cinq manuscrits conservés dans quatre bibliothèques européennes. Dans une première partie, on essaiera de préciser les données biographiques relatives à l'auteur et aux quatre traducteurs qui ont effectué la traduction de son traité du syriaque en arabe. Dans une seconde partie, on étudiera les fragments du manuscrit de Paris et des deux manuscrits de l'Escorial, en examinant d'abord ces fragments du point de vue de leur langue, puis en les comparant à la traduction latine. (shrink)

The article deals with analysis of the formation and historical significance of two traditions in Eastern Christianity, which emerged as a result of the rejection of theological decisions of the Chalcedon Ecumenical Council, that means, they adopted into their own theological tradition significant influences of monophysitism. This concerns Syriac Jacobite and Coptic Churches, as well as the churches that are associated with them in historical and theological cognation.

The literary legacy of Aramaic-speaking Christianity consists predominantly of ecclesiastical works—theological treatises , sermons, hymns, and the like; it is for the most part, one must admit, rather dull stuff. Distinguished from the rest, and of peculiar interest to classical students, are secular works, translated from the Greek, which include, apart from medical and scientific treatises, a handful of writings by Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius. Baumstark suggests that the translator of these three Greek writers be identified as Sargis , a (...) learned priest and ρχιατρός in Theodosiopolis, with a somewhat chequered ecclesiastical career , who is known as the translator of a number of philosophical and medical treatises. Sargis has his place in the history of thought, for it was in the first place through his Syriac translations that the Arabs became acquainted with Galen, whose works eventually assumed almost canonical status with them. (shrink)

This issue presents the research on early Chinese texts by Cao Feng, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. He is an expert in early Chinese political philosophy and philosophy of language found in transmitted and excavated texts. His extensive education in Japan has left him well versed in Japanese sinology. Although a critical researcher in the field of early Chinese thought and a very prolific writer in both Chinese and Japanese, Cao Feng is little known in the West. This issue (...) introduces three papers selected in consultation with the author: a reflection on the study of excavated texts, the "Huang" component of so-called Huang-Lao thought, and views on language in the Laozi. (shrink)

This publication deals with the practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's enclyclopaedia of Aristotelian wisdom "Butyrum sapientiae". The three Syriac books on Ethics, Politics and Economy are unique and the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature.

This publication deals with the practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's enclyclopaedia of Aristotelian wisdom "Butyrum sapientiae". The three Syriac books on Ethics, Politics and Economy are unique and the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature.

This publication deals with the practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's enclyclopaedia of Aristotelian wisdom "Butyrum sapientiae". The three Syriac books on Ethics, Politics and Economy are unique and the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature.

A Corpus of Syriac Incantation Bowls. By Marco Moriggi. Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity, vol. 3. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. xvii + 257, illus. $163.

Pacific Conservation Biology has officially published the manuscript. The article can be accessed using the following DOI:10.1071/PC23044.

The articles collected in this volume are concerned with the transmission and development of the Greek achievement among Syriac scholars of the Fertile Crescent during the four centuries after 500CE, particularly in the fields of rhetoric and philosophy. Cumulatively they show how many aspects of Greek culture were received and elaborated in Syriac, and contribute to understanding the ways in which that culture exercised a powerful influence on the medieval Near East and the burgeoning Islamic civilisation.

Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World. By Michael Philipp Penn. Divina tions: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. v + 294. $59.95, £39.

The popular Islamic formula known as the ḥawqala is first attested in Ḥadīth and other written sources from around the eighth century CE. A similar formula is Q: 18.39b. Some scholars in the first Islamic centuries were concerned that the non-Qurʾānic ḥawqala would be more venerated than Q: 18.39b or confused with it. In this essay, I suggest in what respect the ḥawqala is related to Q: 18.39b. I argue that the ḥawqala is perhaps influenced by Zech: 4.6b and its (...) Syriac version. Past scholars have noted the similarity between the ḥawqala and Zech: 4.6b, but the exact relation between these two phrases has not been fully explored. I therefore discuss the linguistic and thematic similarities between both phrases and note some Islamic traditions in which the ḥawqala is said to be of Biblical provenance. By this, I show that there is good reason to suspect that the ḥawqala is partly influenced by Zech: 4.6b and its Syrac version, and that this probably occurred at an early stage in the development of Islam when Jewish scripture was more regularly consulted as a means of confirming Islamic revelation. (shrink)

The four volumes of Neil Ker's Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries were published by Oxford University Press between 1969 and 1992. They comprise a catalogue of about 3,000 manuscripts in Latin and Western European vernaculars in hitherto uncatalogued or inadequately catalogued institutional collections in the United Kingdom and form a major research tool for humanist scholars. The index volume, produced under the direction of A. G. Watson, a former pupil of Ker's and now his literary executor, and I. C. Cunningham, (...) formerly Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, provides a variety of indexes, including authors/titles; owners; geographical origins and dates of manuscripts; vernacular manuscripts; Latin and vernacular incipits; manuscripts cited; repertories cited; and iconography. There are also lists of recent accessions to libraries and of manuscripts that have migrated from one institution to another. (shrink)

The anonymous author of the Syriac Liber Graduum never mentions his theological opponents. The article analyses a few examples taken from his biblical exegesis and from his most typical theological concepts and shows that these peculiar features are better explained as a hidden polemic against Marcionism, thus casting new light on the nature of the Liber Graduum and providing new data for the study of Syriac Marcionism.

This volume contains a critical edition of Bar Hebraeus’ _Book of Rhetoric_ in his _Cream of Wisdom_. The accompanying introduction, translation and commentary explore its relations with the Syriac Aristotle and the Arabic commentary of Ibn Sina.

Summary Syriac translations and Syriac scholars played an important role in the transmission of the sciences, including the mathematical sciences, from the Greek to the Arabic world. Relatively little, unfortunately, remains of the translations and original mathematical works of earlier Syriac scholars, but some materials have survived, and further glimpses of what once existed may be gained from works of later authors. The paper will provide an overview of the earlier materials that have survived or are known (...) to have existed. This will be followed by an account of some of the later materials, which will include an example illustrating how further earlier materials can be recovered from the writings of later authors, and a mention, by way of an epilogue, of an instance where a Syriac scholar was involved in a major historical and scientific event in the West, namely the reform of the calendar by Gregory XIII. (shrink)

Food prices are a daily concern in many households’ decision-making, especially when people want to have healthier diets. Employing Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 710 Indonesian citizens, we found that people from wealthier households are less likely to have concerns about food prices. However, the degree of health considerations in food consumption was found to moderate against the above association. In other words, people of higher income-based social classes may worry more about food prices if they (...) care more about the health impacts of their food choices. These findings provide more insights for policymakers on the psychological aspects of promoting the balance between finance and health in food consumption. (shrink)

This paper (from 2006) is now defunct. I argue against "realist primitivism". One of my arguments is a kind of "evolutionary debunking argument". Some of the material of this was incorporated into “Can Disjunctivists Explain Our Access to the Sensible World?” and "How Does Color Experience Represent the World?".