Rabbinic Literature, Syriac Patristic

The article presents the discovery of a new manuscript containing extracts from the Syriac version of the «Hundred Chapters» of St. Diadochus of Photice. The article provides the identification of the chapters along with their incipits as contained in the manuscript. The critical text of the 15th chapter of the Centuria, established on the basis of three existent Syriac manuscripts, aims at showing a correlation between them. The publication in the Syriaс language is accompanied by a Russian translation.

This volume gives a bilingual Syriac-English edition of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homily on the Chariot which the Prophet Ezekiel saw. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume constitutes a fascicle of Gorgias’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug. In Syriac and English.

Lo femenino ha sido un tópico recurrente en los autores de la patrística y ha ocupado gran lugar en sus obras exegéticas, poéticas o históricas. Sin embargo, el interés de estos autores no solo se dirigió al análisis de cuestiones antropológicas relacionadas a la mujer, su lugar en la creación y la historia, sino que "femenino" puede identificarse como un atributo independiente asociado a ciertas conductas y procederes tanto humanas como divinas. El cristianismo evocó desde sus inicios la igualdad espiritual del varón y la mujer, generando así una gran atracción en las creyentes, quienes rápidamente se volvieron difusoras de la nueva fe; sin embargo, la retórica sobre lo femenil no acompaña este entusiasmo, ya que los autores de la patrística propiciaron discursos que en muchos casos lo asociaban a la debilidad y la inestabilidad, situaciones muy próximas al pecado. La pregunta que Jesús dirige a María Magdalena en el sepulcro, "Mujer, ¿por qué lloras?", se vuelve en nuestro mundo contemporáneo un llamado a revisitar y revisar críticamente los aportes que la primera literatura cristiana y la patrística oriental y occidental nos han legado en cuanto a imágenes y lecturas de lo femenino.

We will examine texts from the Mishnah Berakhot and Bavli Berakhot whose message seems subsersive, going against the grain of the apparent overall aims of the broader context. By means of close reading I will show that the apparently subversive message of these texts is designed to lead to a more nuanced and sophisticated "reconstruction", rather than merely to "deconstruct".

This paper examines the macro-redaction of a tractate, Berakhot. In previous work I have shown how the conclusion of the Toseftan tractate sums up the major themes of the tractate and integrates them into a cohesive conceptual framework. In this paper I show how additional aspects of the concluding unit interact with earlier passages, providing a fuller and richer picture of the tractate's redaction and ideas.

Much of Mishnah Tractate Sotah consists of digressions from the titular topic. Going beyond the standard explanation of pre-existing collections included by the redactor for mnemotechnical reasons, this article will demonstrate the literary associations which connect the digressions to the main body of the tractate, suggesting deeper conceptual inks which we will seek to discover.

מחבר המאמר הוא ד"ר לתלמוד מאוניברסיטת פוטסדאם בוגר הישיבות 'חברון' ו'מיר'. המאמר אינו מציית לכללים החברתיים-כלכליים של העולם האקדמי (בורדייה/ 'אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים'). המאמר מבקש לבחון את הדרך בה אנו קוראים ומפרשים את התלמוד הבבלי לאור הבנתנו את השפה והלשון (ויטגנשטיין) ולאור הזהירות הנדרשת בפירוש טקסטים מן העבר (קוונטין סקינר). בסופו של דבר המאמר בא לענות על השאלות:
מהו התלמוד הבבלי, וכיצד יש לפרש אותו.

This paper presents a series of examples revealing some significant aspects about the technique of the Greek translation of Ephrem’s mēmrā on Niniveh and Jonah (Syriac text by Edmund Beck, 1970; editio princeps of the Greek text by Démocratie Hemmerdinger-Iliadou, 1967).
This text represents a very interesting example of the interaction at different levels between Greek and Syriac in Late Antiquity. Firstly, this translation is from Syriac into Greek, a translation direction little studied so far, in strong contrast with the opposite movement of translation from Greek into Syriac (for examples, the articles by Sebastian Brock, David Taylor, Aaron Butts and Alberto Rigolio). The contact between the two cultures was not only characterised by the prevalent position of Greek over Syriac, but also by the fact that Syriac literature and culture influenced the Greek spheres by means of translations and oral traditions (the monography about byzantine hagiography by Paul Peeters and some articles by Sebastian Brock).
Secondly, this text shows a literary and poetic interchange, as the Greek translation presents a transposition not only of the content of the Syriac text, but also of the metrical structure of the mēmrā (the only known case so far of a Greek translation from an extant Ephrem’s text). In fact, it reproduces the isosyllabic pattern of the original and expands the couplet of verses in a group of four verses, maintaining the same structure based on parallelisms and oppositions.
From a comparison between the two texts (the source text in Syriac and the target text in Greek), it is possible to identify a series of linguistic, cultural and formal characteristics that indicate which kind of translation the Greek text is. This contribution intends to display these aspects by means of chosen textual examples. The examples will be selected from portions of the Syriac and Greek texts, placed side by side in order to show better the similarities (and differences) between the two versions.
In the conclusions, I will talk about the translation techniques of the text in general and the analysed typology of translation will be viewed within the categorisation of translation techniques in the Syriac literature proposed by Sebastian Brock in 1983.

רבים תוהים מדוע המשנה במסכת שבת מקדימה למשנה המרכזית של 39 מלאכות (פ"ז מ"ב) את ששת הפרקים הראשונים, העוסקים בחלקם בהכנות לקראת שבת ובחלקם בענייני הוצאה. במאמר זה נבחן הסברים שונים שהוצעו לסדר הפרקים כאן, ונתמקד בפתיחה 'במה' המופיעה בארבעה מתוך ששת הפרקים. פרקי 'במה' מתחלקים לשניים העוסקים בהכנות לקראת שבת ושניים העוסקים במלאכת הוצאה, והפתיחה המשותפת רומזת שעורך המשנה מבקש לקשור בין שני הנושאים האלו. ננסה לעמוד על משמעות הקשר בין שני הנושאים הללו, ונציע כי ביחד שני הנושאים מבטאים את ייחודה של השבת ומבליטים את ההבדלים העיקריים בין השבת לבין מועדים מקודשים אחרים.

The doctoral thesis examines a universal history by the 7th-century East Syriac (The Church of the East) author John bar Penkaye “Book of the Main Points, or The History of the Temporal World” in the context of East Syrian literary tradition.
“The Book of the Main Points” was written at the end of the 7th century, on the eve of the Arab dominion in the Middle East and during the second major political crisis in the early caliphate, known as Second Fitna (680-692). Besides political upheavals, the region was being shaken with natural disasters: famine and plague. John undertook this enterprise in the search of answers on the urgent questions which were put forward by his community: what brought these disasters upon us? Thus, in his work John examines the relationship between God and mankind in an attempt to find the answers and writes the history of the human race from the beginning until the last days which John was expecting to come soon. “The Book of the Main Point” is by all means an important witness to the first decades of the early caliphate and the rise of Islam. At the same time, it contains rich material on East Syriac Christianity and theology. Therefore, the research focuses on the History as a historiographical and theological work written in the Syriac speaking environment and rooted in East Syriac tradition.     
Introduction includes the discussion of the transmission of the text: what are the manuscripts, when they were copied, and how they are interrelated with each other.
The first part analyzes and summarizes the sources on John bar Penkaye’s live and his literary heritage.
The second part provides an overview of the book’s content and the historiographical framework employed by John bar Penkaye. In particular, the emergence and usage of the notion of “temporal world” in East Syrian tradition is studied as well as its relation to Theodore of Mopsuestia’s doctrine of the two ages. The last section of the second part outlines the outstanding character of Bar Penkaye’s universal history as compared to similar historiographical works produced in the Syriac speaking milieu.
The third part studies the opening section of “The Book of the Main Points” on the Creation and, generally, East Syrian cosmology, anthropology, angelology, and exegetical tradition related to Gen 1-3: the creation of the universe, primordial natures, spiritual natures (angels and demons) and the nature of man.
The thesis is in Russian but includes the table of contents in English.

In this book, Lynn Kaye examines how rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. Providing close readings of legal and narrative texts in the Babylonian Talmud, she compares temporal ideas with related concepts in ancient and modern philosophical texts and in religious traditions from late antique Mesopotamia.  Kaye demonstrates that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploration and resolution of legal uncertainties, as well as to tell stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically.  Her book, the first on this topic, makes accessible complex legal texts and philosophical ideas. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time.

Forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in January-February 2018

Bozza di programma del Laboratorio «Testi cristiani antichi (II-VII sec.)» – Università Roma Tre (primo semestre 2021-2022)
The draft program of the Laboratory «Ancient Christian Texts (II-VII sec.)» – Roma Tre University (first Semester 2021-2022)
Per info: mpavan@os.uniroma3.it

This paper discusses the ecclesiology of Ephraem the Syrian. It describes both Ephraem's relation to Jewish ideas of priesthood and covenant and Ephraem's position to the Roman Empire and its church. It also discusses aspects of his sacramental theology, for example, when dealing with the Last Supper.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the implications of seven traditions recorded in the Mishnah for our understanding of Jewish practice regarding the pronunciation of Tetragrammaton in the late second temple period.
We will look at ways of approaching isolated texts in the Mishnah which will throw light on some contexts in which the Tetragrammaton was spoken in the period in Jerusalem. The older position was that the name was forgotten and spoken just once a year on Yom Kippor by the high priest and that the Jews would not write it outside the Hebrew scripture:
The practice of avoiding the pronouncing as well as the writing out in full, of the four-lettered holy name of God has been followed by Jews throughout the ages…Except in the books of the Holy Scriptures the Tetragrammaton it is never written out in full . And when the Scriptures are read aloud , even as part of the synagogue service, it is never pronounced as written (Lauterbach 1931: 39). The result of the study is that the Tetragrammaton was spoken far more frequently than is usually understood. This will mean scholars will need to rethink the idea of a general prohibition on the speaking of the Tetragrammaton in the late second temple period.

In this paper I will examine the macro-redaction of an entire Toseftan tractate Berakhot. In my previous work on the redaction of the tractate I demonstrated certain overall redactorial techniques that bind the tractate together and indicate the ideas that the Toseftan redactor sees as central to the tractate. In this paper I will argue that the strategic placement of certain parallel passages adds an important new dimension to understanding the structure and messages of the work.

The International Catacomb Society desires to support scholars of demonstrated promise and ability who are judged capable of producing significant, original research within the sphere of the Mediterranean world from the late Hellenistic Period to the end of the Roman Empire. Of special interest are interdisciplinary projects that approach traditional topics from new perspectives.
One or more Shohet Scholars will be selected each year and supported for a period of one year. Grants may be made to seed innovative approaches and new ideas or to cover specific expenses or phases of a larger project under the direction of the applicant. At this time, awards in the range of $2,000 to $30,000 will be made.
The application deadline for 2017-2018 is January 15, 2017.