Description
This volume offers a critical edition and annotated translation of twenty metrical homilies attributed to Isaac of Antioch, a late fifth-century CE Syriac poet. The works in this collection, the majority of which are examples of the Syriac rebuke genre, are aimed at the moral reformation of the Syrian Christian community. The introduction, which provides the first detailed study of the manuscript tradition of the corpus as a whole, identifies four different Isaacs whose writings were intermingled already in late antiquity and develops criteria for distinguishing among their works. Scholars and students of church history will find this a valuable resource for the study of Syriac poetry and homiletics, Christian ideas of moral reform, and late antique monastic and lay devotional culture.
Adam H. Becker is Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at New York University. In addition to translations and edited volumes, his books include Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (2006) and Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism (2015). He developed and is the ongoing editor of the series Persian Martyr Acts in Syriac.
Praise for Isaac of Antioch: Homilies on Moral and Monastic Reform
Becker’s creative English translation of Isaac’s Syriac texts is sensitive to the movement of the narrative, literal but flowing, utilizing nuanced and colorful terms and idioms to convey the urgent tone of these mēmrē.—Robert A. Kitchen, RBL
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