Books by Adam Becker
This volume offers a critical edition and annotated translation of twenty metrical homilies attri... more 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.
This includes the preface, TOC, and the introduction to the book. There is a summary of the book ... more This includes the preface, TOC, and the introduction to the book. There is a summary of the book on pages 33-36.
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo19085524.html
This is only the table of contents, preface, and introduction. There is a chapter summary at the ... more This is only the table of contents, preface, and introduction. There is a chapter summary at the end of the introduction.
Articles and Book Chapters by Adam Becker
“The Invention of the Persian Martyr Acts,” Syriac Christian Culture: Beginnings to Renaissance, ed. Aaron Butts and Robin Darling Young (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 113-148., 2020
Griechische Wissenschaft und Philosophie bei den Ostsyrern: Zum Gedenken an Mār Addai Scher (1867-1915), ed. Matthias Perkams and Alexander M. Schilling (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 13-28., 2020
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verz... more Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.
Narsai: Rethinking his Work and his World, 2020
In this study I would like to examine the role of the divine name in Narsai’s
works, in particul... more In this study I would like to examine the role of the divine name in Narsai’s
works, in particular the function it has according to Narsai in the baptismal ritual. Narsai includes in his account of the baptismal ritual a description of the officiant priest introducing the ineffable name of God, which in turn is the primary effective agent in the ritual. Narsai’s dependence on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Catechetical Homilies in his mēmrē on the baptismal and eucharistic rituals has long been noted. However, one innovative feature of Narsai’s explication of baptism, something absent from Theodore’s work and in fact generally absent from the ancient understanding of baptism, is his focus on the role the divine
name plays in the ritual. Understanding the place of the divine name in Narsai’s treatment of baptism not only offers an entry point into his distinctive ideas about ritual and the divine name but also requires addressing other significant issues in his work, such as his thinking about materiality and epistemology.
Unfortunately, the full bibliographical references are not included here because the bibliography... more Unfortunately, the full bibliographical references are not included here because the bibliography was at the back of the book.
Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study o... more Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian ("Nestorian") schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer.* This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, 1 and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge-in lay person's terms, education-in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. 2 Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at * This article is based on a paper given at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in 2005. I thank those who provided feedback at the time, as well as Jeffrey Rubenstein, Natalie Dohrmann, Ra'anan Boustan, and especially Michael Pregill and Bridget Purcell. I also thank those in attendance when I presented a later version in the fall of 2007 at the Center for the Study of Early Christianity, Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of America. The anonymous reader provided a number of helpful suggestions for which I am also grateful, and I thank Peter Schäfer for helping me with a missing reference.
This study examines the disproportionately heavy reliance on the word deḥ ltā ("fear") and its c... more This study examines the disproportionately heavy reliance on the word deḥ ltā ("fear") and its cognates in two related sixth-century Syriac martyr texts from the Sasanian Empire, and how this usage refl ects both an acknowledgement of and an attempt to transcend the religious diversity of the sixth century. It begins by describing the contents and historical background of the two martyrdoms and highlighting their broad, even elastic, usage of deḥ ltā and its cognates. The origins of the wide semantic range of deḥ ltā are attributed to Syriac translation literature, especially the Peshitta, the Syriac version of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. After a survey of how this term appears in earlier East Syrian martyr acts, the study turns to the close engagement with Zoroastrianism found in the martyrdoms of Gregory and Yazdpaneh and then to an examination of how "fear" relates to the texts' theological and ethical concerns. It is suggested that fear is an embodied form of knowledge evoked in these texts at the same time that it operates in the textual process of coercion that creates religious subjects.
This previously unpublished Syriac text consists of two parts, a dialogue between a Jew and a Chr... more This previously unpublished Syriac text consists of two parts, a dialogue between a Jew and a Christian concerning the abrogation of the Israelite priesthood by that of Jesus Christ in heaven and a list of key points where the former and the latter priesthoods differ. Although his main source is the pseudo-Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews, the author of this text was influenced by Greek philosophical logic and may have written this text with the aim of debating with Jews.
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Books by Adam Becker
Articles and Book Chapters by Adam Becker
works, in particular the function it has according to Narsai in the baptismal ritual. Narsai includes in his account of the baptismal ritual a description of the officiant priest introducing the ineffable name of God, which in turn is the primary effective agent in the ritual. Narsai’s dependence on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Catechetical Homilies in his mēmrē on the baptismal and eucharistic rituals has long been noted. However, one innovative feature of Narsai’s explication of baptism, something absent from Theodore’s work and in fact generally absent from the ancient understanding of baptism, is his focus on the role the divine
name plays in the ritual. Understanding the place of the divine name in Narsai’s treatment of baptism not only offers an entry point into his distinctive ideas about ritual and the divine name but also requires addressing other significant issues in his work, such as his thinking about materiality and epistemology.
works, in particular the function it has according to Narsai in the baptismal ritual. Narsai includes in his account of the baptismal ritual a description of the officiant priest introducing the ineffable name of God, which in turn is the primary effective agent in the ritual. Narsai’s dependence on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Catechetical Homilies in his mēmrē on the baptismal and eucharistic rituals has long been noted. However, one innovative feature of Narsai’s explication of baptism, something absent from Theodore’s work and in fact generally absent from the ancient understanding of baptism, is his focus on the role the divine
name plays in the ritual. Understanding the place of the divine name in Narsai’s treatment of baptism not only offers an entry point into his distinctive ideas about ritual and the divine name but also requires addressing other significant issues in his work, such as his thinking about materiality and epistemology.