Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day

Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day Monographs of the Peshitta Institute Leiden Studies in the Syriac Versions of the Bible and their Cultural Contexts Editorial Board s.p. brock – s.h. griffith – k.d. jenner a. van der kooij – t. muraoka – w.th. van peursen Executive Editor R.B. ter Haar Romeny VOLUME 18 Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day Edited by Bas ter Haar Romeny LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 This book is printed on acid-free paper. ISSN 0169-9008 ISBN 978 90 0417347 7 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. 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Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix BIOGRAPHY Jacob of Edessa’s Life and Work: A Biographical Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Alison Salvesen Jacob and Early Islamic Edessa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Robert Hoyland JACOB AS A HISTORIAN AND CORRESPONDENT The Chronicle of Jacob of Edessa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Witold Witakowski Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Jacob of Edessa’s Letters and Historical Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 William Adler Greetings to a Virtuous Man: The Correspondence of Jacob of Edessa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Jan J. van Ginkel JACOB AS A JURIST Jacob of Edessa and Canon Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Herman G.B. Teule The Canons of Jacob of Edessa in the Perspective of the Christian Identity of His Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Konrad D. Jenner JACOB AS AN EXEGETE AND REVISER OF THE PESHITTA The Textual Vorlagen for Jacob of Edessa’s Revision of the Books of Samuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Richard J. Saley Jacob of Edessa’s Version of 1–2 Samuel: Its Method and Text-Critical Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Alison Salvesen vi CONTENTS Jacob of Edessa on Genesis: His Quotations of the Peshitta and His Revision of the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Bas ter Haar Romeny JACOB AS A GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR Jacob of Edessa the Grammarian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Rafael Talmon l˜˜z Jacob of Edessa and the Sixth-Century Syriac Translator of Severus of Antioch’s Cathedral Homilies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Lucas Van Rompay JACOB AS A PHILOSOPHER Jacob of Edessa and the Reception of Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Henri Hugonnard-Roche Jacob of Edessa’s Use of Greek Philosophy in His Hexaemeron . . . 223 Marina Wilks JACOB AND THE LITURGY The Anaphora of Saint James and Jacob of Edessa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Baby Varghese BIBLIOGRAPHY A Bibliographical Clavis to the Works of Jacob of Edessa (Revised and Expanded) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Dirk Kruisheer INDEXES Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 ABBREVIATIONS For abbreviated titles of series and periodicals, see S.M. Schwertner, Internationales Abkürzungsverzeichnis für Theologie und Grenzgebiete (2nd ed.; Berlin–New York 1992), also published as the Abkürzungsverzeichnis of the Theologische Realenzyklopädie. PREFACE As early as in the nineteenth century a well-known scholar of Syriac, the abbot J.P.P. Martin, called Jacob of Edessa (c.640-708) the most learned Christian of the early days of Islam. The reader of this volume will find this idea confirmed on all pages. The monk and bishop Jacob of Edessa was active in the fields of historiography, canon law, text and interpretation of the Bible, language and translation, liturgy, Christian doctrine, philosophy, and the sciences. He is the author of many works in all these fields, and also demonstrated his vast knowledge in his correspondence with a network of scholars. In addition, he took the time to answer members of his community who had questions on the right behaviour, among other things, with respect to the representatives of the then new religion of Islam. In April 1997 Dr Konrad Jenner and Professor Lucas Van Rompay organized a small symposium at Leiden University under the same title as that of the present volume: Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day.1 Various new research projects concerning Jacob had been started and the organizers wanted to offer scholars an opportunity to present their work, while inviting others to make a more general contribution or to discuss the present state of research on Jacob’s works. It was in the wake of this meeting that the idea of publishing a volume on Jacob of Edessa first came up. The scope of the symposium had been limited, however: not all scholars working on Jacob of Edessa could be invited, nor could all fields of his activity be discussed. Over the years since this event, the idea ripened that the envisaged volume on Jacob should try to cover the full breadth of the vision and works of this extraordinary polymath. Together with Konrad Jenner, I planned a volume that would discuss Jacob’s biography as well as his position in early Islamic Edessa, and would give as complete a picture as possible of his various accomplishments as a scholar and clergyman. In combination with a full bibliography to Jacob and his works, the articles would also have to present a key to present-day research on Jacob and his time. Unfortunately, Jenner had to withdraw as editor, and it appeared less than easy to bring together articles on all the subjects we had listed. 1 K.D. Jenner and L. Van Rompay, ‘Short Report on the Symposium: “Jacob of Edessa (c. 640–708) and the Syriac Culture of His Day”, Leiden University, 4–5 April 1997’, Hugoye [http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye] 1.1 (1998). viii PREFACE I am happy to say, however, that the task was completed this year, 2008. This volume then marks the 1300th anniversary of Jacob’s death. I am pleased to express my thanks to the contributors of this volume for their cooperation and patience. Where necessary they were also kind enough to bring their contributions up to date. However, this publication would not have been possible without the assistance of Dianne van de Zande, who helped me with the editorial work, the typesetting of the articles, and the preparation of the indexes. Her precision and dedication have saved me from many errors, and I owe her a special debt of gratitude. I also wish to thank Dirk Kruisheer and Geert Jan Veldman. Both helped to convert or retype the Syriac quotations, and the former also gave invaluable advice and support to this project. Although my colleague Dr Konrad Jenner was eventually not able to act as editor of this volume, together we devised the scope of the volume, selected the subjects of the articles, and invited the authors. In addition, he has also helped to edit a number of the articles. I am very grateful to him for this. Bas ter Haar Romeny Leiden, 3 October 2008 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS William Adler is Professor of early Christianity and Judaism at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jan J. van Ginkel is a postdoctoral researcher in Syriac studies, formerly at Leiden University, and now at the VU University, Amsterdam. Robert Hoyland is Professor in Arabic and Middle East Studies at St Andrews University’s School of History. Henri Hugonnard-Roche is Directeur de recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (cnrs) and Directeur d’études at the École pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. Konrad D. Jenner was formerly University Lecturer in Old Testament Studies at Leiden University and Director of the Peshitta Institute. Dirk Kruisheer is preparing a doctoral dissertation on Jacob of Edessa’s Commentary on Genesis and Scholia at Leiden University. Bas ter Haar Romeny is Professor of Old Testament and Eastern Christian Traditions at Leiden University. Richard J. Saley is a Lecturer on the Ancient Near East at Harvard University. Alison Salvesen is a University Research Lecturer at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, and Polonsky Fellow in Jewish Bible Versions at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Rafael Talmon l˜˜z taught in the University of Haifa. He published several books and articles on Semitic linguistics and various aspects of Arabic language and culture. He passed away in 2004. Herman G.B. Teule is Professor of Eastern Christianity at the universities of Nijmegen and Louvain and Head of the Institute for Eastern Christian Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen. Lucas Van Rompay is Professor of Eastern Christianity at Duke University, North Carolina. Baby Varghese is Priest of the Malankara Orthodox Church, Professor of Liturgical Studies at the Orthodox Theological Seminary and at seeri, both in Kottayam, Kerala, India. x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Marina Wilks defended a doctoral dissertation on Jacob of Edessa’s Hexaemeron at Cardiff University, and presently lives in Exeter, United Kingdom. Witold Witakowski is Associate Professor of Semitic languages at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Sweden.