Michael Philip Penn, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Christine Shepardson, Charles M. Stang, Invitation to Syriac Christianity: an anthology. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. Pp. xxi, 431. ISBN 9780520299191Review by
Walter Beers, University of Haifa. wbeers@campus.haifa.ac.il... The volume is organized in four parts (“Foundations,” “Practices,” “Texts and Textual Transmission” and “Interreligious Encounters”), each divided into three chapters focused on important themes or generic clusters (“Origin Stories,” “Poetry,” “Doctrine and Disputation”; “Liturgy,” “Asceticism,” “Mysticism and Prayer”; “Biblical Interpretation,” “Hagiography,” “Books, Knowledge, and Translation”; “Judaism,” “Islam,” “Religions of the Silk Road”). Under these headings, the editors provide a diverse set of selections representative of the spectrum of surviving Syriac-language material from its origins in the early centuries of the common era through the “Syriac Renaissance” (12th-early 14th cen.). ...
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