For nearly 2,000 years, Near East Christian communities have used Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, as their liturgical and cultural language. Over the centuries, they produced an extensive corpus of manuscripts that included passages from biblical texts, philosophical treatises, classical literature and theological commentaries, whose purpose often remains obscure to modern scholars.I have mentioned this research before here. But this article runs with the creative angle, in conversation with the researcher, of noting parallels in the Syriac material to the Talmud. Worth a read.Now, an Israeli researcher has harnessed computational technology to showcase how the scribes compiling the documents made active editorial choices, shaping the knowledge for future generations and serving a role comparable to that of the redactors of another foundational Aramaic work from Late Antiquity: the Jewish Talmud.
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The caveats about AI in my earlier post still apply. There is no comprehensive catalogue of either Talmud comparable to Wright's catalogue of the Syriac material, so there is a long way to go before this computational technology can be applied to the Talmud(s).
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