CHAPTER NINE
JUDAISM AND SYRIAC CHRISTIANITY
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal
I
n a 2008 article, Sebastian Brock laments the fact that Syriac literature is underused
by historians in reconstructing the history and theology of Late Antiquity (Brock
2008). Brock specifically notes the disregard for Eastern material in the curricula of
Western educational institutions. In Brock’s opinion, this disdain for non-classical
languages stems largely from a tendency to associate Christianity with the Roman
Empire and the writings of Western church fathers, a tendency greatly abetted by
the representation of the history of the Christian church in Eusebius’s Life of Constantine and the works of subsequent historians (Brock 1982: 9). Brock identifies
a strong Protestant bias against Eastern Christianity, which is viewed as ‘degenerate and heretical’. As a result of these underlying prejudices, the study of Eastern
Christianity has been acutely neglected in modern scholarship. Furthermore, when
Eastern texts have been examined, their readers’ negative preconceptions have often
influenced their analysis.
Brock’s observations have important ramifications for the study of rabbinic literature
produced in the East in light of its non-Jewish background. In this young emerging field,
they explain the objective and subjective reasons for its relative smaller size. Indeed,
a survey of the academic literature dealing with Jewish-Christian interactions reveals
many of the same biases: the association of Christianity with the Roman Empire and
with the writing of Western church fathers has led scholars to assume a more natural
connection between Christian materials and Palestinian Jewish literature than with the
Babylonian literature – namely, the Babylonian Talmud. Therefore, scholarly work on
the connection between Christianity and rabbinic texts is often preoccupied with Western patristic writings, neglecting Eastern Christian texts. Indeed, as most academics in
the field of Jewish Studies rely heavily on the findings of scholars of Christianity as a
basis for comparative analysis, these general tendencies in the study of Christianity have
influenced which Christian materials are used in rabbinic scholarship. Further, scholars
of rabbinic Judaism have often not paid careful attention to Eastern Christianity, despite
the significant centres of Jewish population that existed in the Persian Empire,1 and rabbinic students are more often required to study Greek and Latin than Syriac.
The Jewish community of Talmudic Babylonia was the largest concentration of
Jews in the diaspora from the third to seventh centuries CE (Gafni 2006: 805). It was
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located in the area surrounding the narrow meeting of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in close proximity to Ctesiphon, and southward to the Persian Gulf. There were
also Jewish settlements in northern Mesopotamia, most notably in Nisibis, probably
dating back to the late Second Temple period (Segal 1964; especially map on p. 806).
In these areas, as well as in Babylonia itself, Christians and Jews were living in close
proximity (Fiey 1967). The two communities also shared a language, Aramaic, but
spoke different dialects, Syriac for the Christians, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic for the
Jews, both traditionally categorised (together with Mandaic) within the same eastern
dialect branch of Late Aramaic. This group of dialects shared a number of features
that set them apart from other contemporary dialects (the western branch) (Bar-Asher
Siegal 2013: 21–3, 2015). Among these features are: (1) l/n as the 3m marker of the
prefix conjugation, (2) the suffix -e as a masculine plural marker, (3) lack of a formal
marker for definiteness, (4) apocopation of final open syllables, (5) the qtil li pattern,
and (6) the development of a new tense formed from the participle with nominative
pronominal suffixes (i.e. the participial conjugation) (Bar-Asher Siegal 2013: 22).
These differences of dialect and script marked out the different communities, but the
close proximity of the dialects still permitted the language to serve as an important
vehicle of communication between the two communities (Millar 2011; Taylor 2002).
Since the interactions between Syriac literature and Palestinian rabbinic sources
are much less well researched than those with Babylonian sources, this chapter will
focus on the interactions between the Syriac world and rabbinic Judaism specifically
within the region of Talmudic Babyonia and the Persian Empire. The reason for the
lack of attention to Palestinian sources is largely chronological: Palestinian sources
such as the Mishnah, Tosefta, and legal midrashim were all edited before or around
the third century CE and thus less likely to reflect direct connections with Christian
materials (Schremer 2010). On the other hand, while the Palestinian Talmud and
later Palestinian midrashim may very well offer evidence of a literary relationship
to Syriac sources, these parallels still need to be examined more closely in relation
to both Greek and Syriac Christian sources. Unfortunately, very little work has been
done on this topic (Rubenstein 2017; Siegal 2016).
A passage from the Babylonian Talmud itself has often been cited as proof that
Christianity is irrelevant to a full understanding of the Talmud’s background. In b.
Avodah Zarah 4a, we find a story in which minim (literally, ‘heretics’) pose a question about a biblical verse to the Babylonian sage Rav Safra, which he is incapable
of answering. R. Abbahu, a Palestinian sage of the late third to early fourth century
CE, explains his colleague’s incompetence: ‘We, who are located among you, set ourselves the task of studying the verses [thoroughly], but they, who are not among you,
do not study it’.2 According to this passage, R. Abbahu explains that his colleague,
Rav Safra, is not learned in the polemical use of scripture because he comes from
Babylonia. The Talmud itself thus appears to proclaim that Babylonian Jews did not
encounter Christians to the extent that Palestinian Jews did. Indeed, the famed rabbinic scholar Ephraim E. Urbach relied on this Talmudic passage when he argued
that the Babylonian rabbinic exegesis of the book of Jonah lacked a strong polemical character because of the relative unimportance of Christianity in the Babylonian
context (Urbach 1949).
Nevertheless, recent scholarship has made clear that the significance of Christian
religious groups in the Persian Empire can no longer be ignored (Payne 2015). As a
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result, scholars of rabbinic Judaism have begun to reconsider the assumption that
Jews and Christians had minimal social, cultural, and literary contact in Late Antique
Babylonia, during the last decades of the Talmud’s composition (as shall be discussed
below). In light of this shift, a number of new readings have been proposed for the
story of Rav Safra cited above. Rather than minimising the role of Christianity in
the lives of Jews in the Persian Empire, this story has been reread variously as a
rhetorical device, fiercely denying connections that actually existed between the two
communities (Boyarin 2007: 358); a warning and a call to vigilance against heretical
polemics (Schremer 2009: 365–6, n66; Schremer 2005: 223–4); and even as a reference to a specific group of Christians, less prevalent in the Persian Empire, who were
concerned with scriptural polemics (Siegal 2013: 17–18, n63).
However, even as we increasingly recognise the prevalence of Christian Syriac
literature in Late Antique Persia and its importance for a full understanding of contemporary rabbinic literature, there remain major obstacles to a comparative study
of Jewish and Christian texts (for more on comparative methodology, see Smith
1990). First, as noted above, most scholars have access to limited research tools.
In addition to the constraints on language study (Syriac and Babylonian Aramaic)
during graduate training, rabbinic and Christian scholars often have very little
exposure to the other tradition’s texts. This has led scholars in both fields to feel
uneasy attempting to answer questions related to the interactions between the two
textual traditions based solely on their own expertise. In addition, only recently
have translations (or even printed editions) of Syriac texts and critical editions of
rabbinic texts become more widely available. Given the relative lack of archaeological evidence and historical accounts, claims of actual interaction between the two
religious communities often rely solely on the ability of scholars to demonstrate
literary contacts between Christian and rabbinic traditions.
Still, even when literary analogies between Christian and rabbinic sources are
found, one cannot always easily draw a direct historical conclusion, for several reasons. First, analogy does not necessarily indicate a genealogical connection between
two sets of texts. Similarities may arise for a variety of reasons, such as for the sake of
a polemical argument or satire, but at other times may just be the result of coincidental resemblance or a parallel, non-dependent, thought process, and the interpretation
of such similarities often depends upon the point of view of the beholder (further
discussion in Siegal 2013: 25–34). Therefore, even when a relationship is identified,
the historical and textual meaning of this relationship between two sources is often
contested. Second, the nature and evolution of the relationship between two texts is
not always easy to identify. When one recovers a rabbinic tradition in a Syriac text,
it does not necessarily indicate the author’s familiarity with the rabbinic source. It
might, for example, result from a similar reading of scripture, born of either a shared
background or independent – but parallel – readings. Conversely, when a Christian
tradition can be identified in the Babylonian Talmud, how are we to know, in certain
cases, whether it was known to the rabbis via Western sources transmitted to the East
or via local, Syriac sources and translations?
Nevertheless, it is now beginning to be acknowledged that the linguistic, temporal, and geographic literary relationships between the Babylonian Talmud and Syriac
literature demand that scholars of rabbinics pay closer attention to Eastern Christian texts. Though the nature of the connections between the corpora is not fully
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understood, a side-by-side reading at the very least deepens our understanding of the
sitz im leben of the Babylonian Talmud and its readers.
It is important to consider the question of genre as we attempt to illustrate the
nature of the interactions between Babylonian Jewry and Eastern Christianity. Different types of texts – including church canons, incantation bowls, hagiography, and
others – provide different perspectives on the relationship between the two communities, and each deserves scholarly attention. As will be shown in the survey below,
the various sources examined thus far, when considered all together, have already
produced a more nuanced and complex picture than any single source would. Scriptural disputes showcase polemical interactions between the two religious communities, while incantation bowls often reveal a mélange of religious elements, suggesting
shared magical traditions. Even the strong anti-Jewish polemical arguments in the
writings of the Eastern church fathers show striking familiarity with Jewish midrash.
These sources might be evidence for a type of Jewish-Christian interaction that served
to define differences and boundaries, while at the same time offering proof of shared
knowledge.
While I construct this survey using a variety of literary genres, these should not
be taken as a unified corpus. The sitzen im leben of the different texts are crucial for
understanding the weight that is given to each such source in the grand picture that
is the relationship between the two religious communities. Incantation bowls used to
evoke magic will obviously represent something different than a scholarly and subtly
ironic, polemical story recorded in the Babylonian Talmud. The supposed contexts in
which the texts were created, their function and purpose at the time of their creation,
as well as the history of their transmission, all have ramifications for how they should
be understood. I shall not attempt to draw these lines myself, as current research has
learned to avoid facile categorisations such as ‘popular’ (magic bowls?) and elite
literature (Talmud?), which do not withstand careful examination. But this methodological issue should stand nonetheless at the background of this survey.
Through what follows, I shall attempt to show that a careful examination of various types of rabbinic and Syriac sources reveals a remarkably diverse picture of the
interactions between the two textual traditions. I will also argue that these types of
studies have great potential to add to our understanding of historical interactions
between the two communities in the Late Antique East. It is clear that work in this
area has only begun. The number of studies on this topic is still relatively small, but
recent advances by scholars of Christianity and the regular publication of Syriac
manuscripts in accessible critical editions will make possible much more important
work on these questions.
I begin my survey with legal documents. Even as late as the sixth century, we find
legal texts that attest to close ties between Jews and Christians in the East. Canons
issued by the Church of the East’s Synod of 585 deal with social relations between
Christians and non-Christians in eastern Syria. For example, Canon 15 states:
We have learned that some Christians, either through ignorance or through
imprudence, are going to see people of other religions and taking part in their
festivals, that is to say, going to celebrate festivals with Jews, heretics, or pagans,
or accepting something sent to them from the festivals of other religions. We thus
order, by heavenly authority, that no Christian is allowed to go to the festivals
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of those who are not Christians, nor accept anything sent to the Christians from
their festivals, for it [the gift] is part of the oblation made in their sacrifice.
(Chabot 1902: 157.31–158.8, trans. 417–8; Walker 2012)
Canon 27 further shows that Christians in the Sasanian Empire intermarried,
exchanged blessings, and even shared altars with ‘heretics’ (Chabot 1902: 158.20–
159.2, trans. 418). These rules are meant to enforce the separation of Christians from
other religious groups, among them Jews, and to delineate the social lines between
them. By the same token, they clearly reflect a situation on the ground in which Christians and Jews were taking part in each others’ festivals as late as the sixth century.
Evidence from incantation bowls is even more suggestive of close ties. These
bowls, which contain textual formulae or graphical depictions that were believed
to offer protective magic, have been found placed upside-down under thresholds, in
walls, and in cemeteries (Morony 2003: 83–107). For example, an incantation bowl
has been discovered containing an explicit reference to Jesus written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic:
By the name of I-am-that-I-am yhwh ṣb’wt, and by the name of Jesus, who conquered the height and the depth by his cross, and by the name of his exalted
father, and by the name of the holy spirits for ever and eternity. Amen amen selah.
(Levene 1999: 290)
This text, alongside other synchronistic elements in the bowls, demonstrates a mixture of Jewish, Babylonian, Hellenistic, Mandaean, Iranian, and Christian traditions.
This diversity of influences has led Shaul Shaked to describe a ‘cultural koine’ in this
region of Sasanian Mesopotamia reflected in the bowl texts. In this cultural context,
a Jewish composer of an incantation bowl could use Christian theological elements
to achieve his magical goals. As this and other bowls suggest, ‘themes and ideas, and
sometimes even whole textual passages, were taken over by each group of practitioners in Mesopotamia from the neighbouring communities’ (Shaked 1999: 315–6).
Jean Maurice Fiey, discussing Jewish-Christian interactions in the East, has concluded that the non-textual nature of the liturgical, homiletic, and exegetical domains
of contemporary Judaism and Christianity made them natural loci for such ‘unprejudiced openness’ (Fiey 1988: 936). This shared pool of ‘popular religion’ in Mesopotamia linked Christians and Jews and was strongly denounced by the Christian bishops
as a result (Shaked 1997).
We should add that these synchronistic elements are characteristic of Jewish and
Mandean bowls, in particular. Tapani Harviainen has noted that this is not the case
for Syriac bowls which, for example, differ in their use of specific formulae and lack
references to Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Harviainen argues that the
Syriac bowls have a ‘pagan origin’ (Harviainen 1995).
An examination of liturgical traditions in early Syriac Christian communities also provides evidence for Jewish-Christian interactions. Gerard Rouwhorst’s work in this area
focuses on the Jewish antecedents of the East Syrian liturgy. He cites, for example, church
floor plans containing a bêma (see also ch. 28, pp. 522–6); the uncommon liturgical practice of reading selections from both the Torah and the Prophets; similarities between the
Jewish grace after meals and the fourth-century Syriac Anaphora of Addai and Mari;
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the Apostolic Constitutions’ call to observe the Sabbath on Saturday in addition to
Sunday; and the date and content of the Easter celebration, its emphasis on the passion and the death of Christ rather than his resurrection (Rouwhorst 1997).
Connections have also been noted between Jewish traditions and the writings
of contemporary Syriac church fathers, particularly Ephrem and Aphrahaṭ. Naomi
Koltun-Fromm’s work on Aphrahaṭ has concentrated on the Jewish-Christian
polemical confrontations particular to Persian Mesopotamia. She argues that these
texts demonstrate familiarity with rabbinic arguments and concludes that we should
take seriously Aphrahaṭ’s claims that his interpretations are based on conversations with ‘a Jew’ (Koltun-Fromm 1996). She posits an exchange of ideas, biblical
exegesis, and theology in this fourth-century context and ‘an ongoing conversation
between Jews and Christians in Mesopotamia at the height of the Persian persecutions on the subject of true faith’ (Koltun-Fromm 1996: 51). In her most recent
book, Koltun-Fromm (2010) examined Aphrahaṭ’s writings on the concepts of holiness and asceticism and presented a more nuanced approach. Here she makes the
subtler argument that both Jewish and Christian sources demonstrate a need to deal
with the tension between one’s spiritual and daily life, and that the two traditions’
attempts to resolve this tension are based on similar and shared traditions of biblical
exegesis. Most importantly, Koltun-Fromm uses her findings to venture into social
history and concludes that contemporary Christian and Jewish communities were
both using these exegetical traditions to define their communal boundaries and their
relations to one another.
Adam Becker (2003) has argued we should read Aphrahaṭ’s literary production in
light of a context in which ‘the local Jewish and Christian communities were not fully
distinct and separate from one another’. He points out references in Christian texts to
Christians who flee to local synagogues in times of persecution and who are circumcised or refuse to eat blood; the use of the Jewish calendar in martyrs’ accounts; and
the use of terms such as ‘priests’ and ‘Levites’ to describe Christian clergy. Moreover,
Christine Shepardson (2008) has argued that we must read Ephrem’s anti-Jewish
rhetoric in light of fourth-century intra-Christian debates. Elena Narinskaya (2010)
has detected in Ephrem’s exegetical writings some dependence on Jewish traditions,3
while other scholars still contend that these Jewish traditions in Ephrem could have
reached his writings orally and indirectly (Brock 1985: 20).
Outlining polemical arguments in Jewish and Christian texts offers another angle
on the interactions between Eastern Jewish and Christian communities. Scholars have
identified a number of Talmudic passages as possible satires or parodies of New Testament traditions: b. Shabbat 116a–b has been read as a parody on the Sermon on
the Mount (Zellentin 2007); b. ‘Avodah Zarah 18a–b as a parody of Jesus’s cry from
the cross (Boyarin 2012: 246–66); and a complex parody of the metaphor of Jesus
as a fountain of living water has been identified in b. Sukkah 48b (Halbertal and
Naeh 2006); among others (Siegal 2013: 34n46). The Christian traditions referred
to in these polemical passages and satirical puns usually derive from the New Testament and could have been known to the rabbinic authors through Western sources.
However, they could just as easily have been circulated in the East through Syriac
sources, whether oral or written. The fact that some of these examples are only found
in the Babylonian Talmud may point to the Babylonian rabbis’ familiarity with local
Christian traditions.
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Peter Schäfer discusses the possibility that the Talmudic authors had knowledge of
these New Testament, Jesus traditions through Tatian’s Diatessaron, a Syriac work
of the second century CE. This would explain why certain details of the Jesus traditions are found only in the Babylonian Talmud and nowhere in Palestinian rabbinic
sources (Schäfer 2007: 129). These include, among others, the story of Jesus’s virgin
birth; his association with the name of Mary Magdalene; the notion of Jesus as a
teacher of Torah; healings performed in the name of Jesus; and the dating of his
execution to the fourteenth of Nisan.
Some studies have focused on lexical overlap, examining Syriac sources in order
better to understand key passages in rabbinic literature. So, for example, Shlomo
Naeh recognised a loanword from Syriac Christian literature, ḥeruta, in a Talmudic
story in b. Qiddushin 82b, referring to abstinence from sexual relations (Naeh 1997).
This study sheds new light on the Talmudic story about an ascetic rabbi and reveals it
to be a mockery of the Christian view of abstinence. However, using Syriac literature
as a kind of dictionary, only to enrich our understanding of the rabbinic lexicon, is
not the optimal use for this rich literature and should only be the first step in exploring the value it can bring to our study of both corpora. Adam Becker (2010) has
recently suggested that we must undertake a broader comparative examination of
the ancient sources produced by these two religious minorities in the Persian Empire,
rather than looking only for Christian texts that illuminate specific rabbinic passages.
In the case of Naeh’s article, his argument may have benefited from a broader survey
of monastic texts in which women are viewed as incarnations of the holy man’s illicit
desires and his struggles against this temptation. Such a reading could illuminate the
Talmudic story of R Ḥiyya as a unique portrayal of an ascetic rabbi fighting his urges,
in the mould of the monastic holy man (Siegal, forthcoming).
It is clear that there is much to be gained from a comparison of Christian hagiographic writings, which describe the lives of the holy men and women of the Eastern
landscape, with Talmudic stories about the lives and thoughts of rabbinic figures.4
Differences in literary genre and chronology present methodological difficulties, but
even given these difficulties a comparative analysis yields interesting parallels and
analogies. One key problem is whether these Christian traditions reached the composers of the Talmudic passages via local Syriac sources or via Palestinian traditions
more closely connected to Western sources. As noted above, this question is relevant
to other examples of literary interactions as well, but it is particularly acute in the
case of analogous stories that share literary motifs, where it is much harder to discern
the ‘smoking gun’ that proves textual interaction. Nevertheless, a growing number of
studies suggest a degree of Talmudic engagement with Christian literary traditions.
Given the importance of Syriac Christianity in the region, it is very likely that Babylonian rabbis were exposed to Christian traditions via Syriac sources.
Let us take as an example Jeffrey Rubenstein’s comparative work on the story of
the death and burial of R. Eleazar the son of R. Shimon bar Yoḥai (Rubenstein 2017).
This story appears in b. Baba Metsiʿa 84b and in the Palestinian midrash Pesiqta
Derav Kahana 11. Rubenstein suggests reading the rabbinic traditions regarding the
post-mortem treatment of the rabbi’s body in light of the Late Antique, Christian
cult of the relics of holy men. As in stories of Christian holy men, and unlike in prevailing rabbinic attitudes, R. Eleazar’s body does not decay after his death, and the
townsfolk refuse to allow its burial because of its protective qualities. In this case,
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there are parallels between Babylonian and Syriac sources and between the Palestinian midrash and Western Christian sources, but the development of the story as it
appears in the Babylonian Talmud is particularly suggestive of shared literary motifs.
My own work finds literary connections between the Babylonian Talmud and the
monastic traditions circulating in Syriac in the Persian Empire (Siegal 2013). The
portrayal of key rabbinic figures resembles that of monastic descriptions of Christian
holy men. In addition, identifying literary connections between Jewish and Christian
corpora invites us to consider the historical relations between the two religious communities in the Persian Empire. The parallels between the sources are even more suggestive, since most cases I discuss are found only in the Babylonian Talmud and not
in Palestinian sources. Even in cases such as these, it is still possible that the Christian
source material came to the rabbis via Western traditions that did not leave a trace in
Palestinian rabbinic sources. This possibility is less likely, however, than the simpler
explanation that local, Syriac sources interacted with rabbinic traditions that were
included in the Babylonian Talmud.
For example, a comparison of Christian monastic sources with parallel passages
in the two Talmuds on the figure of R. Shimon bar Yoḥai reveals that only the Babylonian tradition makes use of monastic motifs (Siegal 2011, 2013, ch. 5). The Babylonian passage draws on popular Christian literary themes to reshape the Palestinian
story of R. Shimon into a quasi-monastic tale, portraying R. Shimon as a monastic
holy man whose sojourn in a cave brings about a spiritual transformation. Since only
the Babylonian version of the story includes these Christian literary analogies, it is
most likely that local Christian traditions, circulating in Syriac, are at the basis of this
literary reworking.
The literary genre of martyrdom stories is an interesting test case for a comparative
analysis of rabbinic and Syriac material. Daniel Boyarin (1999) has suggested viewing martyrdom stories in rabbinic sources as a reflection of a shared, Late Antique
rabbinic and Christian discourse. Jeffrey Rubenstein notes in response (Rubenstein
2018) that Boyarin’s analysis relies exclusively on Christian sources from the GrecoRoman world, written in Greek and Latin. Rubenstein himself suggests examining
martyrdom accounts in the Babylonian Talmud in comparison with the Persian Martyr Acts, a ‘corpus’ of about seventy stories of Christian martyrs, primarily from
the Sasanian Empire. Rubenstein finds numerous parallels, attesting to a common
cultural context, but he gives special emphasis to the differences between the two
corpora, including the enthusiasm they express at the idea of a martyr’s death, and
their treatment of the themes of tricksterism and conversion. Ultimately, Rubenstein
finds the differences between the Jewish and Christian narratives to be much deeper
than their commonalities.
The bread and butter of comparative historical analysis is the examination of
contemporary works dealing with the same topic. From the perspective of rabbinic
texts, we are very fortunate to have two sets of sources, from the West and the East,
deriving from overlapping time periods. The existence of the two Talmuds has supplied rabbinics scholars with a large amount of material to research and compare,
whether they are studying passages within one Talmud or parallels between the two.
However, a study of the rabbinic period that is confined only to rabbinic literature
will a priori produce limited results. Syriac literature can serve, alongside Persian
and Hellenistic materials and, of course, archaeological evidence, as an Archimedean
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point, a hypothetical vantage point from which an observer can objectively perceive
the subject of inquiry. The same can be said of the study of Syriac sources in isolation
from contemporary rabbinic texts. A long enough lever, combined with this remote
Archimedean point, is able to unveil the grand picture, hidden from the occupants of
the earth itself.
Identifying parallels between rabbinic and Christian traditions can help us readdress some of the most important research questions facing scholars of both literatures. This comparative approach will allow us better to understand the nature of
Jewish-Christian relations in the first centuries CE and the so-called parting of the
ways. It will provide a better understanding of specific passages in both literatures.
It may even afford us further insights into larger questions relating to the redaction
of the texts themselves. Through the examination of a shared motif, which suggests
possible literary interaction, we can more easily map the chronology and literary
redaction of parallel passages. We are then in a better position to ask questions about
how these two texts came to be and about their creators, audiences, and tradents.
Including the vast Syriac literature circulating in the East in our comparative framework and not only those circulating in the West is crucial to advancing the scholarly
understanding of both corpora of texts and the religious communities in which they
were produced and preserved.
NOTE S
1 The small number of Syriac scholars in academic posts, or even Syriac language classes
offered at leading universities, is itself an indication of this state of affairs. See Brock’s second
observation in his article, regarding the separation of the teaching of Oriental languages and
literatures from the field of Classics in the Western educational system.
2 All translations from the Talmud are the author’s.
3 But see reviews of this book by Walters in Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 16.1 (2013),
195–8; and that of Morrison in JThS 62.2 (2011), 748–51, and others besides.
4 Brock (2008: 182): ‘Hagiography was a literary genre in late antiquity where texts were particularly apt to cross, and sometimes, re-cross linguistic boundaries, and so an awareness of
the existence of the hagiographical literature in Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, and
Syriac is likely to be of importance at some stage or other for anyone who is concerned with
hagiographical texts in Greek and Latin’. I will add to Brock’s list that it is of importance for
those interested in similar passages in the Talmudic corpora, not just in the Persian Empire,
due to the nature of this literary genre.
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