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2 results

  • 6 - Early Versions of Isaiah as Translations and Interpretations

  • from Part I - The Book of Isaiah Through History
  • Edited by Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah
    Published online:
    08 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 81-99

  • Summary

    Some of the earliest witnesses to the Book of Isaiah are translations into Greek and Syriac. Sometimes the translators offered not simply basic equivalents to Hebrew words but shaped their translation of passages to accord with understandings of them that were current in their Jewish communities. Although this can make the window to their Hebrew text opaque, sometimes their differences from today’s standard Hebrew text preserve alternative wordings found elsewhere in early Hebrew texts, while in other cases they include wordings that have not survived in any other Hebrew witnesses. The chief question such differences raise is whether the translator tailored his version to the readers’ pre-understanding or if they reflect different Hebrew words in the manuscript he used. In “Early Versions of Isaiah as Translations and Interpretations,” Ronald L. Troxel cites examples of these conundrums, and illustrates how scholars attempt to reason about their origins.

  • 15 - The earliest Syriac literature

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 161-171

  • Summary

    The work known as the Teaching of Addai, which belongs to the early decades of the fifth century, is more interesting for the light it sheds on Edessene Christianity of that time than for any reliable information it can give of the origins of Christianity in Edessa. A passage in The Laws of the Countries implies that Christianity had spread fairly widely in the East by the first half of the third century, and it is virtually certain that by that time much of both the Old and the New Testament would have been available in Syriac translation. The Syriac Old Testament, known as the Peshitta, is definitely a translation directly from Hebrew, and the earliest books to be translated probably go back to the second century AD, thus almost certainly constituting the earliest surviving monument of Syriac literature. By far the most extensive piece of early Syriac literature is the narrative known as the Acts of Thomas.