this issue
next article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: The Syriac versions of the panegyric of Gregory of Nyssa on Gregory the Wonder worker and the Life of the Same
Author(s): VAN ESBROECK, Michel †
Journal: Journal of Eastern Christian Studies
Volume: 56    Issue: 1-4   Date: 2004   
Pages: 1-13
DOI: 10.2143/JECS.56.1.578691

Abstract :
In his catalogue of the new Syriac fragments of the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, Sebastian Brock described and identified four nearly complete leaves of the Panegyric on St Gregory and a fragment of a fifth one. These are now catalogued under the title ‘Sparagmata syriaca 24’. As he knew that for many decades I have been involved with several versions of that masterpiece of patristic and sophistic literature, S. Brock left me the privilege of making a further study of the new manuscript. In his catalogue, he still remarked that the text was much closer to the Greek Panegyric than to the published Syriac Life, which had been translated into German by V. Ryssel more than a century ago. Moreover, he identified all the extant fragments according to the critical Greek edition of H.G. Heil. The purpose of this paper is to insert the new leaves into the context of the Syriac tradition of that masterpiece of Greek patristics, and to appreciate how these fragments give a better outlook on the tradition about the Wonderworker and his Panegyric by Gregory of Nyssa. We will publish some of the excerpts and indicate those difficulties that need to be mastered in order to recuperate the ancient version. But first, we have to place the new testimony in the context of the long history of the Panegyric and to add some views about the codicological structure of the codex, which dates from the eighth or the ninth century.