New Open-Access Book: Monastic Manuscripts from the Eastern Mediterranean (Sinai, Jerusalem, Antioch)

 

Monastic Manuscripts from the Eastern Mediterranean (Sinai, Jerusalem, Antioch)

ed. Giulia Rosetto

Contents:

Daniel Galadza, The Liturgy and Liturgical Books of Priests and Scribes in the Holy Land

Tinatin Chronz, Iovane Zosime and His Heritage in the Holy Land and Sinai

 Grigory Kessel, Palimpsests and Patches: A Practice of Parchment Recycling at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Sinai

Adrian C. Pirtea, Manuscripts, Monastic Libraries, and the Arabic Patristic Legacy in Seljuk Antioch: The Activity of Peter, Abbot of St. Symeon (fl. ca. 1090)

Habib Ibrahim, A Note on an Antiochian Book of the Gospels (MS Sinai Ar. 76)

Lasse Løvlund Toft and Natalia Smelova, Scribes and Priests of Syria and Mount Sinai and their Syriac Menaia

Mariafrancesca Sgandurra, I libri liturgici realizzati nel monastero di S. Caterina al Sinai al tempo degli arcivescovi Arsenio e Giovanni V

Samuel Bauer, Early Printed Greek Euchologia on Mount Sinai

Download the entire book here.

Met Ephrem (Kyriakos): The Cross

Arabic original here. 

 The Cross

"God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..." (John 3:16).

Christ gives us forgiveness of sins first through baptism, just as He gives us His surpassing love through the cross.

He first gives us a type from the Old Testament (the bronze serpent) and then speaks of the cross.

We first have the image of the serpent, which is a type of the cross from the Old Testament because the Hebrews were saved from death when they beheld the image of the bronze serpent.

Those who believe in the Crucified One shall enjoy a greater blessing.

 

Faith in the cross causes believers to flee from eternal death.

"The Son of Man shall be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" )(John 3:14-15).

All of this occurs through the cross, to show that man's salvation is achieved by his faith in the cross of Christ God: the cross is the source of life.

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

With the image of the serpent, the Jews fled death, and here with the cross believers flee from eternal death. Christ heals the spiritual wounds of the serpent and death becomes the beginning of eternal life.

 

The cross is the source of life.

Human reason does not accept all of this easily.

Faith in the cross of Christ transcends the weakness of rational logic.

Through death, Christ gives others life.

By his faith in the cross, the believer does not perish, just as the Crucified One Himself does not perish. In this way, Christ liberates others from perishing through faith, just as He was first liberated from perishing through the resurrection.

 

In this way, the cross became, as we have said, the source of life.

Faith transcends the weakness of rational logic. Pagans mock the cross while the faithful hold fast to it.

All of this is an expression of God's surpassing love for us.

 

+Ephrem

Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies

 

New Open-Access Book- Yulia Petrova: Prefaces to 18th-Century Christian Arabic Books

 

Prefaces to 18th-Century Christian Arabic Books

Yulia Petrova

 

The Arabic-language and Arabic-type presses established in Eastern Europe and the Middle East beginning in the early 18th century produced a number of books for the needs of Arabic-speaking Christians living in the Ottoman provinces. These books included liturgical texts, homilies, didactic treatises, and dogmatic teachings and were often accompanied by complementary prefaces and editor’s final remarks. In some cases, these texts are the main source of information on the circumstances of the beginning of Arabic printing for the Christians of the Middle East.

This volume presents new editions of these Arabic prefaces together with English translations and commentary. The corpus includes Christian Arabic books printed throughout the 18th century in Wallachia (Snagov and Bucharest), Moldavia (Iași), Aleppo, Beirut, and the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Khenchara (Dhur al-Shuwayr, Mount Lebanon).

Studying the features of these books makes it possible to trace the process of their editorial activity, the evolution of book design, the influence of European Baroque and also Classical Arabic literature, and the language particularities of the Christian Arabic in the 18th century Greater Syria.

 

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New Open-Access Book: Reconstructing the Disiecta Membra of Köprülü, Mehmed Âsım Bey, 1 bis

 George Kiraz, Sabine Schmidke and Alexander Treiger, Reconstructing the Disiecta Membra of Köprülü, Mehmed Âsım Bey, 1 bis (Gorgias Press, 2026)

 

A facsimile edition of Ms. Istanbul, Köprülü Library, Mehmed Âsım Bey 1 bis, a composite Christian Arabic manuscript with contents including Arabic New Testament witnesses, a lectionary, and Christian Arabic doctrinal, legal, and canonical texts. Beyond its textual contents, the manuscript provides important evidence for the circulation, fragmentation, and reassembly of Christian Arabic books in the Ottoman period, as well as for the precarious survival of Christian Arabic materials within Islamic library collections.

Download the book for free here.

 

 

New Open-Access Book- Books Printed for Arab Christians in the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalog

Archimandrite Policarp Chiţulescu and Yulia Petrova, Books Printed for Arab Christians in the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalog (De Gruyter, 2026)

About this book

This catalog provides descriptive records of 54 Arabic books printed in Eastern Europe and the Arabic-speaking communities in the Ottoman East during the 18^th century. It offers a thorough overview of the connections established through printing between the Romanian principalities and Arabic-speaking Christians in the eastern Mediterranean during this period. The catalog emphasizes the social progress that the printing culture brought to the Near East, to which Romanians made a significant contribution. The catalog also addresses the historical context of these connections and the printing activities of several prominent political and ecclesiastical figures. The books presented here are pivotal to the cultural history of the Ottoman East. They have been particularly significant in the context of conserving Byzantine-based Christianity in Arabic-speaking provinces in the region. Additionally, these books contributed to the standardization of Arabic liturgical texts and greatly influenced Christian Arabic literature. This catalog will be of interest to historians of the Arabic printed book, researchers of Arab Christian communities under Ottoman rule, as well as librarians and antiquarians because it will enable them to accurately identify and describe the 18^th-century Arabic editions in their collections.

Author / Editor information

Policarp Chiţulescu, Romanian Patriarchate, Bucharest, Romania; Yulia Petrova, Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

 

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New Book- Philip Stokes, The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature

Philip Stokes, The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2026).

Abstract

This Element examines the forms of Arabic used by Christians during the early Islamic period in theological treatises and Bible translations. Linguistic analysis of these texts not only clarifies the nature of early Islamic Arabic but also illuminates Christian institutional and intellectual culture. The study challenges common views that Christian authors wrote either flawed Classical Arabic or in substandard
registers. Instead, it demonstrates their Arabic was typical of the early Islamic period. The Element identifies linguistic differences between theological treatises and biblical translations, connecting these to pre-Islamic monastic practices where Greek served theological discourse while Christian Palestinian Aramaic – a local spoken variety written in adapted Syriac script – was used to write texts for lay purposes. After the Muslim conquests, Arabic became the appropriate language for both genres. Christians adapted Arabic, writing deftly and creatively to their literary activities, employing language suited to different audiences and demonstrating sophisticated engagement with emerging Arabic literary registers and traditions.

 This book can be downloaded for free for the next two weeks here. 

Fr Sidney Griffith: Memory Eternal!

Fr Sidney Griffith was virtually the founder of the study of Christian Arabic in English, both as a writer, teacher and interlocutor to many. He will be very deeply missed. 

His department has shared the following announcement with the NASCAS mailing list:

I write with a heavy heart to share the news that Fr. Sidney H. Griffith, Professor Emeritus of Semitics at the Catholic University of America, passed away on July 1, 2026 in Maryland. 

Fr. Griffith was born in 1938 in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he attended school until 1952 when he began studies at the John Carroll High School in Washington, DC. He subsequently joined the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity and attended the congregation’s minor seminary in Alabama and major seminary in Monroe, Virginia. He was ordained as a priest in 1965. 

In 1965, Fr. Griffith began the first of his many years at the Catholic University of America by earning an M.S. in Library Science and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology the following year (1966). Fr. Griffith then began studies in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures where he would remain for the rest of his career. He earned his PhD in Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures in 1978. Fr. Griffith joined the faculty of Catholic University in 1977 and was promoted to ordinary professor in 2001. He held this position until his retirement in 2014. 

Fr. Griffith was internationally renowned as a scholar of Syriac and early Arabic Christianity. His numerous scholarly works include studies of the famous Syriac thinker Ephrem the Syrian, early Syriac asceticism, early Arabic Christian theology, and interreligious dialogue and spirituality. Fr. Griffith was the author of over 130 articles and seven books, including the award-winning The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (2008); The Bible in Arabic (2013); Yahyā ibn ʿAdī, The Reformation of Morals: A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated and Introduced (1992); and A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons Written in Arabic by Theodore Abû Qurrah, Bishop of Harrān (c. 755–c. 830 A. D.) (1997). His Marquette Lecture of 1997 was published as Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian.

Numerous institutions have recognized Fr. Griffith for his work. He was awarded fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute for Advanced Studies. From 1986 to 1988 he was President of the North American Patristics Society; he also served as president of the Byzantine Studies Conference (1990–1991) and of the American Oriental Society (2007–2008). In 2009, he received a Rumi Peace Award for his work in interfaith dialogue. For over a decade he was a member of the Eastern Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue and was a frequent participant in various forms of Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Fr. Griffith was a pillar of the Catholic University of America community, having served as chair of the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures for three terms, as director of the Center for the Study of Early Christianity from 1984–1999, and as secretary of the Institute of Christian Oriental Research for decades. He trained numerous graduate students in the languages and literatures of the Christian Near East, many of whom went on to become notable scholars in the field.

Colleagues, students, and friends remember Fr. Griffith for his engaging conversations and his scholarly generosity. Fr. Griffith was always eager to work through a text with students or colleagues, sharing their curiosity and offering insights from his immense learning. His generosity, knowledge, and humility will be missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him.