INTRODUCTION
IN publishing the commentaries of the famous Nestorian father Ishoʿdad, and in accompanying the Syriac text with a translation into English, Mrs Gibson has added greatly to the obligations under which the learned world has been laid by the devotion to sacred literature and the zealous pursuit of fresh material for its study shewn by herself and her twin-sister, Mrs Lewis.
I believe this is Mrs Gibson's second excursion into the field of Syriac literature (the first being the publication of the Syriac Didascalia), and I am surprised at the courage (I had almost said daring) which she has displayed in attacking a work so extended, and beset by so many internal difficulties: and if there should be found some places in which Mrs Gibson has failed to grasp Ishoʿdad's meaning, or has rendered the Syriac wrongly, a tolerant judgment will no doubt be given by scholars in view of the fact that so much has been added to Syriac literature at a single stroke.
I had for a long time contemplated, with a view to publication, a MS. of Ishoʿdad which had come into my possession, but had shrunk from the task, as being beyond the limits of the time and powers at my disposal; and it was a matter of great satisfaction to me when Mrs Gibson volunteered to take my text from me, and to reinforce it from other existing copies, and play the part of editor and translator to a too long neglected Father of the Eastern Church[1]. When this step was decided upon, Mrs Gibson invited me to write such prefatory matter as might serve to bring Ishoʿdad before the learned world and indicate his importance for the textual critic and the theologian. To this request I have
- ↑ In my book Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diaiessaron (p. ii) I had noted the rich mine of Patristic quotations (both Greek and Syriac) in Ishoʿdad and expressed myself as follows: 'So valuable is the work that it deserves to be published in full, for it contains almost all that is important in later writers like Bar Salibi and Bar Hebraeus, in an earlier form.'
