A sureth version of the east-syriac dialogue poem of mary and the gardener

In the present paper, a Sureth version is published of the dialogue poem of Mary and the Gardener. As a first attempt to reconstruct the history of this text, the poetic version in the vernacular is compared with five manuscript witnesses of the Classical Syriac original. The poem is presented as part of an intertextual web of Classical Syriac hymns for Easter and Pentecost that are preserved in late liturgical collections and appear to be narrative and rhetorical expansions of John 20:11-17. Formal and thematic parallels to the poem are then found in the broader framework of Christian and Jewish hymnography written in varieties of Late Aramaic

Simon Magus and Simon Peter in Rome. The Sureth Version of a Late East-Syriac Hymn for the Commemoration of Saints Peter and Paul

A Sureth (Christian North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic) version of an East-Syriac hymn on Simon Magus and Simon Peter in Rome and its late Classical Syriac Vorlage are here published for the first time. The text is part of a small group of hymns on Peter and Rome that belong to the East Syriac liturgy for the commemoration of Saints Peter and Paul. The episode of the public contest and specific narrative details derive from the Syriac History of Simon Cephas, the Chief of the Apostles. These narrative and poetic texts on Peter have their ultimate roots in literary works, such as the Acts of Peter and the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, that circulated in various languages from the Antiquity onwards and forms the genuine lore of Christian culture, in Europe as well as in Africa and the Near East. More or less consciously adopting a rather narrow-minded, confessional point of view, we are used to label as apocryphal this kind of foundational Christian literature. An attempt is made to contextualize the two versions of the hymn and their text transmission in the histories of both Classical Syriac and Sureth literatures

A Sureth Version of the East-Syriac Dialogue Poem of Mary and the Gardener

In the present paper, a Sureth version is published of the dialogue poem of Mary and the Gardener. As a first attempt to reconstruct the history of this text, the poetic version in the vernacular is compared with five manuscript witnesses of the Classical Syriac original. The poem is presented as part of an intertextual web of Classical Syriac hymns for Easter and Pentecost that are preserved in late liturgical collections and appear to be narrative and rhetorical expansions of John 20:11-17. Formal and thematic parallels to the poem are then found in the broader framework of Christian and Jewish hymnography written in varieties of Late Aramaic

Yazdandukht and Mar Qardagh: From the Persian martyr acts in Syriac to Sureth poetry on YouTube, via a historical novel in Arabic

Videos posted on YouTube show how stories of East-Syriac saints have found their way to a popular web platform, where they are re-told combining traditional genres with a culturally hybrid visual representation. The sketchy female characters Yazdandukht and Yazdui/Christine and the fully developed epos of Mar Qardagh, who belong to the narrative cycle of the Persian martyrs of Erbil and Kirkuk, inspired an Arabic illustrated historical novel, published in 1934 by the Chaldean bishop Sulaymān Ṣā’igh. A few years after the publication of the novel, a new cult of Mar Qardagh was established in Alqosh, in northern Iraq, including the building of a shrine, the painting of an icon, public and private rites, and the composition of hymns. In 1969 the Chaldean priest Yoḥannan Cholagh adapted Ṣā’igh’s Arabic novel to a traditional long stanzaic poem in the Aramaic dialect of Alqosh. The poem On Yazdandukht, as chanted by the poet himself, became the soundtrack of a video published on YouTube in 2014