New Homilies Pages

I am delighted to publicize the recently added pages on homilies to Syri.ac. The study of sermons and Christian preaching in late antiquity and the Middle Ages has grown immensely over the last twenty-five years. Research on Syriac homilies are especially important for connecting Syriac studies to other fields of research. The Syriac tradition has a distinctive metrical homiletical tradition, and Syriac manuscripts preserve very early evidence for the transmission of homilies from late antiquity. The extensive number of homilies translated into Syriac from Greek adds to the value of this corpus.

To support the study of Syriac homilies, Syri.ac now hosts a working guide to homilies in the Syriac tradition. The homilies table organizes the corpus of Syriac homilies according to author and enables searches for common themes across the corpus. An accompanying pdf homilies guide first divides the corpus into homilies authored in Syriac and homilies translated from Greek into Syriac. It then organizes authors chronologically. Both presentations of this material offer different ways of approaching this important body of Syriac literature.

This page is still a work-in-progress, and I intend to update it regularly. More details on the reference works consulted and future updates can be found on the homilies homepage. Comments and suggestions are most welcome.

I am grateful to Scott Johnson and Jack Tannous for incorporating these pages into Syri.ac and to Morgan Reed for digitizing the information.