PREFACE

As I prepare to introduce this book, I have no greater priority than to offer my deepest thanks to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, who, with their customary kindness and generosity, chose to support and promote a work that is highly recommended both by the antiquity of its origin and the gravity of its contents and the authority of its writers.

I believe it is not a futile undertaking to publish the unpublished writings of Saint Ephrem, since that man is most highly commended not only for the soundness of his doctrine and the holiness of his life, but also for the felicity of his genius and the depth of his learning. He is rightly called the first of the Syrians, a Doctor of the Church, and a Doctor of the School. These, therefore, may be considered not unwelcome additions to the illustrious work of Assemani Giuseppe Simone Assemani, a prominent 18th-century Orientalist and scholar of Syriac literature.. However, since we are seeking out unpublished parts from manuscripts, we must not neglect to revise texts already published by using ancient manuscripts that have not yet been collated with one another. Therefore, I did not consider it alien to my purpose to present a new recension of the Testament of Saint Ephrem, that is, to propose the entire and unchanged text of a certain manuscript, while adding the various...