Syriac Anecdotes, Volumes 3 and 4

L. S. An abbreviation for Lectori Salutem, meaning "Greetings to the reader."

Fourteen years ago, I seemed to have proven In the commentary titled "Joannes Bischof von Ephesos" [John, Bishop of Ephesus], pp. 35–37. Add the opinion of Angelo Mai in Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio [New Collection of Ancient Writers], Vol. X (Rome 1838), p. 361, note: "These noble parts of the historian Zacharias, written in Greek by their author, were then made into Syriac by an anonymous writer..." And the same author showed in his preface, p. XII, that Zacharias' history once existed in a certain Byzantine library. that Zacharias Rhetor, or Scholasticus—about whom Assemani discussed in Bibliotheca Orientalis II, 54–62—was not the bishop of Melitene, but of Mitylene on Lesbos, and that he did not write in Syriac, but in Greek. Today we have the clear testimony of a Syriac interpreter In this volume, p. 116, lines 13–14 and 21–22.. As for the see of the bishop, I think it is hardly credible that the author of British Museum codex 12174 (Anecd. Vol. II, pp. 29–30)—a monk living near Melitene and devoted to the reputation of the Monophysites—would have referred to Zacharias only by the titles of "Scholasticus" and "ecclesiastical historian" (this volume, p. 347, lines 5–6) if he had indeed been the bishop of that very diocese; the memory of such a fact could not have easily perished through episcopal catalogs, diptychs, and other documents.