STOREHOUSE OF MYSTERIES

Calling upon the help of God for the assistance of my weakness, I begin to write the book of the

STOREHOUSE OF MYSTERIES

on the interpretation of the whole text of the Bible, the interpretation being one of the works of our Father, His Beatitude original: "ṭūbhånā" Mar Gregorius II, Maphrian a high-ranking ecclesiastical office of the East, renowned in God. Our Lord help me!

FIRSTLY, THE PROEM

To Thee, who hast suspended the earth above the waters and hast confined the waters above the heaven, let every knee bow. And from that which is Thine let every good gift at every step flow, because Thou art God alone and not one of those things that were created beside Thee. Thy Word original: "mellĕth" — referring here to the person of the Son hath set a limit for the peoples, and by Thy Spirit the seas have stood firm in the deep. Man in the very beauty of Thy majesty Thou hast fashioned; and the soul by means of reason, the light of Thy goodness, Thou hast invigorated, especially of those who have devoted themselves to the Divine Writings and have healed unhealthy minds by their divine teachings.

Now since some have expounded the ideas, some have correctly set forth the words, others have composed chronicles, and still others have preferred to write lexicons, it has appeared useful to me that by this labor, for the time being, the seed of all the meanings of the whole text of the Bible in the soil of this little treatise I should implant, and that I should earn abiding gain for myself and for others; because many books are not, for all men, obtainable—nay, their tale cannot be told—and the few must bend the back to the burden of their weight, while the multitude of swallows or "bats" must nest in their shelters.

Now inasmuch as this version, the Peshitta the standard Syriac version of the Bible, is in accord with the Hebrew and—as Eusebius the Caesarean says, Origen found it even with a certain widow—it is in the hands of the Syrians in every place, it, although it be defective, I have made the foundation; and from the version