ARAM, 11-12 (1999-2000), 475-484 S.

BROCK 475

FROM QATAR TO TOKYO, BY WAY OF MAR SABA:

THE TRANSLATIONS OF ISAAC OF BETH QA™RAYE
(ISAAC THE SYRIAN)

SEBASTIAN BROCK

One might well wonder what a seventh-century Syriac monastic writer, usu-
ally known as Isaac of Niniveh, or Isaac the Syrian, has to do with a confer-
ence on Cultural Interchange in the East of the Arabian Peninsula, but one of
the very few details that are known of Isaac's life is the fact that he originated
from Beth Qa†raye, the region of the west coast of the Gulf. This information
is provided, not only by our two prime sources on Isaac's biography, the East
Syriac monastic history (ktaba d-nakputa) by Isho{dnaÌ, and the Syrian Ortho-
dox biographical note published by Rahmani, but also by two thirteenth-cen-
tury manuscripts of Isaac's works which describe him as “the holy Mar Isaac
Qa†raya, bishop of the town of Niniveh”.1
It is often forgotten that the west side of the Gulf was an important centre of
Syriac Christianity in the seventh century, and Beth Qa†raye was the place of
origin of a number of important Syriac writers of that time.2 By far the most
famous of these is Isaac of Niniveh.
The one chronological peg to which Isaac's life can be attached is the state-
ment, in the Syrian Orthodox biographical note, that “when the Catholicos
Mar Giwargis came to the region (sc. of Beth Qa†raye), he took him (sc. Isaac)
to Beth Aramaye”, and in due course consecrated him as bishop of Niniveh.
Giwargis reigned as Catholicos from c.659-680, and he is known to have made
a journey to Beth Qa†raye in 676. It is thus likely, though not certain, that it
was on this occasion that he took Isaac back with him, and if this was so, then
Isaac will probably have been born around the third or fourth decade of the
seventh century, about the time of, or shortly after, the date of the Hijra. Isaac
in fact resigned from the bishopric after only five months, and spent the re-
mainder of his life as a hermit (iÌidaya) in the mountains of Khuzistan (the
1
 Chabot, J.B., Isho{denaÌ, Liber Castitatis (Rome, 1896), ch. 124; Rahmani, I.E., Studia
Syriaca, I (Charfeh, 1904), 33. Both notices are translated into English in [Miller, D.], The
Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, (Boston, 1984), lxv-lxvi. The two manuscripts are
Mardin 46 (used by Bedjan for his edition) and Seert 76; the latter is almost certainly to be iden-
tified with the present Paris syr. 359 (where “Qa†raya” is no longer legible, according to Briquel-
Chatonnet, F., Manuscrits syriaques de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France (no. 356-435),
(Paris, 1997), 25).
2
 See my “Syriac authors from Beth Qatraye”, in the present volume, above, pp. 85-96.
476 FROM QATAR TO TOKYO

biographical sources mention the mountain of Matut and the monastery of

Rabban Shabur, neither of whose location is precisely known, although the lat-
ter was somewhere near Shustar/Tustar). Isaac died in old age, leaving exten-
sive writings on the spiritual life which were perhaps only put into writing
near the end of his life.
As they survive today, Isaac's main writings have been transmitted in
two “Parts”: “The First Part (palguta)” consists of 82 chapters or homilies,
while “the Second Part” contains 41 chapters, of which the third consists
of four “Centuries” on spiritual understanding. From the point of view of
the present paper it is the First Part which is of prime concern, since it alone
came to be translated into Greek, in the late eighth or early ninth century –
only a century or so after Isaac's death (the precise date of which, however,
remains unknown). This Greek translation is known to have been made by the
monks Abramios and Patrikios at the famous monastery of St Saba, near Jeru-
salem.3

THE GREEK TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST PART

The Monastery of St Saba (Mar Saba) was – and is – a Chalcedonian Ortho-

dox monastery under the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and in communion with
the Patriarchate of Constantinople, whereas Isaac belonged to the Church of
the East, whose christology was regarded by the Byzantine Orthodox as, at
best unsatisfactory, and at worst heretical (and hence nicknamed “Nesto-
rian”).4 This makes it something of a puzzle to know how a monastic writer of
the so-called “Nestorian” Church of the East came to be translated into Greek
in a monastery which was a stronghold of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
From the scattered sources for this period one can in fact find several hints
of links between the Church of the East (located in modern Iraq, Iran and the
Gulf area) and Palestine during the seventh and eighth centuries.5 Thus, for
example, in the middle of the seventh century the East Syriac Catholicos
Isho{yahb III (the predecessor of Giwargis who consecrated Isaac bishop)
corresponded with the clergy of Jerusalem in friendly terms,6 and we also
know that several monks from the Church of the East made pilgrimages to the
Holy Places of Palestine. Furthermore, there were evidently a few monastic
3
 This information is explicitly given at the beginnig of Greek manuscripts containing the
translation.
4
 For the misleading nature of this traditional western designation, see my “The ‘Nestorian’
Church: a lamentable minomer”, in Coakley, J.F. and Parry, K., The Church of the East: Life
and Thought = Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, (Manchester), 78:3, (1996), 23-35.
5
 These are indicated in more detail in my “Syriac into Greek at Mar Saba: the translation of
Isaac the Syrian”, forthcoming in Patrich, J. (ed.), The Sabaite Heritage.
6
 Latin translation in Duval, R., Isho{yahb III, Liber Epistularum, (CSCO 12, Scr. Syri 12;
1905), 177-8.
 S. BROCK 477

establishments of the Church of the East in Palestine itself. A mosaic inscrip-

tion from one of these, situated in the vicinity of Jericho, even mentions the
names of several East Syriac monks, two of whom can actually be identified
from literary sources.7 We also know from extant manuscripts that certain East
Syriac monastic texts were circulating among and read by Syriac-speaking
Chalcedonian Orthodox monks in Palestine.
In the light of all this, although we still do not know exactly how the Syriac
text of the First Part of Isaac's writings reached the Chalcedonian Orthodox
monastery of Mar Saba, the fact that it did is a little less surprising than might
at first sight have seemed.
Isaac's Greek translators, the monks Abramios and Patrikios, must have
been working from a manuscript that, on the one hand, did not have all the
homilies of the First Part, but which, on the other hand, also included five texts
not by Isaac, but which, once in Greek, were regularly attributed to Isaac.
These five texts can fortunately all be identified: four are by another East
Syriac monastic writer, John Saba (John the Elder), also known as John of
Dalyatha (and in Arabic as al-sheikh al-ruÌani), who belongs to a couple of
generations later than Isaac.8 The fifth text surprisingly turns out to be an ab-
breviated form of a monastic letter by the famous Syrian Orthodox theologian
and author, Philoxenos of Mabbug (died 523).9 The Greek translation of Isaac
this pleasingly brings together all three Syriac christological traditions – the
Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox providing the text, and the
Chalcedonian Orthodox undertaking the translation.
The earliest witness to the Greek translation of Isaac's writing happens to be
a ninth-century fragment which was discovered at the beginning of this cen-
tury in the Qubbat al-hazna of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus.10 Once in
Greek, Isaac's writings quickly proved popular in monastic circles, to judge
both by the number of manuscripts, from all subsequent centuries, and from
the fact that excerpts from his homilies feature in a number of monastic an-
thologies, in particular in the popular Synagoge (“Collection”) compiled by
Paul Evergetinos in the early eleventh century.”11

7
 See Fiey, J.M., “Rabban Buya de Shaqlawa et de Jericho”, Proche Orient Chrétien, 33,
(1983), 34-38. The inscription was published by Baramki, D.C., and Stephan, St.H., “A
Nestorian hermitage between Jericho and the Jordan”, Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities
in Palestine, 4, (1934), 81-86, plates LII-LIV.
8
 Thus Greek Isaac, homily 2 = John Saba, Discourse 20; Greek Isaac, hom. 7 = John, Disc.
8; Greek Isaac, hom. 43 = John, Disc. 1; Greek Isaac, hom. 80 = John, Disc. 22.
9
 In the Greek Isaac this is the Letter to Symeon, at the end. The full form of the Syriac origi-
nal of Philoxenus' Letter to Patricius was published by Lavenant, R., in Patrologia Orientalis, 30
(1963).
10
 See Treu, K., “Remnants of a majuscule codex of Isaac Syrus from Damascus”, Studia
Patristica, 16:2, (1985), 114-20.
11
 For details, see my “Isaac the Syrian”, in Conticello, G.C. and others (eds), La théologie
byzantine (Turnhout, forthcoming).
478 FROM QATAR TO TOKYO

OTHER EARLY TRANSLATIONS FROM THE SYRIAC ORIGINAL

Before continuing with the subsequent history and influence of the Greek
Isaac, however, a brief glance should be given to the other early translations,
besides the Greek, of the First Part which were made directly from Syriac.
What may be the earliest witnesses to these are single homilies translated into
Georgian and into Arabic, both preserved in early manuscripts actually written
at the monastery of Mar Saba. The Arabic manuscript in question is dated AD
885/6, while the Georgian one is dated two decades later, AD 906.12 Although
neither of these translations have been studied in detail, it seems likely that at
least some of the excerpts are based on the Syriac original, rather than on the
Greek translation. (Here it might be mentioned that the opening folios of a
Syriac manuscript of Isaac's Homilies, actually written at Mar Saba and dating
from 8th/9th century, also survives).13
As far as Arabic is concerned, we know from three letters by Îanun ibn
YuÌanna ibn al-∑alt (late ninth century) that he came across Isaac's writings in
Syriac in a monastery in Anbar, on the Euphrates, and translated excerpts from
them into Arabic, incorporating them into his letters.14 Homilies by Isaac are
in fact preserved in Arabic in several different collections, some translated di-
rectly from Syriac, and others (as will shortly be seen) from Greek.

SECONDARY TRANSLATIONS MADE FROM THE GREEK TRANSLATION 15

The Greek translation of Isaac serves as the source for translations into four
different languages already in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the earliest of these
was the translation into Georgian made by St Euthymios (died 1028), who was
one of the founders of the Georgian monastery on Mount Athos, the Moni
Iviron. Euthymios is known to have undertaken a very large number of transla-
tions of Greek texts for the benefit of Georgian monks and other readers. Also
some time in the eleventh century a translation of 35 of the Greek homilies
was made into Arabic by the prolific Melkite (Chalcedonian Orthodox) author
{Abdallah ibn al Fa∂l. This translation was subsequently incorporated, as Book
III, into the largest and most popular Arabic collection of Isaac's Homilies; it
also served as the basis for the Ethiopic (Ge{ez) translation, perhaps made in
the 16th century.16 Once in Ethiopic, Isaac's Homilies proved extremely popu-
12
 For details, see my “Syriac into Greek at Mar Saba”. (I am most grateful to Dr Kate
Leeming for information concerning the Arabic manuscript, Strasbourg or. 4226).
13
 Paris syr. 378.
14
 Ed. Sbath, P., Traités religieux, philosophiques et moraux extraits des œuvres d'Isaac de
Ninive…par Ibn as-∑alt, (Cairo, 1934).
15
 For further details concerning all of these, see my “Isaac the Syrian”.
16
 A critical edition of this has recently appeared: Berhanu, D., Das masÌafa Mar YesÌaq aus
Ninive, (Hamburg, 1997).
 S. BROCK 479

lar, and in the present century they have been published in Amharic translation
(1923).
The equally influential Slavonic translation of the Greek Isaac probably be-
longs to the early fourteenth century, and may have been made by disciples of
St Gregory of Sinai. It was this translation which served as the basis for the
first Russian translation, published serially in the 19th century (1821-49).
The Latin translation probably also belongs to the fourteenth century, and
may possibly be the work of Angelo Clareno (died 1337), who is known to
have translated several Greek monastic writings into Latin, including the fa-
mous “Ladder”, of St John of Sinai, usually known as John Klimakos, “of the
Ladder”. This translation circulated in Latin under the title de contemptu
mundi, and consisted of only 25 of the homilies17 (in the first printed edition,
produced in Venice in 1506, the text was divided up into 63 chapters, while
later reprints of this sometimes re-divided it into 53). Even before it reached
the printed page, the Latin Isaac had already been translated into a variety of
vernacular languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian; of
these, the Italian was reprinted a number of times in subsequent centuries.
It was well over two and a half centuries after the Venice edition of the
Latin Isaac that the Greek text of Isaac's Homilies got into print. This was the
work of Nikephoros Theotokis, under the patronage of the Greek Orthodox
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Ephraim. The edition (which is extremely rare today)
was published at Leipzig in 1770, and it is the reprinting of this, done by
Ioakim Spetsieris in Athens in 1895, which serves as the basis for current pho-
tographic reprints. It is a matter for regret that Theotokis based his edition on
late manuscripts and rearranged the homilies, putting them into what he con-
sidered a more logical order. This situation provides a ready source of confu-
sion in modern references to Isaac's Homilies, since the Greek and Syriac
chapter numberings are, as a result, very different.
Despite the present rarity of the 1770 edition, this printed Greek text has
been the source of a number of nineteenth- and twentieth- century translations;
thus it serves as the basis for the following:
– a second Slavonic translation, made by Paisiy Velichkovsky (1812);
– a Romanian translation, carried out by two disciples of Velichkovsky
(1819);
– a second Russian translation (complete; 1854), based both on the printed
Greek and the first Slavonic translation;
– a Modern Greek translation, made by a monk of the Pantokrator Monas-
tery on Mount Athos (1871); this has been reprinted a number of times in re-
cent decades;
17
 The Latin corresponds to the following sequence of homilies as re-arranged in the printed
Greek text: 23, 5, 56, 85, 9, 21, 10, 14, 15, 11, 22, 2, 13, 29, 68, 24, 16, 26(end), 26, 46b, 17, 72,
18, 73, 7.
480 FROM QATAR TO TOKYO

– a Japanese translation (Tokyo, 1909), made from the second Russian

translation. This was the work of a Japanese woman, Fuku Horie, who trans-
lated, by way of Russian, a number of writings by Greek monastic writers.
– a third Russian translation (1911), drawing on the second Slavonic and
Russian versions and (for the relevant homilies) Bickell's German and
Chabot's Latin translations of the Syriac original (see below), as well as on the
printed Greek.
– extensive excerpts, translated from the Russian edition of the Philokalia,18
were included by K. Kadkoubovsky and G.E.H. Palmer, in their Early Fathers
from the Philokalia, (London, 1954);
– a selection of ten Homilies was translated into a Demotic form of Modern
Greek by the well-known icon painter and writer, Photis Kontoglu (Athens,
1944; with a second edition in 1975);
– a French translation by Jacques Touraille,19 covering the entire Greek
Isaac (Paris, 1981);
– the complete text in Romanian was incorporated by the late Dumitru
Staniloae into the tenth volume of his edition of the Philokalia (1981);
– an Arabic translation, made by Fr. IsÌaq {A†allah, and published in Beirut
(1983);
– an English translation, made by Dana Miller,20 and published by the Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, Boston (1984).

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE SYRIAC ORIGINAL

By contrast with the Greek Isaac, the Syriac original has given rise to con-
siderably fewer translations, and of these, only one is of the entire Syriac col-
lection of 82 Homilies. The Syriac text itself was only published in 1909, by
Paul Bedjan,21 although even before the Syriac had been printed, a few select
homilies had been translated from manuscripts into German (by G. Bickell,
1874),22 and into Latin (by J.B. Chabot, 1892).23 The translation into English,
by the Dutch scholar A.J. Wensinck (1923),24 remains the only complete trans-
lation of the Syriac text, and all subsequent translations based on the Syriac
original cover only certain Homilies. As in the case of modern translations
18
 The original Greek edition (1782) of the large monastic anthology known as the Philokalia
did not contain any texts by Isaac, but in the second volume of the Russian edition (1894) this
absence was remedied.
19
 Isaac le Syrien. Œuvres spirituelles.
20
 The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian.
21
 Mar Isaacus Ninivita. De Perfectione Religiosa, (Paris/Leipzig).
22
 In Ausgewählte Schriften der syrischen Kirchenväter Aphraates, Rabulas und Isaak von
Ninive, (Kempten). Hom. 1-6, 36, 47.
23
 In his De S. Isaaci Ninivitae Vitae, Scriptis et Doctrina, (Paris). Hom. 43, 45, 28.
24
 Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh, (Amsterdam).
 S. BROCK 481

made from the Greek, it is the '80s of the present century that have witnessed
much renewed activity, as can be seen from the following list:
– Italian (1984), by M. Gallo and P. Bettiolo,25 covering Homilies 1-38;
– English (1984), by Dana Miller (see above), who included translations
from Syriac of five homilies (Syriac nos 49, 56, 71, 75-76) which are absent
from the Greek Isaac into his translation of the latter;
– Franch (1984/5), by E. Khalifé-Hachem,26 of Homily 3;
– English (1987), by S.P. Brock,27 of Homily 22; there are subsequent trans-
lations of this into Malayalam (1991) and Persian (1998);
– English (1989), by Mary Hansbury,28 covering Homilies 1-6;
– English (forthcoming), by S.P. Brock,29 of Homilies 7, 43, 64.

TRANSLATIONS OF THE SECOND PART

Although there is no evidence available to indicate that a Greek translation

was ever made of the Second Part, it is nevertheless certain that the Second
Part (or at least selections from it) were known to, and read by, Syriac-speak-
ing monks in Chalcedonian Orthodox monasteries of Palestine and Sinai: this
is made clear by the presence of excerpts from this Second Part in a few
Melkite (i.e. Chalcedonian Orthodox) Syriac manuscripts; one of these is
dated 882,30 while another belongs to the tenth century.31 Furthermore, it is
evident that at least some chapters from the Second Part were translated into
Arabic.32
When Bedjan came to edit the Syriac text of the First Part at the beginning
of the present century, he knew of a single manuscript, in Urmia, containing
the complete text of the Second Part, and from this he published the text of one
chapter and some excerpts. The Urmia manuscript evidently fell victim to the
ravages of the First World War in that town, leaving only a fragmentary manu-
script of the Second Part in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (syr. 298). In
1983, however, another complete (and early) manuscript of this Second Part
was identified in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,33 and chapters 4-41 of the text

25
 Isacco di Ninive. Discorsi Ascetici 1: L'ebbrezza della fede, (Rome).
26
 In Parole de l'Orient, 12, 203-210.
27
 In The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, (Kalamazoo),
28
 St Isaac of Nineveh, On Ascetical Life, (Crestwood NY).
29
 In “St Isaac the Syrian”.
30
 Ed. Strothmann, W., Codex Syriacus Secundus, (Göttingen, 1977), f.39r, quoting nos 21-23
in the Fourth Century of Headings on Spritiual Knowledge in ch. 3.
31
 Sinay syr. 14, ff.119-27, containing excerpts from chapters 1-3.
32
 These are to be found in Book I of the popular collection of Isaac's works that circulated in
Arabic in four books.
33
 Syr.e.7. A copy of this manuscript had been made in the Urmia area in 1895, a year before
it came to the Bodleian Library; this copy is now in Tehran.
482 FROM QATAR TO TOKYO

have now been edited, with English translation; the remainder (most of which
consists of the extensive Headings on Spiritual Knowledge, or Understanding,
in ch. 3) is already available in English (ch. 1-2) and Italian (ch. 3) transla-
tions. Three secondary translations have already been made, or are in the proc-
ess of being made, all done largely on the basis of the English and Italian
translations. Thus, for translations of the Second Part, there are the following,
in chronological order:
– Italian (1985), in P. Bettiolo, Isacco di Ninive. Discorsi Spirituali,
(Magnano). This covers ch. 3 (the extensive Headings on Spiritual Knowl-
edge).
– English (1987), in S.P. Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spir-
itual Life, (Kalamazoo, 1987). This includes ch. 14 and 15. This collection of
translations has subsequently been translated into Malayalam (1991) and Per-
sian (Tehran, 1998).
– Italian (1991); the second, expanded, edition of P. Bettiolo's Isacco di
Ninive. Discorsi Spirituali further includes (besides ch. 3) ch. 4, 5, 32, 35, and
39.
– Malayalam (1991), of ch. 14-15; see under English (1987).
– English (1994), in S.P. Brock, ”The prayers of St Isaac”, Sobornost/East-
ern Churches Review, 16, 20-31. This covers ch. 5.
– English (1995), in S.P. Brock, Isaac of Niniveh (Isaac the Syrian): “The
Second Part”, chapters IV-XLI, (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orienta-
lium, Scr. Syri 225). This translation accompanies the edition of the Syriac
text of ch. 4-41 (CSCO, Scr. Syri 224).
– English (1997), in S.P. Brock, ”Two unpublished texts by St Isaac the
Syrian”, Sobornost/Eastern Churches Review, 19, 7-33; these are ch. 1 and 2.
– Russian (Moscow, 1998), in H. Alfeyev, Propodobnyi Isaak Sirin. O
bozhestvennikh tainakh i o dukhovnoi zhizni. This covers ch. 1-2, 4-41, and is
based primarily on the English translation, though with reference to the Syriac
original.
– Persian (Tehran, 1998), of ch. 14-15; see under English (1987).
– Romanian (Sibiu, forthcoming), by Ioan I. Ica. This covers the entire Sec-
ond Part, and is made on the basis of the Italian (1991) and English transla-
tions (1995, 1997).
– Arabic (in preparation, based on the English translation).

TRANSLATIONS OF SHORT EXCERPTS FROM BOTH PARTS

Two small anthologies of short passages derived from both Parts have ap-
peared in English, the first of which has already been translated into Japanese:
– A.M.A. Allchin, The Heart of Compassion, (London, 1989); Japanese
translation, Tokyo, 1990.
 S. BROCK 483

– S.P. Brock, The Wisdom of St Isaac, (Kottayam, 1995; 2nd edition, Ox-
ford, 1997).

*  *  *

Even this skeletal outline of the various translations made over the centuries
into some twenty different languages of Isaac's writings should be sufficient in
itself to indicate the unexpectedly wide appeal that these have enjoyed, and
indeed continue to enjoy in modern times: in the nineteenth century it was
Isaac's teaching which lay behind many of the words that Dostoievsky put into
the mouth of Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, and in the latter part
of the present century it is a remarkable fact that the recent monastic revivals
both in the Greek Orthodox Church on Mount Athos, and in the Coptic Ortho-
dox Church in the desert monasteries of Egypt,34 have both owed not a little to
the inspiration provided by the writings of this hermit of the Church of the
East who originated from Beth Qa†raye.

34
 See my “Aspects œcuméniques des œuvres de s.Isaac le Syrien”, in Patrimoine Syriaque:
Actes du Colloque VI, (Antelias, forthcoming).
484 FROM QATAR TO TOKYO

TABLE: TRANSLATIONS OF ISAAC, FIRST PART

(Capitals denote direct translations from Syriac; italics denote complete trans-
lation of the source text used; an asterisk denotes excerpts only)

late 7th cent.            SYRIAC

8th/9th cent.  GREEK

9th cent.             GEORGIAN*   ARABIC*

11th cent. Georgian

Arabic

14th cent.    Slavonic I
Latin

15th cent. Portuguese Catalan Spanish French Italian

16th cent. Ethiopic

18th cent. Printed GREEK

    (1770)

19th cent. Slavonic II

  (1812)
Romanian I (1819)
Russian I

Russian II
  (1854)
Modern Greek
   (1871) GERMAN*
  (1876)
            Russian Philokalia*
             (1884) LATIN* (1892)

20th cent. Printed SYRIAC (1909)  

    Japanese    Russian III
   (1909)      (1911)                         ENGLISH (1923)

        English* (1954)
    Romanian Philokalia (1981)       French (1981)
Arabic (1983)
English (1984)          FRENCH* (1984)   ITALIAN (1984)

  ENGLISH* (1987)
ENGLISH (1989)  ENGLISH* (1989)

Persian (1998) Malayalam (1991)            Japanese (1990)