The People and the Peoples

The main purpose of the book is to provide the Syriac texts from 5th to 7th AD and annotated English translations of four anonymous dialogue poems (with separate introductions to each) where the protagonists are, respectively, Synagogue and Church, Sion and Church, Jesus and the Synagogue, Jesus and the Pharisees. Syriac texts of first two dialogue poems are critical editions based on the oldest manuscripts; the first replaces an earlier edition (1902) based on a very corrupt manuscript, and the second and third have only previously been published in Sughyotho mgabyotho (Select dialogue poems; Monastery of St Ephrem, NL, 1982), intended for a Syrian Orthodox readership. The Syriac text of the fourth is primarily based on earlier editions in F. Feldman, Syrische Wechsellieder von Narses (Leipzig, 1896) and A. Mingana, Narsai Doctoris syri homiliae et carmina II (Mosul, 1905), where the poem is almost certainly wrongly attributed to Narsai.