The Syriac Bible: Text, Translation, and Interpretation in the Other Early Church - Ian Mills - June 30th 2023 - Friday Night Lecture

Church historians sometimes speak of the Greek East and the Latin West, as if Christian history were neatly divided between the two. This tidy division omits a third branch of the early church: Syriac Christianity. This lecture will introduce the Syriac tradition with special emphasis on the value of Syriac literature for Biblical studies, including textual criticism, translation, and the history of interpretation.

The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN is a premier center for the preservation and study of Syriac and other oriental Christian literature. In 2022, Grigory Kessel announced the discovery in HMML's physical collections of a hitherto unknown witness to the Old Syriac gospels — one of the earliest and most important translations of the Christian scriptures. Dr. Mills' lecture will highlight the work of monks and scholars at HMML to make these Christian traditions available to the rest of the world.

 

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Ian Mills holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Duke University with a research focus on the New Testament and early Christianity. He is completing a short research fellowship on Syriac translations of the gospels at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota. Dr. Mills is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY.